Ok, all of this is interesting. Sorry for the late answerâI got caught watching the FTX debacle where I lost an ongoing project.
To summarize, I know something about debating issues rationally but less about getting anyone to like me or listen
Iâm going to focus on that here.
This is related to why I was so late in answering: the longer the exchange is, the most you have to reply to. This means that the cost of answering, in time and brain resources, gets higher, lowering the proability of an answer. I think this is a reason why many people stop debating at some point.
A useful thing I try to keep in mind is that the brain tries to save energy. It can save energy by automating tasks (habits), by using shortcuts (heuristics), and by avoiding strong conclusions that would lead to a large reorganization in the way it currently does things (for instance, changing core beliefs and methods of reasoning). This avoidance can take the form of finding rationalizations to stuff it already does, or denial.
Of course, itâs not just about energy, since the brain can change its structure if there is a good reason. Motivation is a crucial part of people discussing anythingâbut for motivation you need a reason to keep motivated. But itâs really not obvious what the motivation is when discussing abstract methodology. What would that reason be?
Most of the time, the reason is direct feedback that itâs doing things wrong, and negative consequences if it doesnât change. But we donât have this feedback during an abstract discussion on methodology and epistemics.
There is no examples of feedback of the style âwow, the way that guy does things really looks betterâ, as you said.
Social validation doesnât go our way either here.
Youâre not at the top of a social hierachy
Plus, weâre not between friends and weâre remote in time and space (the point you made about debates being more conclusive where there is friendliness or high standards was really good, by the way).
Now, getting better and feeling right about something can be motivating to some people (like us). But if there appears to be no good pathway for me to get better, Iâll give up on the conversation, since my brain will see other stuff to do as more appealing (not right now of course. But at some point).
To prevent that, for me, the reward would be a concrete way to improve how I do things. I can agree with you that we (I) donât have high enough standards for high-quality discourse, but that doesnât tell me what to do. My brain cannot change if you donât point to something specific I can apply (like a method or a rule you can enforce). Debate policies may be a start, but they wonât do if I have no idea what they look like.
We usually donât learn by having more theoretical knowledge, althought thatâs often necessaryâbut most of the time theoretical knowledge doesnât necessarily influence action (think of âtreat others as you would treat yourselfâ). But the kind of knowledge that really sticks and influences action comes from practiceâby trying stuff and seeing by yourself how that works. Having these methological skills you talked about worked for you, so now you try to push them forward. This makes sense. But I can do the same only by trying and testing.
So, what could you provide your debate partners that would be attractive enough to keep them in the debate? Iâm afraid that having extremely long discussions about theoretical stuff with no clear reward may be too much to expect.
âFor example, I have objections to a lot of the psychology and marketing stuff you mention. â
Now Iâm interested. Do you have data that would refute what I said or that you think would work better ?
Iâm afraid that having extremely long discussions about theoretical stuff with no clear reward may be too much to expect.
I donât mind switching to saying one short thing at a time if you prefer. I find people often donât prefer it, e.g. b/âc dozens of short messages seems like too much. In my experience, people tend to stop discussing after a limited number of back-and-forths regardless of how long they are.
Ok, I understandâso if lenght isnât the biggest problem, I guess what might cause more of an issue is that the topic is about âtheoretical stuff with no clear rewardâ.
So I guess the main challenge is about solving that. Questions like: How can I show that this theoretical stuff can be useful in the real world ? What is the reason people might have to be interested in engaging with me ? If I can only have a limited number of replies, how do I make the most of that time, and what are the most valuables ideas, practices and concept that I can push for ?
Questions like: How can I show that this theoretical stuff can be useful in the real world ?
I have answers to this and various other things, but I donât have short, convincing answers that work with pre-existing shared premises with most people. The difficulty is too much background knowledge is different. My ideas make more sense and can be explained in shorter ways if someone knows a lot about Karl Popperâs ideas. My Popperian background and perspective clashes with the Bayesian perspectives here and itâs not mainstream either. (There are no large Popperian communities comparable to LW or EA to go talk to instead.)
The lack of enough shared premises is also, in my experience, one of the main reasons people donât like to debate with me. People usually donât want to rethink fundamental issues and actually donât know how to. If you go to a chemist and say âI disagree with the physics premises that all your chemistry ideas are based onâ, they maybe wonât know how to, or want to, debate physics with you. People mostly want to talk about stuff within their field that they know about, not talk about premises that some other type of person would know about. The obvious solution to this is talk to philosophers, but unfortunately philosophy is one of the worst and most broken fields and thereâs basically no one reasonable to talk to and almost no one doing reasonable work. Because philosophy is so broken, people should stop trusting it and getting premises from it. Everything else is downstream of philosophy, so itâs hurting EA and everything else. But this is a rather abstract issue which, so far, I havenât been able to get many people to care much about.
I could phrase it using more specifics but then people will disagree with me. E.g. âinduction is wrong so...â will get denials that induction is wrong. (Induction is one of the main things Popper criticized. I donât think any philosopher has ever given a reasonable rebuttal to defend induction. Iâve gone through a lot of literature on that issue and asked a lot of people.) The people who deny induction is wrong consistently want to take next steps that I think are the wrong approach, such as debating induction without using literature references or ignoring the issue. Whereas I think the next step should basically be to review the literature instead of making ad hoc arguments. But thatâs work. Iâve done that work but people donât want to trust my results (which is fine) and also donât want to do the work themselves, which leaves it difficult to make progress.
Have you tried putting stuff in a visual way ? Like breaking down the steps of your (different) reasoning in a diagram , in order to show why you have a different conclusion on a specific topic EA is doing.
For instance, letâs say one conclusion you have is âEAs interested in animal welfare should do Xâ. You could present stuff this way : [Argument A] + [Argument B] â [I use my way of estimating things] â [Conlusion X].
Maybe this could help.
unfortunately philosophy is one of the worst and most broken fields and thereâs basically no one reasonable to talk to and almost no one doing reasonable work. Because philosophy is so broken, people should stop trusting it and getting premises from it.
Huhu canât say I disagree, I really have problems seeing what I can get from the field of philosophy most of the time, in terms of practical advice on how to improve that works, not just ideas. (although saying âthereâs no one reasonable to talk to in the field XXXâ would flag you as a judgemental person nobody should talk to, so be careful issuing judgements around like that)
But itâs very hard to say âthis is badâ about something without proposing something people better can turn to instead. And despite exchanging with you, I still donât picture that âbetterâ thing to turn to.
For instance, one of the (many) reasons the anti-capitalism movement is absolutely failing is not because capitalism is good (itâs pretty clear itâs leading us to environmental destruction) or because people support it (there have been surveys in France showing that a majority of people think we need to get out of the myth of infinite growth). It has a lot to do with how hard it is to actually picture alternatives to this system, how hard it is to put forward these alternatives, and how hard it is to implement them. Nothing can change if I canât picture ways of doing things differently.
judge public intellectuals by how they handle debate, and judge ideas by the current objective state of the debate
read and engage with some other philosophers (e.g. Popper, Goldratt and myself)
actually write down whatâs wrong with the bad philosophers in a clear way instead of just disliking them (this will facilitate debating and reaching conclusions about which ones are actually good)
investigate what philosophical premises you hold, and their sources, and reconsider them
There are sub-steps, e.g. to raise intellectual standards people need to improve their ability to read, write and analyze text, and practice that until a significantly higher skill level and effectiveness is intuitive/âeasy. That can be broken down into smaller steps such as learning grammar, learning to make sentence tree diagrams, learning to make paragraph tree diagrams, learning to make multi-paragraph tree diagrams, etc.
I have a forum people can join and plenty of writing and videos which include actionable suggestions about steps to take. Iâve also have proposed things that I think people can picture, like that all arguments are addressed in truth-seeking and time-efficient ways instead of ignored. If that was universal, it would have consequences such as it being possible to go to a charity or company and telling them some ideas and making some arguments and then, if youâre right, they probably change. If 10% of charities were open to changing due to rational argument, itâd enable a lot of resources to be used more effectively.
BTW, I donât think itâs a good idea to have much confidence in your political opinions (or spend much time or effort on them) without doing those other kinds of activities first.
Ah, this is more like it: a list of stuff to do. Good !
Now that I see it in that format, maybe an interesting EA forum post would be to use the list above, and provide links for each of them. You could redirect each item to the best source you have found or produced on this topic. I feel it would be easier to convince people to adopt better rationality practices if they have a list of how to do that.
Well maybe not everyone, but I am drawing conclusions from my personal case: you seem to have some interesting techniques in store, but personally right now I just donât see how acquire themâso the best links you have for that could help greatly.
This would centralize the information in one spot (that you can redirect people to in future debates and works).
An unrelated note: I liked your post on the damage big companies were doing on your forum. I donât really understand why you think the damage they do is not compatible with capitalismâI donât see anything in the definition of capitalism that would preclude such an outcome. But it was an interesting post.
Iâm a bit more skeptical on your post about how to judge the ability of experts, however. If having a debate policy were a common practice, and it was notorious that people who refuse them have something to hide, then it would work. But right now such an advice doesnât seem that useful, because very few people have such a debate policyâso you canât distinguish between people who have something to hide and people who would be ok with the concept if they had heard about it. I donât see such a practice becoming mainstream for the next few decades.
So in the absence of that, how can I really judge which experts are reliable ?
Iâd like to judge by openness in debates, but itâs not clear to me how to get this information quickly. Especially when Iâm seeing an expert for the first time.
For instance, letâs take someone like Nate Hagens. How would you go to judge his reliability?
Anyway, I have plenty more things I could try. I have plenty to say. And I know thereâs plenty of room for improvement in my stuff including regarding organization. I will keep posting things at EA for now. Even if I stop, Iâll keep posting at my own sites. Even if no one listens, it doesnât matter so much; I like figuring out and writing about these things; itâs my favorite activity.
An unrelated note: I liked your post on the damage big companies were doing on your forum.
FYI, itâs hard for me to know what post you mean without a link or title because I have thousands of posts, and I often have multiple posts about the same topic.
I donât really understand why you think the damage they do is not compatible with capitalismâI donât see anything in the definition of capitalism that would preclude such an outcome.
The definition of capitalism involves a free market where the initiation of force (including fraud) is prohibited. Today, fraud is pretty widespread at large companies. Also, many versions of capitalism allow the government to use force, but they do not allow the government to meddle in the economy and give advantages to some companies over others which are derived from the governmentâs use of force (so some companies are, indirectly via the government, using force against competitors). Those are just two examples (of many).
(I may not reply further about capitalism or anything political, but I thought that would be short and maybe helpful.)
so you canât distinguish between people who have something to hide and people who would be ok with the concept if they had heard about it.
You can tell them about the debate policy concept and see how they react. You can also look at whether they respond to criticisms of their work. You can also make a tree of the field and look at whether that expert is contributing important nodes to it or not.
I donât see such a practice becoming mainstream for the next few decades.
I think it could become important, widespread and influential in a few years if it had a few thousand initial supporters. I think getting even 100 initial supporters is the biggest obstacle, then turning that into a bigger group is second. Then once you have a bigger group that can be vocal enough in online discussions, they can get noticed by popular intellectuals and bring up debate policies to them and get responses of some kinds. Then you just need one famous guy to like the idea and it can get a lot more attention and it will then be possible to say âX has a debate policy; why donât you?â And I can imagine tons of fans bringing that up in comment sections persistently for many of the popular online intellectuals. Itâs easy to imagine fans of e.g. Jordan Peterson bugging him about it endlessly until he does it.
I think the reason that doesnât happen is that most people donât actually seem to want it, like it or care, so getting to even 100 supporters of the idea is very hard. The issue IMO is the masses resisting, rejecting or not caring about the idea (of the few who see it, most dislike or ignore it), including at EA, for reasons I donât understand well enough.
For instance, letâs take someone like Nate Hagens. How would you go to judge his reliability?
I glanced at the table of contents and saw mention of Malthus. Thatâs a topic I know about, so I could read that section and be in a pretty good position to evaluate it or catch errors. Finding a section where I have expertise and checking that is a useful technique.
Thereâs a fairly common thing where people read the newspaper talking about their field and they are like âwow itâs so bad. this is so amateurish and full of obvious errorsâ. Then they read the newspaper on any other topic and believe the quality is decent. It isnât. You should expect the correctness of the parts you know less about to probably be similar to the part you know a lot about.
At a glance at the Malthus section, the book seems to be on the same side as Malthus, which I disagree with. So a specific thing Iâd look for is whether the book brings up and tries to address some of the arguments on my side that I regard as important. If it ignores the side of the debate I favor, and doesnât have any criticisms of anything I believe, thatâd be bad. I did a text search for âGodwinâ and there are no results. (Godwin is a classical liberal political philosopher from the same time period as Malthus who I like a lot. He wrote a book about why Malthus was wrong.) There are also no results for âBurkeâ and no mention of Adam Smith (nor turgot, bastiat, condorcet, mises, rothbard, hayek). I see it as a potentially bad sign to look at old thinkers/âwriters only to bring up one who is on your side without talking about other ideas from the time period including disagreements and competing viewpoints. It can indicate bias to cherry pick one past thinker to bring up.
Thatâs inconclusive. Maybe it gives fair summaries of rival viewpoints and criticizes them; I didnât look enough to actually know. I donât want to spend more time and energy on this right now (also I dislike the format and would want to download a copy of the book to read it more). I think it gives you some idea about ways to approach this â methods â even though I didnât actually do much. Also, in my experience, the majority of books like this will fail at fact checking at least once if you check five random cites, so that would be worth checking if you care about whether the facts in the book are trustworthy.
Okâhowever, while this is better, this list is still very long, and quite daunting. Itâs good as an index, but not as a âhereâs the top priority stuffâ.
I think a question you should ask yourself is âIf I can only have a limited number of exchanges with people, and they have a limited time, what do I want them to learn?â. And then just mention a few things that are the best/âmost useful stuff you have in store.
This way people get a sample of what you can offer, and then they may be like âoh ok this might be useful, maybe Iâll dig more into thatâ.
Mentioning âread the entire work of this guyâ or âcheck my entire forumâ is probably not something people will readily use- because from the outside I have no way of knowing if this is a good use of my time. It would take too much effort just to check. So I need a sample that tells me âhey, thatâs interestingâ that pushes me to go onward.
So having a list of 1) Actionable advice 2) with the list with the best stuff to redirect people too would be useful.
You can also look at experts whether they respond to criticisms of their work
Same questionâhow do I check that ? Thereâs no under âanswer sectionâ under scientific papers or books, except some are ones. They could have answered the criticism in the - how do I check that quickly ?
For instance, from what I read, Nate Hagens did take into account the classic points put forward against the claims of Malthus (although he didnât really quote many names). But itâs all over the bookâso thereâs no quick way of checking that.
I think the debate policy could become important, widespread and influential in a few years if it had a few thousand initial supporters. [...] I think the reason that doesnât happen is that most people donât actually seem to want it, like it or care, so getting to even 100 supporters of the idea is very hard. The issue IMO is the masses resisting, rejecting or not caring about the idea (of the few who see it, most dislike or ignore it), including at EA, for reasons I donât understand well enough.
I think one reason most people are not interested is that they donât feel concerned by the idea. I donât feel concerned by it. It feels it could work for public intellectuals, but everybody else has no use for it (maybe theyâre wrong, but it doesnât feel like it). And public intellectuals are a hard to reach public.
Itâs also not obvious what the benefits of the idea would be. I understand there are benefits, but thereâs no visible result you can see for them, which makes it less attractive. And even if there were debates following this policy, itâs not guaranteed this would change the state of the debate: many papers have been shown as non-replicable, but they are still widely cited since the rebuttals have not publicized as much.
I get that this would be really useful if many prominent experts used thatâbecause you could reach to them and theyâd have to answer.
I think Iâm going to have to quit writing anything substantive at EA due to the license change, so if you want to keep discussing with me I think youâll have to join my forum. That sucks but I donât see a better option.
OkâI subscribed to the forum but I donât know how to answer to the comment you linked to.
Iâll answer here.
Why should anyone believe me about the quality or importance of anything I say, or be interested to keep going past reading one or two things? Because they canât point out any errors so far.
Interesting, but I donât know if this is the right criteria. One thing is, I canât point out to an error you made because I canât evaluate your claims. Our discussion was on abstract points of methodology, not facts or stuff you can verifyâso of course I canât point out to an error, because there is no real result to check.
Now I know I should keep an open mind, which I do, especially since I canât point to errors in the reasoning itself. But itâs hard to believe things I canât verify and see by myself.
Which is why I keep asking for stuff like examples and concrete things. Itâs easier to grasp these and to verify them.
If you get ideas from public intellectuals who are doing rationality wrong, then you are in trouble too, not just them. You need to do rationality things right yourself and/âor find thought leaders who are doing things right. So it is each individualâs problem even if they arenât a public intellectual.
Itâs really not obvious to anyone that ânot having a debate policyâ is âdoing rationality wrongâ. Especially when the concept itself is so uncommon. If this is the criteria I really donât know who is doing rationality right (but then again, I donât really know who is doing rationality right). Then again, most people do not get challenged into debates. Even EAs. So it makes sense that they think such a concept is not for them.
Just to test, youâll be happy to know I adopted a debate policy ! Weâll see what results that provides in 10 years.
Iâm more interested in enabling someone to become a great thinker by a large effort, not in offering some quick wins.
Ah, ok. I see where we differ here.
I try to have the most impact I can in the world, so I judge what I do by âwhat positive impact did this have?â As such, quick wins that can target a larger public have a larger impact, and a higher chance of changing things, so I decided on that. Which is why this seems more important to me.
But it appears that you have a different goal in mindâyou seek high-level discussions with like-minded individuals. I can understand that.
Same for the CC BY license. I know Iâd have less impact if I left the forum, and what I write is there with the goal of being shared anyway, so I donât really care about that.
Same for the CC BY license. I know Iâd have less impact if I left the forum, and what I write is there with the goal of being shared anyway, so I donât really care about that.
I have more drafts to go through so there will be more posts soon.
If you or anyone else thinks that any of them should be on the EA forum, you can post them at EA as link posts. In general, I donât plan to link post my own stuff at EA going forward, for several reasons, but if even one person thinks it would add much value to EA, they are welcome to do it.
OkâI subscribed to the forum but I donât know how to answer to the comment you linked to.
To post on my forum, you have to pay $20 (once, not recurring). I know the communication on this isnât amazing (Discourse has limited options) though there should be a banner and some info about it in a few places, but I know sometimes people still donât see it. Thereâs a subscribe button on the home page but itâs in a menu on mobile instead of directly visible. It takes you to https://ââdiscuss.criticalfallibilism.com/ââs and then the payment flow is with a standard plugin that uses Stripe.
If itâs a financial burden for you, I can give you free access.
If you can afford it, then Iâll have to ask you to pay, because my general policy is if people value a discussion with me less than $20 then I shouldnât talk with them. I skip that policy when I go participate at other communities, but Iâm quitting the EA forum now.
OkâI though the $20 were for making posts, I didnât think it was for answering.
I donât think I will pay $20 because all the money I earn beyond my basic needs is going to charities.
I can understand the CC BY issue, if youâve had problems with it in the past. If you think you can have more impact by retaining property over what you write, then this is what you should do.
I donât think I will pay $20 because all the money I earn beyond my basic needs is going to charities.
If $20 got you even a 1% chance to find out that much of your money and effort is going to the wrong charities and causes, wouldnât that be a good deal? Error correction is high value.
I think what EA is doing by getting people to donate that much (all above basic needs) is extremely harmful to people like you. Iâd believe that even if I didnât also believe that the majority of EA causes and efforts were counter-productive.
Thereâs something really problematic about thinking a cause is so important that youâll make large personal sacrifices for it, but not being willing to do much to pursue potential error correction. EA has a lot of people who will go to great lengths to help their causes â they just are so sure theyâre right(?) that they donât seem to think debating critics is very important. Itâs weird. If you think every dollar you donate is a big deal, you should also think every tiny bit of risk reduction and error correction is a big deal. Those things are scarcer than dollars and can easily have larger impacts. But I come here and say I think EA is wrong about important issues, and I want to debate, and I ask if EA has any organized debate methods or even just individuals whoâd be happy to debate much. And the answer was no and also no one seems to think thatâs very bad or risky. That shows a widespread lack of respect for the risk of being wrong about causes that people are investing all their money above basic needs in, and a disinterest in criticism.
Anyway, if you find my ideas implausible and not worth pursuing or debating, or still donât really value my time more than the time of the next guy you could talk with instead, then we should part ways.
SorryâI exagerated a bit. I do not donate everything above my basic needsâstill quite a good chunk but not everything.
I try to spend quite some time on error correction (and sometimes buy books instead of getting them from a library) - but in this realm I am still weighting that against, say, the impact I could obtain by donating to an animal charity instead. But Iâm ready to do some spending if I feel thereâs a good chance to know more and improve.
The problem here is rather that I am not sure subscribing to this forum will really allow me to improve.
I absolutely agree to your claim that EA has a lack of organized debate method, and could improve on fighting against bias. I could probably improve on that too, I think. I can agree with the âlacking methodologyâ.
However, to actually improve, I need practical advice on how to improve. Or an example: for instance, seeing a debate where I see that a specific claim very important in EA is not impactful (for instance, that donating to charities that do corporate outreach in factory farming), and seeing the methodology that led to this claim.
I want to point out that criticism of what exists currently is important but not enoughâthe way I personally work is that I need to see something better in order to update correctly. Then I can be inspired by that better approach.
For instance, I read your criticism of The Scout Mindsetâitâs interesting, there are good points, for instance that the examples she gives could be really biased. But what would add even more value to your post is recommending a book which does the same thing but better (so basically, a book about how to get better at updating how we view the world, written in a clear, streamlined way, with examples and practical adviceâjust more rigorous).
I really like to improve. But I need practical stuff for thatâand I asked for it and still feel you didnât answer that (besides taking up a debate policyâyou also made a list of actions but with no links to go deeper).
I fear it could prove difficult for you to spread your ideas even further without a greater focus on that part.
But I come here and say I think EA is wrong about important issues
By the way, have you issued claims about EA being wrong on its list of priorities ? You have done so on methodologyâwhich is important, but not the most engaging topic, so few people interacted with it (which is too bad). But have tried to make more specific claims, like âEA is wrong about putting effort on factory farmingâ ?
Oh, I had wrote a full answer in your curi.us debate space, but it says I need an account (itâs weird that the âpost public answerâ box appears if it doesnât even if I donât have an account).
I think Iâll take up your offer to have an access to the forum just for a few months, please.
Oh, and thanks for the concern youâre showing me, thatâs kind :)
OK, I gave CF forum posting access to your account.
Youâre right that I should make the curi.us comment section clearer than the current small-print note. If you lost the text of what you wrote, I should be able to retrieve it for you from logs.
Ok, all of this is interesting. Sorry for the late answerâI got caught watching the FTX debacle where I lost an ongoing project.
Iâm going to focus on that here.
This is related to why I was so late in answering: the longer the exchange is, the most you have to reply to. This means that the cost of answering, in time and brain resources, gets higher, lowering the proability of an answer. I think this is a reason why many people stop debating at some point.
A useful thing I try to keep in mind is that the brain tries to save energy. It can save energy by automating tasks (habits), by using shortcuts (heuristics), and by avoiding strong conclusions that would lead to a large reorganization in the way it currently does things (for instance, changing core beliefs and methods of reasoning). This avoidance can take the form of finding rationalizations to stuff it already does, or denial.
Of course, itâs not just about energy, since the brain can change its structure if there is a good reason. Motivation is a crucial part of people discussing anythingâbut for motivation you need a reason to keep motivated. But itâs really not obvious what the motivation is when discussing abstract methodology. What would that reason be?
Most of the time, the reason is direct feedback that itâs doing things wrong, and negative consequences if it doesnât change. But we donât have this feedback during an abstract discussion on methodology and epistemics.
There is no examples of feedback of the style âwow, the way that guy does things really looks betterâ, as you said.
Social validation doesnât go our way either here.
Youâre not at the top of a social hierachy
Plus, weâre not between friends and weâre remote in time and space (the point you made about debates being more conclusive where there is friendliness or high standards was really good, by the way).
Now, getting better and feeling right about something can be motivating to some people (like us). But if there appears to be no good pathway for me to get better, Iâll give up on the conversation, since my brain will see other stuff to do as more appealing (not right now of course. But at some point).
To prevent that, for me, the reward would be a concrete way to improve how I do things. I can agree with you that we (I) donât have high enough standards for high-quality discourse, but that doesnât tell me what to do. My brain cannot change if you donât point to something specific I can apply (like a method or a rule you can enforce). Debate policies may be a start, but they wonât do if I have no idea what they look like.
We usually donât learn by having more theoretical knowledge, althought thatâs often necessaryâbut most of the time theoretical knowledge doesnât necessarily influence action (think of âtreat others as you would treat yourselfâ). But the kind of knowledge that really sticks and influences action comes from practiceâby trying stuff and seeing by yourself how that works. Having these methological skills you talked about worked for you, so now you try to push them forward. This makes sense. But I can do the same only by trying and testing.
So, what could you provide your debate partners that would be attractive enough to keep them in the debate? Iâm afraid that having extremely long discussions about theoretical stuff with no clear reward may be too much to expect.
Now Iâm interested. Do you have data that would refute what I said or that you think would work better ?
I donât mind switching to saying one short thing at a time if you prefer. I find people often donât prefer it, e.g. b/âc dozens of short messages seems like too much. In my experience, people tend to stop discussing after a limited number of back-and-forths regardless of how long they are.
Ok, I understandâso if lenght isnât the biggest problem, I guess what might cause more of an issue is that the topic is about âtheoretical stuff with no clear rewardâ.
So I guess the main challenge is about solving that. Questions like: How can I show that this theoretical stuff can be useful in the real world ? What is the reason people might have to be interested in engaging with me ? If I can only have a limited number of replies, how do I make the most of that time, and what are the most valuables ideas, practices and concept that I can push for ?
I have answers to this and various other things, but I donât have short, convincing answers that work with pre-existing shared premises with most people. The difficulty is too much background knowledge is different. My ideas make more sense and can be explained in shorter ways if someone knows a lot about Karl Popperâs ideas. My Popperian background and perspective clashes with the Bayesian perspectives here and itâs not mainstream either. (There are no large Popperian communities comparable to LW or EA to go talk to instead.)
The lack of enough shared premises is also, in my experience, one of the main reasons people donât like to debate with me. People usually donât want to rethink fundamental issues and actually donât know how to. If you go to a chemist and say âI disagree with the physics premises that all your chemistry ideas are based onâ, they maybe wonât know how to, or want to, debate physics with you. People mostly want to talk about stuff within their field that they know about, not talk about premises that some other type of person would know about. The obvious solution to this is talk to philosophers, but unfortunately philosophy is one of the worst and most broken fields and thereâs basically no one reasonable to talk to and almost no one doing reasonable work. Because philosophy is so broken, people should stop trusting it and getting premises from it. Everything else is downstream of philosophy, so itâs hurting EA and everything else. But this is a rather abstract issue which, so far, I havenât been able to get many people to care much about.
I could phrase it using more specifics but then people will disagree with me. E.g. âinduction is wrong so...â will get denials that induction is wrong. (Induction is one of the main things Popper criticized. I donât think any philosopher has ever given a reasonable rebuttal to defend induction. Iâve gone through a lot of literature on that issue and asked a lot of people.) The people who deny induction is wrong consistently want to take next steps that I think are the wrong approach, such as debating induction without using literature references or ignoring the issue. Whereas I think the next step should basically be to review the literature instead of making ad hoc arguments. But thatâs work. Iâve done that work but people donât want to trust my results (which is fine) and also donât want to do the work themselves, which leaves it difficult to make progress.
Hmm, this is complicated indeed.
Have you tried putting stuff in a visual way ? Like breaking down the steps of your (different) reasoning in a diagram , in order to show why you have a different conclusion on a specific topic EA is doing.
For instance, letâs say one conclusion you have is âEAs interested in animal welfare should do Xâ. You could present stuff this way : [Argument A] + [Argument B] â [I use my way of estimating things] â [Conlusion X].
Maybe this could help.
Huhu canât say I disagree, I really have problems seeing what I can get from the field of philosophy most of the time, in terms of practical advice on how to improve that works, not just ideas. (although saying âthereâs no one reasonable to talk to in the field XXXâ would flag you as a judgemental person nobody should talk to, so be careful issuing judgements around like that)
But itâs very hard to say âthis is badâ about something without proposing something people better can turn to instead. And despite exchanging with you, I still donât picture that âbetterâ thing to turn to.
For instance, one of the (many) reasons the anti-capitalism movement is absolutely failing is not because capitalism is good (itâs pretty clear itâs leading us to environmental destruction) or because people support it (there have been surveys in France showing that a majority of people think we need to get out of the myth of infinite growth). It has a lot to do with how hard it is to actually picture alternatives to this system, how hard it is to put forward these alternatives, and how hard it is to implement them. Nothing can change if I canât picture ways of doing things differently.
The alternatives are things like:
raise intellectual standards
have debate policies
use rational debate to reject lots of bad ideas
judge public intellectuals by how they handle debate, and judge ideas by the current objective state of the debate
read and engage with some other philosophers (e.g. Popper, Goldratt and myself)
actually write down whatâs wrong with the bad philosophers in a clear way instead of just disliking them (this will facilitate debating and reaching conclusions about which ones are actually good)
investigate what philosophical premises you hold, and their sources, and reconsider them
There are sub-steps, e.g. to raise intellectual standards people need to improve their ability to read, write and analyze text, and practice that until a significantly higher skill level and effectiveness is intuitive/âeasy. That can be broken down into smaller steps such as learning grammar, learning to make sentence tree diagrams, learning to make paragraph tree diagrams, learning to make multi-paragraph tree diagrams, etc.
I have a forum people can join and plenty of writing and videos which include actionable suggestions about steps to take. Iâve also have proposed things that I think people can picture, like that all arguments are addressed in truth-seeking and time-efficient ways instead of ignored. If that was universal, it would have consequences such as it being possible to go to a charity or company and telling them some ideas and making some arguments and then, if youâre right, they probably change. If 10% of charities were open to changing due to rational argument, itâd enable a lot of resources to be used more effectively.
BTW, I donât think itâs a good idea to have much confidence in your political opinions (or spend much time or effort on them) without doing those other kinds of activities first.
Ah, this is more like it: a list of stuff to do. Good !
Now that I see it in that format, maybe an interesting EA forum post would be to use the list above, and provide links for each of them. You could redirect each item to the best source you have found or produced on this topic. I feel it would be easier to convince people to adopt better rationality practices if they have a list of how to do that.
Well maybe not everyone, but I am drawing conclusions from my personal case: you seem to have some interesting techniques in store, but personally right now I just donât see how acquire themâso the best links you have for that could help greatly.
This would centralize the information in one spot (that you can redirect people to in future debates and works).
An unrelated note: I liked your post on the damage big companies were doing on your forum. I donât really understand why you think the damage they do is not compatible with capitalismâI donât see anything in the definition of capitalism that would preclude such an outcome. But it was an interesting post.
Iâm a bit more skeptical on your post about how to judge the ability of experts, however. If having a debate policy were a common practice, and it was notorious that people who refuse them have something to hide, then it would work. But right now such an advice doesnât seem that useful, because very few people have such a debate policyâso you canât distinguish between people who have something to hide and people who would be ok with the concept if they had heard about it. I donât see such a practice becoming mainstream for the next few decades.
So in the absence of that, how can I really judge which experts are reliable ?
Iâd like to judge by openness in debates, but itâs not clear to me how to get this information quickly. Especially when Iâm seeing an expert for the first time.
For instance, letâs take someone like Nate Hagens. How would you go to judge his reliability?
I have tried many centralizing or organizing things. Hereâs an example of one which has gotten almost no response or interest: https://ââwww.elliottemple.com/ââreason-and-morality/ââ
Anyway, I have plenty more things I could try. I have plenty to say. And I know thereâs plenty of room for improvement in my stuff including regarding organization. I will keep posting things at EA for now. Even if I stop, Iâll keep posting at my own sites. Even if no one listens, it doesnât matter so much; I like figuring out and writing about these things; itâs my favorite activity.
FYI, itâs hard for me to know what post you mean without a link or title because I have thousands of posts, and I often have multiple posts about the same topic.
The definition of capitalism involves a free market where the initiation of force (including fraud) is prohibited. Today, fraud is pretty widespread at large companies. Also, many versions of capitalism allow the government to use force, but they do not allow the government to meddle in the economy and give advantages to some companies over others which are derived from the governmentâs use of force (so some companies are, indirectly via the government, using force against competitors). Those are just two examples (of many).
(I may not reply further about capitalism or anything political, but I thought that would be short and maybe helpful.)
You can tell them about the debate policy concept and see how they react. You can also look at whether they respond to criticisms of their work. You can also make a tree of the field and look at whether that expert is contributing important nodes to it or not.
I think it could become important, widespread and influential in a few years if it had a few thousand initial supporters. I think getting even 100 initial supporters is the biggest obstacle, then turning that into a bigger group is second. Then once you have a bigger group that can be vocal enough in online discussions, they can get noticed by popular intellectuals and bring up debate policies to them and get responses of some kinds. Then you just need one famous guy to like the idea and it can get a lot more attention and it will then be possible to say âX has a debate policy; why donât you?â And I can imagine tons of fans bringing that up in comment sections persistently for many of the popular online intellectuals. Itâs easy to imagine fans of e.g. Jordan Peterson bugging him about it endlessly until he does it.
I think the reason that doesnât happen is that most people donât actually seem to want it, like it or care, so getting to even 100 supporters of the idea is very hard. The issue IMO is the masses resisting, rejecting or not caring about the idea (of the few who see it, most dislike or ignore it), including at EA, for reasons I donât understand well enough.
I glanced at the table of contents and saw mention of Malthus. Thatâs a topic I know about, so I could read that section and be in a pretty good position to evaluate it or catch errors. Finding a section where I have expertise and checking that is a useful technique.
Thereâs a fairly common thing where people read the newspaper talking about their field and they are like âwow itâs so bad. this is so amateurish and full of obvious errorsâ. Then they read the newspaper on any other topic and believe the quality is decent. It isnât. You should expect the correctness of the parts you know less about to probably be similar to the part you know a lot about.
At a glance at the Malthus section, the book seems to be on the same side as Malthus, which I disagree with. So a specific thing Iâd look for is whether the book brings up and tries to address some of the arguments on my side that I regard as important. If it ignores the side of the debate I favor, and doesnât have any criticisms of anything I believe, thatâd be bad. I did a text search for âGodwinâ and there are no results. (Godwin is a classical liberal political philosopher from the same time period as Malthus who I like a lot. He wrote a book about why Malthus was wrong.) There are also no results for âBurkeâ and no mention of Adam Smith (nor turgot, bastiat, condorcet, mises, rothbard, hayek). I see it as a potentially bad sign to look at old thinkers/âwriters only to bring up one who is on your side without talking about other ideas from the time period including disagreements and competing viewpoints. It can indicate bias to cherry pick one past thinker to bring up.
Thatâs inconclusive. Maybe it gives fair summaries of rival viewpoints and criticizes them; I didnât look enough to actually know. I donât want to spend more time and energy on this right now (also I dislike the format and would want to download a copy of the book to read it more). I think it gives you some idea about ways to approach this â methods â even though I didnât actually do much. Also, in my experience, the majority of books like this will fail at fact checking at least once if you check five random cites, so that would be worth checking if you care about whether the facts in the book are trustworthy.
Okâhowever, while this is better, this list is still very long, and quite daunting. Itâs good as an index, but not as a âhereâs the top priority stuffâ.
I think a question you should ask yourself is âIf I can only have a limited number of exchanges with people, and they have a limited time, what do I want them to learn?â. And then just mention a few things that are the best/âmost useful stuff you have in store.
This way people get a sample of what you can offer, and then they may be like âoh ok this might be useful, maybe Iâll dig more into thatâ.
Mentioning âread the entire work of this guyâ or âcheck my entire forumâ is probably not something people will readily use- because from the outside I have no way of knowing if this is a good use of my time. It would take too much effort just to check. So I need a sample that tells me âhey, thatâs interestingâ that pushes me to go onward.
So having a list of 1) Actionable advice 2) with the list with the best stuff to redirect people too would be useful.
Same questionâhow do I check that ? Thereâs no under âanswer sectionâ under scientific papers or books, except some are ones. They could have answered the criticism in the - how do I check that quickly ?
For instance, from what I read, Nate Hagens did take into account the classic points put forward against the claims of Malthus (although he didnât really quote many names). But itâs all over the bookâso thereâs no quick way of checking that.
I think one reason most people are not interested is that they donât feel concerned by the idea. I donât feel concerned by it. It feels it could work for public intellectuals, but everybody else has no use for it (maybe theyâre wrong, but it doesnât feel like it). And public intellectuals are a hard to reach public.
Itâs also not obvious what the benefits of the idea would be. I understand there are benefits, but thereâs no visible result you can see for them, which makes it less attractive. And even if there were debates following this policy, itâs not guaranteed this would change the state of the debate: many papers have been shown as non-replicable, but they are still widely cited since the rebuttals have not publicized as much.
I get that this would be really useful if many prominent experts used thatâbecause you could reach to them and theyâd have to answer.
I replied but I deleted it after finding out about the new CC BY license requirement. You can read my reply where Iâd mirrored it at https://ââdiscuss.criticalfallibilism.com/âât/âârational-debate-methodology-at-effective-altruism/ââ1510/ââ40?u=elliot
I think Iâm going to have to quit writing anything substantive at EA due to the license change, so if you want to keep discussing with me I think youâll have to join my forum. That sucks but I donât see a better option.
OkâI subscribed to the forum but I donât know how to answer to the comment you linked to.
Iâll answer here.
Interesting, but I donât know if this is the right criteria. One thing is, I canât point out to an error you made because I canât evaluate your claims. Our discussion was on abstract points of methodology, not facts or stuff you can verifyâso of course I canât point out to an error, because there is no real result to check.
Now I know I should keep an open mind, which I do, especially since I canât point to errors in the reasoning itself. But itâs hard to believe things I canât verify and see by myself.
Which is why I keep asking for stuff like examples and concrete things. Itâs easier to grasp these and to verify them.
Itâs really not obvious to anyone that ânot having a debate policyâ is âdoing rationality wrongâ. Especially when the concept itself is so uncommon. If this is the criteria I really donât know who is doing rationality right (but then again, I donât really know who is doing rationality right).
Then again, most people do not get challenged into debates. Even EAs. So it makes sense that they think such a concept is not for them.
Just to test, youâll be happy to know I adopted a debate policy ! Weâll see what results that provides in 10 years.
Ah, ok. I see where we differ here.
I try to have the most impact I can in the world, so I judge what I do by âwhat positive impact did this have?â As such, quick wins that can target a larger public have a larger impact, and a higher chance of changing things, so I decided on that. Which is why this seems more important to me.
But it appears that you have a different goal in mindâyou seek high-level discussions with like-minded individuals. I can understand that.
Same for the CC BY license. I know Iâd have less impact if I left the forum, and what I write is there with the goal of being shared anyway, so I donât really care about that.
I just put up 7 more EA-related articles at https://ââcuri.us The best way to find all my EA related articles is https://ââcuri.us/ââ2529-effective-altruism-related-articles
I have more drafts to go through so there will be more posts soon.
If you or anyone else thinks that any of them should be on the EA forum, you can post them at EA as link posts. In general, I donât plan to link post my own stuff at EA going forward, for several reasons, but if even one person thinks it would add much value to EA, they are welcome to do it.
To post on my forum, you have to pay $20 (once, not recurring). I know the communication on this isnât amazing (Discourse has limited options) though there should be a banner and some info about it in a few places, but I know sometimes people still donât see it. Thereâs a subscribe button on the home page but itâs in a menu on mobile instead of directly visible. It takes you to https://ââdiscuss.criticalfallibilism.com/ââs and then the payment flow is with a standard plugin that uses Stripe.
If itâs a financial burden for you, I can give you free access.
If you can afford it, then Iâll have to ask you to pay, because my general policy is if people value a discussion with me less than $20 then I shouldnât talk with them. I skip that policy when I go participate at other communities, but Iâm quitting the EA forum now.
I also just wrote more about my issues with the CC BY license at https://ââforum.effectivealtruism.org/ââposts/ââWEAXu8yTt5XbKq4wJ/ââignoring-small-errors?commentId=Z7Nh36x3brvzC3Jpm
OkâI though the $20 were for making posts, I didnât think it was for answering.
I donât think I will pay $20 because all the money I earn beyond my basic needs is going to charities.
I can understand the CC BY issue, if youâve had problems with it in the past. If you think you can have more impact by retaining property over what you write, then this is what you should do.
If $20 got you even a 1% chance to find out that much of your money and effort is going to the wrong charities and causes, wouldnât that be a good deal? Error correction is high value.
I think what EA is doing by getting people to donate that much (all above basic needs) is extremely harmful to people like you. Iâd believe that even if I didnât also believe that the majority of EA causes and efforts were counter-productive.
Thereâs something really problematic about thinking a cause is so important that youâll make large personal sacrifices for it, but not being willing to do much to pursue potential error correction. EA has a lot of people who will go to great lengths to help their causes â they just are so sure theyâre right(?) that they donât seem to think debating critics is very important. Itâs weird. If you think every dollar you donate is a big deal, you should also think every tiny bit of risk reduction and error correction is a big deal. Those things are scarcer than dollars and can easily have larger impacts. But I come here and say I think EA is wrong about important issues, and I want to debate, and I ask if EA has any organized debate methods or even just individuals whoâd be happy to debate much. And the answer was no and also no one seems to think thatâs very bad or risky. That shows a widespread lack of respect for the risk of being wrong about causes that people are investing all their money above basic needs in, and a disinterest in criticism.
Anyway, if you find my ideas implausible and not worth pursuing or debating, or still donât really value my time more than the time of the next guy you could talk with instead, then we should part ways.
SorryâI exagerated a bit. I do not donate everything above my basic needsâstill quite a good chunk but not everything.
I try to spend quite some time on error correction (and sometimes buy books instead of getting them from a library) - but in this realm I am still weighting that against, say, the impact I could obtain by donating to an animal charity instead. But Iâm ready to do some spending if I feel thereâs a good chance to know more and improve.
The problem here is rather that I am not sure subscribing to this forum will really allow me to improve.
I absolutely agree to your claim that EA has a lack of organized debate method, and could improve on fighting against bias. I could probably improve on that too, I think. I can agree with the âlacking methodologyâ.
However, to actually improve, I need practical advice on how to improve. Or an example: for instance, seeing a debate where I see that a specific claim very important in EA is not impactful (for instance, that donating to charities that do corporate outreach in factory farming), and seeing the methodology that led to this claim.
I want to point out that criticism of what exists currently is important but not enoughâthe way I personally work is that I need to see something better in order to update correctly. Then I can be inspired by that better approach.
For instance, I read your criticism of The Scout Mindsetâitâs interesting, there are good points, for instance that the examples she gives could be really biased. But what would add even more value to your post is recommending a book which does the same thing but better (so basically, a book about how to get better at updating how we view the world, written in a clear, streamlined way, with examples and practical adviceâjust more rigorous).
I really like to improve. But I need practical stuff for thatâand I asked for it and still feel you didnât answer that (besides taking up a debate policyâyou also made a list of actions but with no links to go deeper).
I fear it could prove difficult for you to spread your ideas even further without a greater focus on that part.
By the way, have you issued claims about EA being wrong on its list of priorities ? You have done so on methodologyâwhich is important, but not the most engaging topic, so few people interacted with it (which is too bad). But have tried to make more specific claims, like âEA is wrong about putting effort on factory farmingâ ?
I donât want to CC BY license my replies, so here are links. I donât want to reply this way in general and may not do it again.
https://ââdiscuss.criticalfallibilism.com/âât/ââelliot-temple-and-corentin-biteau-discussion/ââ1543/ââ5?u=elliot
https://ââdiscuss.criticalfallibilism.com/âât/ââelliot-temple-and-corentin-biteau-discussion/ââ1543/ââ6?u=elliot
Oh, I had wrote a full answer in your curi.us debate space, but it says I need an account (itâs weird that the âpost public answerâ box appears if it doesnât even if I donât have an account).
I think Iâll take up your offer to have an access to the forum just for a few months, please.
Oh, and thanks for the concern youâre showing me, thatâs kind :)
OK, I gave CF forum posting access to your account.
Youâre right that I should make the curi.us comment section clearer than the current small-print note. If you lost the text of what you wrote, I should be able to retrieve it for you from logs.
Also regarding evaluating a book, I just did 4 demonstrations for EA at https://ââforum.effectivealtruism.org/ââposts/ââyKd7Co5LznH4BE54t/ââgame-i-find-three-errors-in-your-favorite-text and 3 of them include a screen recording of my whole process.