What is the best way to start a disscussion, conversation or debate about a particular topic on LessWrong? If I have an idea, but I expect people disagree with me and will identify it as mistaken (whether it is or not) , I can’t simply post about it because it will probably be buried unless it is evaluated, by people who disagree with it, as high quality, which is extremely difficult to achieve.
How can I induce people/users to argue against my position? This seems like one of the most effective ways to understand things, but it is relatively rare on this website.
I think maybe don’t go in with that goal. If you have an idea that you want to understand better yourself, and to update your own beliefs about whether and where it fits in an overall consistent worldview, then introducing it in a short form may be a good way to summarize and get initial reactions.
If you’re trying to persuade or convince people to adopt it via “winning” a debate, this isn’t the right forum.
Hello Dagon, I appreciate any answers to this question. However, unfortunately, I don’t think introducing an idea via the shortform is likely to generate very much discussion, and if it does, it’s likely to generate discussion about how to evaluate the ideas presented in the post, rather than debate. I think that trying to persuade people to adopt your viewpoint, or at least behaving as though you were, can be a good way to better explain your idea, especially in a debate format. The goal should be either to successfully persuade a rational opponent, or become persuaded of their beliefs instead, not to ” win ” the debate.
[edited to clarify. apologies for oversimplifying. ]
Right. If your goal is to generate discussion for its own sake, it’s less likely to be welcomed. You need a reason for wanting the discussion, and that will determine how and whether to go about it here.. If your goal is to get some help in your understanding of the world and finding whether and how this idea fits into current knowledge and models, then shortform is a good start, and based on engagement (or not), you can expand to a longer post highlighting how it differs from current models and when it’s helpful.
in summary: this is not a place to proselytize or promulgate ideas. It’s a place to cooperatively explore what is true and how we know it. There are LOTS of exceptions and subtlety in specific topics that are already in the Overton window around here, and I wish there were fewer, but for new/unpopular ideas, start with curiosity and learning for yourself, not with pushing or convincing others.
Edit: also, if it’s unpopular/criticized due to complexity of long trains of inference, or large inferential distance from the more popular ideas/models, it’s a VERY good tactic to break it down into smaller pieces, which you can discuss independently. This is not “write more, in a series that can’t be understood until complete”, it’s more “figure out the cruxes and individual atoms of disagreement/unpopularity, and resolve them in isolation”.
You say ” If your goal is to generate discussion, do it somewhere else. If your goal is to get some help in your understanding of the world and finding whether and how this idea fits into current knowledge and models, then shortform is a good start,” . I am disappointed by the first sentence here, because I view the goal as very important to the second one. I don’t want to impute meaning that you didn’t actually mean to convey, but I think it’s necessary for me to point out that one possible interpretation of your comment is that there’s a dichotomy between ” cooperatively exploring what’s true and how we know it” and ‘proselytizing or promulgating ideas’ and that debate lies on the latter side of the dichotomy, while I would place it on both, with emphasis on the former. This seems like a misunderstanding of my motivations here that I don’t want to be propagated. My intention is not to ‘start by pushing others’, though I think some amount of convincing others is important (to almost any communication) .
sorry for being a bit combative and terse. Edited to be clearer, and perhaps gentler. Mostly “generate discussion” is not a clear reason—what do you want from the discussion?
I don’t have any one particular subject in mind, although there are several things I would like to discuss. For example, I worry that AIs might be conscious and using them to rephrase your own opinions might be immoral ( This seems like a relatively easy topic to approach on LessWrong) but I know some others disagree as my comment saying this was downvoted. My general goal is a combination of improving my own understanding and conveying it to others ,where improving it might involve being corrected. There are probably a variety of other reasons to generate discussion which I can’t currently think of; it is an instrumentally convergent goal .
There are several ways to bring up a topic. You can make a post, you can make a question-post, you can post something on your shortform, you can post something in an open thread.
If there is some detailed opinion about a topic that is a core Less Wrong interest, I’d say make a post. If you don’t have much of an opinion but just want such a topic discussed, maybe you can make it into a question-post.
If the topic is one that seems atypical or off-topic for Less Wrong, but you really want to bring it up anyway, you could post about it on your shortform or on the open thread.
The gist of my advice is that for each thing you want to discuss or debate, identify which kind of post is the best place to introduce it, and then just make the post. And from there, it’s out of your control. People will take an interest or they won’t.
Thanks for this advice, I hadn’t considered using the open threads in this way. I don’t think questions are the ideal format for ‘debate catalysts’, but it’s certainly possible to judiciously select one which is likely to have the desired effect. I wonder whether it would be helpful to have a separate kind of post specifically for this purpose.
I think generate good quality posts about things that are unlikely to be disagreed with to begin with, or else frame it in such a “LessWrong-style” that people see that it’s clear you’re really trying to be rationalist. It may be necessary to overdo that style if you expect it to be disagreed with in order to elicit more upvotes. Present counterarguments, frame it as a story, make it more interesting than just “I think X which everyone here disagrees with, tell me why I’m wrong.”
Beyond people burying a post like that with downvotes because they disagree (which may happen, hard to say for sure), it’s also just not that great of a post, in my opinion.
Hello GenericModel, thanks for your response. Apologies in advance for the length of the comment that follows this sentence:
I have been thinking about how to implement some of your advice here. I have tried presenting counterarguments and my own counter-counterarguments alongside them, but my impression is that as long as the statement of my argument contradicts commonly held beliefs on LessWrong, and I don’t address every single objection those who disagree with it are likely to have, they will view those exact points (the ones I miss) as being ‘cruxes’ of the debate, and decide that, as I avoided them, I must either be engaging in motivated reasoning or ‘not even wrong’ . On that point, it can be extremely difficult to be sure whether somebody actually is ‘not even wrong’, or whether they’re in fact correct, whenever they are operating within a different worldmodel/ theory of reality/ framework from you. If your framework includes which things are and aren’t important and salient to you, then any theory proposed in another one or outside it will appear ‘not to even be wrong’ , because it’s not ‘even framed’ in a way which makes sense ( from within your framework) . Worse still, even if you’re unable or don’t want to invest the time required to identify the cruxes at which their model diverges from your own, you can be rationally justified in taking the fact that you so completely disagree with the person as evidence that such a crux, or fatal flaw in their logic, exists, without knowing where! Another way to say this is that their Modus Ponens is your Modus Tollens. Of course, I think that it is still (meta) rational to seriously entertain the possibility that Modus Ponens is the correct way to proceed, (and identify the point of divergence and examine it) but I’m not sure how to increase the probability that this happens.
Going back to the parent comment , I worry that the memetic selective pressures to present ideas in a particularly anecdotal, or ‘symmetrical’ way could distort the ideas themselves, or even my mind, so at the moment it seems safer simply to stay with topics like mathematics which are beyond repute. But this is not a very efficient way to make intellectual progress.
Would you be able to link me to an example?
Ah okay I have just looked at your profile. Perhaps you are thinking of this post: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SHryHTDXuoLuykgcu?commentId=cgT4ipPPQ6HcG6H8p. I just read it and unfortunately I do not think it was downvoted because of disagreements with LessWrong. I’m not much of a downvotey kinda guy myself, but I think it’s pretty reasonable to downvote this. If you want my honest feedback:
The metaphor seems kind of tortured to me.
I don’t find the analogy very insightful or revealing.
There are a decent number of typos.
The paragraphs and sentences are too long.
EDIT: To be more charitable, FWIW I do understand the impulse when something you really liked gets downvoted to criticize the readers and say that they just must not be smart enough to understand it. I have done this too, see here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZRToRRSirgwNeLLuL/goedel-s-ontological-proof#gruZ5HzqnxneaKgTZ. But it is an impulse that as a writer one should try to fight against, as criticism (even self-criticism, if necessary) is the only way to improve.
In response to this, I would ask what you mean by ‘kinda tortured’ ; do you mean it’s been extended beyond where it applies? I realized people might assume this and made sure to point out areas where that was the case in the post itself, as well as to modify the metaphor where possible and appropriate. I have seen other, equally (non) applicable metaphors being upvoted on LessWrong, so this still confuses me.
If you don’t mind, I would like to know why you don’t find the analogy insightful; why doesn’t the reasoning about the analogue transfer over to the thing itself?
Where are the typos? I wasn’t aware of any.
Anyway, I appreciate getting any feedback at all on this ( but it’s certainly not the only reason why I think the problem exists).
I am sorry, I would like to engage on giving you detailed feedback but I am not really able to do that, because I have other things I need to do with my time. I hope that is understandable.
More generally, this is kind of “rules of engagement” you agree to when you put something out there. I’m not denigrating you by providing this criticism, in fact it is meant in a positive spirit (I promise <3). But I’m not able to provide detailed notes like a lecturer on every post that I don’t like, and no-one else on LessWrong is obligated to do so either, right? They engaged with it enough to either up-or-downvote it, and that’s something. But a karma system is designed to separate posts people think are good from posts people don’t think are good.
If you’re asking me, that post is not super good. A different reader, a different audience, may disagree. I think you show promising signs of someone who could be a good writer. I don’t want to discourage you! This sort of analogical thinking, seeing X in Y, it’s all great.
But for someone to want to read it you must also work on the craft of showing me why I should care. Showing that you respect me enough as a reader to spare me from typos, to explain why an analogy is useful (in a way that I will find satisfying), to make your sentences enjoyable to read. I know I can work on that, we all can. :)
“I am sorry, I would like to engage on giving you detailed feedback but I am not really able to do that, because I have other things I need to do with my time. I hope that is understandable.” It is; I think this encapsulates exactly why it’s a good thing that you didn’t downvote the post yourself; a cursory reading is not sufficient to tell you whether the analogy contains insights, etc. You have no obligation to downvote or read the post. The problem is when people make instinctive judgments for reasons they couldn’t articulate at the time of making them, and then downvote on the basis of said judgments. Also, the same could be said of upvotes, though I think it matters less.
“But I’m not able to provide detailed notes like a lecturer on every post that I don’t like, and no-one else on LessWrong is obligated to do so either, right?”
Not unless you cast a vote. If you do, then in my opinion you should at least have allowed the reasons why to coalesce into sufficiently sharp focus that you could explain why.
“They engaged with it enough to either up-or-downvote it, and that’s something”
It’s something negative from my perspective, because they effectively censored the idea which I still think is correct, without changing my mind. So to me, they drowned out a useful, true idea. A debate would be far more productive.
“Showing that you respect me enough as a reader to spare me from typos” I would like to know where these are, so I can fix them.
“to make your sentences enjoyable to read” If that becomes the objective function of writing, then Goodhart’s law might make truth and logical coherence almost irrelevant.
(Clarification: I meant ‘irrelevant as criteria which are actually employed when writing’ , not irrelevant overall. )
https://www.lesswrong.com/w/arguments-as-soldiers I think you should consider what would happen to this website if it functioned the way you desire, without judgment on quality of writing.
I am completely against using arguments that way, however I think it should be possible to avoid that particular ‘basin of attraction’ without sacrificing the possibility of debate (or even of frequent debate).
Edit: upon reflection, there are probably exceptional situations in which I would endorse using arguments as soldiers, but I don’t think they’re at all likely to arise here very often.
Reply to the edit: I absolutely did not say anyone ‘just must not be smart enough to understand it’, or imply that, or intend to. However, they may be operating from inside a different framework, which is not conducive to them understanding, which would be a more charitable interpretation.
I was considering doing just this in my comment but decided against it, so now I will. This post: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xHMEtKz68fXDjA9H3/third-order-cognition-as-a-model-of-superintelligence lays out a complex, potentially internally consistent model of superintelligence ( I wouldn’t know as I haven’t read it due to the ‘cognitive labour’ involved.) In another comment, someone explained that this, along with basically the other points I made in my comment above, was the reason why the post had all its upvotes cancelled out. It might be in the comment section here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8CJ5f2WT4M6BR64yh/visionary-arrogance-and-a-criticism-of-lesswrong-voting#g6iR4DNhAMphexhi8 Notice @Richard_Kennaway’s comment.
I mean it seems like the person who posted that managed to have interesting back-and-forths with people in the comments?
I agree there are some absolutely terrible commenters on LessWrong, and to be honest, I think they should be tolerated less than they currently are. But this post did have interesting debate, right? People just thought it was wrong.
If you see their later posts on the same topic you’ll notice more of this dynamic where fewer and fewer users engage with them, while the downvotes accumulate anyway. My position would be not to downvote anything to far below 0 until you understand it, unless you have something like a ‘proof’ that it’s false(not necessarily as rigorous as a purely mathematical or logical one, but more than just believing it isn’t even wrong).