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sixes_and_sevens comments on Norms survey (dead) - Less Wrong Discussion
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We should believe that our beliefs, taboos and practises are subject to change based on future evidence and circumstance, much of which is unknown, or even unknowable, at this time.
We also suppose that codifying them will add both a cognitive and administrative overhead to carrying out such changes.
It may be useful to codify beliefs in particular as "what we believed in (May of) 2011" rather than "what we believe". That seems to me like it will cut down on a lot of the overhead - there's much less implication that someone should believe any particular thing on the list, and it's more obvious that 'so what?' or 'yes, because...' are good responses to 'you don't believe [particular thing] any more!'.
I'm not sure that beliefs are an appropriate thing to have in a list of LW norms in the first place, though. There are some obvious ones that seem to belong here, like the belief that believing true things is generally likely to be helpful, but other than that, well, changing beliefs is what we're about; our norms should be something a bit more meta than that.
That's an interesting point, actually. If it were a descriptive exercise rather than a normative one, it could have merit as a historical record.
Perhaps add a version number with a datestamp?
I took the categories of the norms from this post you made earlier. The 'updating based on evidence' seemed more like a skill than a belief, and the other two categories you mention explicitly. If they end up not being a useful division, then they'll end up getting changed. I don't have any investment in them.
Eh?
I mentioned updating beliefs based on evidence, and acting based on one's beliefs, but not having particular beliefs in general. The last bit, about the list of common beliefs, was meant to be along the lines of "If you believe A, you should do B. If you believe C, you should do D. If you believe E...", not a list of endorsed beliefs.
Also, rationalist taboo is not about taboos in the usual sense.
Oh, so it isn't. Oops. Hm.
Norms do usually contain taboos, but there isn't any particular reason that we have to. Should that category be deleted, or do we have things that we think should be taboo?
One that springs to mind as a possibility would be the use of the Dark Arts.
edit - I was thinking that our list of endorsed beliefs would be slightly more basic, things like 'rationality is worth pursuing' or something. http://lds.org/library/display/0,4945,106-1-2-1,FF.html is the small amount of norms that the LDS church has codified as an easy reference to point potential converts to, and while I don't like the idea of converting people, being able to point to a set of beliefs that sounds boringly sane might be a good thing.
Codifying taboos seems reasonable if we're codifying norms in general - taboos are basically norms of not doing certain things, after all.
We seem to have a pretty strong norm of not lying to each other, and a weaker (and possibly not generally endorsed) norm of not talking about any religious or spiritual practices that we might have.
Not lying to each other sounds like a very good one.
Both of these seem true. Making our norms rigid will decrease our ability to adapt, and codifying them will make them harder to change.
If the group consensus ends up determining that this isn't a worthwhile endeavor, then I'll delete the article and if anyone wishes to contact me I'll apologize for the wasted time involved.