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.
Of course the norm would be "don't reply to words with violence", not "it is irrational to reply to words with violence".
By the same token, taboos are not actions that it is irrational to take, taboos are either actions that it's bad to take (prescriptively) or actions that it's frowned upon to take (descriptively).
Rationality is not generic virtuousness and irrationality generic sinfulness. "Rational" is not a label you slap on something when you want to endorse it. At least it shouldn't be ;)
Let's try codify our norms.
Fuck that!
The above seems to be the most natural translation of my instinctive evaluation of the suggestion. I expect such a process of codification to have a negative effect on the community. Any reference to such a code would be an obnoxious interruption for reasons similar to those Eliezer recently mentioned.
Codify concepts not norms.
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.
We don't know what beliefs, practices and taboos it is rational to hold. They're probably not the same ones that we already hold as a group. Thus we won't discover them by just investigating the ones we currently have.
Decide whether you want to list what norms LW has, or to investigate what norms it would be "rational" to have (a loftier project to say the least).
Can you explain why this is a very high priority for you?
Any phrase beginning with "we should believe that" seems outright irrational. Rational beliefs are grow from evidence, not moral reasoning of any kind.
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."
We should encourage and support self-experimentation by our members.
Unless the experiment is obviously harming the experimenter, encouraging this will help us find more efficient ways of doing things. I think that respecting a fellow rationalist's decision is a way of respecting their rationality as well.
We should have a clear and concise list of our norms.
This will give us a clearer picture of what is expected of us, by us.
'Social norms are the behavioral expectations and cues within a society or group. This sociological term has been defined as "the rules that a group uses for appropriate and inappropriate values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. These rules may be explicit or implicit.' - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norm_(sociology)
Without explicit norms, we invite debates over exactly what a 'real' rationalist should believe, and whether or not ...
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.