Anthropic awareness or “you’re not just in traffic, you are traffic.”
An old standup comedy bit I like is “You’re not in traffic, you are traffic.”Traffic isn’t just something that happens to you, but something you actively participate in (for example, by choosing to leave work during rush hour). Put another way, you are other people’s traffic.
I take the generalized version of this point pretty seriously. Another example of this was I remember complaining about noise at a party. Soon after, I realized that the noise I was complaining about was just other people talking! And of course I participated in (and was complicit in) this issue.
Similarly, in recent months I complained to friends about the dropping kindness and epistemic standards on this forum. It took me way too long to realize the problem with that statement, but the reality is that discourse, like traffic, isn’t something that just happens to me. If anything, as one of the most active users on this forum, I’m partially responsible for the dropping forum standards, especially if I don’t active try to make epistemic standards better.
So this thread is my partial attempt to rectify the situation.
I’d love for more forum users to also recognize this, and personally embody the virtues that you’d like other users to have.
For example, high-decoupler rationalist types rightly note the importance of debating the best versions of the relevant arguments, and not just distorted uncharitable readings of poor ones. To that end, I think it’s helpful for rationalist-y types to attempt to steelman or at least try to understand and emphasize with the perspectives of people who disagree with them.
Similarly, high-contextualizer types rightly note the frequent importance of understanding statements and actions in the proper context, and not always take all statements or actions on their literal face value. To that end, it will be helpful for people to take in the full context of statements and actions to account, and note, for example, that it’d in most circumstances be quite surprising for a grantmaker of Jewish descent to knowingly want to give money to neo-Nazi organizations , and this surprise should make us hesitant to immediately jump to conclusions or otherwise demand extreme haste or concessions.[1]
Another example where I think high-contextualizers have failed this is in an earlier controversy by taking offense at a few lines in Nick Beckstead’s theses implying that we should give less to people in poorer countries, completely ignoring that he was an earlier member of Giving What We Can and giving >=10% of his graduate school stipend to global health charities.
Anthropic awareness or “you’re not just in traffic, you are traffic.”
An old standup comedy bit I like is “You’re not in traffic, you are traffic.”Traffic isn’t just something that happens to you, but something you actively participate in (for example, by choosing to leave work during rush hour). Put another way, you are other people’s traffic.
I take the generalized version of this point pretty seriously. Another example of this was I remember complaining about noise at a party. Soon after, I realized that the noise I was complaining about was just other people talking! And of course I participated in (and was complicit in) this issue.
Similarly, in recent months I complained to friends about the dropping kindness and epistemic standards on this forum. It took me way too long to realize the problem with that statement, but the reality is that discourse, like traffic, isn’t something that just happens to me. If anything, as one of the most active users on this forum, I’m partially responsible for the dropping forum standards, especially if I don’t active try to make epistemic standards better.
So this thread is my partial attempt to rectify the situation.
I’d love for more forum users to also recognize this, and personally embody the virtues that you’d like other users to have.
For example, high-decoupler rationalist types rightly note the importance of debating the best versions of the relevant arguments, and not just distorted uncharitable readings of poor ones. To that end, I think it’s helpful for rationalist-y types to attempt to steelman or at least try to understand and emphasize with the perspectives of people who disagree with them.
Similarly, high-contextualizer types rightly note the frequent importance of understanding statements and actions in the proper context, and not always take all statements or actions on their literal face value. To that end, it will be helpful for people to take in the full context of statements and actions to account, and note, for example, that it’d in most circumstances be quite surprising for a grantmaker of Jewish descent to knowingly want to give money to neo-Nazi organizations , and this surprise should make us hesitant to immediately jump to conclusions or otherwise demand extreme haste or concessions.[1]
Another example where I think high-contextualizers have failed this is in an earlier controversy by taking offense at a few lines in Nick Beckstead’s theses implying that we should give less to people in poorer countries, completely ignoring that he was an earlier member of Giving What We Can and giving >=10% of his graduate school stipend to global health charities.