I’ll consider writing and publishing a longer post, but here’s a quick summary off the top of my head:
There’s a real tension – in my own mind anyways – between epistemological and instrumental rationality, particularly in areas dominated by ‘psychology’ and ‘sociology’, i.e. when interacting with other people, either alone or in groups. Epistemological rationality is, or at least feels, easier. This tension is, I think, either the or the main cause of the uncanny valley. The first item of the “frontpage comment guidelines” hints at this:
Aim to explain, not persuade
Knowing when to avoid persuading, or recognizing when one is doing that, is hard!
And even explaining is difficult! At some point, I find myself trying to persuade others to accept my attempted explanations and at least understand it to my satisfaction. This is a big reason why I empathize with this statement in your post: “I now find talking to non-rationalists much less interesting”. Rationalists at least have norms that depend on differentiating the two. I find that a lot of non-rationalists almost inevitably pattern-match what I intend as an explanation as attempted persuasion.
Because of uncertainty, chaos, and path dependance, even just picking targets against which to judge one’s own effectiveness is a seemingly inevitably and permanently nebulous project. I try to maintain the idea that my own effectiveness is bounded by constraints, including my own psychology, and I don’t know all of the constraints. But another idea that accompanies that is that I might be limiting my effectiveness by handicapping myself in my own thoughts as a means of preserving (some amount of) my self esteem.
I also struggle with integrating my own preferences into my own judgements about my effectiveness.
I don’t think I’ve climbed out of the rationalist uncanny valley. I think I have been descending into and then climbing out of several uncanny local minima in the landscape of my personal effectiveness. I also think that I descended into a valley (at least once) before I found Overcoming Bias, and then Less Wrong – and before either existed. (I’m 38 years old.) I also feel like my ‘effectiveness record’ is very mixed. I don’t think I’ve ever been, overall, ineffective, and I think I’ve definitely scored some clear victories, so, in a sense, there are many different dimensions and it’s only in some that I consider myself, at any one time, to be in a valley (or not).
Would you mind sharing your thoughts?
Nope!
I’ll consider writing and publishing a longer post, but here’s a quick summary off the top of my head:
There’s a real tension – in my own mind anyways – between epistemological and instrumental rationality, particularly in areas dominated by ‘psychology’ and ‘sociology’, i.e. when interacting with other people, either alone or in groups. Epistemological rationality is, or at least feels, easier. This tension is, I think, either the or the main cause of the uncanny valley. The first item of the “frontpage comment guidelines” hints at this:
Knowing when to avoid persuading, or recognizing when one is doing that, is hard!
And even explaining is difficult! At some point, I find myself trying to persuade others to accept my attempted explanations and at least understand it to my satisfaction. This is a big reason why I empathize with this statement in your post: “I now find talking to non-rationalists much less interesting”. Rationalists at least have norms that depend on differentiating the two. I find that a lot of non-rationalists almost inevitably pattern-match what I intend as an explanation as attempted persuasion.
Because of uncertainty, chaos, and path dependance, even just picking targets against which to judge one’s own effectiveness is a seemingly inevitably and permanently nebulous project. I try to maintain the idea that my own effectiveness is bounded by constraints, including my own psychology, and I don’t know all of the constraints. But another idea that accompanies that is that I might be limiting my effectiveness by handicapping myself in my own thoughts as a means of preserving (some amount of) my self esteem.
I also struggle with integrating my own preferences into my own judgements about my effectiveness.
I don’t think I’ve climbed out of the rationalist uncanny valley. I think I have been descending into and then climbing out of several uncanny local minima in the landscape of my personal effectiveness. I also think that I descended into a valley (at least once) before I found Overcoming Bias, and then Less Wrong – and before either existed. (I’m 38 years old.) I also feel like my ‘effectiveness record’ is very mixed. I don’t think I’ve ever been, overall, ineffective, and I think I’ve definitely scored some clear victories, so, in a sense, there are many different dimensions and it’s only in some that I consider myself, at any one time, to be in a valley (or not).