This may be getting into private-message territory. I haven't paid enough attention to the norms to be sure. But it's easy to not read these...
your comment makes me think that avoiding ambiguity and not appropriating is not enough and perhaps even using it among ourselves is to be avoided, e.g. for the benefit of those 'looking in from the outside' who might be preemptively alienated.
I am, perhaps, "looking in from the outside". I have a lot of history and context with the ideas here, and with the canonical texts, and even with a few of the people, but I'm an extreme "non-joiner". In fact, I tend toward suspicion and distaste for the whole idea of investing my identity in a community, especially one with a label and a relatively clear boundary. I have only a partial model of where that attitude comes from, but I do know that I seem to retain an "outsider" reaction for a lot longer than other people might.
I may be hypersensitive. But I think it's more likely that I'm a not-horrible model of how a completely naive outsider might react to some of these things, even though I can express it in a Less-Wrongish vocabulary.
And of course these posts are indeed visible to people who are only vaguely exploring, or only thinking about "joining", for whatever value of "joining". This is still outreach, right?
Perhaps more accurate would've been for me to say that your original argument could have been applied to the LW-rationality approach generally, or to the bias-correcting approach based on the heuristics and biases literature.
I agree that there are a ton of things that people do all the time that don't seem very useful. If I'm not going to accept all of them, I'd better have a good reason to think this particular social-interaction issue is different.
My reason is that I don't think that epistemic rationality, or even extreme instrumental rationality, has been a critical survival skill for people until very recently (and maybe it still isn't). It's useful, but it doesn't overwhelm everything else, and indeed it seems very likely that the heuristics and biases themselves have clear advantages in many historical contexts.
On the other hand, social cooperation, and especially avoiding constant overt conflict with members of one's own society, are pretty crucial if you want to survive as a human. So I tend to expect institutions and adaptations in that area to be pretty fine-tuned and effective. I don't like a lot of the ways people behave socially, but they seem to work.
Not that strong, I know, but then I haven't seen anything that strong on any side of this.
I reserve some fair probability that there were clear differences in type between the obnoxious attempts and the successful ones, such that your experiences would not be very strong reference class evidence for e.g. Telling.
I don't think I can provide detailed descriptions, but it is definitely true that there are meaningful differences, even major differences, between most of the experiences I've had and the example approach.
The thing is that, if presented with the example approach in real life, I don't think I'd notice those differences. I think I would react heuristically to the unexpected disclosure of internal state, and provisionally put the person into the "annoying/broken" bucket before I got that far.
Then, if I weren't being very, very careful (which I can't necessarily be in all circumstances), the promise that "everything will be OK if you say no" wouldn't be believed, and might even be interpreted as confirmation that the person was going into passive-aggressive mode, and was indeed annoying/broken.
And in the particular example given, I'm being asked to have this presumptively-broken person stay in my house overnight, which is going to make me more wary.
If I were in perfect form and not distracted, I might catch other cues and escape the heuristic, but I think it would be my likely reaction most of the time.
YMMV if, for example, I have prior information that the person is an honest Teller, rather than somebody who incorrectly believes themselves to be a Teller or is just outright dishonest.
I don't have as much discipline in not applying heuristics, or in turning them off at will, as many people here. On the other hand, I have more such discipline than a lot of people... probably including some people here, and definitely including people I suspect one might wish to avoid putting off of the community, should they come exploring.
I also retain the possibility that your reaction to the approaches you disliked was overblown, though my credence for that is far lower now than it was, based on your comment and your claim to be less fazed than average by nonconventional approaches.
I could also be wrong about being less fazed. I know that many nonconventional approaches don't bother me even though they seem to bother others. That doesn't mean that I'm not unknowingly hypersensitive to these nonconventional approaches. I haven't calibrated myself systematically or overtly on them, and they do tickle personal boundary issues where I'm especially likely to be more sensitive than normal.
Have you also accounted for the potential for the negative communication approaches to stick in your mind more than ones you accepted or adopted?
Sure. That's one reason I believe I'd react negatively to the example approach. I haven't been talking about the right way to react. I've been predicting how I likely would react (and saying that I think others might react the same way).
(1) What's your general take on the picture painted by http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/05/24/going-from-california-with-an-aching-in-my-heart/
It rings true to me in a lot of ways. I usually say that I miss the Bay Area's "geekosphere". I miss what is cheesily called the "sense of possibility". I miss the easy availability of tools and resources. I miss the critical mass of people who really want to do cool, new things, whether they want to change the world, or make something beautiful, or even just make a bunch of money they're not sure how to spend. I miss the number of people who really are willing to look hard at how things work, and then change them... in the large if need be. Now that I have a kid, I really miss the wide availability of approaches to education that don't feel so much like "shove 'em in the box and make 'em like it".
On the other hand, that description sounds a little starry-eyed. I've had a bit too much contact with the "hippies" to think they're really always about peace and love, too much contact with the programmers to believe they're nearly as smart as they think they are, and too much contact with the entrepreneurs for "competent" to be the first description that comes to mind. I've also seen some people use "abandoning hangups", or "social efficiency", or whatever, as an excuse to treat others callously. You get a lot of that in the poly community, for example.
I might have missed those issues, or ignored them, 20 or 30 years ago. I might have said things about "wacky leftism" back then, too, things I wouldn't say nearly so strongly now that I know a bit more about how all the parts fit together. It's not that the leftism isn't wacky, it's that the capitalism is wacky, too.
I have not had direct contact with the "cooked" LW-rationalist community, so I can't speak to that. I was in only-somewhat-related circles, I was never very, very social, and I left the area almost 7 years ago after largely "disappearing" from those circles a year or two before that. So I can't confirm or deny what it says about that particular community.
(2) Why do you no longer spend much time in some of the communities you used to? And if you moved away from California, why?
The usual stuff: life intervened. I got busy with other stuff. I went back to work... in the Bay Area or in tech, that can be pretty consuming, and it turns out that it's harder to take the "changing the world" jobs when you're supporting other people. I got divorced. I got depressed. I had personal and romantic ties in Montreal, so I moved... and then I built a life here, with its own rewards and its own obligations and its own web of connections to people who also have reasons to be here. Moving back would be hard now.
But I do still miss it a lot.
I am really very pleasantly surprised with how this comment tree turned out and these are useful warnings. The level of internal insight was higher than I would have expected even if our first two comments hadn't been vaguely confrontational. Thank you!
Followup to: Ask and Guess
Ask culture: "I'll be in town this weekend for a business trip. Is it cool if I crash at your place?" Response: “Yes“ or “no”.
Guess culture: "Hey, great news! I'll be in town this weekend for a business trip!" Response: Infer that they might be telling you this because they want something from you, conclude that they might want a place to stay, and offer your hospitality only if you want to. Otherwise, pretend you didn’t infer that.
The two basic rules of Ask Culture: 1) Ask when you want something. 2) Interpret things as requests and feel free to say "no".
The two basic rules of Guess Culture: 1) Ask for things if, and *only* if, you're confident the person will say "yes". 2) Interpret requests as expectations of "yes", and, when possible, avoid saying "no".
Both approaches come with costs and benefits. In the end, I feel pretty strongly that Ask is superior.
But these are not the only two possibilities!
"I'll be in town this weekend for a business trip. I would like to stay at your place, since it would save me the cost of a hotel, plus I would enjoy seeing you and expect we’d have some fun. I'm looking for other options, though, and would rather stay elsewhere than inconvenience you." Response: “I think I need some space this weekend. But I’d love to get a beer or something while you’re in town!” or “You should totally stay with me. I’m looking forward to it.”
There is a third alternative, and I think it's probably what rationalist communities ought to strive for. I call it "Tell Culture".
The two basic rules of Tell Culture: 1) Tell the other person what's going on in your own mind whenever you suspect you'd both benefit from them knowing. (Do NOT assume others will accurately model your mind without your help, or that it will even occur to them to ask you questions to eliminate their ignorance.) 2) Interpret things people tell you as attempts to create common knowledge for shared benefit, rather than as requests or as presumptions of compliance.
Suppose you’re in a conversation that you’re finding aversive, and you can’t figure out why. Your goal is to procure a rain check.
Here are more examples from my own life:
The burden of honesty is even greater in Tell culture than in Ask culture. To a Guess culture person, I imagine much of the above sounds passive aggressive or manipulative, much worse than the rude bluntness of mere Ask. It’s because Guess people aren’t expecting relentless truth-telling, which is exactly what’s necessary here.
If you’re occasionally dishonest and tell people you want things you don't actually care about--like their comfort or convenience--they’ll learn not to trust you, and the inherent freedom of the system will be lost. They’ll learn that you only pretend to care about them to take advantage of their reciprocity instincts, when in fact you’ll count them as having defected if they respond by stating a preference for protecting their own interests.
Tell culture is cooperation with open source codes.
This kind of trust does not develop overnight. Here is the most useful Tell tactic I know of for developing that trust with a native Ask or Guess. It’s saved me sooooo much time and trouble, and I wish I’d thought of it earlier.
"I'm not asking because I expect you to say ‘yes’. I'm asking because I'm having trouble imagining the inside of your head, and I want to understand better. You are completely free to say ‘no’, or to tell me what you’re thinking right now, and I promise it will be fine." It is amazing how often people quickly stop looking shifty and say 'no' after this, or better yet begin to discuss further details.