= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Cameron_Taylor comments on Why Our Kind Can't Cooperate - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (186)
In fact, agreement is a sort of spam - it consumes space and usually doesn't bring new thoughts. When I imagine a typical conference where the participants are constantly running out of time, visualising the 5-minute question interval consumed by praise to the speaker helps me a lot in rationalising why the disagreement culture is necessary. Not that it would be the real reason why I would flee screaming out of the room, I would probably do even if the time wasn't a problem.
When I read the debates at e.g. daylightatheism.org I am often disgusted by how much agreement there is (and it is definitely not a Dark Side blog). So I think I am strongly immersed in the disagreement culture. But, all cultural prejudices aside, I will probably always find a discussion consisting of "you are brilliant" type statements extraordinarily boring.
It doesn't have to bring new thoughts to serve a purpose. A chorus of agreement is an emotional amplifier.
Not only that, it becomes a glue that binds people together, the more agreement the stronger the binding (and the more that get bound). At least that is the analogy that I use when I look at this; we (rationalists) have no glue, they (religions) have too much.
Agreement does not need to be contentless and therefore spam. It can fill in holes in the argument, take a different perspective(helping a different segment of the reading population), add specific details to the argument that were glossed over and much more.
It sounds like you have a problem with lack of content more then you do with agreement. I am sure you would find contentless disagreement just a boring.
Agreements are a lot more often contentless, as a rule. When disagreeing, people feel motivated to include some reasons, and even if they don't, the one who was disagreed with feels motivated to ask for the reasons. But in principle you are right that my objections don't primarily aim at agreement.
I think you are focusing too much on discussions.
There are other activities where success can depend heavily on <em>not acting alone</em>, and it is in those types of activities (such as fundraising, seizing political power, reforming institutions, etc) that rationalist-types are disadvantaged by their lack of coordination.
I agree!
You didn't read Eliezer's post very carefully, did you? You need more practice in agreement and conformity. There are a limited number of "right" answers out there. It's alright to agree on them, when they are found.