It seems like the meaning of “truthseeking” ambiguates between “practicing good epistemology” and “being intellectually honest”
Very accurate and succinct summary of the issue.
One thing that annoys me about the EA Forum (which I previously wrote about here) is that there’s way too much EA Forum-specific jargon.
Good point. I think actually there is an entire class of related jargon for which something like the above applies. For example, I think its often a bad idea to say stuff like:
“You’re being uncharitable.”
“You’re strawmanning me.”
“Can you please just steelman my position?”
“I don’t think you could pass my ITT.”
“You’re argument is a committing the motte-baily fallacy.”
“You’re committing the noncentral fallacy.”
And other similar comments. I think clarity issue around some types of jargon are related to your next point. People pickup on ideas that are intuitive but still very rough. This can often mean that the speaker feels super confident in their meaning but it is confusing to the reader because they may interpret these rough ideas differently.
I also feel something similar to what you say where people seem to jump on ideas rather quickly and run with them, whereas my reaction is, don’t you want to stress test this a bit more before giving it the full-send? I view this as a significant cultural/worldview difference that I perceive between myself and a lot of EAs, which I sometimes think of as a “do-er” vs “debater” dichotomy. I think EA strongly emphasizes “doing”, whereas I’m not going to be beating the “debater” allegations anytime soon. I think worldview is upstream of my takes on the ongoing discussions around reaching out to orgs. I think the concept of “winning” expressed here is also related to a strong “doing over debating” view.
Making “truthseeking” a fundamental value
I think its inherently challenging to think of truth-seeking as a terminal value. Its under-specified, truth-seeking about what? How quickly paint dries? I think it makes more sense to think about constraints requiring truthfulness. Following on from this, I think trying to “improve epistemics” by trying to enforce “high standards” can be counterproductive because it gets in the way of the natural “marketplace of ideas” dynamic that often fuels and incentives good epistemics. The view of “truth-seeking” as this kind of quantitative thing that you want really high values of I think can cause confusion in this regard, making people think communities high in “truth-seeking” must therefore have “high standards”.
Chances are the person is using it passive-aggressively, or with the implication that they’re more truthseeking than someone else. I’ve never seen someone say, “I wasn’t being truthseeking enough and changed my approach.” This kinda makes it feel like the main purpose of the word is to be passive-aggressive and act superior.
I think this is often the case. Perhaps related to my more “debater” mentality, it seems to me like people in EA sometimes do something with their criticism where they think they are softening it, but they do so in a way that makes the actual claim insanely confusing. I think “truth-seeking” is partial downstream from this, because its not straight-up saying “you’re being bad faith here” and thus feels softer. I wish people would be more “all the way in or all the way out”. Either stick to just saying someone is wrong or straight-up accuse them of whatever you think they are doing. I think on balance that might mean doing the second one more than people do now, but perhaps doing the ambiguous version less.
Here are my rules of thumb for improving communication on the EA Forum and in similar spaces online:
Say what you mean, as plainly as possible.
Try to use words and expressions that a general audience would understand.
Be more casual and less formal if you think that means more people are more likely to understand what you’re trying to say.
To illustrate abstract concepts, give examples.
Where possible, try to let go of minor details that aren’t important to the main point someone is trying to make. Everyone slightly misspeaks (or mis… writes?) all the time. Attempts to correct minor details often turn into time-consuming debates that ultimately have little importance. If you really want to correct a minor detail, do so politely, and acknowledge that you’re engaging in nitpicking.
When you don’t understand what someone is trying to say, just say that. (And be polite.)
Don’t engage in passive-aggressiveness or code insults in jargon or formal language. If someone’s behaviour is annoying you, tell them it’s annoying you. (If you don’t want to do that, then you probably shouldn’t try to communicate the same idea in a coded or passive-aggressive way, either.)
If you’re using an uncommon word or using a word that also has a more common definition in an unusual way (such as “truthseeking”), please define that word as you’re using it and — if applicable — distinguish it from the more common way the word is used.
Err on the side of spelling out acronyms, abbreviations, and initialisms. You don’t have to spell out “AI” as “artificial intelligence”, but an obscure term like “full automation of labour” or “FAOL” that was made up for one paper should definitely be spelled out.
When referencing specific people or organizations, err on the side of giving a little more context, so that someone who isn’t already in the know can more easily understand who or what you’re talking about. For example, instead of just saying “MacAskill” or “Will”, say “Will MacAskill” — just using the full name once per post or comment is plenty. You could also mention someone’s profession (e.g. “philosopher”, “economist”) or the organization they’re affiliated with (e.g. “Oxford University”, “Anthropic”). For organizations, when it isn’t already obvious in context, it might be helpful to give a brief description. Rather than saying, “I donated to New Harvest and still feel like this was a good choice”, you could say “I donated to New Harvest (a charity focused on cell cultured meat and similar biotech) and still feel like this was a good choice”. The point of all this is to make what you write easy for more people to understand without lots of prior knowledge or lots of Googling.
When in doubt, say it shorter.[1] In my experience, when I take something I’ve written that’s long and try to cut it down to something short, I usually end up with something a lot clearer and easier to understand than what I originally wrote.
Kindness is fundamental. Maya Angelou said, “At the end of the day people won’t remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel.” Being kind is usually more important than whatever argument you’re having.
(Decided to also publish this as a quick take, since it’s so generally applicable.)
This advice comes from the psychologist Harriet Lerner’s wonderful book Why Won’t You Apologize? — given in the completely different context of close personal relationships. I think it also works here.
Very accurate and succinct summary of the issue.
Good point. I think actually there is an entire class of related jargon for which something like the above applies. For example, I think its often a bad idea to say stuff like:
“You’re being uncharitable.”
“You’re strawmanning me.”
“Can you please just steelman my position?”
“I don’t think you could pass my ITT.”
“You’re argument is a committing the motte-baily fallacy.”
“You’re committing the noncentral fallacy.”
And other similar comments. I think clarity issue around some types of jargon are related to your next point. People pickup on ideas that are intuitive but still very rough. This can often mean that the speaker feels super confident in their meaning but it is confusing to the reader because they may interpret these rough ideas differently.
I also feel something similar to what you say where people seem to jump on ideas rather quickly and run with them, whereas my reaction is, don’t you want to stress test this a bit more before giving it the full-send? I view this as a significant cultural/worldview difference that I perceive between myself and a lot of EAs, which I sometimes think of as a “do-er” vs “debater” dichotomy. I think EA strongly emphasizes “doing”, whereas I’m not going to be beating the “debater” allegations anytime soon. I think worldview is upstream of my takes on the ongoing discussions around reaching out to orgs. I think the concept of “winning” expressed here is also related to a strong “doing over debating” view.
I think its inherently challenging to think of truth-seeking as a terminal value. Its under-specified, truth-seeking about what? How quickly paint dries? I think it makes more sense to think about constraints requiring truthfulness. Following on from this, I think trying to “improve epistemics” by trying to enforce “high standards” can be counterproductive because it gets in the way of the natural “marketplace of ideas” dynamic that often fuels and incentives good epistemics. The view of “truth-seeking” as this kind of quantitative thing that you want really high values of I think can cause confusion in this regard, making people think communities high in “truth-seeking” must therefore have “high standards”.
I think this is often the case. Perhaps related to my more “debater” mentality, it seems to me like people in EA sometimes do something with their criticism where they think they are softening it, but they do so in a way that makes the actual claim insanely confusing. I think “truth-seeking” is partial downstream from this, because its not straight-up saying “you’re being bad faith here” and thus feels softer. I wish people would be more “all the way in or all the way out”. Either stick to just saying someone is wrong or straight-up accuse them of whatever you think they are doing. I think on balance that might mean doing the second one more than people do now, but perhaps doing the ambiguous version less.
Here are my rules of thumb for improving communication on the EA Forum and in similar spaces online:
Say what you mean, as plainly as possible.
Try to use words and expressions that a general audience would understand.
Be more casual and less formal if you think that means more people are more likely to understand what you’re trying to say.
To illustrate abstract concepts, give examples.
Where possible, try to let go of minor details that aren’t important to the main point someone is trying to make. Everyone slightly misspeaks (or mis… writes?) all the time. Attempts to correct minor details often turn into time-consuming debates that ultimately have little importance. If you really want to correct a minor detail, do so politely, and acknowledge that you’re engaging in nitpicking.
When you don’t understand what someone is trying to say, just say that. (And be polite.)
Don’t engage in passive-aggressiveness or code insults in jargon or formal language. If someone’s behaviour is annoying you, tell them it’s annoying you. (If you don’t want to do that, then you probably shouldn’t try to communicate the same idea in a coded or passive-aggressive way, either.)
If you’re using an uncommon word or using a word that also has a more common definition in an unusual way (such as “truthseeking”), please define that word as you’re using it and — if applicable — distinguish it from the more common way the word is used.
Err on the side of spelling out acronyms, abbreviations, and initialisms. You don’t have to spell out “AI” as “artificial intelligence”, but an obscure term like “full automation of labour” or “FAOL” that was made up for one paper should definitely be spelled out.
When referencing specific people or organizations, err on the side of giving a little more context, so that someone who isn’t already in the know can more easily understand who or what you’re talking about. For example, instead of just saying “MacAskill” or “Will”, say “Will MacAskill” — just using the full name once per post or comment is plenty. You could also mention someone’s profession (e.g. “philosopher”, “economist”) or the organization they’re affiliated with (e.g. “Oxford University”, “Anthropic”). For organizations, when it isn’t already obvious in context, it might be helpful to give a brief description. Rather than saying, “I donated to New Harvest and still feel like this was a good choice”, you could say “I donated to New Harvest (a charity focused on cell cultured meat and similar biotech) and still feel like this was a good choice”. The point of all this is to make what you write easy for more people to understand without lots of prior knowledge or lots of Googling.
When in doubt, say it shorter.[1] In my experience, when I take something I’ve written that’s long and try to cut it down to something short, I usually end up with something a lot clearer and easier to understand than what I originally wrote.
Kindness is fundamental. Maya Angelou said, “At the end of the day people won’t remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel.” Being kind is usually more important than whatever argument you’re having.
(Decided to also publish this as a quick take, since it’s so generally applicable.)
This advice comes from the psychologist Harriet Lerner’s wonderful book Why Won’t You Apologize? — given in the completely different context of close personal relationships. I think it also works here.