All of these are reasonable points, given the fixed goal of obtaining and sharing as much truth as possible.
Is the implication that they’re not reasonable under the assumption that truth, too, trades off against other values?
What the points I presented (perhaps along with other things) convinced me of was not that truth or information takes precedence over all other values, but rather simply that it had been sacrificed too much in service of other values. The pendulum has swung too far in a certain direction.
Above, I made it sound like it the overshooting of the target was severe; but I now think this was exaggerated. That quantitative aspect of my comment should probably be regarded as heated rhetoric in service of my point. It’s fairly true in my own case, however, which (you’ll hopefully understand) is particularly salient to me. Speaking up about my preoccupations is (I’ve concluded) something I haven’t done nearly enough of. Hence this very discussion.
But people don’t choose goals.
This is obviously false, as a general statement. People choose goals all the time. They don’t, perhaps, choose their ultimate goals, but I’m not saying that truth-seeking is necessarily anybody’s ultimate goal. It’s just a value that has been underserved by a social context that was ostensibly designed specifically to serve it.
Most people certainly care much more about not being attacked physically than discovering truth.
But not infinitely much. That’s why communicational norms differ among contexts; not all contexts are as tightly regulated as politics, diplomacy, and law. What I’m suggesting is that Less Wrong, an internet forum for discovering truth, can afford to occupy a place toward the looser end of the spectrum of communicational norms.
This, indeed, is possible because a lot of other optimization power has already gone into the prevention of violence; the background society does a lot of this work, and the fact that people are confronting each other remotely over the internet does a fair portion of the rest. And contrary to Maxwell’s implication, nobody is talking about removing any Chesterton Fences. Obviously, for example, actual threats of violence are intolerable. (That did not occur here—though again, I’m much less interested in defending the specific comment originally at issue than in discussing the general principles which, to my mind, this conversation implicates.)
The thing is: not all norms are Chesterton Fences! Most norms are flexible, with fuzzy boundaries that can be shifted in one direction or the other. This includes norms whose purpose is to prevent violence. (Not all norms of diplomacy are entirely unambiguous, let alone ordinary rules of “civil discourse”.) The characteristic of fences is that they’re bright lines, clear demarcations, without any ambiguity as to which side you’re on. And just as surely as they should only be removed with great caution, so too should careful consideration guide their erection in the first place. When possible, the work of norms should be done by ordinary norms, which allow themselves to be adjusted in service of goals.
There are other points to consider, as well, that I haven’t even gotten into. For example, it looks conceivable that, in the future, technology, and the way it interacts with society, will make privacy and secrecy less possible; and that social norms predicated upon their possibility will become less effective at their purposes (which may include everything up to the prevention of outright violence). In such a world, it may be important to develop the ability to build trust by disclosing more information, rather than less.
I agree with all of this. (Except “this is obviously false,” but this is not a real disagreement with what you are saying. When I said people do not choose goals, that was in fact about ultimate goals.)
Is the implication that they’re not reasonable under the assumption that truth, too, trades off against other values?
What the points I presented (perhaps along with other things) convinced me of was not that truth or information takes precedence over all other values, but rather simply that it had been sacrificed too much in service of other values. The pendulum has swung too far in a certain direction.
Above, I made it sound like it the overshooting of the target was severe; but I now think this was exaggerated. That quantitative aspect of my comment should probably be regarded as heated rhetoric in service of my point. It’s fairly true in my own case, however, which (you’ll hopefully understand) is particularly salient to me. Speaking up about my preoccupations is (I’ve concluded) something I haven’t done nearly enough of. Hence this very discussion.
This is obviously false, as a general statement. People choose goals all the time. They don’t, perhaps, choose their ultimate goals, but I’m not saying that truth-seeking is necessarily anybody’s ultimate goal. It’s just a value that has been underserved by a social context that was ostensibly designed specifically to serve it.
But not infinitely much. That’s why communicational norms differ among contexts; not all contexts are as tightly regulated as politics, diplomacy, and law. What I’m suggesting is that Less Wrong, an internet forum for discovering truth, can afford to occupy a place toward the looser end of the spectrum of communicational norms.
This, indeed, is possible because a lot of other optimization power has already gone into the prevention of violence; the background society does a lot of this work, and the fact that people are confronting each other remotely over the internet does a fair portion of the rest. And contrary to Maxwell’s implication, nobody is talking about removing any Chesterton Fences. Obviously, for example, actual threats of violence are intolerable. (That did not occur here—though again, I’m much less interested in defending the specific comment originally at issue than in discussing the general principles which, to my mind, this conversation implicates.)
The thing is: not all norms are Chesterton Fences! Most norms are flexible, with fuzzy boundaries that can be shifted in one direction or the other. This includes norms whose purpose is to prevent violence. (Not all norms of diplomacy are entirely unambiguous, let alone ordinary rules of “civil discourse”.) The characteristic of fences is that they’re bright lines, clear demarcations, without any ambiguity as to which side you’re on. And just as surely as they should only be removed with great caution, so too should careful consideration guide their erection in the first place. When possible, the work of norms should be done by ordinary norms, which allow themselves to be adjusted in service of goals.
There are other points to consider, as well, that I haven’t even gotten into. For example, it looks conceivable that, in the future, technology, and the way it interacts with society, will make privacy and secrecy less possible; and that social norms predicated upon their possibility will become less effective at their purposes (which may include everything up to the prevention of outright violence). In such a world, it may be important to develop the ability to build trust by disclosing more information, rather than less.
I agree with all of this. (Except “this is obviously false,” but this is not a real disagreement with what you are saying. When I said people do not choose goals, that was in fact about ultimate goals.)