pjeby comments on Why Our Kind Can't Cooperate - Less Wrong

132 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 20 March 2009 08:37AM

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Comment author: prase 20 March 2009 02:26:50PM 16 points [-]

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.

Comment author: pjeby 20 March 2009 04:07:31PM 11 points [-]

It doesn't have to bring new thoughts to serve a purpose. A chorus of agreement is an emotional amplifier.

Comment author: AndrewH 20 March 2009 09:02:25PM 4 points [-]

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.