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.

short-sighted and incomplete understanding of social dynamics and ethics.

Still nitpicking here, but this seems to me to be related to the most important difference between norms and rules: Norms apply to normal situations and leave room for personal judgement; rules apply to all situations and generally don't.

I expect that it is normally not a good thing to punch someone in the face - that something more than 60% of a random sampling of non-consensual face-punches would generally be considered on reflection to have been a bad idea. If that's true (and I'll grant that I'm not terribly confident of it), then having a norm of reacting to the information that a given person has punched someone in the face as if that's indicative of a significant lapse in judgement seems reasonable. If there are extenuating circumstances, then that can be taken into account, and it's not 'breaking a rule' to do so and conclude that the normal response is inappropriate. It doesn't even disprove the usefulness of the norm, whereas finding a situation where a rule leads to poor results can be taken to prove that the rule needs changing.

(I don't necessarily advocate this specific norm here, though. I haven't thought enough about it to weigh in one way or the other.)

There is a difference between thinking that on average punching people in the face is a dumbass move and codifying a norm to the effect.

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Norms survey (dead)

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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