Something about that anecdote just bugs me… The submitter is the one escalating the conversation each time, and she seemingly doesn’t realize it. It’s easy to call out other people on failing to think about the consequences of their words, but much harder to apply that same criterion to yourself.
Hypothetical gender reversal test:
“So, do you actually know how to knit, or did someone drag you here?”
“Are you saying that because he’s wearing a suit and tie?”
flustered “No, it’s not because of how he’s dressed. It’s just that most men who come here are dragged by someone else.”
“Do you think that any man, no matter why he came here, would feel welcomed by that question?”
“Well, if you frame it like that… Didn’t your question imply that suit-wearing men shouldn’t be welcome at the LessWrong knitting club?”
I’m not sure knitting and reading LW are analogous enough for this to be a good intuition pump. A conference about psychology or gender studies or nursery (to take examples from this thread) would be a better example (and while you’re at it, you’d have to replace the suit and tie with something like a muscle shirt and hair gel).
you’d have to replace the suit and tie with something like a muscle shirt and hair gel
In what way “muscle shirt and hair gel” are to men as “heels and lipstick” are to women?
(Not a rhetorical question. The first sounds like an exception and the second like a rule, and “suit and tie” also feels closer to a rule. I mean, mom usually wears heels and lipstick, and dad usually wears suits and ties. (For the record, I don’t wear either.) I’m wondering where our intuitions diverge and why.)
On thinking of heels and lipstick, I think of ‘something people wear in places where they’re looking for potential mates, such as nightclubs’, whereas on thinking of suits and ties I think of ‘something people wear in formal situations, such as on the workplace by white-collar workers’. (I’m assuming they were talking of bright-coloured lipstick and high heels, given that they were talking about it at all—I’d guess barely-visible lipstick and not-so-high heels wouldn’t be salient enough to be mentioned.)
As far as I can tell, a supermajority of men would never even consider wearing heels and lipstick, except in costume parties and the like. Suits and ties are nowhere near as strongly gendered than that.
Now maybe there isn’t quite a perfect match to “heels and lipstick”, but I can’t think of any better one at the moment.
And my view may be slightly skewed the other way because (contrary to what I’ve heard is a common stereotype) people in my country tend to not be terribly dressy by First World standards except in certain situations.
On thinking of heels and lipstick, I think of ‘something people wear in places where they’re looking for potential mates, such as nightclubs’, whereas on thinking of suits and ties I think of ‘something people wear in formal situations, such as on the workplace by white-collar workers’. (I’m assuming they were talking of bright-coloured lipstick and high heels, given that they were talking about it at all—I’d guess barely-visible lipstick and not-so-high heels wouldn’t be salient enough to be mentioned.)
As far as I can tell, a supermajority of men would never even consider wearing heels and lipstick, except in costume parties and the like. Suits and ties are nowhere near as strongly gendered than that.
Now maybe there isn’t quite a perfect match to “heels and lipstick”, but I can’t think of any better one at the moment.
The submitter is the one escalating the conversation each time
You say this as if it is a bad thing. Of course she is escalating the conversation. Any time you see something wrong and intervene, you are escalating.
Hypothetical gender reversal test:
“So, do you actually know how to knit, or did someone drag you here?”
As a man, I would in fact find being greeted like that offensive. In the larger scheme of things, only in a very minor way, but of course as a man such things will in fact rarely be said to me. They will be unusual when they occur, and I will just mentally mark down the individual specker (not a misspelling) for their obtuse words. But the thoughtless people who say things like that are usually men saying them to women, or more broadly, unmarked people saying them to marked people. For a woman facing this sort of crap day in and day out, drip, drip, drip, a stand has to be made. That stand will of course look out of proportion to the individual event, enabling the one giving the offense to get self-righteously indignant and talk obliviously about “escalation”.
If you’re a single brick in a wall, you can’t claim to not be in anyone’s way. That is what a wall does.
Any time you see something wrong and intervene, you are escalating.
This seems false. Especially when you continue to escalate the issue after intervening when there are less aggressive options available. Regardless of whether you approve of her actions they are not tautologically implied by intervention.
That line of intervention holds for correcting a general social offence, however in this instance the competing goal of welcoming the first time attendee must be considered.
On the grand scale of things, perhaps Submitter C values correcting potential gender bias in favour of gender neutrality/awareness more than promoting welcoming behaviour; this interpretation conflicts with Submitter C’s explicitly stated intent for intervening and is not a charitable reading. I will only address Submitter C’s explicit objection of the implications, meant or not, of Guy’s inquiry of the first time attendee.
According to their submission, Submitter C wished to prioritise welcoming the first time attendee over chastising Guy; I will assume chastising Guy was a sub-goal considering the content of the exchange.
Wedrifid points out that having a public outburst introduces negativity and political signalling to the situation’s social dynamic; without firm knowledge of the first time attendee’s thoughts or emotions regarding Guy’s inquiry (an affect does not a credible signal make), a positive intervention would have the greater probability of welcoming the attendee.
GUY: “So, do you actually read Less Wrong, or did someone drag you here?”
SUBMITTER C (grinning/smiling): “That’s not a very welcoming phrasing, now is it?”
Guy’s social ineptitude, but innocent intent (actual intent becomes irrelevant) are signalled to the first time attendee; Guy is mildly nudged to think on their phrasing without feeling (too) victimised, and most importantly the first time attendee is welcomed with a signal of group care for kindness. More chastising can be given to Guy by Submitter C later and in privacy, where Guy will not have frets about status fettering an update.
As a man, I would in fact find being greeted like that offensive.
This man wouldn’t.
see something wrong
I’d say she didn’t see something wrong, she evaluated something as wrong—something that I did not, just you evaluated the knitting question as offensive, while I did not.
I’d say she didn’t see something wrong, she evaluated something as wrong—something that I did not, just you evaluated the knitting question as offensive, while I did not.
I’m sure we have all read our Korzybski, and grok the distinction that you are drawing to our attention, between levels of abstraction: between reality, perceptions, interpretations of those perceptions, deductions from those interpretations, etc. This is an important fact, but it also leaves out an important aspect of the matter.
This can be seen if the stakes are raised. A trifle such as the knitting question (a trifle, that is, in the way that a single drop of water falling on a rock is a trifle), is—a trifle. It is lost in the noise of everyday friction. It is easy to politely ignore, easy to not even notice. But if, instead of seeing someone make the remark under discussion, you see them yelling hostile obscenities, at someone else, or at you, you do not really have the option of saying, “well, you evaluate it as wrong, but I do not.”
It’s about how far you let things go before taking a stand. Different people will make different judgements, but I cannot fault Submitter C for making that stand at “So, do you actually read Less Wrong, or did someone drag you here?”
Why “take a stand” against a trifle that could very well be simply a misinterpretation?
Accusations of a moral affront are themselves a moral affront. You’ve crossed the rubicon. The stakes have been raised from mistake to attack. For my part, I would have found less fault in the original fellow if he had retaliated in kind than I find in Submitter C’s behavior as is.
Why “take a stand” against a trifle that could very well be simply a misinterpretation?
There are only so many excuses one can make for people before one has to wonder why they keep on having to be made.
Accusations of a moral affront are themselves a moral affront.
C’s response was “Are you saying that because she’s wearing heels and lipstick?”. Is that an accusation of a moral affront?
I wasn’t there; were you? If not, we’re likely both responding not just to the story as written, but to movies we’re playing in our respective heads as we read the words.
Submitter C, the primary source for the whole thing, has posted an update. It may be true that as she says, “The whole thing would have gone better if I had responded more charitably”, but that is hindsight talking about might-have-beens. In the moment, you respond as best you can with the information and time available.
And I get an uneasy feeling about this: “I think it was a genuine mistake/misunderstanding and not a deliberate attempt to alienate anyone.” Well, it wouldn’t be. That is the problem.
Did you edit this after initial posting, or am I drunk again?
In the moment, you respond as best you can with the information and time available.
And maybe next time her best will more accurately assess the situation, and she’ll respond more charitably.
No evidence that the first woman took offense. The first fellow says he didn’t mean anything by it. And Submitter C wishes she had responded more charitably. Looks like you’re the last holdout.
Well, it wouldn’t be. That is the problem.
And this problem is your wall of bricks?
Generalizations about women are bricks in the wall for which women should take a stand. She is entitled to react disproportionately to the immediate brick, because it is a part of a larger wall.
How many decades of such entitlement for women does a man need to live through until he is similarly entitled to disproportionate response to the bricks in his wall? For all my conscious life, and I’m pushing 50, entitling women to denigrate men has been standard operating procedure throughout mainstream media. It’s not just entitlement, it’s self righteous approval and condemnation of any man who objects. When a woman condemns you, you’ll take it and like it!
I don’t claim the right to disproportionate response. But I’m not going to cower meekly when it is tried on me. That’s where I make my stand.
Often it’s only when I see the posting that I realise I want to change something.
Same with me. For some reason my eyeballs don’t see the issue until I’ve submitted it. I think some of it is being able to see a bigger chunk of text at once. I wish we could make the editing window bigger.
How? Here I am editing in chrome, I go to the edges to tray and get a draggy thing, and I don’t get one. I can resize the screen, but that doesn’t give me more line like to work with. The box expands and shrinks in sync with the text.
How? Here I am editing in chrome, I go to the edges to tray and get a draggy thing, and I don’t get one.
Upgrade to a Mac? :-) There’s a draggy thing at the bottom right corner of the comment editing pane for me, put there by the browser, not the web page—it’s on editing panes in any web page. Safari at least has done this for years.
That’s just embedding your conclusion into your premises.
I embedded what I took as your characterization (trifle) and the possibility of misinterpretation. Rereading it, looks like you didn’t particularly commit to the where this stood on the scale, and the possibility of misinterpretation was a reality!
C has posted an update:
I think it was a genuine mistake/misunderstanding and not a deliberate attempt to alienate anyone. I don’t know how the other woman took the whole situation. I know it pushed my you-don’t-belong-here button, and I responded based on that. The whole thing would have gone better if I had responded more charitably.
“If I had responded more charitably”. Yes. Grant him the presumption of basic good will, and see whether the data is compatible with that.
C’s response was “Are you saying that because she’s wearing heels and lipstick?”.
Is that an accusation of a moral affront?
I think moral affront was taken and given. Yes. I believe that was the whole point. She was offended at what she took as some implication of the question, deeming it likely to offend.
I wasn’t there; were you? If not, we’re likely both responding not just to the story as written, but to movies we’re playing in our respective heads as we read the words.
I made the same point elsewhere. Yes, it’s a big problem that we’re all inevitable filling in the blanks and commenting on our individual hallucinations. These kind of discussions without shared concretes have a high degree of built in divisiveness to overcome, giving the tendency to hallucinate in our own favor.
Just an idle quip. But perhaps this could be an interesting research question for Bayesian reasoning. What is the minimum communication necessary for the process of Aumann agreement? Aumann original paper requires that the reasoners have the same priors and common knowledge of their posteriors, without considering the mechanism that gets them there—presumably, they just tell each other. There has been some work on more explicit protocols for them to share their information, some of it referenced here.
How much agreement can a community of perfect Bayesian reasoners reach through the medium of a karma voting system?
You clearly have a weird understanding of Aumann. First of all, why did you bring it up? Because 6 out of 17 people did not agree with you!? People are neither perfect bayesians nor have common priors as you probably know and the agreement theorem is not really applicable here.
Furthermore perfect bayesians are not susceptible to framing effects so it does not matter how they arrive at the information.
Also I do not really see”different protocols for them to share information” on the wiki. Hanson’s idea is basically that bayesians cannot agree to disagree if instead of having common priors they have common information about how they arrive at those priors (because this way they will again end up with common priors if his pre-rationality condition is fulfilled). And I hadn’t seen the other paper but it seems like Hellman is just examining agreement in the case of differing priors.
How much agreement can a community of perfect Bayesian reasoners reach through the medium of a karma voting system?
Perfect Bayesian reasoners are able to reach maximum agreement. The medium does not matter. So I’d say maximum agreement.
You clearly have a weird understanding of Aumann. First of all, why did you bring it up?
Like I said, an idle quip. Perfect Bayesians, perfectly communicating, agree, and there is a frequently expressed attitude on LessWrong that as would-be perfect Bayesians, we should easily come to agreement about everything. Yet here we have an extreme divergence. (The score is now at 11-8. I love the new feature of showing the % positive!)
Also I do not really see”different protocols for them to share information” on the wiki.
Try the Aaronson paper, and the papers it references.
How much agreement can a community of perfect Bayesian reasoners reach through the medium of a karma voting system?
Perfect Bayesian reasoners are able to reach maximum agreement. The medium does not matter. So I’d say maximum agreement.
There must be a medium. The properties of that medium determine what can be communicated and how long it takes.
there is a frequently expressed attitude on LesWrong that as would-be perfect Bayesians, we should easily come to agreement about everything.
Hm, definitely no. I think that most lesswrongers realize that we are really really far from being prefect bayesians and having common priors and also realize how far we are from agreeing. That Helman paper surely argues with me, however I can believe that there are a bunch of lesswrongers deluded into thinking that we are already at the stage when we can easily reach agreements about everything. I am skeptical to them being more than a minority though.
Try the Aaronson paper, and the papers it references.
The Aaronson protocols address the real-world limitations of time and computing power . The mechanism through which perfect bayesians receive information is not important outside of such real-world limitations (as those are limitations for humans and as perfect bayesians exist slightly outside those limitations). The data that they currently posses and are able to obtain is.
There must be a medium. The properties of that medium determine what can be communicated and how long it takes.
I am assuming mediums where they are able to exchange whatever information they want even if they need to send it through binary—mediums such as the one here. And no, it does not matter how long it takes—the same agreement will be reached if it takes a billion years or 4 milliseconds, this is perfect bayesians we are talking about.
Something about that anecdote just bugs me… The submitter is the one escalating the conversation each time, and she seemingly doesn’t realize it. It’s easy to call out other people on failing to think about the consequences of their words, but much harder to apply that same criterion to yourself.
Hypothetical gender reversal test:
“So, do you actually know how to knit, or did someone drag you here?”
“Are you saying that because he’s wearing a suit and tie?”
flustered “No, it’s not because of how he’s dressed. It’s just that most men who come here are dragged by someone else.”
“Do you think that any man, no matter why he came here, would feel welcomed by that question?”
“Well, if you frame it like that… Didn’t your question imply that suit-wearing men shouldn’t be welcome at the LessWrong knitting club?”
″...”
″… Guys, I’m right here!”
I’m not sure knitting and reading LW are analogous enough for this to be a good intuition pump. A conference about psychology or gender studies or nursery (to take examples from this thread) would be a better example (and while you’re at it, you’d have to replace the suit and tie with something like a muscle shirt and hair gel).
In what way “muscle shirt and hair gel” are to men as “heels and lipstick” are to women?
(Not a rhetorical question. The first sounds like an exception and the second like a rule, and “suit and tie” also feels closer to a rule. I mean, mom usually wears heels and lipstick, and dad usually wears suits and ties. (For the record, I don’t wear either.) I’m wondering where our intuitions diverge and why.)
On thinking of heels and lipstick, I think of ‘something people wear in places where they’re looking for potential mates, such as nightclubs’, whereas on thinking of suits and ties I think of ‘something people wear in formal situations, such as on the workplace by white-collar workers’. (I’m assuming they were talking of bright-coloured lipstick and high heels, given that they were talking about it at all—I’d guess barely-visible lipstick and not-so-high heels wouldn’t be salient enough to be mentioned.)
As far as I can tell, a supermajority of men would never even consider wearing heels and lipstick, except in costume parties and the like. Suits and ties are nowhere near as strongly gendered than that.
Now maybe there isn’t quite a perfect match to “heels and lipstick”, but I can’t think of any better one at the moment.
OK, probably I’ve a skewed view because of my mom being dressier than average, and too little familiarity with white-collar workplaces and nightclubs.
And my view may be slightly skewed the other way because (contrary to what I’ve heard is a common stereotype) people in my country tend to not be terribly dressy by First World standards except in certain situations.
On thinking of heels and lipstick, I think of ‘something people wear in places where they’re looking for potential mates, such as nightclubs’, whereas on thinking of suits and ties I think of ‘something people wear in formal situations, such as on the workplace by white-collar workers’. (I’m assuming they were talking of bright-coloured lipstick and high heels, given that they were talking about it at all—I’d guess barely-visible lipstick and not-so-high heels wouldn’t be salient enough to be mentioned.)
As far as I can tell, a supermajority of men would never even consider wearing heels and lipstick, except in costume parties and the like. Suits and ties are nowhere near as strongly gendered than that.
Now maybe there isn’t quite a perfect match to “heels and lipstick”, but I can’t think of any better one at the moment.
You say this as if it is a bad thing. Of course she is escalating the conversation. Any time you see something wrong and intervene, you are escalating.
As a man, I would in fact find being greeted like that offensive. In the larger scheme of things, only in a very minor way, but of course as a man such things will in fact rarely be said to me. They will be unusual when they occur, and I will just mentally mark down the individual specker (not a misspelling) for their obtuse words. But the thoughtless people who say things like that are usually men saying them to women, or more broadly, unmarked people saying them to marked people. For a woman facing this sort of crap day in and day out, drip, drip, drip, a stand has to be made. That stand will of course look out of proportion to the individual event, enabling the one giving the offense to get self-righteously indignant and talk obliviously about “escalation”.
If you’re a single brick in a wall, you can’t claim to not be in anyone’s way. That is what a wall does.
ETA: 11 votes for, 6 votes against. Yay Aumann!
This seems false. Especially when you continue to escalate the issue after intervening when there are less aggressive options available. Regardless of whether you approve of her actions they are not tautologically implied by intervention.
I don’t find that an accurate description of the conversation in the OP. This is what it looks like to me:
Man: asinine comment
Submitter C: WTF?
Man: confusion
Submitter C: explanation
That line of intervention holds for correcting a general social offence, however in this instance the competing goal of welcoming the first time attendee must be considered.
On the grand scale of things, perhaps Submitter C values correcting potential gender bias in favour of gender neutrality/awareness more than promoting welcoming behaviour; this interpretation conflicts with Submitter C’s explicitly stated intent for intervening and is not a charitable reading. I will only address Submitter C’s explicit objection of the implications, meant or not, of Guy’s inquiry of the first time attendee.
According to their submission, Submitter C wished to prioritise welcoming the first time attendee over chastising Guy; I will assume chastising Guy was a sub-goal considering the content of the exchange.
Wedrifid points out that having a public outburst introduces negativity and political signalling to the situation’s social dynamic; without firm knowledge of the first time attendee’s thoughts or emotions regarding Guy’s inquiry (an affect does not a credible signal make), a positive intervention would have the greater probability of welcoming the attendee.
GUY: “So, do you actually read Less Wrong, or did someone drag you here?”
SUBMITTER C (grinning/smiling): “That’s not a very welcoming phrasing, now is it?”
Guy’s social ineptitude, but innocent intent (actual intent becomes irrelevant) are signalled to the first time attendee; Guy is mildly nudged to think on their phrasing without feeling (too) victimised, and most importantly the first time attendee is welcomed with a signal of group care for kindness. More chastising can be given to Guy by Submitter C later and in privacy, where Guy will not have frets about status fettering an update.
This man wouldn’t.
I’d say she didn’t see something wrong, she evaluated something as wrong—something that I did not, just you evaluated the knitting question as offensive, while I did not.
I’m sure we have all read our Korzybski, and grok the distinction that you are drawing to our attention, between levels of abstraction: between reality, perceptions, interpretations of those perceptions, deductions from those interpretations, etc. This is an important fact, but it also leaves out an important aspect of the matter.
This can be seen if the stakes are raised. A trifle such as the knitting question (a trifle, that is, in the way that a single drop of water falling on a rock is a trifle), is—a trifle. It is lost in the noise of everyday friction. It is easy to politely ignore, easy to not even notice. But if, instead of seeing someone make the remark under discussion, you see them yelling hostile obscenities, at someone else, or at you, you do not really have the option of saying, “well, you evaluate it as wrong, but I do not.”
It’s about how far you let things go before taking a stand. Different people will make different judgements, but I cannot fault Submitter C for making that stand at “So, do you actually read Less Wrong, or did someone drag you here?”
Why “take a stand” against a trifle that could very well be simply a misinterpretation?
Accusations of a moral affront are themselves a moral affront. You’ve crossed the rubicon. The stakes have been raised from mistake to attack. For my part, I would have found less fault in the original fellow if he had retaliated in kind than I find in Submitter C’s behavior as is.
There are only so many excuses one can make for people before one has to wonder why they keep on having to be made.
C’s response was “Are you saying that because she’s wearing heels and lipstick?”. Is that an accusation of a moral affront?
I wasn’t there; were you? If not, we’re likely both responding not just to the story as written, but to movies we’re playing in our respective heads as we read the words.
Submitter C, the primary source for the whole thing, has posted an update. It may be true that as she says, “The whole thing would have gone better if I had responded more charitably”, but that is hindsight talking about might-have-beens. In the moment, you respond as best you can with the information and time available.
And I get an uneasy feeling about this: “I think it was a genuine mistake/misunderstanding and not a deliberate attempt to alienate anyone.” Well, it wouldn’t be. That is the problem.
Did you edit this after initial posting, or am I drunk again?
And maybe next time her best will more accurately assess the situation, and she’ll respond more charitably.
No evidence that the first woman took offense. The first fellow says he didn’t mean anything by it. And Submitter C wishes she had responded more charitably. Looks like you’re the last holdout.
And this problem is your wall of bricks?
Generalizations about women are bricks in the wall for which women should take a stand. She is entitled to react disproportionately to the immediate brick, because it is a part of a larger wall.
How many decades of such entitlement for women does a man need to live through until he is similarly entitled to disproportionate response to the bricks in his wall? For all my conscious life, and I’m pushing 50, entitling women to denigrate men has been standard operating procedure throughout mainstream media. It’s not just entitlement, it’s self righteous approval and condemnation of any man who objects. When a woman condemns you, you’ll take it and like it!
I don’t claim the right to disproportionate response. But I’m not going to cower meekly when it is tried on me. That’s where I make my stand.
Yes, within a few minutes of posting it, but not since. Often it’s only when I see the posting that I realise I want to change something.
Well, do that. I don’t see a problem.
Same with me. For some reason my eyeballs don’t see the issue until I’ve submitted it. I think some of it is being able to see a bigger chunk of text at once. I wish we could make the editing window bigger.
Safari, Firefox, and Chrome all let you resize any multi-line editing box.
How? Here I am editing in chrome, I go to the edges to tray and get a draggy thing, and I don’t get one. I can resize the screen, but that doesn’t give me more line like to work with. The box expands and shrinks in sync with the text.
Upgrade to a Mac? :-) There’s a draggy thing at the bottom right corner of the comment editing pane for me, put there by the browser, not the web page—it’s on editing panes in any web page. Safari at least has done this for years.
Like this.
I embedded what I took as your characterization (trifle) and the possibility of misinterpretation. Rereading it, looks like you didn’t particularly commit to the where this stood on the scale, and the possibility of misinterpretation was a reality!
C has posted an update:
“If I had responded more charitably”. Yes. Grant him the presumption of basic good will, and see whether the data is compatible with that.
I think moral affront was taken and given. Yes. I believe that was the whole point. She was offended at what she took as some implication of the question, deeming it likely to offend.
I made the same point elsewhere. Yes, it’s a big problem that we’re all inevitable filling in the blanks and commenting on our individual hallucinations. These kind of discussions without shared concretes have a high degree of built in divisiveness to overcome, giving the tendency to hallucinate in our own favor.
What does Aumann have to do with voting.
Just an idle quip. But perhaps this could be an interesting research question for Bayesian reasoning. What is the minimum communication necessary for the process of Aumann agreement? Aumann original paper requires that the reasoners have the same priors and common knowledge of their posteriors, without considering the mechanism that gets them there—presumably, they just tell each other. There has been some work on more explicit protocols for them to share their information, some of it referenced here.
How much agreement can a community of perfect Bayesian reasoners reach through the medium of a karma voting system?
You clearly have a weird understanding of Aumann. First of all, why did you bring it up? Because 6 out of 17 people did not agree with you!? People are neither perfect bayesians nor have common priors as you probably know and the agreement theorem is not really applicable here.
Furthermore perfect bayesians are not susceptible to framing effects so it does not matter how they arrive at the information.
Also I do not really see”different protocols for them to share information” on the wiki. Hanson’s idea is basically that bayesians cannot agree to disagree if instead of having common priors they have common information about how they arrive at those priors (because this way they will again end up with common priors if his pre-rationality condition is fulfilled). And I hadn’t seen the other paper but it seems like Hellman is just examining agreement in the case of differing priors.
Perfect Bayesian reasoners are able to reach maximum agreement. The medium does not matter. So I’d say maximum agreement.
Like I said, an idle quip. Perfect Bayesians, perfectly communicating, agree, and there is a frequently expressed attitude on LessWrong that as would-be perfect Bayesians, we should easily come to agreement about everything. Yet here we have an extreme divergence. (The score is now at 11-8. I love the new feature of showing the % positive!)
Try the Aaronson paper, and the papers it references.
There must be a medium. The properties of that medium determine what can be communicated and how long it takes.
Hm, definitely no. I think that most lesswrongers realize that we are really really far from being prefect bayesians and having common priors and also realize how far we are from agreeing. That Helman paper surely argues with me, however I can believe that there are a bunch of lesswrongers deluded into thinking that we are already at the stage when we can easily reach agreements about everything. I am skeptical to them being more than a minority though.
The Aaronson protocols address the real-world limitations of time and computing power . The mechanism through which perfect bayesians receive information is not important outside of such real-world limitations (as those are limitations for humans and as perfect bayesians exist slightly outside those limitations). The data that they currently posses and are able to obtain is.
I am assuming mediums where they are able to exchange whatever information they want even if they need to send it through binary—mediums such as the one here. And no, it does not matter how long it takes—the same agreement will be reached if it takes a billion years or 4 milliseconds, this is perfect bayesians we are talking about.