I liked the Can the Chain Still Hold You? because the baboon example felt inspiring. But two essentially contentless “yay rationality” posts in a row is overdoing it, and starting to give an “overzealous recent convert caught in a happy death spiral” vibe.
I agree: this post felt like a self-congratulatory collection of applause lights. (I wonder if the habit of linking to previous posts every other word is an indicator of this. Most people aren’t going to follow those links, they’re just going to think, “Ah yes, a link to a Sequence post. That must be an accepted thing!”)
I also think there’s a worrying tendency towards ideology here. Luke suggests that “levelling up” in rationality led him to a bunch of beliefs, which are, coincidentally, fairly widely accepted views around here. Cue a round of back-slapping as we all congratulate ourselves on how rational we are.
But rationality doesn’t necessarily lead you anywhere: the evidence should do that. And if the evidence starts pointing somewhere else, you should move. And so I’m a bit wary of the tendency to draw too close a link between any particular beliefs and rationality. You never want to be in the situation where you’re trying to persuade someone of your views and you find yourself saying “But it’s the rational thing to believe!” instead of presenting the evidence.
Also: hints of the No True Scotsman fallacy.
When genuine curiosity tore down those walls, it didn’t take long for the implications of my atheism to propagate.
Woe betide you who don’t come to the same conclusions as Luke: your curiousity clearly isn’t genuine!
Now this may all sound a bit harsh, but frankly I really wish Luke would stop writing posts like this and start doing some hard-headed thinking about some actual problems.
I do agree with some of your points, especially with the fact that this post is annoyingly self-congratulating in places (though I know I have a bias to find that annoying, and so I don’t necessary think my annoyance means much. However, I don’t think this post is content-less...in fact, content is a lot of what you’re disagreeing with, i.e. that specific
Less Wrong beliefs are associated with being rational.
I do think it is good to have some inspirational posts here than don’t rely that much on actual argumentation but rather paint an example picture where you could be when using rationality, what rationality could look like. There are dangers to that, but still, I like these.
I don’t necessarily think that this post was written in the same spirit as the previous one. ‘Can the Chain Still Hold You’ was one of lukeprog’s more abstract, ideology-related posts, whereas this one, though it may be ‘yay, rationality’, is at least very specific in what it’s yay-ing about.
I disagree. The previous post spoke in parables about animals with questionable applicability to humans, this one said “here is what I did to pop out of my Evangelical bubble and make my life better.”
I’m usually confused by these kinds of comments. Reflections on rationality a year out had even less content and was less well-written and less detailed, but was massively upvoted. Kevin hit the nail on the head with his comment on my Existential Risk post:
I’d like to point out some lukeprog fatigue here, if anyone else wrote this article it would have way more points by now.
Also, this is a personal contribution to the long-running “What good is rationality?” discussion on LessWrong.
Well, yes, there is lukeprog fatigue, but not in the sense that you probably mean it. One, or even a couple, of such posts from the same person are fine. It’s good to have information about how rationality has impacted somebody, and it’s motivatonal as well. But when the same person keeps posting about the same things, over and over again, it ceases to have motivational value. And while it’s good to summarize old material, clarify it or make it sexier (your Existential Risk post was great, in those respects), simply linking to old stuff or restating it provides little of value.
“Power 1”, is basically a recap of What Curiosity Looks Like (which by itself is less than two weeks old!), plus it explains things about your Christian background that you’ve already told us about.
“Power 3” recaps parts of your personal history that most people here are already perfectly aware of.
You’re right in that a lot of this material would be more appreciated if it was coming from somebody else, but it’s not because we’ve started to take it for granted that you’re producing quality material. It’s because coming from somebody else, it would provide an independent datapoint about this stuff being useful for someone. You restating the ways in which this has been useful to you only tells us that you haven’t changed your mind about this being useful to you.
(And I second the “don’t take this personally” bit—I still upvote most of your posts, and I think you’re one of the best posters on the site. It’s just this particular series of posts that doesn’t thrill me.)
“Power 2” is a recap of The Neglected Value of Scholarship, as well as a plug for some of your later posts.
Not really. The previous post focused on the example of William Lane Craig, who is just an awful example for rationalists to emulate. This section is more “scholarship allowed me to do X, Y, and Z to make my own life better,” which is much more helpful.
Yeah. I’ve gotten that comment before. No offense taken. I haven’t devoted enough cycles to this problem yet. If suggestions come to mind, feel free to share them.
I’ve worked out some ways to avoid certain variants of this problem, but most of them really boil down to “trick people with framing,” which isn’t really desirable—both because it’s at least a little deceptive and because it generally minimizes legitimate progress and serves mostly to make the other party feel better about their existing state.
The tones of the two articles are very different, and that affects how we perceive the (lack of) content.
I think part of it is that you’ve broken the rule about making high-status claims in public (or to put it another way, you’ve broken the show don’t tell rule). We all already know that you’re intelligent, curious, persuasive, a good researcher, etc etc. because we’ve read your highly impressive posts where you’ve compressed ridiculous amounts of research into a nice readable form backed up with a million references. But now you’ve made a post that’s all about how great rationality has been for you, and a lot of it involves rehashing how great you are. You didn’t just improve Common Sense Atheism’s traffic, you made it one of the most popular atheism blogs on the internet. You didn’t just start working on x-risk, you were appointed Executive Director of SingInst. You haven’t just made progress against akrasia, you’ve mastered the algorithm. And so on.
Compare to the other post, where we didn’t already have overwhelming evidence of awesomeness and the tone is much more humble.
I also have a strong dislike of linkspam without supporting content and particularly disliked most of the linking in the last paragraph, but that’s probably more of a personal thing.
You didn’t just improve Common Sense Atheism’s traffic, you made it one of the most popular atheism blogs on the internet. You didn’t just start working on x-risk, you were appointed Executive Director of SingInst. You haven’t just made progress against akrasia, you’ve mastered the algorithm.
But these things are true, at least the first two are. And knowing what Luke feels helped him in achieving these things is very good to know. Previously, I hadn’t known Luke did a ton of research in driving traffic to make Common Sense Atheism what it was, and I’m glad to know that.
Kevin is correct, but there may also be an element of “What good is rationality?” fatigue involved. This discussion has gone on for quite a while but it’s mostly been dominated by applause light-ish anecdotes rather than deep theories. I suspect people are tiring of this kind of post, which would explain why your post has fewer upvotes than previous ones on the same topic.
That may also be the case. In my case, I used my personal reflections on the value of rationality as a first step in working towards a deep theory of why rationality helps sometimes and not others, so that I might take a crack at the hard problem of how to create superheroes.
I wouldn’t call Can the Chain Still Hold You? a “Yay rationality” post; more just generally inspirational. But yeah, I’m with you.
Fittingly, this website provides several examples of how even when talking about rationality, we (humans) still have a tendency to lapse. One of the most annoying: most of the metaethics sequence seems to be designed to make the reader feel good about Yudkowsky’s metaethical position, rather than argue for it and/or explain it.
(acknowledging that Kaj only said his posting exudes a vibe, not that the vibe reveals his actual state)
I don’t have any reason to suspect lukeprog of overconfidence or overexuberance. He really is more successful and happy than he’d have been without thinking about how to optimize both, and then acting on those thoughts. It’s been a long time now; illusions would have crashed.
If you’re forgiving enough of yourself, it doesn’t grate as much to hear someone congratulating themselves. It’s annoying when someone wastes time by falsely signaling their great success via some questionable method, but I’ve noticed that when I feel under-appreciated by others, I can become excessively skeptical about others’ bragging. (apologies if the psychoanalysis isn’t relevant to you; it definitely is to me).
The antidote to excessive cheerleading is more focused, concrete advice toward the 5-second end of the spectrum. If you’re encouraging luke to mix it up, I’d agree, in that it’s probably best for all of us, whether or not we’re posting. Too much thinking for too long at a high level of abstraction can become self-rewarding and divorced from reality.
I like this post personally, and as well as being enjoyable to read I think it can serve two practical purposes:
It provides a useful starting point for people entering the community who aren’t already aware of the ideas discussed, and points them towards further reading. Its easy to forget how common the question “whats the point of being rational” really is. Providing evidence that we can provide something more than philosophical masturbation is a good thing for attracting people into the community.
Its also nice to be reminded occasionally that this all has a point and a purpose, particularly when one loses focus or hope. Personally Its reminded me of what I’ve gained and what more I have to do.
I liked the Can the Chain Still Hold You? because the baboon example felt inspiring. But two essentially contentless “yay rationality” posts in a row is overdoing it, and starting to give an “overzealous recent convert caught in a happy death spiral” vibe.
I agree: this post felt like a self-congratulatory collection of applause lights. (I wonder if the habit of linking to previous posts every other word is an indicator of this. Most people aren’t going to follow those links, they’re just going to think, “Ah yes, a link to a Sequence post. That must be an accepted thing!”)
I also think there’s a worrying tendency towards ideology here. Luke suggests that “levelling up” in rationality led him to a bunch of beliefs, which are, coincidentally, fairly widely accepted views around here. Cue a round of back-slapping as we all congratulate ourselves on how rational we are.
But rationality doesn’t necessarily lead you anywhere: the evidence should do that. And if the evidence starts pointing somewhere else, you should move. And so I’m a bit wary of the tendency to draw too close a link between any particular beliefs and rationality. You never want to be in the situation where you’re trying to persuade someone of your views and you find yourself saying “But it’s the rational thing to believe!” instead of presenting the evidence.
Also: hints of the No True Scotsman fallacy.
Woe betide you who don’t come to the same conclusions as Luke: your curiousity clearly isn’t genuine!
Now this may all sound a bit harsh, but frankly I really wish Luke would stop writing posts like this and start doing some hard-headed thinking about some actual problems.
I do agree with some of your points, especially with the fact that this post is annoyingly self-congratulating in places (though I know I have a bias to find that annoying, and so I don’t necessary think my annoyance means much. However, I don’t think this post is content-less...in fact, content is a lot of what you’re disagreeing with, i.e. that specific Less Wrong beliefs are associated with being rational.
I do think it is good to have some inspirational posts here than don’t rely that much on actual argumentation but rather paint an example picture where you could be when using rationality, what rationality could look like. There are dangers to that, but still, I like these.
I don’t necessarily think that this post was written in the same spirit as the previous one. ‘Can the Chain Still Hold You’ was one of lukeprog’s more abstract, ideology-related posts, whereas this one, though it may be ‘yay, rationality’, is at least very specific in what it’s yay-ing about.
I disagree. The previous post spoke in parables about animals with questionable applicability to humans, this one said “here is what I did to pop out of my Evangelical bubble and make my life better.”
I’m usually confused by these kinds of comments. Reflections on rationality a year out had even less content and was less well-written and less detailed, but was massively upvoted. Kevin hit the nail on the head with his comment on my Existential Risk post:
Also, this is a personal contribution to the long-running “What good is rationality?” discussion on LessWrong.
Well, yes, there is lukeprog fatigue, but not in the sense that you probably mean it. One, or even a couple, of such posts from the same person are fine. It’s good to have information about how rationality has impacted somebody, and it’s motivatonal as well. But when the same person keeps posting about the same things, over and over again, it ceases to have motivational value. And while it’s good to summarize old material, clarify it or make it sexier (your Existential Risk post was great, in those respects), simply linking to old stuff or restating it provides little of value.
This is your third “yay rationality” post within a relatively short time: it was preceded by Can the Chain Still Hold You and What Curiosity Looks Like. So the motivational impact is rapidly hitting zero.
“Power 1”, is basically a recap of What Curiosity Looks Like (which by itself is less than two weeks old!), plus it explains things about your Christian background that you’ve already told us about.
“Power 2” is a recap of The Neglected Value of Scholarship, as well as a plug for some of your later posts.
“Power 3” recaps parts of your personal history that most people here are already perfectly aware of.
You’re right in that a lot of this material would be more appreciated if it was coming from somebody else, but it’s not because we’ve started to take it for granted that you’re producing quality material. It’s because coming from somebody else, it would provide an independent datapoint about this stuff being useful for someone. You restating the ways in which this has been useful to you only tells us that you haven’t changed your mind about this being useful to you.
(And I second the “don’t take this personally” bit—I still upvote most of your posts, and I think you’re one of the best posters on the site. It’s just this particular series of posts that doesn’t thrill me.)
Not really. The previous post focused on the example of William Lane Craig, who is just an awful example for rationalists to emulate. This section is more “scholarship allowed me to do X, Y, and Z to make my own life better,” which is much more helpful.
You’re harder to relate to now that you’ve made progress on problems the rest of us are still struggling with. Don’t take it personally.
Yeah. I’ve gotten that comment before. No offense taken. I haven’t devoted enough cycles to this problem yet. If suggestions come to mind, feel free to share them.
I’ve worked out some ways to avoid certain variants of this problem, but most of them really boil down to “trick people with framing,” which isn’t really desirable—both because it’s at least a little deceptive and because it generally minimizes legitimate progress and serves mostly to make the other party feel better about their existing state.
The tones of the two articles are very different, and that affects how we perceive the (lack of) content.
I think part of it is that you’ve broken the rule about making high-status claims in public (or to put it another way, you’ve broken the show don’t tell rule). We all already know that you’re intelligent, curious, persuasive, a good researcher, etc etc. because we’ve read your highly impressive posts where you’ve compressed ridiculous amounts of research into a nice readable form backed up with a million references. But now you’ve made a post that’s all about how great rationality has been for you, and a lot of it involves rehashing how great you are. You didn’t just improve Common Sense Atheism’s traffic, you made it one of the most popular atheism blogs on the internet. You didn’t just start working on x-risk, you were appointed Executive Director of SingInst. You haven’t just made progress against akrasia, you’ve mastered the algorithm. And so on.
Compare to the other post, where we didn’t already have overwhelming evidence of awesomeness and the tone is much more humble.
I also have a strong dislike of linkspam without supporting content and particularly disliked most of the linking in the last paragraph, but that’s probably more of a personal thing.
But these things are true, at least the first two are. And knowing what Luke feels helped him in achieving these things is very good to know. Previously, I hadn’t known Luke did a ton of research in driving traffic to make Common Sense Atheism what it was, and I’m glad to know that.
The visceral reaction to a high-status claim has nothing to do with truth values.
Same here, but that doesn’t detract from any tone issues.
Kevin is correct, but there may also be an element of “What good is rationality?” fatigue involved. This discussion has gone on for quite a while but it’s mostly been dominated by applause light-ish anecdotes rather than deep theories. I suspect people are tiring of this kind of post, which would explain why your post has fewer upvotes than previous ones on the same topic.
That may also be the case. In my case, I used my personal reflections on the value of rationality as a first step in working towards a deep theory of why rationality helps sometimes and not others, so that I might take a crack at the hard problem of how to create superheroes.
I wouldn’t call Can the Chain Still Hold You? a “Yay rationality” post; more just generally inspirational. But yeah, I’m with you.
Fittingly, this website provides several examples of how even when talking about rationality, we (humans) still have a tendency to lapse. One of the most annoying: most of the metaethics sequence seems to be designed to make the reader feel good about Yudkowsky’s metaethical position, rather than argue for it and/or explain it.
(acknowledging that Kaj only said his posting exudes a vibe, not that the vibe reveals his actual state)
I don’t have any reason to suspect lukeprog of overconfidence or overexuberance. He really is more successful and happy than he’d have been without thinking about how to optimize both, and then acting on those thoughts. It’s been a long time now; illusions would have crashed.
If you’re forgiving enough of yourself, it doesn’t grate as much to hear someone congratulating themselves. It’s annoying when someone wastes time by falsely signaling their great success via some questionable method, but I’ve noticed that when I feel under-appreciated by others, I can become excessively skeptical about others’ bragging. (apologies if the psychoanalysis isn’t relevant to you; it definitely is to me).
The antidote to excessive cheerleading is more focused, concrete advice toward the 5-second end of the spectrum. If you’re encouraging luke to mix it up, I’d agree, in that it’s probably best for all of us, whether or not we’re posting. Too much thinking for too long at a high level of abstraction can become self-rewarding and divorced from reality.
Incredibly true, incredibly irritating tidbit about human nature. It happens to me too, and makes me feel like a huge asshole when I catch myself.
I like this post personally, and as well as being enjoyable to read I think it can serve two practical purposes:
It provides a useful starting point for people entering the community who aren’t already aware of the ideas discussed, and points them towards further reading. Its easy to forget how common the question “whats the point of being rational” really is. Providing evidence that we can provide something more than philosophical masturbation is a good thing for attracting people into the community.
Its also nice to be reminded occasionally that this all has a point and a purpose, particularly when one loses focus or hope. Personally Its reminded me of what I’ve gained and what more I have to do.