Norms survey (dead)

Cayenne

Edit - Barring a major surprise, this post should be regarded as a worthless artifact of my impulse to do things instead of talking about them. I apologize for any time wasted on this, and would recommend ignoring it unless it is for historical purposes. I'll just stick to things I'm less bad at from now on.

This article will be edited as people post and discuss.

I believe that we need to have a clear, concise statement about the beliefs, practices, and taboos that it is rational to hold, and that we already hold as a group. To be clear, this is not an attempt to make new norms, but an attempt to codify the ones that we already hold and to get a rough estimate of the popularity/importance of each.

Core Rational - skills, meta-beliefs, and habits that enhance personal rationality

Social Rational - norms that enhance working in groups rationally

LessWrong Norms - norms for dealing with Less Wrong specifically

Common Knowledge - basic, useful beliefs to build on

Please post one phrase at a time and then give your reasoning under it. Once any idea has a common consensus, I'll add it to this article in the appropriate list.

Edited - Removed the word 'should' as someone has suggested a better phrasing. Edited again - category change, remove extra now-useless examples.

This article will be edited as people post and discuss.

Core Rational - skills, meta-beliefs, and habits that enhance personal rationality

Social Rational - norms that enhance working in groups rationally

LessWrong Norms - norms for dealing with Less Wrong specifically

Common Knowledge - basic, useful beliefs to build on

Please post one phrase at a time and then give your reasoning under it. Once any idea has a common consensus, I'll add it to this article in the appropriate list.

Edited - Removed the word 'should' as someone has suggested a better phrasing. Edited again - category change, remove extra now-useless examples.

Eh?

I mentioned updating beliefs based on evidence, and acting based on one's beliefs, but not having particular beliefs in general. The last bit, about the list of common beliefs, was meant to be along the lines of "If you believe A, you should do B. If you believe C, you should do D. If you believe E...", not a list of endorsed beliefs.

Also, rationalist taboo is not about taboos in the usual sense.

Oh, so it isn't. Oops. Hm.

Norms do usually contain taboos, but there isn't any particular reason that we have to. Should that category be deleted, or do we have things that we think should be taboo?

One that springs to mind as a possibility would be the use of the Dark Arts.

edit - I was thinking that our list of endorsed beliefs would be slightly more basic, things like 'rationality is worth pursuing' or something. http://lds.org/library/display/0,4945,106-1-2-1,FF.html is the small amount of norms that the LDS church has codified as an easy reference ... (read more)