Finally, even after a re-read and showing your comment to two other people seeking alternative interpretations, I think you did say the thing you claim not to have said. Perhaps you meant to say something else, in which case I’d suggest editing to say whatever you meant to say. I would suggest an edit myself, but in this case I don’t know what it was you meant to say.
I’ve edited the relevant section. The edit was simply “This is also pretty common in other debate formats (though I don’t know how common in BP in particular)”.
By contrast, criticisms I think mostly don’t make sense:
+ Goodharting + Anything to the effect of ‘the speakers might end up believing what they are saying’, especially at top levels. Like, these people were randomly assigned positions, have probably been assigned the roughly opposite position at some point, and are not idiots.
Alas, those are indeed my primary concerns. It’s of course totally OK if you are not compelled, but I have no idea how you are so confident to dismiss them. Having talked to multiple people who have participated in high-level debate in multiple formats, those are the criticisms that they level as well, including for formats very similar to BP, and for BP in-particular.
I have now watched multiple videos of BP debate, and I wish I didn’t because my guesses of what it would look like were basically right, and I feel like I wasted two hours of my time watching BP debates because you insisted that for some reason I am not allowed to make claims from very nearby points of evidence, even though as far as I can tell after spending those two hours, most of my concerns are on-point and BP looks just like most other forms of debate I’ve seen.
I knew when I wrote the above comment that BP debates look less immediately goodharted. But after engaging more deeply with it, I would be surprised if it is actually much less goodharted. Of course, 4 debates at 2x speed isn’t really enough to judge the whole category, but given that I’ve watched dozens of other debates in multiple other formats, I feel like I’ve pinpointed the type of debate that BP is pretty well in debate space.
Of course, you can insist that only people intimately familiar with the format participate in this discussion, in which case I of course cannot clear that bar, and neither can almost anyone else on the forum (and this will of course heavily select against anyone who is critical of debate).
Let me take a step back. Look… I feel super frustrated by your comment above. I am trying to contribute a number of points to this discussion that feel important, and you now twice just kind of insinuated that I am unfairly biased or being unreasonable without really backing up your points? Like, your comments have been super stressful, and the associated downvotes have felt pretty bad. I think the arguments I’ve made in my comments are pretty straightforward, I stayed civil, and I don’t think I am being particularly irrational about this topic.
I’ve thought about it for 2-3 dozen hours over the years and at multiple points in the last few years have spent full-time work weeks evaluating whether we should have a debate tradition inside of EA as well, which caused me to think through a lot of the relevant considerations and investigate a substantial number of debate formats. I’ve talked to something like 8 people with extensive debate experience in EA for at least an hour and tried to get a sense of what things worked and what didn’t.
And then you come along and just assert:
Overall, I’m left with the distinct impression that you’ve made up your mind on this based on a bad personal experience, and that nothing is likely to change that view.
And this… just feels really unfair? Indeed, phenomenologically, my debate experiences were great. I didn’t have a random bad experience that somehow soured me towards this whole sport. I was positive on it, and then thought about it for at least a dozen hours in total and overall came to a complicated high-level position that overall was a lot more hesitant. I have separately also thought for at least a literal 1000 by-the-clock-hours about our talent funnels and the epistemic norms I want the community to have and how the two interact.
My position also isn’t categorically opposed to debate at all. Indeed, I am personally likely to cause EA and the Rationality community to have more of a debating institution internally, and continue to feel conflicted about this project. I think it’s quite plausible it’s good, but I would want the organizers to think hard about how to avoid the problems that seem pretty deeply embedded in debate, and how to avoid them damaging the social institutions of EA, or attract people that might otherwise cause harm.
I don’t know. It’s fine for you to think I am being irrational about this topic, or for some reason to categorically dismiss the kind of concern that I am having, but I don’t feel like you’ve really justified either of those assertions, and I perceived them both coming with some kind of social slap-down motion that made participating in this thread much more stressful than necessary. I will disengage for now. I hope the people involved in this project make good choices.
I’ve edited the relevant section. The edit was simply “This is also pretty common in other debate formats (though I don’t know how common in BP in particular)”.
Alas, those are indeed my primary concerns. It’s of course totally OK if you are not compelled, but I have no idea how you are so confident to dismiss them. Having talked to multiple people who have participated in high-level debate in multiple formats, those are the criticisms that they level as well, including for formats very similar to BP, and for BP in-particular.
I have now watched multiple videos of BP debate, and I wish I didn’t because my guesses of what it would look like were basically right, and I feel like I wasted two hours of my time watching BP debates because you insisted that for some reason I am not allowed to make claims from very nearby points of evidence, even though as far as I can tell after spending those two hours, most of my concerns are on-point and BP looks just like most other forms of debate I’ve seen.
I knew when I wrote the above comment that BP debates look less immediately goodharted. But after engaging more deeply with it, I would be surprised if it is actually much less goodharted. Of course, 4 debates at 2x speed isn’t really enough to judge the whole category, but given that I’ve watched dozens of other debates in multiple other formats, I feel like I’ve pinpointed the type of debate that BP is pretty well in debate space.
Of course, you can insist that only people intimately familiar with the format participate in this discussion, in which case I of course cannot clear that bar, and neither can almost anyone else on the forum (and this will of course heavily select against anyone who is critical of debate).
Let me take a step back. Look… I feel super frustrated by your comment above. I am trying to contribute a number of points to this discussion that feel important, and you now twice just kind of insinuated that I am unfairly biased or being unreasonable without really backing up your points? Like, your comments have been super stressful, and the associated downvotes have felt pretty bad. I think the arguments I’ve made in my comments are pretty straightforward, I stayed civil, and I don’t think I am being particularly irrational about this topic.
I’ve thought about it for 2-3 dozen hours over the years and at multiple points in the last few years have spent full-time work weeks evaluating whether we should have a debate tradition inside of EA as well, which caused me to think through a lot of the relevant considerations and investigate a substantial number of debate formats. I’ve talked to something like 8 people with extensive debate experience in EA for at least an hour and tried to get a sense of what things worked and what didn’t.
And then you come along and just assert:
And this… just feels really unfair? Indeed, phenomenologically, my debate experiences were great. I didn’t have a random bad experience that somehow soured me towards this whole sport. I was positive on it, and then thought about it for at least a dozen hours in total and overall came to a complicated high-level position that overall was a lot more hesitant. I have separately also thought for at least a literal 1000 by-the-clock-hours about our talent funnels and the epistemic norms I want the community to have and how the two interact.
My position also isn’t categorically opposed to debate at all. Indeed, I am personally likely to cause EA and the Rationality community to have more of a debating institution internally, and continue to feel conflicted about this project. I think it’s quite plausible it’s good, but I would want the organizers to think hard about how to avoid the problems that seem pretty deeply embedded in debate, and how to avoid them damaging the social institutions of EA, or attract people that might otherwise cause harm.
I don’t know. It’s fine for you to think I am being irrational about this topic, or for some reason to categorically dismiss the kind of concern that I am having, but I don’t feel like you’ve really justified either of those assertions, and I perceived them both coming with some kind of social slap-down motion that made participating in this thread much more stressful than necessary. I will disengage for now. I hope the people involved in this project make good choices.