I’ve heard similar things about the line-by-line nitpick style, which originated on Usenet and now flourishes in places like Reddit. It got even worse when people learned to name-drop logical fallacies. But pockets of intelligent discussion always exist and a genuinely curious person would do better to find them, which is easier today than ever thanks to the internet. Why spend your time trying to fix stupid discussions? It’s a thankless task and might make you stupider as well.
pockets of intelligent discussion always exist and a genuinely curious person would do better to find them
Maybe I don’t qualify as a sufficiently curious person (I tend to give up easily), but before LessWrong I couldn’t find a reasonable debate. Reasonable individuals, yes. But never a group, a community where rationality would be norm. Not even online community.
Also, many highly intelligent people around me did things that I now see as obviously irrational (things like mentioned in this article), and used them as a signal for high intelligence. I suspected that something was wrong, but wasn’t able to pinpoint the problem, so my explanations were something like “I’m sorry, but this way of reasoning feels intuitively wrong”, which of course was only taken as an evidence of my insufficient intelligence. (I admit that being able to describe the problem precisely would be more impressive, but not even noticing the problem is less impressive. But again, this is my opinion; my friends would prefer having all opinions explicit, even if it would mean they ignore some part of reality. The same problem, on a meta level.)
Why spend your time trying to fix stupid discussions?
I admit I do not know how much the “desire to think and act rationally” is a long-term character trait, and how much it depends on the environment. Is the preference for “win debates, instead of reflecting reality” something we start to aesthetically prefer in the childhood, and once that happens, the person is forever locked in this mode, because when they hear about rationality afterwards, they will only approach it as “yet another verbal tool that may help me win some debate in future”? And analogically, is the preference for “reflecting reality” an aesthetic preference formed in childhood that will make the person feel disgusted by all clever debate-winning techniques? Or is this all mostly about learning and copying our friends?
If rationality has a strong long-term-character-trait component, we cannot fix stupid discussions. We can only drop hints for all the “rationality preferring” people that another kind of debate is possible, and where to find it.
If rationality is about learning and copying, then we could improve some less stupid discussions by showing them how to do it correctly.
If I would have to make a bet, I think I would bet on the long-term-character-trait model. I do not remember seeing a person become more rationality-loving in result of exposure to rationality materials. I have only seen already rationality-loving people become more confident that their approach is correct; and debate-winning people add a few new keywords to their toolsets.
Also, many highly intelligent people around me did things that I now see as obviously irrational (things like mentioned in this article), and used them as a signal for high intelligence.
Sometimes it’s rational to value signaling your intelligence more than coming up with the right answer to an inconsequential question :-)
Your usual kitchen debate about politics is predominantly about signaling (both tribal identity and facility at arguing).
It’s just… people who cannot stop signalling, even when you tell them: “look, I see that you are signalling, but now please stop doing that for a minute and let’s talk seriously”… annoy me a lot.
(Yeah, it would be easy to say that what I want is also signalling, just of a different kind. Whatever. Either way, I hate that kind of signalling.)
The ability to easily go meta—that is, stop and take a look at yourself “from the outside” is not common, probably more rare than “just” high intelligence.
Sometimes it’s rational to value signaling your intelligence more than coming up with the right answer to an inconsequential question :-)
The problem is that “inconsequential” questions can be consequential to someone, who then gets labeled an idiot (or worse) for attempting to approach it rationally.
I guess I agree. In fact, if I mentally register that my interlocutor seems to be employing one of these algorithms, it mainly just triggers a little “aha, I don’t need to waste more time arguing with this person, they are operating under counterproductive assumptions of how arguments work.”
I’ve heard similar things about the line-by-line nitpick style, which originated on Usenet and now flourishes in places like Reddit. It got even worse when people learned to name-drop logical fallacies. But pockets of intelligent discussion always exist and a genuinely curious person would do better to find them, which is easier today than ever thanks to the internet. Why spend your time trying to fix stupid discussions? It’s a thankless task and might make you stupider as well.
Maybe I don’t qualify as a sufficiently curious person (I tend to give up easily), but before LessWrong I couldn’t find a reasonable debate. Reasonable individuals, yes. But never a group, a community where rationality would be norm. Not even online community.
Also, many highly intelligent people around me did things that I now see as obviously irrational (things like mentioned in this article), and used them as a signal for high intelligence. I suspected that something was wrong, but wasn’t able to pinpoint the problem, so my explanations were something like “I’m sorry, but this way of reasoning feels intuitively wrong”, which of course was only taken as an evidence of my insufficient intelligence. (I admit that being able to describe the problem precisely would be more impressive, but not even noticing the problem is less impressive. But again, this is my opinion; my friends would prefer having all opinions explicit, even if it would mean they ignore some part of reality. The same problem, on a meta level.)
I admit I do not know how much the “desire to think and act rationally” is a long-term character trait, and how much it depends on the environment. Is the preference for “win debates, instead of reflecting reality” something we start to aesthetically prefer in the childhood, and once that happens, the person is forever locked in this mode, because when they hear about rationality afterwards, they will only approach it as “yet another verbal tool that may help me win some debate in future”? And analogically, is the preference for “reflecting reality” an aesthetic preference formed in childhood that will make the person feel disgusted by all clever debate-winning techniques? Or is this all mostly about learning and copying our friends?
If rationality has a strong long-term-character-trait component, we cannot fix stupid discussions. We can only drop hints for all the “rationality preferring” people that another kind of debate is possible, and where to find it.
If rationality is about learning and copying, then we could improve some less stupid discussions by showing them how to do it correctly.
If I would have to make a bet, I think I would bet on the long-term-character-trait model. I do not remember seeing a person become more rationality-loving in result of exposure to rationality materials. I have only seen already rationality-loving people become more confident that their approach is correct; and debate-winning people add a few new keywords to their toolsets.
Sometimes it’s rational to value signaling your intelligence more than coming up with the right answer to an inconsequential question :-)
Your usual kitchen debate about politics is predominantly about signaling (both tribal identity and facility at arguing).
It’s just… people who cannot stop signalling, even when you tell them: “look, I see that you are signalling, but now please stop doing that for a minute and let’s talk seriously”… annoy me a lot.
(Yeah, it would be easy to say that what I want is also signalling, just of a different kind. Whatever. Either way, I hate that kind of signalling.)
The ability to easily go meta—that is, stop and take a look at yourself “from the outside” is not common, probably more rare than “just” high intelligence.
The problem is that “inconsequential” questions can be consequential to someone, who then gets labeled an idiot (or worse) for attempting to approach it rationally.
I guess I agree. In fact, if I mentally register that my interlocutor seems to be employing one of these algorithms, it mainly just triggers a little “aha, I don’t need to waste more time arguing with this person, they are operating under counterproductive assumptions of how arguments work.”