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.
Fair enough. "Because" itself isn't perfectly transparent word: X because Y may mean that
(etymologically) Y is a cause of X: "I have been arrested because I have robbed a bank."
Y is a purpose for X: "I robbed the bank because I wanted the money."
X is logically deducible from Y: The apple fell down because of the laws of gravity.
(and I believed that also) X is probabilistically deducible from Y. I have used the word "because" in this sense, as a shorthand for "and the evidence for the previous claim is that", which after all may be ungrammatical.
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.