DaystarEld

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All good points, and yeah I did consider the issue of "appeals" but considered "accept the judgement you get" part of the implicit (or even explicit if necessary) agreeement made when raising that flag in the first place. Maybe it would require both people to mutually accept it.

But I'm glad the "pool of people" variation was tried, even if it wasn’t sustainable as volunteer work.

FWIW, I don't avoid posting because of worries of criticism or nitpicking at all. I can't recall a moment that's ever happened.

But I do avoid posting once in a while, and avoid commenting, because I don't always have enough confidence that, if things start to move in an unproductive way, there will be any *resolution* to that.

If I'd been on Lesswrong a lot 10 years ago, this wouldn't stop me much. I used to be very... well, not happy exactly, but willing, to spend hours fighting the good fight and highlighting all the ways people are being bullies or engaging in bad argument norms or polluting the epistemic commons or using performative Dark Arts and so on.

But moderators of various sites (not LW) have often failed to be able to adjudicate such situations to my satisfaction, and over time I just felt like it wasn't worth the effort in most cases.

From what I've observed, LW mod team is far better than most sites at this. But when I imagine a nearer-to-perfect-world, it does include a lot more "heavy handed" moderation in the form of someone outside of an argument being willing and able to judge and highlight whether someone is failing in some essential way to be a productive conversation partner.

I'm not sure what the best way to do this would be, mechanically, given realistic time and energy constraints. Maybe a special "Flag a moderator" button that has a limited amount of uses per month (increased by account karma?) that calls in a mod to read over the thread and adjudicate? Maybe even that would be too onerous, but *shrugs* There's probably a scale at which it is valuable for most people while still being insufficient for someone like Duncan. Maybe the amount decreases each time you're ruled against.

Overall I don't want to overpromise something like "if LW has a stronger concentration of force expectation for good conversation norms I'd participate 100x more instead of just reading." But 10x more to begin with, certainly, and maybe more than that over time.

Strong agree. The interesting coordination/incentive questions that come to mind are things like:

  1. Would it help to make criticism have diminishing returns on social status?
  2. Would it help if contribution/building boosts criticism visibility?
  3. How does a society/garden reach the most productive equilibrium of Socrates? The ideal world where each Socrates is doing something meaningfully different from each other is hard to arrive at while each individually feels like they are Fighting the Good Fight.

Thank you both for writing this and sharing your thoughts on the ecosystem in general. It's always heartening for me, even just as someone who occasionally visits the Bay, to see the amount of attention and thought being put into the effects of things like this on not just the ecosystem there, but also the broader ecosystem that I mostly interact with and work in. Posts like this make me slightly more hopeful for the community's general health prospects.

Hey Blasted, thanks for sharing :) I remember enjoying Well, will try to check out the others when I get a chance.

Thanks for posting this Adam! (For those that don't know, I'm Damon)

I think another writing competition would be a good way to encourage stories like this, and am considering what the best way to structure that might be.

Meanwhile, to add a bit more to the sorts of stories I think would be good to see, I think fiction is powerful because it not just allows to grapple with unusual or alien ideas, but also, if written from the perspective of characters with rich inner lives, see the world through a different lens and perspective. When we’re engaged in a character’s experience, their thoughts and reactions and emotions, some part of us can download what it’s like to be that sort of person, and can give us a blueprint for how to act in that sort of situation. 

Many people outside of the community don’t know what it’s like to be someone who grapples with problems this big, and many people inside of it are desperate for “better” ways to orient to topics that can be frightening, depressing, or painful to think of, such as widespread suffering in the world, or X-risk.

Which is why, among the other types of AI Fables I'd love to see is at least one story about the struggles, internal and external, of a character facing a problem that threatens the world, all while still mostly going about a day-to-day life. 

Most stories don’t cover that in particular because most protagonists dealing with such stakes are in constant struggle against it throughout the story. But in our world, for X-risks we face, that's just not true. Whether you're trying to prevent nuclear winter or prevent unaligned AGI, you'll end up spending most of your time among people or in a broader culture that isn't particularly concerned about it, and in the latter case will likely think you're kind of weird for worrying about it.

Characters in fiction can do more than entertain or inform us by their actions; they can also inspire us, and give us frames and mental models to help handle difficult emotional situations. 

If you have ideas for short stories that might show that, or anything else Adam mentioned, feel free to message me too. Also feel free to reach out if you have thoughts on the best way to solicit such stories; I'm tentatively planning to put something together for late April or May.

I agree that "asserting what someone is doing" can also be considered frame control or manipulation. But I think it's much less often so, or much less dark artsy, because it's referencing observable behavior rather than unverifiable/unfalsifiable elements.

Meanwhile the guru might be supplementing this with non-frame-control techniques. When they argue with you, they imply (maybe in a kind but firm voice, maybe with an undertone of social threat) that you're kinda stupid for disagreeing for them

 

This exact implication isn't frame control, but the common thing I've seen gurus do that is more subtle is assert why you disagree with them in a way that reinforces their frame. 

"Kinda stupid" is overly crude, and might be spotted and feel off even among those who believe in them, but implying you just don't "get" what they're saying because you're unenlightened or not ready for it is very effective at quieting dissent and maintaining their control.

In general this is why I dislike any attempts to assert with confidence what someone thinks or feels, as well as why. I may be one of the only therapists who hates psychoanalysis, but I maintain that it's almost always a bad thing to to anyone who isn't inviting it, and sometimes even then.

I don't think it's particularly stupid to think this might work; it is in fact how most of our ancestors oriented to relationships. We just have higher standards, these days... for good and for ill.

Great post, will add it to my Relationships Orientations guide.

I will note that society somewhat seems to depend on people prioritizing Building relationships over Entertaining ones, and this is certainly how things worked in the old days such that most of our parents and ancestors did not have the luxury to choose the most entertaining partners. Our standards as a whole have raised when it comes to relationships, in part due to unrealistic fictional representations, but our selective processes for finding partners have not increased proportionally. 

It is still (probably) better in most cases to try and find the most happiness you can with a Building relationship if you do want a family, than trying to build a life with someone who primarily fulfills the Entertainment criteria, so long as you and your partner can at least reach stable "contentment." But people who do so should be very prepared for it to be genuinely hard to maintain a positive relationship with someone over decades without that "spark," hence the frequency of infidelity and divorce.

Life is just not optimized to give most people ~everything they want in a partner, which can suck to realize, but is (plausibly) important not to fool ourselves about, particularly for monogamous people.

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