I have noticed myself updating towards this for Local Politics (i.e. when I do a bunch of thinking about an issue among nearby EA / X-risk / Rationality orgs or communities).
In particular, I’ve noticed a fair amount of talking past each other when resolving some disagreement. Alice and Bob disagree, they talk a bit. Alice concludes it’s because Bob doesn’t understand Principle X. Alice writes an effortpost on Principle X.
And… well, the effortpost is usually pretty useful. Principle X is legitimately important and it’s good to have it written up somewhere if it wasn’t already.
But, Principle X usually wasn’t the crux between Alice and Bob.
(Hmm, I notice that this comment is doing literally the thing we’re talking about here. I don’t feel like digging up the details but will note that people I’ve seen doing this include Duncan, Ben Hoffman, maybe Jessica Taylor, maybe Ruby and Me?)
((It’s less obvious to me when I do this because of illusion of transparency. I suppose it’s possible my entire doublecrux sequence is an instance of this, although in that case I don’t think I was expecting it to be the missing piece so much as “I wanted to make sure there was common knowledge of some foundational stuff.”))
I actually think these posts often update my thinking towards that person’s point of view even though it’s not the crux. You think is rock is important, I think hard place is important. You make a post about rock, but it updates me that Rock was even more important than I thought.
I think I’ve found that for Ben/Jessica/Zack posts, but not for Duncan posts (where instead I’m like “hmm. umm, so, that’s like literally the same post I would have wrote to support my point.”)
I have noticed myself updating towards this for Local Politics (i.e. when I do a bunch of thinking about an issue among nearby EA / X-risk / Rationality orgs or communities).
In particular, I’ve noticed a fair amount of talking past each other when resolving some disagreement. Alice and Bob disagree, they talk a bit. Alice concludes it’s because Bob doesn’t understand Principle X. Alice writes an effortpost on Principle X.
And… well, the effortpost is usually pretty useful. Principle X is legitimately important and it’s good to have it written up somewhere if it wasn’t already.
But, Principle X usually wasn’t the crux between Alice and Bob.
(Hmm, I notice that this comment is doing literally the thing we’re talking about here. I don’t feel like digging up the details but will note that people I’ve seen doing this include Duncan, Ben Hoffman, maybe Jessica Taylor, maybe Ruby and Me?)
((It’s less obvious to me when I do this because of illusion of transparency. I suppose it’s possible my entire doublecrux sequence is an instance of this, although in that case I don’t think I was expecting it to be the missing piece so much as “I wanted to make sure there was common knowledge of some foundational stuff.”))
I actually think these posts often update my thinking towards that person’s point of view even though it’s not the crux. You think is rock is important, I think hard place is important. You make a post about rock, but it updates me that Rock was even more important than I thought.
I think I’ve found that for Ben/Jessica/Zack posts, but not for Duncan posts (where instead I’m like “hmm. umm, so, that’s like literally the same post I would have wrote to support my point.”)