About everyone’s perspective being valid, I don’t really understand the statement meaningfully. I study computer science, math, and logic. It is surely not the case that people always present viewpoints that are logically valid, so I assume you mean something else. I want every mind to have good experiences in our shared reality, and so I want effort to go towards caring for them well, but that doesn’t seem like a good fit for the statement. Maybe you mean that everyone is the expert on their own experience? That is surely at least very close to true, with some caveats for strange psychological situations. I mention these things to show you where I’m coming from. I’d like if you wanted to share more of what you mean with that.
About consensus leading to indecisive government and only working in small groups. I must unfortunately agree! However, I’d like to put forth the notion that language and communication are technologies and we are facing two problems:
(cons. prob. 1: scale) We have very large numbers of people who are very different from one another who must all somehow come to agree with one another.
(cons. prob. 2: agreement) It is very difficult to get people who do not understand one another and do not agree with one another to communicate to the point that they agree with one another either quickly or at all.
These problems are quite insurmountable with our current communication technology, but I think that setting out to explicitly improve our abilities to communicate and understand one another to the point that large scale consensus becomes possible is a very good goal. Not that it seems easy. It seems very difficult, possibly impossible, but worth attempting.
About happy AIs and human extinction, I can’t speak for others but from my own perspective, it seems like we first need to better understand consciousness and happiness before proceeding with anything drastic, but an important consideration is what it means to be human. If we can emulate humans in computer programs and those emulations can transform their simulated or instantiated bodies and transform the architecture of their minds, does that make them no longer human? I think there’s a sense in which it does, but another sense in which that would represent the continuation of humanity. I think there’s a distinction there. All human bodies disappearing from the universe does not necessarily mean human extinction in a sense that is meaningful.
Although, I don’t really agree with utilitarianism as a target for superintelligent levels of optimization. I most highly preference whatever my own preferences are although I do not know them perfectly and certainly cannot speak them. Further than that, I preference the CEV of the kinds of mind that could coherently join a collective with me. I think utilitarianism is a useful tool for helping with decision making, but as we become more capable I hope we will develop better models of morality. I think our current results suggesting the creation of the maximum number of happy AI is probably a bit of a fluke, but I don’t think the issue is settled. I don’t think it needs to be settled at our current level of capability. I don’t think we should act on it at our current level of capability, even if it does turn out to be true.
I can steelman it as implying the modus tollens that when we can show that a speaker isn’t articulating a valid and coherent set of propositions, they aren’t articulating a perspective, and maybe even aren’t really “someone.” But usually “everyone’s perspective is equally valid” is functionally an incantation to interrupt and sabotage efforts to compare and adjudicate conflicting claims.
Hmm… that’s a good point, though another aspect comes to my mind regarding “an incantation to interrupt and sabotage efforts to compare and adjudicate conflicting claims”. If the user of the incantation believes that the system of logic used to compare and adjudicate is flawed, but that pointing out the flaws is likely to be ineffective, suggesting “everyone’s perspective is equally valid” may be a better strategy. Ideally one would fall back to a discussion of ways of knowing and adjudication of different ways of knowing in these contexts, but that may not always be possible, and may run into recursive problems.
The correspondence of statistics and other data and the things they are meant to represent seems like the most important and valid example of this I’ve noticed. Data is often recorded through ineffective and biased processes and conclusions are often drawn from data in ways that are logically invalid[1]. The highest quality response to instances of this situation would be to find and communicate about the methodological and logical flaws, but it’s understandable for people with good reason to believe some conclusion derived from data is false to simply claim “everyone’s perspective is equally valid” either because they know it is pragmatically more effective, or because they haven’t got a BSc focused on logic and statistics and don’t like spending their free time tracking down methodological and logical details.
This claim requires justification. I only have vibes. Ideally I would look for research to justify the claim, but I’m not going to. If anyone else wants to find evidence to support or oppose it, I would be most grateful.
I think your first paragraph is functionally equivalent to “if someone feels that the dominant discourse is at war with them (committed to not acknowledging their critiques) they may sympathetically try to sabotage it.” Does that seem right?
“Conclusions are often drawn from data in ways that are logically invalid” seems sufficiently well-attested to be a truism.
Yeah, that’s a good generalization of my first paragraph. It seems good to point out the generalization that they are sympathetically sabotaging, and in particular using the “everyone’s valid” incantation as their method of sabotage, because that implies first that their position is sympathetic and second that there could be other strategies they are or could be employing.
I probably wouldn’t use the term “dominant discourse” or “at war”, I might rather say “some entity professing some adjudication” and “not good ROI to attempt meaningful communication”.
The issue with the term “dominant discourse” is I don’t think this necessarily refers to a context where the adjudicator holds dominant power or any power at all. For example, the saboteur could be attempting to dismiss an opinionated schitzophrenic adjudicator.
And “war” implies particularly focused malice which need not be present in the adjudicator or imagined by the saboteur. For example, I don’t believe many bureaucratic systems are “at war” with me, but I definitely believe that attempting to communicate intelligently with them would almost always be a massive, frustrating, waste of my time.
...
I’m glad the invalid conclusions thing seems obviously true, but it’s also a pretty big problem. Ideally we could be more sure of a lot of our assumptions than we are, and have better and more well known epistemological understanding of where our assumptions may be more likely to fail, and in what ways. Obviously easier said than done.
When the problematic adjudicator isn’t the dominant one, one can either safely ignore them, or escalate to someone less problematic who does hold power, so there’s no benefit in sabotage, and there’s reputational harm.
Relatedly I think the only real solution to the “lying with statistics” problem is the formation of epistemic communities where you’re allowed to accuse someone of lying with statistics, it’s adjudicated with a preponderance-of-evidence standard, and both false accusations and evidence that you’re lying with statistics are actually discrediting, proportionate to the severity of the offense and the confidence of the judgment.
I think we might be imagining slightly different situations. I’m imagining, for example, situations like while riding the bus or out shopping where a stranger has the power to talk to you and you do technically have the power to like, call security or the police if they are harassing you, but they aren’t really harassing you and that would make the situation worse for you. They don’t have real or enduring power but in that situation they do have that power to force an interaction. It would feel incredibly wrong to call what they are saying the “dominant discourse” but I suppose in that context maybe that’s what it is. Also, I like to avoid ignoring people who engage with me unless I have a compelling reason not to. That may be a personal quirk.
The idea of an epistemic community like you describe sounds nice, though it seems unfortunate that the focus has to be on transgression and accusation rather than a system that focuses on identifying particularly good epistemics and just… ignoring the epistemics that aren’t identified, which may be because they involve lying with data or just poor use of statistics and analysis… But since lying with statistics seems common, it probably would be good to make a point of identifying and cataloguing it.
I’m also grateful for your engagement : )
About everyone’s perspective being valid, I don’t really understand the statement meaningfully. I study computer science, math, and logic. It is surely not the case that people always present viewpoints that are logically valid, so I assume you mean something else. I want every mind to have good experiences in our shared reality, and so I want effort to go towards caring for them well, but that doesn’t seem like a good fit for the statement. Maybe you mean that everyone is the expert on their own experience? That is surely at least very close to true, with some caveats for strange psychological situations. I mention these things to show you where I’m coming from. I’d like if you wanted to share more of what you mean with that.
About consensus leading to indecisive government and only working in small groups. I must unfortunately agree! However, I’d like to put forth the notion that language and communication are technologies and we are facing two problems:
(cons. prob. 1: scale) We have very large numbers of people who are very different from one another who must all somehow come to agree with one another.
(cons. prob. 2: agreement) It is very difficult to get people who do not understand one another and do not agree with one another to communicate to the point that they agree with one another either quickly or at all. These problems are quite insurmountable with our current communication technology, but I think that setting out to explicitly improve our abilities to communicate and understand one another to the point that large scale consensus becomes possible is a very good goal. Not that it seems easy. It seems very difficult, possibly impossible, but worth attempting.
About happy AIs and human extinction, I can’t speak for others but from my own perspective, it seems like we first need to better understand consciousness and happiness before proceeding with anything drastic, but an important consideration is what it means to be human. If we can emulate humans in computer programs and those emulations can transform their simulated or instantiated bodies and transform the architecture of their minds, does that make them no longer human? I think there’s a sense in which it does, but another sense in which that would represent the continuation of humanity. I think there’s a distinction there. All human bodies disappearing from the universe does not necessarily mean human extinction in a sense that is meaningful.
Although, I don’t really agree with utilitarianism as a target for superintelligent levels of optimization. I most highly preference whatever my own preferences are although I do not know them perfectly and certainly cannot speak them. Further than that, I preference the CEV of the kinds of mind that could coherently join a collective with me. I think utilitarianism is a useful tool for helping with decision making, but as we become more capable I hope we will develop better models of morality. I think our current results suggesting the creation of the maximum number of happy AI is probably a bit of a fluke, but I don’t think the issue is settled. I don’t think it needs to be settled at our current level of capability. I don’t think we should act on it at our current level of capability, even if it does turn out to be true.
I can steelman it as implying the modus tollens that when we can show that a speaker isn’t articulating a valid and coherent set of propositions, they aren’t articulating a perspective, and maybe even aren’t really “someone.” But usually “everyone’s perspective is equally valid” is functionally an incantation to interrupt and sabotage efforts to compare and adjudicate conflicting claims.
Hmm… that’s a good point, though another aspect comes to my mind regarding “an incantation to interrupt and sabotage efforts to compare and adjudicate conflicting claims”. If the user of the incantation believes that the system of logic used to compare and adjudicate is flawed, but that pointing out the flaws is likely to be ineffective, suggesting “everyone’s perspective is equally valid” may be a better strategy. Ideally one would fall back to a discussion of ways of knowing and adjudication of different ways of knowing in these contexts, but that may not always be possible, and may run into recursive problems.
The correspondence of statistics and other data and the things they are meant to represent seems like the most important and valid example of this I’ve noticed. Data is often recorded through ineffective and biased processes and conclusions are often drawn from data in ways that are logically invalid[1]. The highest quality response to instances of this situation would be to find and communicate about the methodological and logical flaws, but it’s understandable for people with good reason to believe some conclusion derived from data is false to simply claim “everyone’s perspective is equally valid” either because they know it is pragmatically more effective, or because they haven’t got a BSc focused on logic and statistics and don’t like spending their free time tracking down methodological and logical details.
This claim requires justification. I only have vibes. Ideally I would look for research to justify the claim, but I’m not going to. If anyone else wants to find evidence to support or oppose it, I would be most grateful.
I think your first paragraph is functionally equivalent to “if someone feels that the dominant discourse is at war with them (committed to not acknowledging their critiques) they may sympathetically try to sabotage it.” Does that seem right?
“Conclusions are often drawn from data in ways that are logically invalid” seems sufficiently well-attested to be a truism.
Yeah, that’s a good generalization of my first paragraph. It seems good to point out the generalization that they are sympathetically sabotaging, and in particular using the “everyone’s valid” incantation as their method of sabotage, because that implies first that their position is sympathetic and second that there could be other strategies they are or could be employing.
I probably wouldn’t use the term “dominant discourse” or “at war”, I might rather say “some entity professing some adjudication” and “not good ROI to attempt meaningful communication”.
The issue with the term “dominant discourse” is I don’t think this necessarily refers to a context where the adjudicator holds dominant power or any power at all. For example, the saboteur could be attempting to dismiss an opinionated schitzophrenic adjudicator.
And “war” implies particularly focused malice which need not be present in the adjudicator or imagined by the saboteur. For example, I don’t believe many bureaucratic systems are “at war” with me, but I definitely believe that attempting to communicate intelligently with them would almost always be a massive, frustrating, waste of my time.
...
I’m glad the invalid conclusions thing seems obviously true, but it’s also a pretty big problem. Ideally we could be more sure of a lot of our assumptions than we are, and have better and more well known epistemological understanding of where our assumptions may be more likely to fail, and in what ways. Obviously easier said than done.
When the problematic adjudicator isn’t the dominant one, one can either safely ignore them, or escalate to someone less problematic who does hold power, so there’s no benefit in sabotage, and there’s reputational harm.
Relatedly I think the only real solution to the “lying with statistics” problem is the formation of epistemic communities where you’re allowed to accuse someone of lying with statistics, it’s adjudicated with a preponderance-of-evidence standard, and both false accusations and evidence that you’re lying with statistics are actually discrediting, proportionate to the severity of the offense and the confidence of the judgment.
I think we might be imagining slightly different situations. I’m imagining, for example, situations like while riding the bus or out shopping where a stranger has the power to talk to you and you do technically have the power to like, call security or the police if they are harassing you, but they aren’t really harassing you and that would make the situation worse for you. They don’t have real or enduring power but in that situation they do have that power to force an interaction. It would feel incredibly wrong to call what they are saying the “dominant discourse” but I suppose in that context maybe that’s what it is. Also, I like to avoid ignoring people who engage with me unless I have a compelling reason not to. That may be a personal quirk.
The idea of an epistemic community like you describe sounds nice, though it seems unfortunate that the focus has to be on transgression and accusation rather than a system that focuses on identifying particularly good epistemics and just… ignoring the epistemics that aren’t identified, which may be because they involve lying with data or just poor use of statistics and analysis… But since lying with statistics seems common, it probably would be good to make a point of identifying and cataloguing it.