I have several problems with including this in the 2018 review. The first is that it's community-navel-gaze-y - if it's not the kind of thing we allow on the frontpage because of concerns about newcomers seeing a bunch of in-group discussion, then it seems like we definitely wouldn't want it to be in a semi-public-facing book, either.
The second is that I've found that most discussion of the concept of 'status' in rationalist circles to be pretty uniformly unproductive, and maybe even counterproductive. People generally only discuss 'status' when they're feeling a lack of it, which means that discussions around the subject are often fraught and can be a bit of an echo chamber. I have not personally found any post about status to be enlightening or to have changed the way I think.
My other concerns have to do with specific parts of the post:
How is worth generated? Quite simply, by giving praise.
This is unsubstantiated and confusing in a whole host of ways. First, what is 'worth' supposed to mean? Toon seems to say it means something along the lines of "we will grant you personhood and take you seriously and allow you onto the ark when the world comes crumbling." If I had to sum
I appreciate your review.
Most of your review assumes that my intent was to promote praise regardless of honesty, but quite the opposite is true. My intent was for people to pause, take a breath, think for a few moments what good things others are doing, and then thank them for it, but only if they felt compelled to do so.
Or I'll put it this way: it's not about pretending to like things, it's about putting more attention to the things about others that you already like. It's about gratefulness, good faith and recognition. It's about validating those that are already on the right track, to embolden them and secure them.
And this works to the extent that it is genuine. If you don't feel what you say, people will notice and discard your opinion. Congruency is an obvious first step that I didn't include in the post because I assumed it to be obvious.
But of course not getting that point across is all on me. I suppose I could have written a better post.
That said, please give genuine and true praise, and please make sure that your praise correlates to real things.
If you praise someone for being hard-working and creative, and then two days later announce that you're looking for someone hard-working and creative to fill a position in your company, please don't turn down the person that you praised two days ago. It makes all further praise that you offer feel meaningless.
Basically, praise should be an *accurate signal* that you are awarding someone social capital.
Now that I've said that, I realize that I've said things like it before, and most rationalists seem to respond by *giving less praise*, instead of awarding more social capital. This seems tragic and a little cruel.
How about we award people way more social capital than we currently are, and then praise them in proportion to the social capital we're awarding?
I think sufficiently imprecise praise can even be net-negative for someone's worth, because their internal monologue might still be doubting or denying your praise. I wrote a post a few years ago on how to provide Specific Positivity:
With specific positivity, you try to give someone evidence that they should be praised, rather than praise itself. They don’t bristle or argue, because all you’ve given them is a description of your own experience. The recipient of your compliment can then use your descriptive evidence to compliment themselves. This is the goal, anyway- get them to feel good by recognizing the good they’ve done or been.
Compliments aren't necessarily easy, but I agree that they're worthwhile.
I've definitely noticed, in the very slow process of improving my social skills, that people (in general, and me in particular) don't give nearly enough compliments or praise relative to the optimum. Past me just didn't notice when there was a good place for a compliment - the skill that I improved was fundamentally a noticing skill. I also benefited a lot from understanding the psychological idea of validation - people want validation, not just praise for any old thing.
Re: working on a specific thing. I have more or less accepted that the amount of praise one gets will not fit one's needs. There's a fame effect that causes a fat tail, and no particular reward for merely trying, which I think is necessary given the number of non-experts and how easy it is to produce bad work without noticing it. I definitely have to work on intrinsic motivation.
I've asked around, and it even seems to be considered "normal" in most (non-systematizing) communities to habitually give praise. It's even apparently something people regard as necessary for proper psychological health. But honestly, apart from volunteering at CFAR, I can't recall getting much praise for anything I've done for the community.
I think there are many "standard well-being norms" that LW, and seeing this lack has often shocked me. Giving praise seems like super low hanging fruit, and I want to signal boos...
My impression is that in-group status is always, inherently zero-sum.
While the influence/worth distinction may be a relevant one, I think it'd be relative worth that satisfies status-as-social-need.
Praise certainly meets other emotional needs, though, and it may well be rational to have more of it.
The dominant model about status in LW seems to be one of relative influence.
I don't understand what that means. I understand that the core of your post is "giving more praise would be good", and this quote isn't the point, but I don't understand it. What is a "status model"? Is it something LW inherently has, or something that each user has separately? "Social status", is a sort of score assigned to each person, that we mostly agree on (that's what makes is social). So I can say "EY has high status in...
It's coming. We need to get more skilled at our rationality first. The more we can break new ground, the more we can see others for the amazing work they do and recognise their progress.
Just a mod note that I've moved this post back to your personal blog, Toon, as the frontpage isn't for meta discussion of the site or the communities around it.
[Edit] Thanks all for letting me know this mod action seemed confusing/wrong; I've written a (brief) further explanation in Meta here.
And also my apologies - as Oli said, we'll not be as responsive at the moment due to some other commitments that will conclude in the next one or two months.
The dominant model about status in LW seems to be one of relative influence. Necessarily, it's zero-sum. So we throw up our hands and accept that half the community is just going to run a deficit.
Here's a different take: status in the sense of worth. Here's a set of things we like, or here's a set of problems for you to solve, and if you do, you will pass the bar and we will grant you personhood and take you seriously and allow you onto the ark when the world comes crumbling. Worth is positive-sum.
I think both models are useful, but only one of these models underlies the emotional need we call status. I think it's the latter.
Another assumption: humans are satisficers. Those that claim to the contrary have never been satisfied. An unsatisfied satisficer acts like a maximizer. I think that Maslov got pretty close with his hierarchy of needs. Not the specific set of needs, not necessarily their order, but the idea of humans working on one need at the time, until satisfaction, so that the next need comes up.
It seems to me that many of us are stuck at the status level, and I think getting past it makes us surely happier and plausibly more effective.
How is worth generated? Quite simply, by giving praise. You either find your behavior exceeding a standard that the community agreed on, or someone actually tells you you're doing well. The latter seems more powerful.
I've asked around, and it even seems to be considered "normal" in most (non-systematizing) communities to habitually give praise. It's even apparently something people regard as necessary for proper psychological health. But honestly, apart from volunteering at CFAR, I can't recall getting much praise for anything I've done for the community. As a result I never quite feel like I'm doing enough, edging on burnout a few times. Reminds me of pica. Does working on AI Safety ever get me the sense of worth I'm looking for, or should I give up?
So I'd like to suggest we try for Giving Praise as a rationalist virtue. It might just be a staple of group rationality.