When this post first came out, I felt that it was quite dangerous. I explained to a friend: I expected this model would take hold in my sphere, and somehow disrupt, on this issue, the sensemaking I relied on, the one where each person thought for themselves and shared what they saw.
This is a sort of funny complaint to have. It sounds a little like “I’m worried that this is a useful idea, and then everyone will use it, and they won’t be sharing lots of disorganised observations any more”. I suppose the simple way to express the bite of the worry is that I worried this concept was more memetically fit than it was useful.
Almost two years later, I find I use this concept frequently. I don’t find it upsetting; I find it helpful, especially for talking to my friends. Wuckles.
I see things in the world that look like believing in. For example, a friend of mine, who I respect a fair amount and has the energy and vision to pull off large projects, likes to share this photo:
Interestingly, I think that those who work with him generally know it won’t be easy. But it’s more achievable than his comrades think, because he has delusion on his side. He has a lot of non-epistemic believing in.
Another example: I think when interacting with people, it’s often appropriate to extend a certain amount of believing in to their self-models. Say my friend says he’s going to take up exercise. If I thought that were true, perhaps I’d get them a small exercise-related gift, like a water bottle. Or maybe I’d invite him on a run with me. If I thought it were false, a simple calculation might suggest not doing these things: it’s a small cost, and there’ll be no benefit. But I think it’s cool to invite them on the run or maybe buy the water bottle. I think this is a form of believing in, and I think it makes my actions look similar to those I’d take if I just simply believed them. But I don’t have to epistemically believe them to have my believing in lead to the action.
So, I do find this a helpful handle now. I do feel a little sad, like: yeah, there’s a subtle landscape that encompasses beliefs and plans and motivation, and now when I look it I see it criss-crossed by the balks of this frame. And I’m not sure it’s the best I could find, had I the time. For example, I’m interested in thinking more about lines of advance. Nonetheless, it helps me now, and that’s worth a lot. +4
re: “the bite of the worry is that I worried this concept was more memetically fit than it was useful.”
Hmm. There are two choices that IMO made it memetically fit; I’m curious whether those choices of mine were bad manners. The two choices: 1) I linked my concept to a common English phrase (“believing in”), which made it more referenceable. 2) The specific phrase “believing in” that I picked gets naturally into a bit of a fight with “belief”, and “belief” is one of LW’s most foundational concepts, and this also made it more referenceable / more natural for me at least to geek out about. (Whereas if I’d given roughly the same model but called it “targets” or “aims” my post would’ve been less naturally in a fight with “beliefs”, and so less salient/referenceable / less natural to compare-and-contrast to the many claims/questions/etc I have stored up around ‘beliefs’.)
I think a crux for me about whether this was bad manners (or, alternately phrased, whether discussions will go better or worse if more posts follow similar “manners”) is whether the model I share in the post is basically predicts the ordinary English meaning of “believing in”. (In my book, ordinary English words and phrases that’ve survived many generations often map onto robustly useful concepts, at least compared to just-made-up jargon words; and so it’s often good to let normal English words/concepts have a lot of effects on how we parse things; they’ve come by their memetic fitness honestly.) A related crux for me is whether the LW technical term “belief” was/is overshadowing many LWers’ ability to understand some of the useful things that normal people are up to with the word “belief”.
When this post first came out, I felt that it was quite dangerous. I explained to a friend: I expected this model would take hold in my sphere, and somehow disrupt, on this issue, the sensemaking I relied on, the one where each person thought for themselves and shared what they saw.
This is a sort of funny complaint to have. It sounds a little like “I’m worried that this is a useful idea, and then everyone will use it, and they won’t be sharing lots of disorganised observations any more”. I suppose the simple way to express the bite of the worry is that I worried this concept was more memetically fit than it was useful.
Almost two years later, I find I use this concept frequently. I don’t find it upsetting; I find it helpful, especially for talking to my friends. Wuckles.
I see things in the world that look like believing in. For example, a friend of mine, who I respect a fair amount and has the energy and vision to pull off large projects, likes to share this photo:
Interestingly, I think that those who work with him generally know it won’t be easy. But it’s more achievable than his comrades think, because he has delusion on his side. He has a lot of non-epistemic believing in.
Another example: I think when interacting with people, it’s often appropriate to extend a certain amount of believing in to their self-models. Say my friend says he’s going to take up exercise. If I thought that were true, perhaps I’d get them a small exercise-related gift, like a water bottle. Or maybe I’d invite him on a run with me. If I thought it were false, a simple calculation might suggest not doing these things: it’s a small cost, and there’ll be no benefit. But I think it’s cool to invite them on the run or maybe buy the water bottle. I think this is a form of believing in, and I think it makes my actions look similar to those I’d take if I just simply believed them. But I don’t have to epistemically believe them to have my believing in lead to the action.
So, I do find this a helpful handle now. I do feel a little sad, like: yeah, there’s a subtle landscape that encompasses beliefs and plans and motivation, and now when I look it I see it criss-crossed by the balks of this frame. And I’m not sure it’s the best I could find, had I the time. For example, I’m interested in thinking more about lines of advance. Nonetheless, it helps me now, and that’s worth a lot. +4
re: “the bite of the worry is that I worried this concept was more memetically fit than it was useful.”
Hmm. There are two choices that IMO made it memetically fit; I’m curious whether those choices of mine were bad manners. The two choices:
1) I linked my concept to a common English phrase (“believing in”), which made it more referenceable.
2) The specific phrase “believing in” that I picked gets naturally into a bit of a fight with “belief”, and “belief” is one of LW’s most foundational concepts, and this also made it more referenceable / more natural for me at least to geek out about. (Whereas if I’d given roughly the same model but called it “targets” or “aims” my post would’ve been less naturally in a fight with “beliefs”, and so less salient/referenceable / less natural to compare-and-contrast to the many claims/questions/etc I have stored up around ‘beliefs’.)
I think a crux for me about whether this was bad manners (or, alternately phrased, whether discussions will go better or worse if more posts follow similar “manners”) is whether the model I share in the post is basically predicts the ordinary English meaning of “believing in”. (In my book, ordinary English words and phrases that’ve survived many generations often map onto robustly useful concepts, at least compared to just-made-up jargon words; and so it’s often good to let normal English words/concepts have a lot of effects on how we parse things; they’ve come by their memetic fitness honestly.) A related crux for me is whether the LW technical term “belief” was/is overshadowing many LWers’ ability to understand some of the useful things that normal people are up to with the word “belief”.