I currently think the rationalist norms of assuming good faith, doing a lot of interpretive labor, and passive selection for honest and high functioning people are all good. We are as a culture pretty darn good at sifting useful meaning out of subtle mishandling of statistics, or noticing when a conflict is driven by people mistakenly talking past each other. I also think these norms create a bit of a monoculture weakness against people willing to just say false things.
I do actually think it’s valuable to have a Best Of entry that reminds readers that yeah, some people will just say false things. And uh, from observation a lot of rationalists are kinda bad at the basics of lying, and so someone willing to say the false thing with confidence can sneak by a surprising number of vibe checks.
I don’t know how well Ymeskhout is handling confidentiality here, but he offers a clearer story than I usually can. From my observation, yes, there exist people in or adjacent to the rationalist community that will tell whoppers like this, but with more mental cycles modeling you to make it harder to nail down that they definitely fibbed.
I vote this should be in the Best Of collection. We do need the antibodies this provides.
I currently think the rationalist norms of assuming good faith, doing a lot of interpretive labor, and passive selection for honest and high functioning people are all good. We are as a culture pretty darn good at sifting useful meaning out of subtle mishandling of statistics, or noticing when a conflict is driven by people mistakenly talking past each other. I also think these norms create a bit of a monoculture weakness against people willing to just say false things.
I do actually think it’s valuable to have a Best Of entry that reminds readers that yeah, some people will just say false things. And uh, from observation a lot of rationalists are kinda bad at the basics of lying, and so someone willing to say the false thing with confidence can sneak by a surprising number of vibe checks.
I don’t know how well Ymeskhout is handling confidentiality here, but he offers a clearer story than I usually can. From my observation, yes, there exist people in or adjacent to the rationalist community that will tell whoppers like this, but with more mental cycles modeling you to make it harder to nail down that they definitely fibbed.
I vote this should be in the Best Of collection. We do need the antibodies this provides.