I’m actually interested in that—if you have found sources and documents that provide a better picture of how brains work, I’d be interested. The way I work in debate is that if you provide somehing that explains the world in a better way than my current explanation, then I’ll use it.
I have already tried telling people about evolutionary psychology and many other topics that they are interested in.
I determined that it mostly doesn’t work due to incorrect debate methodology, lack of intellectual skills (e.g. tree-making skills or any alternative to accomplish the same organizational purposes), too-low intellectual standards (like being dismissive of “small” errors instead of thinking errors merit post mortems), lack of persistence, quitting mid-discussion without explanation (often due to bias against claims you’re losing to in debate), poor project management, getting emotional, lack of background knowledge, lack of willingness to get new background knowledge mid-discussion, unwillingness to proceed in small, organized steps, imprecision, etc.
Hence I’ve focused on topics with priority which I believe are basically necessary prerequisite issues before dealing with the other stuff productively.
In other words, I determined that standard, widespread, common sense norms for rationality and debate are inadequate to reach true conclusions about evolutionary psychology, AGI, animal welfare, capitalism, what charity interventions should be pursued, and so on. The meta and methodological issues need to be dealt with first. And people’s disinterest in those issues and resistance to dealing with them is a sign of irrationality and bias – it’s part of the problem.
So I don’t want to attempt to discuss evolutionary psychology with you because I don’t think it will work well due to those other issues. I don’t think you will discuss such a complex, hard issue in a way that will actually lead to a correct conclusion, even if that requires e.g. reading books and practicing skills as part of the process (which I suspect it would require). Like you’ll make an inductivist or justificationist argument, and then I’ll mention that Popper refuted that, and then to resolve the issue we’ll need a whole sub-discussion where you engage with Popper in a way capable of reaching an accurate conclusion. That will lead to some alternatives like you could read and study Popper, or you could review the literature for Popper critics who already did that who you could endorse, or you could argue that Popper is actually irrelevant, or there are other options but none are particularly easy. And there can be many layers of sub-issues, like most people should significantly improve their reading skills before it’s reasonable to try to read a lot of complex literature and expect to find the truth (rather than doing it more for practice), and people should improve their grammar skills before expecting to write clear enough statements in debates, and people should improve their math and logic skills before expecting to actually get much right in debates, and people should improve their introspection skills before expecting to make reasonably unbiased claims in debates (and also so they can more accurately monitor when they’re defensive or emotional).
I tried, many times, starting with an object level issue, discussing it until a few errors happened, and then trying to pivot the discussion to the issues which caused and/or prevented correction of those errors. I tried using an initial discussion as a demonstration that the meta problems actually exist, that the debate won’t work and will be full of errors, etc. I found basically that no one ever wanted to pivot to the meta topic. Having a few errors pointed out did not open their eyes to a bigger picture problem. One of the typical responses is doing a quick, superficial “fix” for each error and then wanting to move on without thinking about root causes, what process caused the error, what other errors the same process would cause, etc.
Sorry you took it that way.
This is an archetypical non-apology that puts blame on the person you’re speaking to. It’s a well known stereotype of how to do fake apologies. If you picked up this speech pattern by accident because it’s a common pattern that you’ve heard a lot, and you don’t realize what it means, then I wanted to warn you because you’ll have a high chance of offending people by apologizing this way. I think maybe it’s an accident here because I didn’t get a hostile vibe from you in the rest; this one sentence doesn’t fit well. It’s also an inaccurate sentence since I didn’t take it that way. I said how it reads. I spoke directly about interpretations rather than simply having one interpretation I took for granted and replied based on. I showed awareness that it could be read, interpreted or intended in multiple ways. I was helpfully letting you know about a problem rather than being offended.
I feel like we are starting to hit a dead-end here, which is a pity since I really want to learn stuff.
The problem is :
I am interested in learning concrete stuff to improve the way I think about the world
You point out that methodology and better norms for rationality and debate are necessary to get a productive conversation (which I can agree with, to some extent)
Except I have no way of knowing that your conclusions are better than mine. It’s entirely possible that yours are better—you spent a lot of time on this. But I just don’t have the motivation to do the many, many prerequisites you asked for, unless I’ve seen from experience that they provide better results.
This is the show don’t tell problem: you’ve told me you’ve got better conclusions (which is possible). But you’ve not shown me that. I need to see that from experience.
I may be motivated to spend some time on improving rationality norms, and change my conclusions. But not without a (little) debate on some concrete stuff that would help understand that I can improve.
How about challenging my conclusion that energy depletion is a problem neglected by many, and that we’re starting to hit limits to growth ? We could do that in the other post you pointed to.
This is an archetypical non-apology that puts blame on the person you’re speaking to.
True. It was a mistake on my part. It’s just that the sentence “I’m used to ignoring comments that assume I don’t exist” felt a bit passive-agressive, so I got passive-agressive as well on that.
It’s not very rational. I shouldn’t have done that, you’re right.
How about challenging my conclusion that energy depletion is a problem neglected by many, and that we’re starting to hit limits to growth ?
OK, as a kind of demonstration, I will try engaging about this some, and I will even skip over asking about why this issue is an important priority compared to alternative issues.
First question: What thinkers/ideas have you read that disagree with you, and what did you do to address them and conclude that they’re wrong?
First, most of what I’m saying challenges deeply what is usually said about energy, resources or the economy.
So the ideas that disagree with me are the established consensus, which is why I’m already familiar with the counter-arguments usually put forward against to energy depletion:
We’ve heard about it earlier and didn’t “run out”
Prices will increase gradually
Technology will improve and solve the problem
We can have a bigger economy and less energy
We’ll just adapt
So in my post I tried my best to adress these points by explaining why ecological economists and other experts on energy and resources think they won’t solve the problem (and I’m in the process of writing a post more focused on adressing explicited these counter-arguments).
I also read some more advanced arguments against what these experts said (debates with Richard Heinberg, articles criticizing Jean-Marc Jancovici). But each time I’ve seen limits to the reasoning. For instance, what was said againt the Limits to growth report (turns out most criticism didn’t adress the core points of the report).
I’m not aware of any major thinker that is fluent on the topic of energy and its relationship with the economy, and optimistic on the topic. However, the one that was the most knowledgeable about this that I found was Dave Denkenberger, director of ALLFED, and we had a lot of exchanges, where he put some solid criticism against what I said. For some of what I wrote, I had to change my mind. For some other stuff, I had to check the litterature and I found limits that he didn’t take into account (like on investment). This was interesting (and we still do not agree, which I find weird). But I tried my best to find reviewers that could criticize what I said.
I have already tried telling people about evolutionary psychology and many other topics that they are interested in.
I determined that it mostly doesn’t work due to incorrect debate methodology, lack of intellectual skills (e.g. tree-making skills or any alternative to accomplish the same organizational purposes), too-low intellectual standards (like being dismissive of “small” errors instead of thinking errors merit post mortems), lack of persistence, quitting mid-discussion without explanation (often due to bias against claims you’re losing to in debate), poor project management, getting emotional, lack of background knowledge, lack of willingness to get new background knowledge mid-discussion, unwillingness to proceed in small, organized steps, imprecision, etc.
Hence I’ve focused on topics with priority which I believe are basically necessary prerequisite issues before dealing with the other stuff productively.
In other words, I determined that standard, widespread, common sense norms for rationality and debate are inadequate to reach true conclusions about evolutionary psychology, AGI, animal welfare, capitalism, what charity interventions should be pursued, and so on. The meta and methodological issues need to be dealt with first. And people’s disinterest in those issues and resistance to dealing with them is a sign of irrationality and bias – it’s part of the problem.
So I don’t want to attempt to discuss evolutionary psychology with you because I don’t think it will work well due to those other issues. I don’t think you will discuss such a complex, hard issue in a way that will actually lead to a correct conclusion, even if that requires e.g. reading books and practicing skills as part of the process (which I suspect it would require). Like you’ll make an inductivist or justificationist argument, and then I’ll mention that Popper refuted that, and then to resolve the issue we’ll need a whole sub-discussion where you engage with Popper in a way capable of reaching an accurate conclusion. That will lead to some alternatives like you could read and study Popper, or you could review the literature for Popper critics who already did that who you could endorse, or you could argue that Popper is actually irrelevant, or there are other options but none are particularly easy. And there can be many layers of sub-issues, like most people should significantly improve their reading skills before it’s reasonable to try to read a lot of complex literature and expect to find the truth (rather than doing it more for practice), and people should improve their grammar skills before expecting to write clear enough statements in debates, and people should improve their math and logic skills before expecting to actually get much right in debates, and people should improve their introspection skills before expecting to make reasonably unbiased claims in debates (and also so they can more accurately monitor when they’re defensive or emotional).
I tried, many times, starting with an object level issue, discussing it until a few errors happened, and then trying to pivot the discussion to the issues which caused and/or prevented correction of those errors. I tried using an initial discussion as a demonstration that the meta problems actually exist, that the debate won’t work and will be full of errors, etc. I found basically that no one ever wanted to pivot to the meta topic. Having a few errors pointed out did not open their eyes to a bigger picture problem. One of the typical responses is doing a quick, superficial “fix” for each error and then wanting to move on without thinking about root causes, what process caused the error, what other errors the same process would cause, etc.
This is an archetypical non-apology that puts blame on the person you’re speaking to. It’s a well known stereotype of how to do fake apologies. If you picked up this speech pattern by accident because it’s a common pattern that you’ve heard a lot, and you don’t realize what it means, then I wanted to warn you because you’ll have a high chance of offending people by apologizing this way. I think maybe it’s an accident here because I didn’t get a hostile vibe from you in the rest; this one sentence doesn’t fit well. It’s also an inaccurate sentence since I didn’t take it that way. I said how it reads. I spoke directly about interpretations rather than simply having one interpretation I took for granted and replied based on. I showed awareness that it could be read, interpreted or intended in multiple ways. I was helpfully letting you know about a problem rather than being offended.
I feel like we are starting to hit a dead-end here, which is a pity since I really want to learn stuff.
The problem is :
I am interested in learning concrete stuff to improve the way I think about the world
You point out that methodology and better norms for rationality and debate are necessary to get a productive conversation (which I can agree with, to some extent)
Except I have no way of knowing that your conclusions are better than mine. It’s entirely possible that yours are better—you spent a lot of time on this. But I just don’t have the motivation to do the many, many prerequisites you asked for, unless I’ve seen from experience that they provide better results.
This is the show don’t tell problem: you’ve told me you’ve got better conclusions (which is possible). But you’ve not shown me that. I need to see that from experience.
I may be motivated to spend some time on improving rationality norms, and change my conclusions. But not without a (little) debate on some concrete stuff that would help understand that I can improve.
How about challenging my conclusion that energy depletion is a problem neglected by many, and that we’re starting to hit limits to growth ? We could do that in the other post you pointed to.
True. It was a mistake on my part. It’s just that the sentence “I’m used to ignoring comments that assume I don’t exist” felt a bit passive-agressive, so I got passive-agressive as well on that.
It’s not very rational. I shouldn’t have done that, you’re right.
OK, as a kind of demonstration, I will try engaging about this some, and I will even skip over asking about why this issue is an important priority compared to alternative issues.
First question: What thinkers/ideas have you read that disagree with you, and what did you do to address them and conclude that they’re wrong?
Ok, interesting question.
First, most of what I’m saying challenges deeply what is usually said about energy, resources or the economy.
So the ideas that disagree with me are the established consensus, which is why I’m already familiar with the counter-arguments usually put forward against to energy depletion:
We’ve heard about it earlier and didn’t “run out”
Prices will increase gradually
Technology will improve and solve the problem
We can have a bigger economy and less energy
We’ll just adapt
So in my post I tried my best to adress these points by explaining why ecological economists and other experts on energy and resources think they won’t solve the problem (and I’m in the process of writing a post more focused on adressing explicited these counter-arguments).
I also read some more advanced arguments against what these experts said (debates with Richard Heinberg, articles criticizing Jean-Marc Jancovici). But each time I’ve seen limits to the reasoning. For instance, what was said againt the Limits to growth report (turns out most criticism didn’t adress the core points of the report).
I’m not aware of any major thinker that is fluent on the topic of energy and its relationship with the economy, and optimistic on the topic. However, the one that was the most knowledgeable about this that I found was Dave Denkenberger, director of ALLFED, and we had a lot of exchanges, where he put some solid criticism against what I said. For some of what I wrote, I had to change my mind. For some other stuff, I had to check the litterature and I found limits that he didn’t take into account (like on investment). This was interesting (and we still do not agree, which I find weird). But I tried my best to find reviewers that could criticize what I said.