I think there is a tradeoff being elided here between exploring and exploiting. I don't think it works well in the improv case just because comedy is supposed to be absurd or whatever.
If there's lots of "low-hanging fruit" spread throughout the search space (as in comedy), then a pure "yes and" strategy can be effective and efficient. But if the proverbial fruit is very rare and hard to reach, it make sense to more strictly prune certain pathways according to validated principles and heuristics. The cost of such validation is a key factor in which approach is optimal.
When it comes to collaborative truthseeking, I don't think there's always a specific side of the explore-exploit tradeoff that makes sense. Even with something like math, it often makes sense to start by "brainstorming" (i.e. use a "yes and" strategy), which gives everyone a better sense of the space. This can be followed up with by pointing out the potential problems with each idea (often cheaper to batch this kind of processing), at which point maybe a more focused brainstorming finds the key insight, and then the solution is written up rigorously (i.e. with a "no because" strategy).
(None of which is to say I don't think it's usually a good idea to clear up confusions or misconceptions during this sort of activity.)
I was trying to find some references for this but it is common sense enough anyway.
From an active inference (or more generally bayesian) perspective you can view this process as finding a shared generative model to go from. So to reiterate what you said: "yes and" is good for improv as you say but if you have a core disagreement in your model and you do inference from that you're gonna end up being confused. (Meta: pointing at sameness)
I really like the idea of generating a core of "sameness" as a consequence. By finding the common ground in your models you can then start to deal with the things that you don't share and this usually leads to better results according to conflict resolution theory than going at it directly. So the "no because" only makes sense after a degree of sameness (which you can also have beforehand).
(Meta: Difference introduction from the sameness frame)
One of the best forums I knew was homeschooling place, that was officially anti-vax. it was really bad at true-seeking, but I learned there so much. it turned out there are a lot of things that doesn't get said in places that are no default-collaborative. my models of people and societies much better because I was there. and also I leaved when I couldn't endure the idea that I'm bad and wrong for pointing out obvious falsehoods.
I don't think you can seek true without pointing out at false thing and saying they are false. but also, this way of thinking tend to be blind to all of the things that can exist only in places where there is good faith assumption. there is a lot of sharing of information, of ability to say or write socially forbidden truths.
and I think most places are far far away from the Pareto front.
the way to collaboratively say "I don't understand" include demonstrating Good Faith - trying to come up with two hypotheses, trying to understand in a way legible to the people reading it.
you can disagree without blocking. more effort needed to be invested, and it's coordination problem, without norms it can lead to bad places when the less busy person win without regard to truth.
but when it works, it works better then the bad-faith-allowing place. disagreements with good faith are harder, but are more rational.
I'm thinking a lot about the way that my good faith heuristics, that I got from place that was atrocious at truth-seeking, is so good at promoting it. this is because it forbid very frequent failure mode of irrationality. people who decided the other side is enemy tend to interpret things not in the most correct way, but in the most strawman-y way. it's very very bad, and it's dynamic that prevent thinking and understanding.
Analogous to the way the actor playing Agent Stone accepts not the demand to surrender, but accepts the premise that he is held hostage, at gunpoint, and called Agent Stone - what might be an example of such acceptance in polite debate?
Off the top of my head, Prince, arguably one of the greatest guitarists in pop music once demurred on another of the greatest guitarists in pop music Jimmy Page:
“Jimmy Page was cool"..."but he couldn’t keep a sequence without John Bonham behind him. He went from one to four without stopping at two and three.”
How could one "yes, and..." this premise? As I see it there are two propositions asserted here: 1. "Jimmy page was cool", 2. Jimmy page couldn't keep a sequence, therefore John Bonham's drumming covered for him
The actor playing Agent Stone doesn't need to acquiesce to the surrender [1] presumably in some fictional dialogue with Prince, I don't need to accept either of his propositions about Jimmy Page... but what form would "yes, and..." take on in this imaginary dialogue?
I contend that would be boring improv anyway. Comedy and Drama thrive on obstacles. It's boring if Odysseus goes straight home. This is particularly so in improv. Hence you need your improv partner to put up obstacles. These offers afford comical ways of resolving them.
Surrendering is the boring option. In the same way that if the Dr. Skull character were a sleazy salesman and tries to sell Agent Stone a Time share, and he said "sure, I'll buy it" - there's no comedy - he needs to resist, and the efforts to cajole, deceive, and convince is where the comedy comes from.
Rik Mayal and Alexei Sayle illustrated this brilliantly in their parody of Monty Python's Cheese Shop sketch which is an exception that proves the rule - Sayle conflating with a minister of Silly Walks asks "is this a cheese shop?", and Mayal in the Palin/Wenselydale role simply replies "no sir". Sayle breaks the fourth wall:
"Well, that's that sketch knackered then, in'nt?"
The original sketch requires Palin to presage the sycophantic replies of contemporary LLMs, by stringing John Cleese's character along without ever admitting that there isn't any actual cheese in the store.
I the subversion funny? Of course. But wouldn't make for good improv as it's all over in like 7 seconds.
Scott Garrabrant gives a number of examples to illustrate that "Yes Requires the Possibility of No". We can understand the principle in terms of information theory. Consider the answer to a yes-or-no question as a binary random variable. The "amount of information" associated with a random variable is quantified by the entropy, the expected value of the negative logarithm of the probability of the outcome. If we know in advance of asking that the answer to the question will always be Yes, then the entropy is −P(Yes)·log(P(Yes)) − P(No)·log(P(No)) = −1·log(1) − 0·log(0) = 0.[1] If you already knew what the answer would be, then the answer contains no information; you didn't learn anything new by asking.
In the art of improvisational theater ("improv" for short), actors perform scenes that they make up as they go along. Without a script, each actor's choices of what to say and do amount to implied assertions about the fictional reality being portrayed, which have implications for how the other actors should behave. A choice that establishes facts or gives direction to the scene is called an offer. If an actor opens a scene by asking their partner, "Is it serious, Doc?", that's an offer that the first actor is playing a patient awaiting diagnosis, and the second actor is playing a doctor.
A key principle of improv is often known as "Yes, and" after an exercise that involves starting replies with those words verbatim, but the principle is broader and doesn't depend on the particular words used: actors should "accept" offers ("Yes"), and respond with their own complementary offers ("and"). The practice of "Yes, and" is important for maintaining momentum while building out the reality of the scene.
Rejecting an offer is called blocking, and is frowned upon. If one actor opens the scene with, "Surrender, Agent Stone, or I'll shoot these hostages!"—establishing a scene in which they're playing an armed villain being confronted by an Agent Stone—it wouldn't do for their partner to block by replying, "That's not my name, you don't have a gun, and there are no hostages." That would halt the momentum and confuse the audience. Better for the second actor to say, "Go ahead and shoot, Dr. Skull! You'll find that my double agent on your team has stolen your bullets"—accepting the premise ("Yes"), then adding new elements to the scene ("and", the villain's name and the double agent).
Notice a subtlety: the Agent Stone character isn't "Yes, and"-ing the Dr. Skull character's demand to surrender. Rather, the second actor is "Yes, and"-ing the first actor's worldbuilding offers (where the offer happens to involve their characters being in conflict). Novice improvisers are sometimes tempted to block to try to control the scene when they don't like their partner's offers, but it's almost always a mistake. Persistently blocking your partner's offers kills the vibe, and with it, the scene. No one wants to watch two people arguing back-and-forth about what reality is.
Proponents of collaborative truthseeking think that many discussions benefit from a more "open" or "interpretive" mode in which participants prioritize constructive contributions that build on each other's work rather than tearing each other down.
The analogy to improv's "Yes, and" doctrine writes itself, right down to the subtlety that collaborative truthseeking does not discourage disagreement as such—any more than the characters in an improv sketch aren't allowed to be in conflict. What's discouraged is the persistent blocking of offers, refusing to cooperate with the "scene" of discourse your partner is trying to build. Partial disagreement with polite elaboration ("I see what you're getting at, but have you considered ...") is typically part of the offer—that we're "playing" reasonable people having a cooperative intellectual discussion. Only wholesale negation ("That's not a thing") is blocking—by rejecting the offer that we're both playing reasonable people.
Whatever you might privately think of your interlocutor's contribution, it's not hard to respond in a constructive manner without lying. Like a good improv actor, you can accept their contribution to the scene/discourse ("Yes"), then add your own contribution ("and"). If nothing else, you can write about how their comment reminded you of something else you've read, and your thoughts about that.
Reading over a discussion conducted under such norms, it's easy to not see a problem. People are building on each other's contributions; information is being exchanged. That's good, right?
The problem is that while the individual comments might (or might not) make sense when read individually, the harmonious social exchange of mutually building on each other's contributions isn't really a conversation unless the replies connect to each other in a less superficial way that risks blocking.
What happens when someone says something wrong or confusing or unclear? If their interlocutor prioritizes correctness and clarity, the natural behavior is to say, "No, that's wrong, because ..." or "No, I didn't understand that"—and not only that, but to maintain that "No" until clarity is forthcoming. That's blocking. It feels much more cooperative to let it pass in order to keep the scene going—with the result that falsehood, confusion, and unclarity accumulate as the interaction goes on.
There's a reason improv is almost synonymous with improv comedy. Comedy thrives on absurdity: much of the thrill and joy of improv comedy is in appreciating what lengths of cleverness the actors will go to maintain the energy of a scene that has long since lost any semblance of coherence or plausibility. The rules that work for improv comedy don't even work for (non-improvised, dramatic) fiction; it certainly won't work for philosophy.
Per Garrabrant's principle, the only way an author could reliably expect discussion of their work to illuminate what they're trying to communicate is if they knew they were saying something the audence already believed. If you're thinking carefully about what the other person said, you're often going to end up saying "No" or "I don't understand", not just "Yes, and": if you're committed to validating your interlocutor's contribution to the scene before providing your own, you're not really talking to each other.
I'm glossing over a technical subtlety here by assuming—pretending?—that 0·log(0) = 0, when log(0) is actually undefined. But it's the correct thing to pretend, because the linear factor goes to zero faster than can go to negative infinity. Formally: ↩︎