I think a higher priority is to have some incentives or software/institutional support for actually indicating how a disagreement got resolved, or not get resolved, as opposed to a conversation just ending without anyone knowing why, except the person who stopped responding. I know I keep harping on this, and you already have a possible solution in the works, but how am I supposed to produce “clear distillations of how disagreements get resolved” if I have no idea if one of the participants actually changed their mind and is tacitly agreeing with the other person, or just got too frustrated and stopped wanting to talk with the other person, or something else?
(See here and here for two recent somewhat frustrating examples. Note that I’m not blaming the participants, but instead the current culture/norms/software/institutions.)
I’m not 100% sure which distinction you’re drawing. My current frame is something like “if we have official software support for distillation, that will hopefully shift the culture to acknowledge that distillation is important, and therefore, it’s more important for conversations to reach some state of summarizeability.”
This doesn’t mean all conversations need to be resolved, or subsequently distilled. Looking at your two examples, I have some sense that the first example (from “The Real Rules” post) didn’t cry out to me for resolution, largely because the people involved aren’t really collaborating on longer term projects. It’s not necessary for any given two lesswrongers be on the same page about everything. (But, maybe, this is a wrong frame/characterization on my part, either of that particular conversation or LW as a whole?).
Your conversation with Michael Cohen seemed more likely to be worth reaching some kind of resolution on (again, just based on some rough surface level heuristics).
My little habryka-simulation that runs in my head is saying “Don’t try to force people to spell out what they changed their mind about, especially not too early. It’s okay if a conversation sort of meanders and then people move on and reflect on it in the background for awhile.” Which I think I agree with.
But it still seems like it might be good, a few days or weeks after a conversation seems to have wrapped up, if you replied to the comment and said “Hey, I’d be interested in writing up my summary of this conversation. I’m not 100% sure where everyone in the convo had ended up. Would anyone be up for sharing some of their more up-to-date thoughts before I start?”.
One could start doing that unilaterally, and hope that that starts to shift conversations towards having an after-the-fact step where people crystallize their takeaways.
[note: I currently think it’s important for people to be more legible about what they’ve changed their mind about, so that people can model the overall epistemic health and progress of the community. I think habryka disagrees with some of that framing but not 100% sure]
I’m not 100% sure which distinction you’re drawing. My current frame is something like “if we have official software support for distillation, that will hopefully shift the culture to acknowledge that distillation is important, and therefore, it’s more important for conversations to reach some state of summarizeability.”
Ok, I hadn’t thought of this causal pathway, which I admit does make sense (although I’m not sure if it’s enough). My thinking was like, “In order for me to distill discussions, I need to know what each participant thinks at the end, and that information is often unavailable, so we need to fix that first before trying to support distillation more.”
Looking at your two examples, I have some sense that the first example (from “The Real Rules” post) didn’t cry out to me for resolution, largely because the people involved aren’t really collaborating on longer term projects.
I suspect the disagreement over “act consequentialism” might be a crux in the recent debates over site culture/norms, which is definitely a long-term project that we’re involved in.
But it still seems like it might be good, a few days or weeks after a conversation seems to have wrapped up, if you replied to the comment and said “Hey, I’d be interested in writing up my summary of this conversation. I’m not 100% sure where everyone in the convo had ended up. Would anyone be up for sharing some of their more up-to-date thoughts before I start?”.
I feel reluctant to do this, and I think it’s because (1) I don’t want people to think that I’m trying to push them to admit that I’m right and they’re wrong and (2) if they ended the conversation because it became too frustrating or something like that, it would increase their aversive feelings towards me if I explicitly asked them to continue. I think it would be better if it was a third party or some kind of impersonal norm or incentive that pushed people to give reasons for ending discussions.
I agree it’s a bit weirder for you to push to summarize discussions (esp. disagreements) that you were a part of.
Curious if there exist things-that-need-summarizing where you _weren’t_ an active participant?
A possible experiment to try is something like “have a Distillation Open Thread”, where people either propose threads that they’d like distilled (which they may or may not have been involved with), and other people do a first pass attempt to summarize the conversation. (Maybe doing the distillation in the Open Thread, but replying to the original conversation with a link to it?)
I think a higher priority is to have some incentives or software/institutional support for actually indicating how a disagreement got resolved, or not get resolved, as opposed to a conversation just ending without anyone knowing why, except the person who stopped responding. I know I keep harping on this, and you already have a possible solution in the works, but how am I supposed to produce “clear distillations of how disagreements get resolved” if I have no idea if one of the participants actually changed their mind and is tacitly agreeing with the other person, or just got too frustrated and stopped wanting to talk with the other person, or something else?
(See here and here for two recent somewhat frustrating examples. Note that I’m not blaming the participants, but instead the current culture/norms/software/institutions.)
Thanks.
I’m not 100% sure which distinction you’re drawing. My current frame is something like “if we have official software support for distillation, that will hopefully shift the culture to acknowledge that distillation is important, and therefore, it’s more important for conversations to reach some state of summarizeability.”
This doesn’t mean all conversations need to be resolved, or subsequently distilled. Looking at your two examples, I have some sense that the first example (from “The Real Rules” post) didn’t cry out to me for resolution, largely because the people involved aren’t really collaborating on longer term projects. It’s not necessary for any given two lesswrongers be on the same page about everything. (But, maybe, this is a wrong frame/characterization on my part, either of that particular conversation or LW as a whole?).
Your conversation with Michael Cohen seemed more likely to be worth reaching some kind of resolution on (again, just based on some rough surface level heuristics).
My little habryka-simulation that runs in my head is saying “Don’t try to force people to spell out what they changed their mind about, especially not too early. It’s okay if a conversation sort of meanders and then people move on and reflect on it in the background for awhile.” Which I think I agree with.
But it still seems like it might be good, a few days or weeks after a conversation seems to have wrapped up, if you replied to the comment and said “Hey, I’d be interested in writing up my summary of this conversation. I’m not 100% sure where everyone in the convo had ended up. Would anyone be up for sharing some of their more up-to-date thoughts before I start?”.
One could start doing that unilaterally, and hope that that starts to shift conversations towards having an after-the-fact step where people crystallize their takeaways.
[note: I currently think it’s important for people to be more legible about what they’ve changed their mind about, so that people can model the overall epistemic health and progress of the community. I think habryka disagrees with some of that framing but not 100% sure]
Ok, I hadn’t thought of this causal pathway, which I admit does make sense (although I’m not sure if it’s enough). My thinking was like, “In order for me to distill discussions, I need to know what each participant thinks at the end, and that information is often unavailable, so we need to fix that first before trying to support distillation more.”
I suspect the disagreement over “act consequentialism” might be a crux in the recent debates over site culture/norms, which is definitely a long-term project that we’re involved in.
I feel reluctant to do this, and I think it’s because (1) I don’t want people to think that I’m trying to push them to admit that I’m right and they’re wrong and (2) if they ended the conversation because it became too frustrating or something like that, it would increase their aversive feelings towards me if I explicitly asked them to continue. I think it would be better if it was a third party or some kind of impersonal norm or incentive that pushed people to give reasons for ending discussions.
I agree it’s a bit weirder for you to push to summarize discussions (esp. disagreements) that you were a part of.
Curious if there exist things-that-need-summarizing where you _weren’t_ an active participant?
A possible experiment to try is something like “have a Distillation Open Thread”, where people either propose threads that they’d like distilled (which they may or may not have been involved with), and other people do a first pass attempt to summarize the conversation. (Maybe doing the distillation in the Open Thread, but replying to the original conversation with a link to it?)