Hm. I think I don’t want to socially reward people for making drive-by points without reading at least the specific blog post that they’re commenting on. And the quality of their point, isn’t very relevant to me in my not wanting to reward that.
Like, I think it’s bad to normalize people dropping into high context conversations to say something based their superficial understanding. Most of the time when people do that, it’s annoying. And generally, it’s not a good distribution of interpretive labor.
I don’t feel like pushing back against Jack here, since this seems minor, but I do feel like pushing back against Rob specifically encouraging this.
If you can write one of the most useful comments in a 487-comment discussion, without needing to read the full posts (or discussions) in question, then you get credit in my book not only for the comment quality but also for efficiently processing evidence. I see it as following the same principle as:
Reading full books for information is usually bad. Reward and normalize skimming. More generally, encourage people to be strategic and goal-oriented about what they read and how they read it, rather than placing high moral value on completion for completion’s sake.
Eliezer’s habit (noted by him somewhere on Twitter) of asking himself, whenever he reaches a conclusion, if he could have reached the same conclusion just as reliably using fewer thoughts / intermediary steps.
Eliezer’s “you would, if you had been smarter, probably have been persuadable by the empty string”.
(Obviously, you might not agree with me that this is one of the most useful comments.)
In general, it’s an (unusually important and central) virtue to require less evidence in order to reach the correct conclusion. Cf. Scott’s “[...] obviously it’s useful to have as much evidence as possible, in the same way it’s useful to have as much money as possible. But equally obviously it’s useful to be able to use a limited amount of evidence wisely, in the same way it’s useful to be able to use a limited amount of money wisely.”
Like, sure, skimming a post can result in people writing bad comments too. But everyone knows that already, and if someone is skimming excessively, it should be possible to wait and criticize that once they actually write some bad comments, rather than criticizing on an occasion where the heuristic worked.
This particular situation also involves things that might make that move easy here—Eliezer posted X, and this is a response. The nature of the two, allows for a comment on their nature and the situation. It’s not that the second post is required for the comment, but that as the second post suited the situation, so did the comment.
The approach can work broadly, but in this situation it’s reasons for working seem to be about that. (in the same way the comment is about that)
and if someone is skimming excessively, i
but I noted this anyway because skimming and discernment are both options here. This situation seems clear—and there were different comments on the first post that this reminds me of.
Hm. I think I don’t want to socially reward people for making drive-by points without reading at least the specific blog post that they’re commenting on. And the quality of their point, isn’t very relevant to me in my not wanting to reward that.
Like, I think it’s bad to normalize people dropping into high context conversations to say something based their superficial understanding. Most of the time when people do that, it’s annoying. And generally, it’s not a good distribution of interpretive labor.
I don’t feel like pushing back against Jack here, since this seems minor, but I do feel like pushing back against Rob specifically encouraging this.
If you can write one of the most useful comments in a 487-comment discussion, without needing to read the full posts (or discussions) in question, then you get credit in my book not only for the comment quality but also for efficiently processing evidence. I see it as following the same principle as:
Reading full books for information is usually bad. Reward and normalize skimming. More generally, encourage people to be strategic and goal-oriented about what they read and how they read it, rather than placing high moral value on completion for completion’s sake.
Eliezer’s habit (noted by him somewhere on Twitter) of asking himself, whenever he reaches a conclusion, if he could have reached the same conclusion just as reliably using fewer thoughts / intermediary steps.
Eliezer’s “you would, if you had been smarter, probably have been persuadable by the empty string”.
(Obviously, you might not agree with me that this is one of the most useful comments.)
In general, it’s an (unusually important and central) virtue to require less evidence in order to reach the correct conclusion. Cf. Scott’s “[...] obviously it’s useful to have as much evidence as possible, in the same way it’s useful to have as much money as possible. But equally obviously it’s useful to be able to use a limited amount of evidence wisely, in the same way it’s useful to be able to use a limited amount of money wisely.”
Like, sure, skimming a post can result in people writing bad comments too. But everyone knows that already, and if someone is skimming excessively, it should be possible to wait and criticize that once they actually write some bad comments, rather than criticizing on an occasion where the heuristic worked.
This particular situation also involves things that might make that move easy here—Eliezer posted X, and this is a response. The nature of the two, allows for a comment on their nature and the situation. It’s not that the second post is required for the comment, but that as the second post suited the situation, so did the comment.
The approach can work broadly, but in this situation it’s reasons for working seem to be about that. (in the same way the comment is about that)
but I noted this anyway because skimming and discernment are both options here. This situation seems clear—and there were different comments on the first post that this reminds me of.