Your goal of starting a debate with an as-yet-undetermined rationalist is not aligned with the values of this community. If you wanted to have a discussion with a specific person about their ideas, that would make sense and you could do a dialogue. If you wanted to share an idea or ask a question, there are post types for that. However, it is becoming hard to avoid the conclusion that you basically want to start an argument. We’re not going to give you advice on how to provoke someone into disagreeing with you.
(Though ironically enough, this question is a decent method for that poor goal, though I don’t think you’ll get much sustained engagement over it)
I forgot to address this point: “Your goal of starting a debate with an as-yet-undetermined rationalist is not aligned with the values of this community ” . Why is this? It seems to me like it would be in alignment with the community, because of the extraordinary epistemic effectiveness of debate. Obviously, it can be abused, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be.
Because your priorities are in the wrong order. You’re treating what should be an instrumental goal as if it were terminal, and also starting from the general “I want to have a debate” rather than the specific “I want to have a debate about X.”
“You’re treating what should be an instrumental goal as if it were terminal” No I am not. I certainly didn’t intend to give that impression. In fact, that’s partly why I mentioned the effectiveness of debate when attempting to understand things.
““I want to have a debate about X.” I want to have a debate about various topics, but it’s necessary to be able to start debates in general in order to have a debate about any of them.
However, you would have an easier time starting with “I am curious about X. I think Y, but I want to know more about this. Does anyone want to discuss?”
It has been my experience that Questions are my best performing types of post, despite requiring relatively little effort, which certainly pushes me in the direction of agreeing with you here. But it does make me moderately sad (that/if) simply doing this outperforms making a concerted effort to argue for an idea and explain it in depth.
Hello Cole, I would ideally like to start a (or many) discussions or debates with multiple people involved.
“However, it is becoming hard to avoid the conclusion that you basically want to start an argument.” I certainly want a debate, yes. I want arguments to be involved in that debate as well, but not as an end in itself.
“We’re not going to give you advice on how to provoke someone into disagreeing with you.”
I want to induce people to voice their disagreements, not to express disagreement when they would otherwise agree (unless they get there through logical debate). So I don’t think it’s accurate to say I’m trying to ‘provoke someone’; I want to provoke debate/ argument itself, which is different in an important way even if it leads to a similar result.
If you want people to engage with your ideas, have good ideas and present them clearly. As a distant third priority, they should have something to do with rationality, effective altruism, AI, etc.
That would (almost) ideally be the case, but there are of course many reasons which have little to do with the quality of the idea or the clarity of its presentation which determine how much attention is focused on it. Knowing whether an idea is good often(or always) requires engaging with it, so this can’t be a key criterion for engagement! I try to present ideas as clearly as possible, but often the nature of the idea itself imposes an upper bound on the clarity with which it can be presented. Additionally, all of these things require significant development of the idea within the mind proposing/describing it, but sometimes that development and depth of understanding is extremely difficult or even impossible for a human to achieve on their own, hence why I’m keen to know how to generate debate.
It seems like you haven’t been here very long. If you want to discuss things but haven’t developed your ideas far enough to easily attract discussion, start by reading for awhile and then writing thoughtful comments.
The problem is, from my perspective, the evidence is consistent with both me not having developed my ideas to a point at which others correctly assess them as valuable, and my ideas being sufficiently far removed from the “LessWrongian belief centroid” that the dynamics I discussed with GenericModel come into play.
Can you provide me with an argument or evidence that this remains true even when those unpopular beliefs stray far from the “centroid” in a way which wasn’t predetermined by the general trajectory of the evolution of the body of ideas found here?
Your goal of starting a debate with an as-yet-undetermined rationalist is not aligned with the values of this community. If you wanted to have a discussion with a specific person about their ideas, that would make sense and you could do a dialogue. If you wanted to share an idea or ask a question, there are post types for that. However, it is becoming hard to avoid the conclusion that you basically want to start an argument. We’re not going to give you advice on how to provoke someone into disagreeing with you.
(Though ironically enough, this question is a decent method for that poor goal, though I don’t think you’ll get much sustained engagement over it)
I forgot to address this point: “Your goal of starting a debate with an as-yet-undetermined rationalist is not aligned with the values of this community ” . Why is this? It seems to me like it would be in alignment with the community, because of the extraordinary epistemic effectiveness of debate. Obviously, it can be abused, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be.
Because your priorities are in the wrong order. You’re treating what should be an instrumental goal as if it were terminal, and also starting from the general “I want to have a debate” rather than the specific “I want to have a debate about X.”
“You’re treating what should be an instrumental goal as if it were terminal” No I am not. I certainly didn’t intend to give that impression. In fact, that’s partly why I mentioned the effectiveness of debate when attempting to understand things.
““I want to have a debate about X.” I want to have a debate about various topics, but it’s necessary to be able to start debates in general in order to have a debate about any of them.
However, you would have an easier time starting with “I am curious about X. I think Y, but I want to know more about this. Does anyone want to discuss?”
It has been my experience that Questions are my best performing types of post, despite requiring relatively little effort, which certainly pushes me in the direction of agreeing with you here. But it does make me moderately sad (that/if) simply doing this outperforms making a concerted effort to argue for an idea and explain it in depth.
Well, you could do both (explain a question in depth).
I could… The problem is, sometimes debate is required to ascertain the best questions to ask.
Hello Cole, I would ideally like to start a (or many) discussions or debates with multiple people involved.
“However, it is becoming hard to avoid the conclusion that you basically want to start an argument.” I certainly want a debate, yes. I want arguments to be involved in that debate as well, but not as an end in itself.
“We’re not going to give you advice on how to provoke someone into disagreeing with you.”
I want to induce people to voice their disagreements, not to express disagreement when they would otherwise agree (unless they get there through logical debate). So I don’t think it’s accurate to say I’m trying to ‘provoke someone’; I want to provoke debate/ argument itself, which is different in an important way even if it leads to a similar result.
If you want people to engage with your ideas, have good ideas and present them clearly. As a distant third priority, they should have something to do with rationality, effective altruism, AI, etc.
That would (almost) ideally be the case, but there are of course many reasons which have little to do with the quality of the idea or the clarity of its presentation which determine how much attention is focused on it. Knowing whether an idea is good often(or always) requires engaging with it, so this can’t be a key criterion for engagement! I try to present ideas as clearly as possible, but often the nature of the idea itself imposes an upper bound on the clarity with which it can be presented. Additionally, all of these things require significant development of the idea within the mind proposing/describing it, but sometimes that development and depth of understanding is extremely difficult or even impossible for a human to achieve on their own, hence why I’m keen to know how to generate debate.
It seems like you haven’t been here very long. If you want to discuss things but haven’t developed your ideas far enough to easily attract discussion, start by reading for awhile and then writing thoughtful comments.
The problem is, from my perspective, the evidence is consistent with both me not having developed my ideas to a point at which others correctly assess them as valuable, and my ideas being sufficiently far removed from the “LessWrongian belief centroid” that the dynamics I discussed with GenericModel come into play.
I doubt the problem is the belief centroid thing, lesswrong loves well thought out but unpopular takes.
Can you provide me with an argument or evidence that this remains true even when those unpopular beliefs stray far from the “centroid” in a way which wasn’t predetermined by the general trajectory of the evolution of the body of ideas found here?