Norms survey (dead)

Cayenne

Edit - Barring a major surprise, this post should be regarded as a worthless artifact of my impulse to do things instead of talking about them. I apologize for any time wasted on this, and would recommend ignoring it unless it is for historical purposes. I'll just stick to things I'm less bad at from now on.

This article will be edited as people post and discuss.

I believe that we need to have a clear, concise statement about the beliefs, practices, and taboos that it is rational to hold, and that we already hold as a group. To be clear, this is not an attempt to make new norms, but an attempt to codify the ones that we already hold and to get a rough estimate of the popularity/importance of each.

Core Rational - skills, meta-beliefs, and habits that enhance personal rationality

Social Rational - norms that enhance working in groups rationally

LessWrong Norms - norms for dealing with Less Wrong specifically

Common Knowledge - basic, useful beliefs to build on

Please post one phrase at a time and then give your reasoning under it. Once any idea has a common consensus, I'll add it to this article in the appropriate list.

Edited - Removed the word 'should' as someone has suggested a better phrasing. Edited again - category change, remove extra now-useless examples.

This article will be edited as people post and discuss.

Core Rational - skills, meta-beliefs, and habits that enhance personal rationality

Social Rational - norms that enhance working in groups rationally

LessWrong Norms - norms for dealing with Less Wrong specifically

Common Knowledge - basic, useful beliefs to build on

Please post one phrase at a time and then give your reasoning under it. Once any idea has a common consensus, I'll add it to this article in the appropriate list.

Edited - Removed the word 'should' as someone has suggested a better phrasing. Edited again - category change, remove extra now-useless examples.

Be very careful what you assert, even if it's true. It's really easy to start with good ideas and end up with a doctrine.

If you make a statement like "we should believe cryonics is desirable" or even something as basic (for LW) as "we believe in reductionism", it's really easy to exclude or piss off all the people we actually want to reach.

A very minimal set of skepticism might work. Something like RAW's advice in Prometheus Rising: "Avoid coming to any strong conclusions prematurely. [...] Believe it possible that you do not know everything yet, and that you might have something still to learn."

I meant those as examples only. I would welcome suggestions on less-offensive alternatives.

1

Norms survey (dead)

1

Please post one phrase at a time and then give your reasoning under it. Once any idea has a common consensus, I'll add it to this article in the appropriate list.

1

1

Norms survey (dead)

1

Please post one phrase at a time and then give your reasoning under it. Once any idea has a common consensus, I'll add it to this article in the appropriate list.

1