I think it’s true there can be useful things about listening to bad faith internet trolls, but, I do kinda think you can save the world mostly without interact with bad faith internet trolls (unless you have some additional reason to take them seriously).
(the “at least as annoying as John” and “NOT at least as annoying as openly sneering internet trolls” is an empirical belief based on the contingent state of the rationalsphere and professional world and broader world. I don’t think the internet trolls are actually a good use of your time, en net)
I think the twitter user teortaxestex can often be as annoying as an openly sneering internet troll but is a good source of information. There’s some people like this in the prediction market space too.
I’m guessing it’s net positive to tune people out unless either they clearly-at-a-glance have some insight, or, you’ve heard from some other channel that that they say interesting/useful things.
(I’m not that confident the calculus shakes out this way but generally I think people pay way too much attention to internet trolls. They don’t just need to provide nonzero value, they have to provide more value than whatever else you were doing, on average)
Well yes of course only pay attention if they have something to say worth listening to. But imo this is pretty rare so it’s worth putting up with some rudeness to get.
Wrt your “don’t understand” react, my point being information sources that are contentful, high-density and have high KL-divergence wrt your existing sources of information are rare. And of course one reason they might be high-divergence is that they are in a distinct social cluster with distinct norms, possible even tribally opposed to your usual information sources. IMO most rationalists do not read widely enough in this sense.
People who work on politics often have to deal with adversaries who are openly sneering internet trolls (or similar), and sometimes run across valuable opportunities that require cooperating with them.
Yeah, it’s not a good use of your time to seek that out. But if you do happen to stumble upon them (e. g., if they intruded into your garden, or if Zvi’s newsletter covered an incident involving them, with quotes), and a statement from them causes a twinge of “hm, there may be something to it...”, investigating that twinge may be useful. You shouldn’t necessarily crush it in a burst of cognitive dissonance/self-protectivenss.
Giving attention to sneering comments that happen to bubble to your attention isn’t Pareto optimal on any front. If you want to learn where you are wrong, seek out the most insightful people who disagree with you (and not just the ones that use long essays to lay out their case logically).
I think it’s true there can be useful things about listening to bad faith internet trolls, but, I do kinda think you can save the world mostly without interact with bad faith internet trolls (unless you have some additional reason to take them seriously).
(the “at least as annoying as John” and “NOT at least as annoying as openly sneering internet trolls” is an empirical belief based on the contingent state of the rationalsphere and professional world and broader world. I don’t think the internet trolls are actually a good use of your time, en net)
I think the twitter user teortaxestex can often be as annoying as an openly sneering internet troll but is a good source of information. There’s some people like this in the prediction market space too.
I’m guessing it’s net positive to tune people out unless either they clearly-at-a-glance have some insight, or, you’ve heard from some other channel that that they say interesting/useful things.
(I’m not that confident the calculus shakes out this way but generally I think people pay way too much attention to internet trolls. They don’t just need to provide nonzero value, they have to provide more value than whatever else you were doing, on average)
Well yes of course only pay attention if they have something to say worth listening to. But imo this is pretty rare so it’s worth putting up with some rudeness to get.
Wrt your “don’t understand” react, my point being information sources that are contentful, high-density and have high KL-divergence wrt your existing sources of information are rare. And of course one reason they might be high-divergence is that they are in a distinct social cluster with distinct norms, possible even tribally opposed to your usual information sources. IMO most rationalists do not read widely enough in this sense.
Okay, I think I get what you mean. Still disagree with your comment but I already listed why in the comment before, so not getting into it more.
People who work on politics often have to deal with adversaries who are openly sneering internet trolls (or similar), and sometimes run across valuable opportunities that require cooperating with them.
Mm nod. (I would classify that under “you have some other reason to take them seriously” although it’s a different kind of seriously)
Yeah, it’s not a good use of your time to seek that out. But if you do happen to stumble upon them (e. g., if they intruded into your garden, or if Zvi’s newsletter covered an incident involving them, with quotes), and a statement from them causes a twinge of “hm, there may be something to it...”, investigating that twinge may be useful. You shouldn’t necessarily crush it in a burst of cognitive dissonance/self-protectivenss.
Giving attention to sneering comments that happen to bubble to your attention isn’t Pareto optimal on any front. If you want to learn where you are wrong, seek out the most insightful people who disagree with you (and not just the ones that use long essays to lay out their case logically).