David—you make some excellent points here. I agree that being agreeable vs. disagreeable might be largely orthogonal to playing the ‘inside game’ vs. the ‘outside game’. (Except that highly disagreeable people trying to play the inside game might get ostracized from inside-game organizations, e.g. fired from OpenAI.)
From my evolutionary psychology perspective, if agreeableness always worked for influencing others, we’d have all evolved to be highly agreeable; if disagreeableness always worked, we’d all have evolved to be highly disagreeable. The basic fact that people differ in the Big Five trait of Agreeableness (we psychologists tend to capitalize well-established personality traits) suggests that, at the trait level, there are mixed costs and benefits for being at any point along the Agreeableness spectrum. And of course, at the situation level, there are also mixed costs and benefits for pursuing agreeable vs. disagreeable strategies in any particular social context.
So, I think there are valid roles for people to use a variety of persuasion and influence tactics when doing advocacy work, and playing the outside game. On X/Twitter for example, I tend to be pretty disagreeable when I’m arguing with the ‘e/acc’ folks who dismiss AI safety concerns—partly because they often use highly disagreeable rhetoric when criticizing ‘AI Doomers’ like me. But I tend to be more agreeable when trying to persuade people I consider more open-minded, rational, and well-informed.
I guess EAs can do some self-reflection about their own personality traits and preferred social interaction styles, and adopt advocacy tactics that are the best fit, given who they are.
I agree that people should adopt advocacy styles that fit them and that the best tactics depend on the situation. What (arguably) matters most is making good arguments and raising the epistemic quality of (online) discourse. This requires participation and if people want/need to use disagreeable rhetoric in order to do that, I don’t want to stop them!
Admittedly, it’s hypocritical of me to champion kindness while staying on the sidelines and not participating in, say, Twitter discussions. (I appreciate your engagement there!) Reading and responding to countless poor and obnoxious arguments is already challenging enough, even without the additional constraint of always having to be nice and considerate.
Your point about the evolutionary advantages of different personality traits is interesting. However, (you obviously know this already) just because some trait or behavior used to increase inclusive fitness in the EEA doesn’t mean it increases global welfare today. One particularly relevant example may be dark tetrad traits which actually negatively correlate with Agreeableness (apologies for injecting my hobbyhorse into this discussion :) ).
Generally, it may be important to unpack different notions of being “disagreeable”. For example, this could mean, say, straw-manning or being (passive-)aggressive. These behaviors are often infuriating and detrimental to epistemics so I (usually) don’t like this type of disagreeableness. On the other hand, you could also characterize, say, Stefan Schubert as being “disagreeable”. Well, I’m a big fan of this type of “disagreeableness”! :)
I agree that Dark Tetrad traits applied to modern social media are often counter-productive (e.g. anonymous trolls trolling).
And, you’re right that there are constructive ways to be disagreeable, and toxic ways to be disagreeable—just as there are toxic ways to be overly agreeable! (eg validating people’s false claims or misguided reactions).
David—you make some excellent points here. I agree that being agreeable vs. disagreeable might be largely orthogonal to playing the ‘inside game’ vs. the ‘outside game’. (Except that highly disagreeable people trying to play the inside game might get ostracized from inside-game organizations, e.g. fired from OpenAI.)
From my evolutionary psychology perspective, if agreeableness always worked for influencing others, we’d have all evolved to be highly agreeable; if disagreeableness always worked, we’d all have evolved to be highly disagreeable. The basic fact that people differ in the Big Five trait of Agreeableness (we psychologists tend to capitalize well-established personality traits) suggests that, at the trait level, there are mixed costs and benefits for being at any point along the Agreeableness spectrum. And of course, at the situation level, there are also mixed costs and benefits for pursuing agreeable vs. disagreeable strategies in any particular social context.
So, I think there are valid roles for people to use a variety of persuasion and influence tactics when doing advocacy work, and playing the outside game. On X/Twitter for example, I tend to be pretty disagreeable when I’m arguing with the ‘e/acc’ folks who dismiss AI safety concerns—partly because they often use highly disagreeable rhetoric when criticizing ‘AI Doomers’ like me. But I tend to be more agreeable when trying to persuade people I consider more open-minded, rational, and well-informed.
I guess EAs can do some self-reflection about their own personality traits and preferred social interaction styles, and adopt advocacy tactics that are the best fit, given who they are.
Thanks, Geoffrey, great points.
I agree that people should adopt advocacy styles that fit them and that the best tactics depend on the situation. What (arguably) matters most is making good arguments and raising the epistemic quality of (online) discourse. This requires participation and if people want/need to use disagreeable rhetoric in order to do that, I don’t want to stop them!
Admittedly, it’s hypocritical of me to champion kindness while staying on the sidelines and not participating in, say, Twitter discussions. (I appreciate your engagement there!) Reading and responding to countless poor and obnoxious arguments is already challenging enough, even without the additional constraint of always having to be nice and considerate.
Your point about the evolutionary advantages of different personality traits is interesting. However, (you obviously know this already) just because some trait or behavior used to increase inclusive fitness in the EEA doesn’t mean it increases global welfare today. One particularly relevant example may be dark tetrad traits which actually negatively correlate with Agreeableness (apologies for injecting my hobbyhorse into this discussion :) ).
Generally, it may be important to unpack different notions of being “disagreeable”. For example, this could mean, say, straw-manning or being (passive-)aggressive. These behaviors are often infuriating and detrimental to epistemics so I (usually) don’t like this type of disagreeableness. On the other hand, you could also characterize, say, Stefan Schubert as being “disagreeable”. Well, I’m a big fan of this type of “disagreeableness”! :)
David—nice comment; thanks.
I agree that Dark Tetrad traits applied to modern social media are often counter-productive (e.g. anonymous trolls trolling).
And, you’re right that there are constructive ways to be disagreeable, and toxic ways to be disagreeable—just as there are toxic ways to be overly agreeable! (eg validating people’s false claims or misguided reactions).