This is a negative review of an admittedly highly-rated post.
The positives first; I think this post is highly reasonable and well written. I’m glad that it exists and think it contributes to the intellectual conversation in rationality. The examples help the reader reason better, and it contains many pieces of advice that I endorse.
But overall, 1) I ultimately disagree with its main point, and 2) it’s way too strong/absolutist about it.
Throughout my life of attempting to have true beliefs and take effective actions, I have quite strongly learned some distinction that maps onto the ideas of inside and outside view. I find this distinction extremely helpful, and specifically, remembering to use (what I call) the outside view often wins me a lot of Bayes points.
When I read through the Big Lists O’ Things, I have these responses;
I think many of those things are simply valid uses of the terms[1]
People using a term wrong isn’t a great reason[2] to taboo that term; e.g. there are countless mis-uses of the concept of “truth” or “entropy” or “capitalism”, but the concepts still carve reality
Seems like maybe some of these you heard one person use once, and then it got to go on the list?
A key example of the absolutism comes from the intro: “I recommend we permanentlytaboo “Outside view,” i.e. stop using the word and use more precise, less confused concepts instead.” (emphasis added).
But, as described in the original linked sequence post, the purpose of tabooing a word is to remember why you formed a concept in the first place, and see if that break-down helps you reason further. The point is not to stop using a word.
I think the absolutism has caused this post to have negative effects; the phrase “taboo the outside view” has stuck around as a meme, and in my memory, when people use it it has not tended to be good for the conversation.
Instead, I think the post should have said the following.
The term “outside view” can mean many things that can be importantly different (and sometimes wrong)
When you reach for this term, take a second to consider more specifically what you mean, and considering saying that more specific thing instead
When you hear someone say “outside view”, consider asking them more specifically what they mean
(And to be clear, I’m against the absolutism here because I think it is incorrect, not because e.g. rationalists should generally be more polite and hedged, or anything like that.)
I don’t think it makes sense to use “outside view” as a synonym for “reference class forecasting”. The joint that it carves in reality is bigger than that. And I think it’s okay if terms move away from their initial historical use.
To be fair I do actually consider it Bayesian evidence that we should taboo terms; the point of language is to communicate, and if a term is sufficiently mis-used, then it is a net-negative for communication.
Thanks for this thoughtful review! I think the more moderate version that you recommend is very sensible, even though I still stand by the more aggressive original version.
I think a crux for me is just how these things go in practise. Some people have reported that the meme “taboo outside view” has been helpful in conversations, and now you are reporting that it was harmful. I’m interested to hear that & would be interested to hear more details/examples if you remember any. I suppose ideally we’d do a poll of the community to find out whether the taboo has been overzealously applied or not.
I think the absolutism has caused this post to have negative effects; the phrase “taboo the outside view” has stuck around as a meme, and in my memory, when people use it it has not tended to be good for the conversation.
I’m also interested in examples (I actually haven’t seen the phrase “taboo outside view” in the wild, one way or another)
When you reach for this term, take a second to consider more specifically what you mean, and considering saying that more specific thing instead.
What considerations might lead you to not say the more specific thing? Can you give a few examples of cases where it’s better to say “outside view” than to say something more specific?
If “outside view” was a natural category that was useful to use, AND people generally had a shared understanding of what it meant, then it would slow things down unnecessarily to be more specific, at least often (sometimes even then you’d want to be more specific.) My original post cast doubt on both the naturalness/usefulness of the concept (not saying there’s absolutely nothing tying the things in the Big Lists together, just saying that there isn’t really any good evidence that whatever it is that ties them together is epistemically important) and the shared understanding (ho boy do different people seem to have different ideas of what it means and how it should be used and what evidential status it confers)
Yeah, I agree with all of this; see my own review. My guess is that Alex_Altair is making the exact mistake you tried to warn against. But, if I’m wrong, the examples would have been clarifying.
This is a negative review of an admittedly highly-rated post.
The positives first; I think this post is highly reasonable and well written. I’m glad that it exists and think it contributes to the intellectual conversation in rationality. The examples help the reader reason better, and it contains many pieces of advice that I endorse.
But overall, 1) I ultimately disagree with its main point, and 2) it’s way too strong/absolutist about it.
Throughout my life of attempting to have true beliefs and take effective actions, I have quite strongly learned some distinction that maps onto the ideas of inside and outside view. I find this distinction extremely helpful, and specifically, remembering to use (what I call) the outside view often wins me a lot of Bayes points.
When I read through the Big Lists O’ Things, I have these responses;
I think many of those things are simply valid uses of the terms[1]
People using a term wrong isn’t a great reason[2] to taboo that term; e.g. there are countless mis-uses of the concept of “truth” or “entropy” or “capitalism”, but the concepts still carve reality
Seems like maybe some of these you heard one person use once, and then it got to go on the list?
A key example of the absolutism comes from the intro: “I recommend we permanently taboo “Outside view,” i.e. stop using the word and use more precise, less confused concepts instead.” (emphasis added).
But, as described in the original linked sequence post, the purpose of tabooing a word is to remember why you formed a concept in the first place, and see if that break-down helps you reason further. The point is not to stop using a word.
I think the absolutism has caused this post to have negative effects; the phrase “taboo the outside view” has stuck around as a meme, and in my memory, when people use it it has not tended to be good for the conversation.
Instead, I think the post should have said the following.
The term “outside view” can mean many things that can be importantly different (and sometimes wrong)
When you reach for this term, take a second to consider more specifically what you mean, and considering saying that more specific thing instead
When you hear someone say “outside view”, consider asking them more specifically what they mean
(And to be clear, I’m against the absolutism here because I think it is incorrect, not because e.g. rationalists should generally be more polite and hedged, or anything like that.)
I don’t think it makes sense to use “outside view” as a synonym for “reference class forecasting”. The joint that it carves in reality is bigger than that. And I think it’s okay if terms move away from their initial historical use.
To be fair I do actually consider it Bayesian evidence that we should taboo terms; the point of language is to communicate, and if a term is sufficiently mis-used, then it is a net-negative for communication.
Thanks for this thoughtful review! I think the more moderate version that you recommend is very sensible, even though I still stand by the more aggressive original version.
I think a crux for me is just how these things go in practise. Some people have reported that the meme “taboo outside view” has been helpful in conversations, and now you are reporting that it was harmful. I’m interested to hear that & would be interested to hear more details/examples if you remember any. I suppose ideally we’d do a poll of the community to find out whether the taboo has been overzealously applied or not.
I’m also interested in examples (I actually haven’t seen the phrase “taboo outside view” in the wild, one way or another)
What considerations might lead you to not say the more specific thing? Can you give a few examples of cases where it’s better to say “outside view” than to say something more specific?
If “outside view” was a natural category that was useful to use, AND people generally had a shared understanding of what it meant, then it would slow things down unnecessarily to be more specific, at least often (sometimes even then you’d want to be more specific.) My original post cast doubt on both the naturalness/usefulness of the concept (not saying there’s absolutely nothing tying the things in the Big Lists together, just saying that there isn’t really any good evidence that whatever it is that ties them together is epistemically important) and the shared understanding (ho boy do different people seem to have different ideas of what it means and how it should be used and what evidential status it confers)
Yeah, I agree with all of this; see my own review. My guess is that Alex_Altair is making the exact mistake you tried to warn against. But, if I’m wrong, the examples would have been clarifying.