Duncan_Sabien

Karma: 8,838

Duncan_Sabien 1 Feb 2023 9:05 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Kaj_Sotala’s comment on: Basics of Rationalist Discourse
it sounds like you’re modeling patience as a quantity that people have either more or less of, while I think of patience as a budget that you need to split between different things
… it’s pretty obviously both?
Like, each person is going to have a quantity, and some people will have more or less, and each person will need to budget the quantity that they have available.
And separately, one can build up one’s capacity to bring deliberate patience to bear on worthwhile endeavors, thus increasing one’s available quantity of patience, or one can not.

Duncan_Sabien 1 Feb 2023 1:58 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: Duncan_Sabien’s comment on: Aiming for Convergence Is Like Discouraging Betting
Separately:
“You don’t need to apologize for being blunt! Let me be equally blunt. The sense you’re getting is accurate: no, I am not treating you as a cooperative partner in this conversation. I think your arguments are bad, and I feel very motivated to explain the obvious counterarguments to you in public, partially for the education of third parties, and partially to raise my status at the expense of yours.”
I consider this a good faith reply. It’s certainly not a polite thing to say. But politeness is bad faith. (That’s why someone might say in response to a compliment, “Do you really mean it, or are you just being polite?”) Given that someone actually in fact thinks my arguments are bad, and actually in fact feels motivated to explain why to me in public in order to raise their status at expense of mine, I think it’s fine for them to tell me so. How would me expecting them to lie about their motives help anyone? Complying with such an expectation really would be in bad faith!
I suppose such a person would not be engaging in the “collaborative truth-seeking” that the “Basics of Rationalist Discourse” guideline list keeps talking about.
Zack supposes wrong, and this is an excellent demonstration that he cannot pass the ITT of the post he thinks he is objecting to, and is in fact objecting to a strawman of his own construction. The imagined reply is not particularly nice, and is not the sort of comment I would tend to write when there are other, better ways to convey the same accurate information, but it doesn’t break any of the guidelines listed (and note also that the guidelines are guidelines, not rules, and that they are explicitly described as only being an ⁸⁰⁄₂₀ of good discourse anyway).

Duncan_Sabien 1 Feb 2023 0:44 UTC
5 points
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on: Aiming for Convergence Is Like Discouraging Betting
And “behave as if your interlocutors [or counterparties] are also aiming for convergence on truth” borders on the contradictory: if you really believed that, you wouldn’t be here!
(That is, disagreement is disrespect; the very fact that you’re disagreeing with someone implies that you think there’s something wrong with their epistemic process, and that they think there’s something wrong with your epistemic process.
I find that this post contains a non-negligible number of … questionable leaps, and big roundings-off, and various other things that would tend more to cause people to be [unable to see what’s true] rather than to [improve their ability to see what’s true]. I’m highlighting this one as an example. Another example is the second paragraph of the post (the second bullet point in the summary).
There’s the implicit assertion that “being here” is incompatible with the described behavior; that because Zack can’t think of a way to make the two of them compatible, they simply aren’t.
There’s the explicit assertion that you must disagree with someone because you think there’s something wrong with their epistemic processes (as opposed to, say, because you think they’ve seen different evidence, or haven’t processed that evidence yet).
I suspect that people who are generally nodding along will not catch such subtle maneuvers on the author’s part, and will correspondingly become less clear in their thoughts rather than moreso.
(I note for context that, when an incomplete earlier draft of the post Zack is responding to went live by accident for ten minutes, he ignored that draft’s request that he read expansions of summary bullet points before objecting to a straw understanding of the summary, and fired off a comment beginning “This is insane,” before proceeding to do lots more of the-sort-of-move I’m objecting to above.)

Duncan_Sabien 1 Feb 2023 0:19 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: Kaj_Sotala’s comment on: Basics of Rationalist Discourse
So even if I might correctly object “hey, I don’t actually expect all content to require literally zero effort from me”, it might still be the case that I’m more impatient than I would be in a counterfactual world where I wasn’t influenced by the social forces pushing for more impatience.
Now that I think of it, I’m pretty certain that that’s actually indeed the case.
I’ll note that Logan’s writing historically gets “surprisingly” little engagement, and “it doesn’t fit well in a culture of impatience” is among my top guesses as to why.
Like, if LessWrong were 15% more patient (whatever that actually means), I suspect Logan’s writing in particular would get something like 30% more in the way of discussion and upvotes.

Duncan_Sabien 1 Feb 2023 0:14 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Said Achmiz’s comment on: Basics of Rationalist Discourse
This is my sense as well, but this is in large part the core of the cultural disagreement, I think?
Like, back in the early 2000′s, there was a parkour community centered around a web forum, NCparkour.com. And there was a constant back-and-forth tension between:
a) have a big tent; bring in as many people as possible; gradually infect them with knowledge and discipline and the proper way of doing things
b) have standards; have boundaries; make clear what we’re here to do and do not be particularly welcoming or tolerant of people whose default way of being undermines that mission
My sense is that, if you’re an a-er, the above mentality seems like a CLEAR mistake, à la “why would you drive away someone who’s a mere two or three insights away from being a good and productive member of our culture??”
And if you’re a b-er, the above mentality is like, yep, two or three insights away from good is a vast and oft-insurmountable distance, people generally don’t change and even if they do we’re not going to be able to change them from the outside. Let’s not dilute our subculture by allowing in a bunch of “”voters”″ who don’t even understand what we’re trying to do, here (and will therefore ruin it).
My sense is that LessWrong has historically been closer to a than to b, though not so close to a that, as a b-er, I feel like it’s shooting itself in the foot. More like, just failing to be the shining city on the hill that it could be.
(Also, more of a side note, but: the quoted text is not from J.K. Rowling.)

Duncan_Sabien 31 Jan 2023 22:28 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: the gears to ascenscion’s comment on: Basics of Rationalist Discourse
Just copy paste the bullet points.

Duncan_Sabien 31 Jan 2023 20:53 UTC
6 points
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in reply to: Vaniver’s comment on: Basics of Rationalist Discourse
(I like and have upvoted the above)
writing with them in mind helps make writing posts sharpen thinking. We have the distribution of potential readers that we actually have.
For sure! This is part of why the post took me over a year; I did in fact work hard to strike what I felt was a workable compromise between me-and-the-culture-I’d-like-us-to-have and the-culture-we-currently-have.
Some of what’s going on with my apologetic frustration above is, like, “Gosh, I’ve already worked real hard to bridge the gap/come substantially toward a compromise position, but of course you all don’t know that/can’t be expected to have seen any of that work, and thus to me it feels like there’s a real meta question about ‘did you go far enough/do an effective-enough job’ and it’s hard to make visceral to myself that y’all’s stance on that question is (probably) different than it would be if you had total extrospective access to my brain.”

Duncan_Sabien 31 Jan 2023 20:48 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: Kaj_Sotala’s comment on: Basics of Rationalist Discourse
(Not sure I’ll be able to substantively respond but wanting to note that I’ve strong upvoted on both axes available to me; your summary up to the point where you noted you’d check in was great)

Duncan_Sabien 31 Jan 2023 17:28 UTC
11 points
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in reply to: Kaj_Sotala’s comment on: Basics of Rationalist Discourse
It’s more the latter; I think that it further reinforces a sense of something like “people should have to put forth zero effort; whatever it takes to get reader buy-in, no matter how silly; if your post isn’t bending over backwards to smooth the transition from [haven’t read] to [read] it’s automatically unstrategic (as opposed to maybe those readers just aren’t part of the audience),” etc.
Literally the first paragraph of the post is like, “this is mostly about a short list.” The sort of reader who sees “43 min” on a LessWrong post and then is so deterred that they don’t even read the first paragraph feels already lost to me, and going further in the direction of accommodating them (I already weakened the post substantially on behalf of the tl;dr crowd; this is already WAY capitulating) seems bad not only for the specific post but also for, like, sending the implicit social signal that yes, your terrorism is working, please continue leaning on the incentive gradient that makes it hard to take [an audience who actually gives a crap and doesn’t need to be infinitely “sold” on every little thing] for granted.
Putting a soothing “don’t worry, this is actually short, you don’t have to read something big and scary if you don’t want to!” message as literally the first line of the post sends a strong message that I Do Not Want To Send; people should just not read it if they don’t want to and my reassurances and endorsements shouldn’t be necessary.
This is why the zeroth guideline is “expect to have to put in a little work some of the time;” in the future I’ll answer such questions by linking to it but it’s a bit circular in this case when people have already demonstrated that they’re loath to even read that far.

Duncan_Sabien 31 Jan 2023 17:22 UTC
5 points
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in reply to: Vitor’s comment on: Basics of Rationalist Discourse
Compelling!

Duncan_Sabien 31 Jan 2023 17:21 UTC
6 points
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in reply to: Henry Prowbell’s comment on: My Model Of EA Burnout
I’ve realised that values (or perhaps ‘needs’ fits better) are immutable facts about myself. Like my height or hair colour. And getting annoyed at them for not being different makes about as much sense as shouting at the sky for raining.
Just noting that I’m reasonably confident that neither Logan nor most CFAR staff would claim that values are immutable; just that they are not easily changeable.
I think values do, indeed, shift; we can see this when e.g. people go through puberty or pregnancy or lose a limb or pass through a traumatic experience like a war zone. This puts a floor on how immutable values/needs can really be, and presumably they can be shifted via less drastic interventions.

Duncan_Sabien 31 Jan 2023 0:38 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: s-video’s comment on: Appendix: Building a Bugs List prompts
Yeah, in general when this activity is done in-person, people are writing/typing for the whole 15-25min, and each successive prompt is basically just another way to re-ask the same question. If the frame of “bugs and feature requests” starts to feel too [whatever], another way to think of it is to just keep writing down threads-to-pull-on.

Duncan_Sabien 30 Jan 2023 19:42 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Vitor’s comment on: Basics of Rationalist Discourse
I’m not sure what the suggestion, question, or request (in the part you’re more confident about) was. Could you nudge me a little more re: what kind of response you were hoping for?

Duncan_Sabien 30 Jan 2023 19:19 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Kaj_Sotala’s comment on: Basics of Rationalist Discourse
(Continued feelings of frustration and anger; I think I understand all of you and I don’t think any of you yet understand me and haven’t seen anyone visibly try. This is in no small part because I haven’t given anything in the way of detail, but the proposed edits/additions feel like … capitulating to the Twitter mob? As a Focusing handle?)
I think I’d like to note, as something like “a request you have zero obligation to meet; it’d be more doing me an active favor than fulfilling some moral duty,” that I have a wish/hope that you spend thirty seconds imagining “what if these suggestions were terrible? Like, what if Omega came down and told me ‘Duncan was right, your version is objectively and meaningfully worse, those changes caused problems’ … what model would I produce, as a result, trying to explain what was going on?”

Duncan_Sabien 30 Jan 2023 19:17 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: PoignardAzur’s comment on: Sapir-Whorf for Rationalists
David Belle and I had a bit of a disagreement about it, in person. =P

Duncan_Sabien 30 Jan 2023 19:16 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: Chi Nguyen’s comment on: My Model Of EA Burnout
The specific things you said about the EA forum seem true but it also seems to me to be a hellscape of vicious social punishment and conformity and suspicion. The existence of a number of people pushing back against that doesn’t quite suffice for feelings of safety, at least according to my own intuitions.

Duncan_Sabien 29 Jan 2023 22:32 UTC
7 points
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in reply to: Alex_Altair’s comment on: Basics of Rationalist Discourse
(noting, with substantial apology and a general lack of pride/endorsement, that I won’t be able to reply to this with anything coherent because all I feel is anger/frustration)

Duncan_Sabien 29 Jan 2023 22:22 UTC
7 points
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in reply to: Adele Lopez’s comment on: Basics of Rationalist Discourse
I agree it’s going backwards in that it’s making more inferences than the second, but it’s also exposing those inferences/has the virtue of being more openly cruxy and interface-able. Plausible I should tweak the example anyway, though; thank you for highlighting this one.

Duncan_Sabien 29 Jan 2023 21:14 UTC
−3 points
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in reply to: Vitor’s comment on: Basics of Rationalist Discourse
In particular, the guidelines are very bad for productive babbling / brainstorming, for intuitive knowledge transfer, and other less rigorous ways of communicating that I find really valuable in some situations.
Strong disagree; like, strong enough that I will be blunter than usual and say “this is just false.” If you project a bunch of stuff onto the guidelines that isn’t actually there in the text, then yeah, but.

All of Julia Galef, Anna Salamon, Rob Bensinger, Scott Garrabrant, Vaniver, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Logan Brienne Strohl, Oliver Habryka, Kelsey Piper, Nate Soares, Eric Rogstad, Spencer Greenberg, and Dan Keys have engaged in productive babbling/brainstorming, intuitive knowledge transfer, and other less rigorous ways of communicating on the regular; the only difference is that they take three seconds to make clear that they’re shifting into that mode.

Duncan_Sabien 28 Jan 2023 19:37 UTC
9 points
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in reply to: M. Y. Zuo’s comment on: Basics of Rationalist Discourse
Er, note that that example was about someone being overconfident about status being important, and that the recommendation was that they note that their conclusion lives inside their head and might not be real.
I do not think that the hypothesis that everyone’s morality is based on status is a key point or should have more time here. I think it’s usually a curiosity stopper and a Red Herring and we-as-a-community already talk about it too much given how little detail our median member has in their mental model.