Mercurial comments on Where do I most obviously still need to say "oops"? - Less Wrong

5 Post author: lukeprog 22 November 2011 01:48AM

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Comment author: Mercurial 22 November 2011 04:10:13AM 6 points [-]

Luke, I don't feel I know you well enough to help you with your quest to locate any lingering wrongness in you. From what I've seen of your writing and what I've heard from people who have met you, you're doing a really amazing job of walking the rationalist talk. The fact that you even ask the community here this question is quite a testament to your taking this stuff seriously and actually using it. I think I should be asking you this question!

But your asking this makes me think of something. If you, or Eliezer, or someone else of that calibre of rational competence pointed out to me an area where I need to say "Oops" (or otherwise direct rational attention), I'd like to think that I'd take that seriously. I suspect I'd take it even more seriously if there were some avenue for me to ask such people for that help the way you've asked the whole Less Wrong community here.

So I wonder: Might it be a good move to set up something like that? We might not yet have a good metric in place for what constitutes someone's degree of rationality, but I'd imagine if two or three black-belt Bayesians all agree that someone is wrong about something, that should still count for something and is probably a reasonable direction to consider in the absence of a more objective metric. So if there were something set up where people could actively ask for that feedback from known people of skilled rationality (or people designated by those with known impressive levels of rationality), I wonder if that would be useful. What do you think? Or would that just be redundant with respect to the Rationality Dojos you mentioned are coming?

Comment author: lukeprog 22 November 2011 05:38:00AM 6 points [-]

If this could be arranged in the future, we'd want to involve top-level non-SIAI rationalists like Julia Galef to avoid results dictated by the SIAI memeplex rather than by rationality skills. (By "top-level" I don't mean "popular" but "seriously skilled in rationality".)

Comment author: XiXiDu 22 November 2011 09:42:15AM 3 points [-]

The questions that I really care about, the important questions, are either not solved yet or it is everyone versus the "SIAI memeplex".

All of the following people would disagree with the Singularity Institute on some major issues: Douglas Hofstadter, Steven Pinker, Massimo Pigliucci, Greg Egan, Holden Karnofsky, Robin Hanson, John Baez, Katja Grace, Ben Goertzel...just to name a few. Even your top donor thinks that the Seaststeading Institute deserves more money than the Singularity Institute. And in the end they would either be ignored, downvoted, called stupid or their disagreement a result of motivated cognition.

Comment author: wedrifid 22 November 2011 11:43:08AM * -1 points [-]

Comment author: XiXiDu 22 November 2011 11:59:28AM * 0 points [-]

...my downvotes of Ben Goertzel and suggestions that he was stupid are not based on motivated cognition...

Never said that.

The impressiveness of his name (that thing which causes you to refer to him as an authority)...

WTF? I don't think that he has any authority. This essay pretty much shows that he is a dreamer. Two quotes from the essay:

“Of course, this faith placed in me and my team by strangers was flattering. But I felt it was largely justified. We really did have a better idea about how to make computers think. We really did know how to predict the markets using the news.”

“We AI folk were talking so enthusiastically, even the businesspeople in the company were starting to get excited. This AI engine that had been absorbing so much time and money, now it was about to bear fruit and burst forth upon the world!”

Pfft.

Comment author: wedrifid comment score below threshold [+] (20 children)

Comment author: XiXiDu 22 November 2011 01:20:44PM * 5 points [-]

By listing people who would be downvoted as though it is a significant fact it implies that they have status such that they deserve to be mentioned in that context.

The suggestion was to get feedback from experts on matters of rationality. I listed some people and listed some possible reactions. This doesn't imply that I believe that those people are actually worthy of being asked or that the reactions would be unjustified.

There are various problems, 1.) there are not many people that are on the same level as LW 2.) a lot of those people who are not part of the "SIAI memeplex", as Luke called it, actually disagree on important issues 3.) there is a lack of critical examination and debate with those that are critical of SI key positions. Especially #3 tends to be problematic as disagreement is often met with the mentioned reactions, which doesn't imply that the reactions are not justified, but unhelpful.

The fact that someone is actually worthy of downvotes has rather significant implications on whether or not motivated cognition must be involved in the downvoting.

I never said that there is any motivated cognition involved in the downvoting of people on LW. I said that people on LW are sometimes claiming that their opponents disagreement is caused by motivated cognition, that the people who disagree with LW are often disagreeing due to motivated cognition.

To summarize: a place to receive feedback on issues of rationality from outsiders wouldn't work out in my opinion as long as the people on LW are not willing to dissolve the disagreement but rather tend to ignore or simply downvote their opponents because they are perceived to be stupid etc. (which might very well be justified).

Comment author: [deleted] 23 November 2011 05:40:53AM * 2 points [-]

Upvoting and agreeing.

This is more about LW in general, than to Luke personally, but I do feel that this site has a strong "cult" feel to it. I think there are a lot of things that rational people might disagree with LW consensus on, and instead of welcoming non-LW ideas, people say that they aren't rational.

For example, I think that if 500 people all thought about AI and FAI rationally and independently, they wouldn't all just happen to come to the exact same conclusions considering that there are so many unknowns. But the group-think here is such that anyone with a differing opinion is kept out. I am actually thinking about making a post on this, but we'll see how busy I am.

Comment author: lessdazed 23 November 2011 06:51:16AM * 2 points [-]

people say that they aren't [censored].

That would be an awful group habit. Narrowness, specificity, is a virtue. Show me something written on the subject by Ben Goetzel, and I'll show you specific logical fallacies.

Comment author: prase 23 November 2011 10:41:47AM 0 points [-]

I like your censorship.

Comment author: [deleted] 23 November 2011 06:13:38AM 0 points [-]

And my point is only strengthened by the fact that anytime I use LW-speak and say things that agree with LW consensus they are quickly upvoted, but any time that I say things that are non-LW consensus, they are quickly downvoted (see above).

Comment author: ArisKatsaris 23 November 2011 02:14:15PM 4 points [-]

There exist hundreds of LW readers, and downvotes don't mean that the majority disapproves, it means that atleast one out of those hundreds of readers disapproved with a downvote. (Or more precisely that n+1 readers disapproved with a downvote where n readers approved with an upvote)

As such arguments of the style "I got downvoted for speaking against group consensus, therefore LessWrong is exhibiting groupthink" don't seem that convincing to me. Even if that was the only reason you got downvoted, even if it was a completely unjust downvote -- it just means that one reader was exhibiting groupthink behaviour and downvoted you unjustly for going against the norm.

continue this thread »

Comment author: antigonus 23 November 2011 06:26:37AM * 1 point [-]

For what it's worth, I've posted a fair number of things in my short time here that go against what I assume to be consensus, and I've mostly only been upvoted for them. (This includes posts that come close to making the cult comparison.)

Comment author: XiXiDu 22 November 2011 01:27:54PM 2 points [-]

Erm, before you waste more time on this issue, you are right that Ben Goertzel was a bad, or even completely misplaced choice for the category of people I wanted to list.

Comment author: lessdazed 22 November 2011 07:28:53PM * 0 points [-]

And in the end they would either be ignored, downvoted, called stupid or their disagreement a result of motivated cognition.

"Called" both referred to the named people and linked "their disagreement" to "a result of motivated cognition". It's a syllepsis.

And in the end they would either be ignored, downvoted, or called stupid, or their disagreement was called a result of motivated cognition.

Comment author: Mercurial 23 November 2011 04:40:28AM 0 points [-]

That would be awesome, for sure! But I'd also prefer not to see this get frozen in planning just because there's a theoretical possibility of making it better. I'd still consider SIAI-biased advice to be vastly better than no advice at all.

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