Commentary on LessWrong and its norms

That I would like to share. I recently found it on the blog Writings by James_G. I am going to add some emphasis and commentary of my own, but I'm mostly interested how other LWers see this. The main topic of the post itself is about politics and cooperation but I want to emphasise that isn't the topic I'd like to open.

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So, neurological egalitarians like (I should imagine) Zachary and neurological racist-authoritarians like myself need to be able to cooperate. Unfortunately, politics is the mind-killer.

No wait—that can’t be true. I’m writing this highly political essay, and my mind ain’t killed (Aberlour notwithstanding). This is the problem with Yudkowsky: he’s right so often, that the odd misfire goes unnoticed.

People go funny in the head when talking about politics.

Close, but no cigar. People go funny in the head when their emotions are aroused, and “political” arguments tend to be provocative. Thinking about and discussing politics doesn’t always evoke strong emotions; strong emotions can be evoked by things other than politics. Politics and out-of-control emotions are closely related, but here Yudkowsky didn’t cleave reality at its joints.

Yudkowsky’s rationalist forum, lesswrong.com, is based on the idea that politics is the mind-killer. When someone comments on what he considers a political subject, he apologises for dropping a mind-killer. Political arguments are taboo. The forum also has a karma system: every post and comment is subject to anonymous positive and negative ratings from other users. This is especially effective because of the forum members’ high regard for LessWrong’s majority opinion; negative karma is an assault on one’s soul. Given the high quality of the founding population (Overcoming Bias commenters), these features make LessWrong an unusually civil place.

Yeah it kind of can feel like that. Consider the strong reaction and even written out objections people have when down voted. Yet I think we should be doing more down voting.

So, is LessWrong an exemplar for efficient cooperation across the neuropolitical divide? I don’t think so.

There seems to be evidence that we indeed failing at this.

First, enforcing the no-politics taboo isn’t straightforward. “Politics” is an ill-defined term. It means roughly, “ideas and arguments associated with governance, how people should live, and decisions that significantly affect many people’s lives”. A LessWrong thread about the irrationality of Keynesianism and fraudulence of Keynesian economists would be highly political—seditious. But a (quite interesting) thread about Awful Austrians isn’t political, because Austrian economists are marginal. Austrian theory isn’t influential and might never be, therefore attacking it doesn’t seem political in everyone’s eyes. In this way, no-politics can easily become no-political-opinion-that-isn’t-mainstream—not a recipe for rationality.

Another problem is that the scope of “mind-killing arguments” is embarrassingly wide. For example:

I’ve recently read a lot of strong claims and mind-killing argumentation made against E.Y.’s assertion that MWI is the winning/leading interpretation in QM. The SEP seems to agree with this, which means I’ve got a bottom-line here to erase since both of my favorite authorities agree on that particular conclusion.

If arguments about quantum mechanics are mind-killing, what isn’t? Is arguing in general taboo? That isn’t rational.

Emotion is the mind-killer, so an apolitical argument could kill a nerd’s mind. For example, his opponent might insinuate that only rubes take the Copenhagen interpretation seriously. Being insulted, or simply losing an argument can stimulate emotions. But a rational person learns not to let anyone kill his mind (and to be a skilful mind-assassin when it suits him). To describe every firm clash of opinions as “mind-killing” is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Emotions may have evolved to permit ignorant humans to practise timeless decision theory in situations requiring reciprocity and deal-making, like the Parfit’s Hitchhiker thought experiment. “Emotion” signifies a shift in the balance of mental sub-agents, which induced TDT behaviour in fecund ancestral humans. If the brain in question is a moral realist, it rationalises these emotions using moral projectivism: “I responded like that because he was morally wrong”. This epistemic error obstructs the displaced sub-agent from regaining control; moral realism legitimises upstart sub-agents.

Some emotions don’t prompt moral rationalisation. The excuse for odd behaviour associated with mating is, “I love X”. Love is nonetheless another instance of TDT pre-commitment; but since mating is a private interaction, unlike morality the (degenerate) rationalisation for the emotion of love need not act as a common currency for collective negotation and deal-making. Whether or not TDT considerations fully explain the evolution of emotion, we know that emotion “kills minds”—it promotes upstart sub-agents—and we can identify its causes.

Internet fora are provocative. Anyone can comment; even if 9 out of 10 discussants are reasonable, there’s always a jerk. The low bandwidth of internet discussions also causes problems. In meatspace, body language, tone of voice and familiarity allow people to respect one another’s emotional limits; internet interlocutors inadvertently upset one another. LessWrong’s karma system is also subtly infuriating. Outside cyberspace, nobody can snipe someone’s reputation with the impunity of the anonymous, silent downvoter. In real life, not everyone’s opinion is equally status-enhancing or -detracting, and every off-hand comment isn’t susceptible to meticulous scrutiny. Unwarranted downvotes—and jerks’ downvotes are indistinguishable from anyone else’s— are the Jim Jones of mind-killing.

LessWrong does a great job of maintaining civility; a more polite, entirely open internet forum I cannot imagine. But the costs of the no-politics taboo and karma system—entrenching mainstream ideas, stifling discussion of important problems, and creating effete rationalists—are unavoidable, and gradual dissipation of the highly rational, open-minded Overcoming Bias founding group may exacerbate these downsides.

A completely open forum, however effective the karma system and informal rules, doesn’t permit neurological leftists and rightists to cooperate and discourse efficiently. Still, internet fora are a great means of exchanging information. To confine useful discussion to email and glacial blogospheric exchanges isn’t ideal. We need a way to discuss politics honestly, without emotional turmoil. I propose two things: a protocol, and a forum design.

The protocol is a formal way to conduct internet discussions, which minimises mind-killing. First, each discussant must state his utility function. “Humans” don’t have utility functions, but their sub-agents do. For example, I (speaking now) am a hedonic utilitarian, which inhabits a brain populated by competing sub-agents. Refusal to state a utility function implies failure to accurately reduce the “I” in a statement like “I want to do X”.

Discussants whose utility functions differ substantially must accept that this is an impediment to cooperation. But the strongest sub-agent in an educated mind is usually a hedonic utilitarian. Ideally, all parties to a discussion claim to share the same utility function.

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I'm not sure this protocol is workable. The full article is here.