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MarkusRamikin comments on Bayesian Judo - Less Wrong
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This post's presence so early in the core sequences is the reason I nearly left LW after my first day or two. It gave me the impression that a major purpose of rationalism was to make fun of other people's irrationality rather than trying to change or improve either party. In short, to act like a jerk.
I'm glad I stuck around long enough to realize this post wasn't representative. Eliezer, at one point you said you wanted to know if there were characteristically male mistakes happening that would deter potential LWers. I can't speak for all women, but this post exemplifies a kind of male hubris that I find really off-putting. Obviously the woman in the penultimate paragraph appreciated it in someone else, but I don't know if it made her think, "This is a community I want to hang out with so I, too, can make fools of other people at parties."
Before I say anything I would like to mention that this is my first post on LW, and being only part way through the sequences I am hesitant to comment yet, but I am curious about your type of position.
What I find peculiar about your position is the fact that Yudkowsky did not, as he presented here, engage the argument. The other person did, asserting "only God can make a soul", implying that Yudkowsky's profession is impossible or nonsensical. Vocalizing any type of assertion, in my opinion, should be viewed as a two-way street, letting potential criticism come. In this particular example the assertion was of a subject that the man knew would be of large interest to Yudkowsky, certainly disproportionately more than say whether or not the punch being served had mango juice in it.
I'd like to know what you expect Yudkowsky should have done given the situation. Do you expect him not to give his own opinion, given the other person's challenge? Or was it instead something in particular about the way Yudkowsky did it? Isn't arguing inevitable and all we can do is try to build better dialogue quality? (That has been my conclusion for the last few years). Either way, I don't see the hubris you seem to. My usual complaints of discussions is that they are not well educated enough and people tend to say things that are too vague to be useful, or outright unsupported. However I rarely see a discussion and think "Well the root problem here is that they are too arrogant", so I'd like to know what your reasoning is.
It may be relevant that in real life I am known by some as being "aggressive" and "argumentative". Though you probably could have inferred that based on my position but I'd like to keep everything about my position as transparent as possible.
Thank you for your time.
If I were the host I would not like it if one of my guests tried to end a conversation with "We'll have to agree to disagree" and the other guest continued with "No, we can't, actually. There's a theorem of rationality called Aumann's Agreement Theorem which shows that no two rationalists can agree to disagree." In my book this is obnoxious behavior.
Having fun at someone else's expense is one thing, but holding it up in an early core sequences post as a good thing to do is another. Given that we direct new Less Wrong readers to the core sequence posts, I think they indicate what the spirit of the community is about. And I don't like seeing the community branded as being about how to show off or how to embarrass people who aren't as rational as you.
What gave me an icky feeling about this conversation is that Eliezer didn't seem to really be aiming to bring the man round to what he saw as a more accurate viewpoint. If you've read Eliezer being persuasive, you'll know that this was not it. He seemed more interested in proving that the man's statement was wrong. It's a good thing to learn to lose graciously when they're wrong, and learn from the experience. But that's not something you can force someone to learn from the outside. I don't think the other man walked away from this experience improved, and I don't think that was Eliezer's goal.
I, like you, love a good argument with someone who also enjoys it. But to continue arguing with someone who's not enjoying it feels sadistic to me.
If I were in this conversation, I would try to frame it as a mutual exploration rather than a mission to discover which of us was wrong. At the point where the other tried to shut down the conversation, I might say, "Wait, I think we were getting to something interesting, and I want to understand what you meant when you said..." Then proceed to poke holes, but in a curious rather than professorial way.
I'd find it especially obnoxious because Aumann's agreement theorem looks to me like one of those theorems that just doesn't do what people want it to do, and so ends up as a rhetorical cudgel rather than a relevant argument with practical import.
Agreed. If this was Judo, it wasn't a clean point. EY's opponent simply didn't know that the move used on him was against the sport's rules, and failed to cry foul.
Storytelling-wise, EY getting away with that felt like a surprising ending, like a minor villain not getting his comeuppance.