A currently existing social norm basically says that everyone has the right to an opinion on anything, no matter how little they happen to know about the subject.
...what if we had a social norm saying that by default, people do not have the right to an opinion on anything?
I get what you're saying, but I don't think that's quite the problem.
The real problem is the social norm that says "you aren't allowed to be critical of someone else's view because everyone has the right to an opinion".
The italicized bit is the problem. I think everyone should have the right to an opinion, but also that everyone should have the right to be able to express criticisms of other's opinions.
(I think the "you can't criticise other's views" thing stems from relativism).
I think a norm is likely to be a product of the solution, not the solution itself.
So the problem is we have a lot of people who don't appreciate what constitutes a reasonable foundation for an opinion. They think they can just say what they feel. To put it one way, they have a poor understanding of the nature of evidence.
I don't think a norm like you describe could have any effect on anyone like that who had a poor understanding of evidence. Those people would just think the norm was wrong or ridiculous.
If they were to come to better understand the nat...
In general it would be great if people were more knowledgeable, our conversations were more enlightened etc. etc. - no-one will disagree with that.
But I think there is a dangerous elitist fallacy lurking here somewhere. The validity of your opinion about subject X isn't always strongly dependent on your knowledge of subject X. Let me make up a simple example. We have a choice between getting a red rock or a green rock. Some of us have a utility function that prefers red to green. Others have a utility function that prefers green to red. But a further group...
I don't think you could rely on people having read a bit about the matter.
The reasons we do or don't believe something aren't so simple.
Behind my belief that quantum physics is a respectable field is not some specific evidence I have that its descriptions of the world are actually true.
My belief in it is derived from of a complex 'web of trust' - I place a certain amount of trust in the channels from which I hear that there is evidence for it, because I trust the social and scientific means by which that evidence is gathered, disseminated and evaluated. ...
The way you build such a norm is by annoyingly pointing out when people violate your proposed norm.
If we had in place a social norm demanding an adequate amount of background knowledge on the topic before anyone voiced an opinion they expected to be taken seriously, the signal/noise ratio might be somewhat improved.
Unfortunately that'd skew things towards the status quo.
Advances in knowledge often come from taking a very different angle on a problem, by someone who isn't immersed -- and thus not necessarily knowledgeable in -- the existing viewpoints about the problem (e.g. by amateurs or people from different fields).
Ultimately a person's view should be judged just on its own merits.
Yes, yes, it would be nice.
-1 Porn. The article is nothing but "what if". No suggestion on how do we bring about the goal or even a question to the audience. I didn't get any bit smarter upon reading it.
People are entitled to make mistakes, provided they are not overly detrimental to others. What is offensive is not having a mistaken opinion (particularly when this is a freshly formed mistaken impression rather than an entrenched bias), but attempting to spread it far and wide.
Existing safeguards against this include our concept of expertise. More people will listen to someone who has advanced understanding of an area of knowledge, versus a novice. Usually an expert in a subject really can provide better guidance to form valid opinions.
The trouble arises ...
"Everyone has a right to his/her opinion" is a social standard because it helps people get along. The total solution to this problem is not telling people that they aren't entitled to their opinions, so much as making it so that when you someone's opinion is ill-founded, they say, "Hey, you're right. I should change my opinion!"
Given that, in reality, that almost never happens, the expression exists as a way of maintaining civility. That way the person pointing out that no, the earth is not 6000 years old becomes the "bad guy"...
Focusing on the listeners, the important thing is for the arguments/opinions to be helpful. Unjustified opinions is one example of unhelpful declaration: there is no point in listening to them. A justified opinion can also be unhelpful, if it isn't understood, or the reason it's justified isn't understood. Or even worse, a justified opinion, or valid knowledge, can have a negative effect on the listener.
Also, a person still needs to hold unjustified opinions on every subject, that's how the decisions are bootstrapped, but voicing these opinions is usually ...
I think the causality has to run: X-Rationalists raise the standards for ordinary rationalists and scientists-> People connected to the scientists raise their standards-> Everyone else
Sort of top down by osmosis rather than decree. Everyone gets slightly better, but most ordinary people won't have to unrealistically become X-Rationalists.
I think this problem, if it exists, is aided by the often misguided fact/opinion distinction commonly taught in schools. It's surely useful to some extent in the context of journalism or law, but it leads to all sorts of problems in fields like ethics and science. If 'everbody's entitled to an opinion' and there are bright lines between fact and opinion, then people will feel indignant for their opinions being declared false.
Example:
"Abby: I think it's okay to set cats on fire"
"Bob: But that's clearly wrong; (insert argument here)"
&qu...
I agree that the end result would be valuable, but I think that changing norms for a whole society would be very hard.
Although it might still be easier than the converse of raising the rationality of a whole society: being informed has higher status in society than being rational. It is more related to being a professor, journalist or talking head, whereas rationality is more associated to being a nerd, scientist or economist.
(Warning) This is a huge mind-dump created while on lunch break. By all means pick it apart, but I am not planning on defending it in any way. Take it with all the salt in the world.
Personally, I find the concept of animal rationality to be more of a distraction. For some reason, my linguistic matrix finds the word "intelligent" to describe cats responded to a can opener. Animals are very smart. Humans are very smart. But smart does not imply rational and a smart human is not necessarily imply rationality.
I tend to reserve rationality for describing the next "level" of intelligence. Rationality is the form or method of increase intelligence. An analogy is speed versus acceleration. Acceleration increases speed; rationality increases intelligence. This is more of a rough, instinctive definition, however, and one of my personal reasons for being here at Less Wrong is to learn more about rationality. My analogy does not seem accurate in application. Rationality seems connected to intelligence but to say that rationality implies change in intelligence does not fit with its reverse: irrationality does not decrease intelligence.
I am missing something, but it seems that whatever I am looking for in my definitions is not found in cats. But, as you may have meant, if cats have no rationality and cannot have rationality, is it because they have no rationality?
If this were the case, and rationality builds on itself, where does our initial rationality come from? If I claim to be rational, should I be able to point to a sequence of events in my life and say, "There it started"? It seems that fully understanding rationality implies knowing its limits; its beginning and ending. To further our rationality we should be able to know what helps or hinders our rationality.
Annoyance claims that the first instances of rationality may be caused by chance. If this were true, could we remove the chance? Could we learn what events chanced our own rationality and inflict similar events on other people?
Annoyance also seems to claim that rationality begets rationality. But something else must produce that first spark in us. That spark is worth studying. That spark is annoyingly difficult to define and observe. How do we stop and examine ourselves to know if we have the spark? If two people walk before us claiming rationality yet one is lying, how do we test and observe the truth?
Right now, we do so by their actions. But if the liar knows the rational actions and mimics them without believing in their validity or truth, how would we know? Would such a liar really be lying? Does the liar's beliefs matter? Does rationality imply more than correct actions?
To make this more extreme, if I build a machine to mimic rationality, is it rational? This is a classic question with many forms. If I make a machine that acts human, is it human? I claim that "rationality" cannot be measured in a cat. Could it be measured in a machine? A program? Why am I so fixated on humanity? Is this bias?
Rationality is a label attached to a behavior but I believe it will eventually be reattached to a particular source of the behavior. I do not think that rational behavior is impossible to fake. Pragmatically, a Liar that acts rational is not much different from a rational person. If the Liar penetrates our community and suddenly goes ape than the lies are obvious. How do we predict the Liars before they reveal themselves? What if the Liars believe their own lies?
I do not mean "believe" as in "having convinced themselves". What if they are not rational but believe they are? The lie is not conscious; it is a desire to be rational but not possessing the Way. How do we spot the fake rationalists? More importantly, how do I know that I, myself, have rationality?
Does this question have a reasonable answer? What if the answer is "No"? If I examine myself and find myself to be irrational, what do I do? What if I desire to be rational? Is it possible for me to become rational? Am I denied the Way?
I think much of the confusion comes from the inability to define rationality. We cannot offer a rationality test or exam. We can only describe behavior. I believe this currently necessary but I believe it will change. I think the path to this change has to do with finding the causations behind rationality and developing a finer measuring stick for determining rational behavior. I see this as the primary goal of Less Wrong.
Once we gather more information about the causes of our own rationality we can begin development methods for causing rationality in others along with drastically increasing our own rationality. I see this as the secondary goal of Less Wrong.
This is why I do not think Annoyance's answer was sufficient. "Chance" may be how we describe our fortune but this is inoculative answer. During Eliezer's comments on vitalism he says this:
I call theories such as vitalism mysterious answers to mysterious questions. These are the signs of mysterious answers: First, the explanation acts as a curiosity-stopper rather than an anticipation-controller. Second, the hypothesis has no moving parts - the model is not a specific complex mechanism, but a blankly solid substance or force. The mysterious substance or mysterious force may be said to be here or there, to do this or that; but the reason why the mysterious force behaves thus is wrapped in a blank unity. Third, those who proffer the explanation cherish their ignorance; they speak proudly of how the phenomenon defeats ordinary science or is unlike merely mundane phenomena. Fourth, even after the answer is given, the phenomenon is still a mystery and possesses the same quality of sacred inexplicability that it had at the start.
(Emphasis original. You will have to search for the paragraph, it is about three-quarters down the page.)
"Chance" hits 3 of 4, giving Annoyance benefit of the doubt and assuming there is no cherished ignorance. So, "chance" works for now because we have no better words to describe the beginning of rationality, but there is a true cause out there flipping the light bulbs on inside of heads and producing the behavior we have labeled "rationality." Let's go find it.
(PS) Annoyance, this wasn't meant to pick on what you said, it just happened to be in my mind and relevant to the discussion. You were answering a very specific question and the answer satisfied what was asked at the time.
Rationality-as-acceleration seems to match the semi-serious label of x-rationality.
A currently existing social norm basically says that everyone has the right to an opinion on anything, no matter how little they happen to know about the subject.
But what if we had a social norm saying that by default, people do not have the right to an opinion on anything? To earn such a right, they ought to have familiarized themselves on the topic. The familiarization wouldn't necessarily have to be anything very deep, but on the topic of e.g. controversial political issues, they'd have to have read at least a few books' worth of material discussing the question (preferrably material from both sides of the political fence). In scientific questions where one needed more advanced knowledge, you ought to at least have studied the field somewhat. Extensive personal experience on a subject would also be a way to become qualified, even if you hadn't studied the issue academically.
The purpose of this would be to enforce epistemic hygiene. Conversations on things such as public policy are frequently overwhelmed by loud declarations of opinion from people who, quite honestly, don't know anything on the subject they have a strong opinion on. If we had in place a social norm demanding an adequate amount of background knowledge on the topic before anyone voiced an opinion they expected to be taken seriously, the signal/noise ratio might be somewhat improved. This kind of a social norm does seem to already be somewhat in place in many scientific communities, but it'd do good to spread it to the general public.
At the same time, there are several caveats. As I am myself a strong advocate on freedom of speech, I find it important to note that this must remain a *social* norm, not a government-advocated one or anything that is in any way codified into law. Also, the standards must not be set *too* high - even amateurs should be able to engage in the conversation, provided that they know at least the basics. Likewise, one must be careful that the principle isn't abused, with "you don't have a right to have an opinion on this" being a generic argument used to dismiss any opposing claims.