as opposed to, say, because you think they’ve seen different evidence, or haven’t processed that evidence yet
Hm, I’m not immediately sure how I would rewrite the offending paragraph to make the intended meaning clearer. Would adding the word “persistent” (persistent disagreement) help, or does the whole section need an overhaul?
I hope you’ll let me try again, in accordance with the Eighth Guideline: I’m trying to paint this vision of the world where—there’s only one territory, and accurate maps of that territory should all agree, and so most of the time (relative to the space of possible disagreements), people don’t disagree about things. (You won’t see a mispricing in most prediction markets; we don’t spend time talking about whether water is wet, because I can safely assume we’ve already converged on that without having to say anything.)
I agree, of course, that oftentimes, someone will say something that seems wrong, and you might mention it, expecting that the two of you “don’t ‘actually’ disagree”—that you’ll quickly converge once you have time to share evidence or clear up trivial language differences. That’s not the kind of situation this post is trying to talk about. (If that wasn’t clear from context, maybe I’m a bad writer. Sorry, and please downvote as appropriate.)
I’m saying that in the unusual situations where people persistently disagree, our guidelines for navigating that shouldn’t explicitly encourage convergence (even though ideal rational agents would end up converging), because the process by which rational agents would converge, fundamentally doesn’t look like them trying to converge. As far as the theory of normative reasoning is concerned, doing an Bayesian update based on a human’s verbal output isn’t fundamentally different from doing an update based on a photograph: you update because you think the states of the human/photo are systematically correlated with the states of some other part of reality that you want to know about. It would be very strange to talk about being “collaborative” with a photograph, or giving the photograph two more chances to demonstrate that it’s here in good faith! That’s why the Fifth Guideline sounds so strange to my ears. That’s why I’m suspicious that it’s—I apologize in advance for this uncharitable phrasing, but I think the uncharitable phrasing is warranted to communicate the nature of the suspicion—”an etiquette guideline masquerading as a rationality guideline”.
Does that make more sense?
because Zack can’t think of a way to make the two of them compatible, they simply aren’t.
I agree, of course, that my map is not the territory. In general, when I claim that two things are incompatible, it’s always possible that I’m mistaken, that the things are compatible in the territory, and the fact that my map doesn’t represent them as being compatible means that my map is wrong.
I don’t think I understand the function of appealing to the map-territory distinction here? What is being communicated by “because Zack can’t think of a way to make the two of them compatible, they simply aren’t” that couldn’t also be said as “Zack is wrong to imply the two aren’t compatible; in fact, they are compatible”, or would you consider those equivalent?
I note for context that
Thanks for adding this context. (I wasn’t going to mention it if you weren’t!)
So, from my perspective, I didn’t ignore the draft’s request to read the expansions before objecting; I read the expansions, and didn’t think my concern was addressed by the expansions, so I wrote a comment.
As it happens, I … still don’t think the concern has been addressed? The “Bayesian reasoners aren’t trying to converge” thing seems very fundamental to me (I’m proud of that second summary bullet point!), and I still don’t know what your reply to that is.
In retrospect, given that I offended you so much (which was not the outcome I was hoping for), I definitely wish both that I had used a nicer tone, and that I had explicitly included a sentence to the effect of “I read the expansion, but I still don’t think my objection has been addressed.” (I think I would have taken more care if I were commenting on your personal Facebook wall, rather than on Less Wrong.)
I’m aware that “I’m sorry you were offended” isn’t really an apology. The reason I can’t offer you a better sincere apology, is because I … don’t particularly think I did anything wrong? (I can make more of an effort to conform with your preferred communication norms when I’m talking with you, in order to try to be on good terms with you, but that would be me trying to be sensitive to your preferences, rather than me recognizing those norms qua norms.)
To gesture at where I’m coming from (without expecting you to conform to my norms), in my culture, “This is insane” was the least interesting part of the comment, and that (in Zackistan, though not in the world of Duncans), harping on it would reflect poorly on you. In my culture, if someone like (say) Said Achmiz leaves me a comment starting, “This is insane,” followed by an intellectually substantive counterargument to the post, I don’t consider that a norm violation. I think, “Gee, sounds like Said really didn’t like my post,” and then (if I care and have time), I respond to the counterargument. I don’t think of myself as having the “right” to request that people engage with my writing in a particular way; if I think the counterargument was already addressed by something I said in the post, I’ll say, “I think I already covered this in this-and-such paragraph; does that address your objection?” I would definitely never tell a critic that they’ve failed to pass the ITT of the post they think they’re objecting to; I think passing an ITT, while desirable, is a high bar, not something you can reasonably expect of anyone before they react to a post!
Basically, to Zackistani eyes, it looks like Duncans are prone to getting unreasonably offended and shutting down productive conversations over perceived norm violations that Zackistani people just don’t recognize as enforceable norms, and instead see as part of the “cost of doing business” of having intellectually substantive discussions. It’s definitely annoying when (for example) critics seem to motivatedly misunderstand (“strawman”) your work, but in Zackistan, the culturally normative response is to just keep arguing (correct the misunderstanding; don’t stress about whether it was in “good faith”); as uncivilized and anarchic as it must seem to visitors from Duncanland, we don’t have a book of guidelines that everyone has agreed to be bound by.
Does that make sense? I really think Zackistan and the world of Duncans should be able to have friendly diplomatic relations—that there should be some way for us to cooperate despite apparently having different conceptions of what cooperation looks like.
Thanks for commmenting!
Hm, I’m not immediately sure how I would rewrite the offending paragraph to make the intended meaning clearer. Would adding the word “persistent” (persistent disagreement) help, or does the whole section need an overhaul?
I hope you’ll let me try again, in accordance with the Eighth Guideline: I’m trying to paint this vision of the world where—there’s only one territory, and accurate maps of that territory should all agree, and so most of the time (relative to the space of possible disagreements), people don’t disagree about things. (You won’t see a mispricing in most prediction markets; we don’t spend time talking about whether water is wet, because I can safely assume we’ve already converged on that without having to say anything.)
I agree, of course, that oftentimes, someone will say something that seems wrong, and you might mention it, expecting that the two of you “don’t ‘actually’ disagree”—that you’ll quickly converge once you have time to share evidence or clear up trivial language differences. That’s not the kind of situation this post is trying to talk about. (If that wasn’t clear from context, maybe I’m a bad writer. Sorry, and please downvote as appropriate.)
I’m saying that in the unusual situations where people persistently disagree, our guidelines for navigating that shouldn’t explicitly encourage convergence (even though ideal rational agents would end up converging), because the process by which rational agents would converge, fundamentally doesn’t look like them trying to converge. As far as the theory of normative reasoning is concerned, doing an Bayesian update based on a human’s verbal output isn’t fundamentally different from doing an update based on a photograph: you update because you think the states of the human/photo are systematically correlated with the states of some other part of reality that you want to know about. It would be very strange to talk about being “collaborative” with a photograph, or giving the photograph two more chances to demonstrate that it’s here in good faith! That’s why the Fifth Guideline sounds so strange to my ears. That’s why I’m suspicious that it’s—I apologize in advance for this uncharitable phrasing, but I think the uncharitable phrasing is warranted to communicate the nature of the suspicion—”an etiquette guideline masquerading as a rationality guideline”.
Does that make more sense?
I agree, of course, that my map is not the territory. In general, when I claim that two things are incompatible, it’s always possible that I’m mistaken, that the things are compatible in the territory, and the fact that my map doesn’t represent them as being compatible means that my map is wrong.
I don’t think I understand the function of appealing to the map-territory distinction here? What is being communicated by “because Zack can’t think of a way to make the two of them compatible, they simply aren’t” that couldn’t also be said as “Zack is wrong to imply the two aren’t compatible; in fact, they are compatible”, or would you consider those equivalent?
Thanks for adding this context. (I wasn’t going to mention it if you weren’t!)
So, from my perspective, I didn’t ignore the draft’s request to read the expansions before objecting; I read the expansions, and didn’t think my concern was addressed by the expansions, so I wrote a comment.
As it happens, I … still don’t think the concern has been addressed? The “Bayesian reasoners aren’t trying to converge” thing seems very fundamental to me (I’m proud of that second summary bullet point!), and I still don’t know what your reply to that is.
In retrospect, given that I offended you so much (which was not the outcome I was hoping for), I definitely wish both that I had used a nicer tone, and that I had explicitly included a sentence to the effect of “I read the expansion, but I still don’t think my objection has been addressed.” (I think I would have taken more care if I were commenting on your personal Facebook wall, rather than on Less Wrong.)
I’m aware that “I’m sorry you were offended” isn’t really an apology. The reason I can’t offer you a better sincere apology, is because I … don’t particularly think I did anything wrong? (I can make more of an effort to conform with your preferred communication norms when I’m talking with you, in order to try to be on good terms with you, but that would be me trying to be sensitive to your preferences, rather than me recognizing those norms qua norms.)
To gesture at where I’m coming from (without expecting you to conform to my norms), in my culture, “This is insane” was the least interesting part of the comment, and that (in Zackistan, though not in the world of Duncans), harping on it would reflect poorly on you. In my culture, if someone like (say) Said Achmiz leaves me a comment starting, “This is insane,” followed by an intellectually substantive counterargument to the post, I don’t consider that a norm violation. I think, “Gee, sounds like Said really didn’t like my post,” and then (if I care and have time), I respond to the counterargument. I don’t think of myself as having the “right” to request that people engage with my writing in a particular way; if I think the counterargument was already addressed by something I said in the post, I’ll say, “I think I already covered this in this-and-such paragraph; does that address your objection?” I would definitely never tell a critic that they’ve failed to pass the ITT of the post they think they’re objecting to; I think passing an ITT, while desirable, is a high bar, not something you can reasonably expect of anyone before they react to a post!
Basically, to Zackistani eyes, it looks like Duncans are prone to getting unreasonably offended and shutting down productive conversations over perceived norm violations that Zackistani people just don’t recognize as enforceable norms, and instead see as part of the “cost of doing business” of having intellectually substantive discussions. It’s definitely annoying when (for example) critics seem to motivatedly misunderstand (“strawman”) your work, but in Zackistan, the culturally normative response is to just keep arguing (correct the misunderstanding; don’t stress about whether it was in “good faith”); as uncivilized and anarchic as it must seem to visitors from Duncanland, we don’t have a book of guidelines that everyone has agreed to be bound by.
Does that make sense? I really think Zackistan and the world of Duncans should be able to have friendly diplomatic relations—that there should be some way for us to cooperate despite apparently having different conceptions of what cooperation looks like.