I agree that Eliezer’s post was focusing on the humility of the fail-safe engineer, and that he brought up the social kind of humility primarily to warn about ways in which it could undermine the truth-seeking kind of humility. But I think it’s also worth considering the social kind of humility more on its own terms, and so I tried to describe how that can be valuable in its own right and also how it can sometimes serve the goal of truth-seeking rather than interfering with it.
To take one example of how the two kinds of humility can be complementary and closely related, it’s good if other people are comfortable criticizing you. That has a truth-seeking goal (it allows you to identify and fix the flaws in your thinking) but it’s a social practice, and both kinds of humility are useful for it. There’s a general tendency that people are unwilling to openly second-guess or criticize people who are high status (like their superiors in a hierarchy), so it can help to avoid playing high status (social humility). Other people will be more willing to criticize you if it’s clear that you’re looking for your mistakes and want to find them so you can address them (intellectual humility). It will also help if you frequently give credit to other people, and portray yourself as someone who relies on other people’s contributions to succeed (social humility), since that shows that you’ll appreciate their contribution and not take it as a personal challenge. One reason why people are reluctant to criticize others is that they’re afraid that they’ll say something stupid, have their criticisms shot down, and lose status because of it; social humility (which is a cooperative way to play status games) can also help reassure people that they won’t lose status (e.g., you won’t pounce on the flaws in their criticism to reassert your status).
I agree that Eliezer’s post was focusing on the humility of the fail-safe engineer, and that he brought up the social kind of humility primarily to warn about ways in which it could undermine the truth-seeking kind of humility. But I think it’s also worth considering the social kind of humility more on its own terms, and so I tried to describe how that can be valuable in its own right and also how it can sometimes serve the goal of truth-seeking rather than interfering with it.
To take one example of how the two kinds of humility can be complementary and closely related, it’s good if other people are comfortable criticizing you. That has a truth-seeking goal (it allows you to identify and fix the flaws in your thinking) but it’s a social practice, and both kinds of humility are useful for it. There’s a general tendency that people are unwilling to openly second-guess or criticize people who are high status (like their superiors in a hierarchy), so it can help to avoid playing high status (social humility). Other people will be more willing to criticize you if it’s clear that you’re looking for your mistakes and want to find them so you can address them (intellectual humility). It will also help if you frequently give credit to other people, and portray yourself as someone who relies on other people’s contributions to succeed (social humility), since that shows that you’ll appreciate their contribution and not take it as a personal challenge. One reason why people are reluctant to criticize others is that they’re afraid that they’ll say something stupid, have their criticisms shot down, and lose status because of it; social humility (which is a cooperative way to play status games) can also help reassure people that they won’t lose status (e.g., you won’t pounce on the flaws in their criticism to reassert your status).