Hey Misha!
Thanks for the reply and for linking the post, I enjoyed reading the conversation. I agree that there’s an important difference. The point I was trying to make is that one can look like the other, and that I’m worried that a culture of epistemic uncertainty can accidentally foster a culture of anxious social signaling, esp. when people who are inclined to be underconfident can smuggle anxious social signaling in disguised (to the speaker/writer themselves) as epistemic uncertainty. And because anxious social signalling can superficially look similar to epistemic uncertainty, they see other people in their community show similar-ish behavior and see similar-ish behavior be rewarded.
Not sure how to address this without harming epistemic uncertainty though. (although I’m inclined to think the right trade-off point involves more risk of less of the good communication of epistemic uncertainty)
Or was your point that you disagree that they look superficially similar? And hence, one wouldn’t encourage the other? And if that’s indeed your point, would you independently agree or disagree that there’s a lot of anxious social signaling of uncertainty in effective altruism?
I mostly wanted to highlight that there is a confident but uncertain mode of communication. And that displaying uncertainty or lack of knowledge sometimes helps me be more relaxed.
People surely pick up bits of style from others they respect; so aspiring EAs are likely to adopt the manners of respected members of our community. It seems plausible to me that this will lead to the negative consequences you mentioned in the fifth paragraph (e.g. there is too much deference to authority for the amounts of cluelessness and uncertainty we have). I think a solution might be not in discouraging display of uncertainty but in encouraging positive downstream activities like betting, quantification, acknowledging that arguments changed your mind &c — likely this will make cargo culting less probable (a tangential example is encouraging people to make predictions when they say “my model is…”).
I agree underconfidence and anxiety could be confused on the forum. But not in real life as people leak clues about their inner state all the time.
Reply 1⁄3
Got it now, thanks! I agree there’s confident and uncertain, and it’s an important point.
I’ll spend this reply on the distinction between the two, another response on the interventions you propose, and another response on your statement that qualifiers often help you be more relaxed.
The more I think about it, the more I think that there’s quite a bit for someone to unpack here conceptually. I haven’t done so, but here a start:
There’s stating epistemic degree of epistemic uncertainty to inform others how much they should update based on your belief (e.g. “I’m 70% confident in my beliefs, i.e. I think it’s 70% likely I’d still hold them after lots of reflection.”)
There’s stating probabilities which looks similar, but just tells others what your belief is, not how confident you are in it (“I think event X is 70% likely to occur”)
There’s stating epistemic uncertainty for social reasons that are not anxiety/underconfidence driven: Making a situation less adversarial; showing that you’re willing to change your mind; making it easy for others to disagree; just picking up this style of talking from people around you
There’s stating epistemic uncertainty for social reasons that is anxiety/underconfidence driven: Showing you’re willing to change your mind, so others don’t think you’re cocky; Saying you’re not sure, so you don’t look silly if you’re wrong/any other worry you have because you think maybe you’re saying something ‘dumb’; Making a situation less adversarial because you want to avoid conflict because you don’t want others to dislike you
There’s stating uncertainty about the value of your contribution. That can honestly be done in full confidence, because you want to help the group allocate to attention optimally, so you convey information and social permission to not spend too much time on your point. I think online most of the reasons to do so do not apply (people can just ignore you), so I’m counting it mostly as anxious social signalling or in the best case, a not so useful habit. An exception are if you want to help people decide whether to read a long piece of text.
I think you’re mostly referring to 1 and 2. I think 1 and 2 are good things to encourage and 4 and 5 are bad things to encourage. Although I think 4⁄5 also have their functions and shouldn’t be fully discouraged (more in my (third reply)[https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/rWSLCMyvSbN5K5kqy/chi-s-shortform?commentId=un24bc2ZcH4mrGS8f]). I think 3 is a mix. I like 3. I really like that EA has so much of 3. But too much can be unhelpful, esp. the “this is just a habit” kind of 3.
I think 1 and 2 look quite different from 4 and 5. The main problem that it’s hard to see if something is 3 or 4 or both, and that often, you can only know if you know the intention behind a sentence. Although 1 can also sometimes be hard to tell apart from 3, 4, and 5, e.g. today I said “I could be wrong”, which triggered my 4-alarm, but I was actually doing 1. (This is alongside other norms, e.g. expert deference memes, that might encourage 4.)
I would love to see more expressions that are obviously 1, and less of what could be construed as any of 1, 3, 4, or 5. Otherwise, the main way I see to improve this communication norm is for people to individually ask themselves which of 1,3,4,5 is their intention behind a qualifier.
edit: No idea, I really love 3
Tangentially, I just want to push back a bit on 1 and 2 being obviously good. While I think that quantification is in general good, my forecasting experience taught me that quantitative estimates without a robust track record and/or reasoning are quite unsatisfactory. I am a bit worried that misunderstanding of the Aumann agreement theorem might lead to overpraising communication of pure probabilities (which are often unhelpful).
“displaying uncertainty or lack of knowledge sometimes helps me be more relaxed”
I think there’s a good version of that experience and I think that’s what you’re referring to, and I agree that’s a good use of qualifiers. Just wanted to make a note to potential readers because I think the literal reading of that statement is a bit incomplete. So, this is not really addressed at you :)
I think displaying uncertainty or lack of knowledge always helps to be more relaxed even when it comes from a place of anxious social signalling. (See my first reply for what exactly I mean with that and what I contrast it to) That’s why people do it. If you usually anxiously qualify and force yourself not to do it, that feels scary. I still think, practicing not to do it will help with self-confidence, as in taking yourself more seriously, in the long run. (Apart from efficient communication)*
Of course, sometimes you just need to qualify things (in the anxious social signalling sense) to get yourself in the right state of mind (e.g. to feel safe to openly change your mind later, freely speculate, or to say anything at all in the first place), or allowing yourself the habit of anxious social signalling makes things so much more efficient, that you should absolutely go for it and not beat yourself up over it. Actually, an-almost ideal healthy confidence probably also includes some degree of what I call anxious social signalling and it’s unrealistic to get rid of all of it.
I just found one other frame for what I meant with anxious social signalling partly being rewarded in EA. Usually, that kind of signaling means others take you less seriously. I think it’s great that that’s not so much the case in EA, but I worry that sometimes it may look like people in EA take you more seriously when you do it. Maybe because EA actually endorses what I call 3 in my first reply, but—to say the same thing for the 100th time—I worry that it also encourages anxious social signalling.
I like the suggestions, and they probably-not-so-incidentally are also things that I often tell myself I should do more and that I hate. One drawback with them is that they are already quite difficult, so I’m worried that it’s too ambitious of an ask for many. At least for an individual, it might be more tractable to (encourage them to) change their excessive use of qualifiers as a first baby step than to jump right into quantification and betting. (Of course, what people find more or less difficult confidence-wise differs. But these things are definitely quite high on my personal “how scary are things” ranking, and I would expect that that’s the case for most people.)
OTOH, on the community level, the approach to encourage more quantification etc. might well be more tractable. Community wide communication norms are very fuzzy and seem hard to influence on the whole. (I noticed that I didn’t draw the distinction quite where you drew it. E.g. “Acknowledgements that arguments changed your mind” are also about communication norms.)
I am a little bit worried that it might have backfire effects. More quantification and betting could mostly encourage already confident people to do so (while underconfident people are still stuck at “wouldn’t even dare to write a forum comment because that’s scary.”), make the online community seem more confident, and make entry for underconfident people harder, i.e scarier. Overall, I think the reasons to encourage a culture of betting, quantification etc. are stronger than the concerns about backfiring. But I’m not sure if that’s the case for other norms that could have that effect. (See also my reply to Emery )
I agree that the mechanisms proposed in my comment are quite costly sometimes. But I think higher-effort downstream activities only need to be invoked occasionally (e.g. not everyone who downvotes needs to explain why but it’s good that someone will occasionally) — if they are invoked consistently they will be picked up by people.
Right, I think I see how this can backfire now. Maybe upvoting “ugh, I still think that this is likely but am uncomfortable about betting” might still encourage using qualifiers for reasons 1–3 while acknowledging vulnerability and reducing pressure on commenters?
Hey Misha! Thanks for the reply and for linking the post, I enjoyed reading the conversation. I agree that there’s an important difference. The point I was trying to make is that one can look like the other, and that I’m worried that a culture of epistemic uncertainty can accidentally foster a culture of anxious social signaling, esp. when people who are inclined to be underconfident can smuggle anxious social signaling in disguised (to the speaker/writer themselves) as epistemic uncertainty. And because anxious social signalling can superficially look similar to epistemic uncertainty, they see other people in their community show similar-ish behavior and see similar-ish behavior be rewarded. Not sure how to address this without harming epistemic uncertainty though. (although I’m inclined to think the right trade-off point involves more risk of less of the good communication of epistemic uncertainty)
Or was your point that you disagree that they look superficially similar? And hence, one wouldn’t encourage the other? And if that’s indeed your point, would you independently agree or disagree that there’s a lot of anxious social signaling of uncertainty in effective altruism?
I mostly wanted to highlight that there is a confident but uncertain mode of communication. And that displaying uncertainty or lack of knowledge sometimes helps me be more relaxed.
People surely pick up bits of style from others they respect; so aspiring EAs are likely to adopt the manners of respected members of our community. It seems plausible to me that this will lead to the negative consequences you mentioned in the fifth paragraph (e.g. there is too much deference to authority for the amounts of cluelessness and uncertainty we have). I think a solution might be not in discouraging display of uncertainty but in encouraging positive downstream activities like betting, quantification, acknowledging that arguments changed your mind &c — likely this will make cargo culting less probable (a tangential example is encouraging people to make predictions when they say “my model is…”).
I agree underconfidence and anxiety could be confused on the forum. But not in real life as people leak clues about their inner state all the time.
Reply 1⁄3 Got it now, thanks! I agree there’s confident and uncertain, and it’s an important point. I’ll spend this reply on the distinction between the two, another response on the interventions you propose, and another response on your statement that qualifiers often help you be more relaxed.
The more I think about it, the more I think that there’s quite a bit for someone to unpack here conceptually. I haven’t done so, but here a start:
There’s stating epistemic degree of epistemic uncertainty to inform others how much they should update based on your belief (e.g. “I’m 70% confident in my beliefs, i.e. I think it’s 70% likely I’d still hold them after lots of reflection.”)
There’s stating probabilities which looks similar, but just tells others what your belief is, not how confident you are in it (“I think event X is 70% likely to occur”)
There’s stating epistemic uncertainty for social reasons that are not anxiety/underconfidence driven: Making a situation less adversarial; showing that you’re willing to change your mind; making it easy for others to disagree; just picking up this style of talking from people around you
There’s stating epistemic uncertainty for social reasons that is anxiety/underconfidence driven: Showing you’re willing to change your mind, so others don’t think you’re cocky; Saying you’re not sure, so you don’t look silly if you’re wrong/any other worry you have because you think maybe you’re saying something ‘dumb’; Making a situation less adversarial because you want to avoid conflict because you don’t want others to dislike you
There’s stating uncertainty about the value of your contribution. That can honestly be done in full confidence, because you want to help the group allocate to attention optimally, so you convey information and social permission to not spend too much time on your point. I think online most of the reasons to do so do not apply (people can just ignore you), so I’m counting it mostly as anxious social signalling or in the best case, a not so useful habit. An exception are if you want to help people decide whether to read a long piece of text.
I think you’re mostly referring to 1 and 2. I think 1 and 2 are good things to encourage and 4 and 5 are bad things to encourage. Although I think 4⁄5 also have their functions and shouldn’t be fully discouraged (more in my (third reply)[https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/rWSLCMyvSbN5K5kqy/chi-s-shortform?commentId=un24bc2ZcH4mrGS8f]). I think 3 is a mix. I like 3. I really like that EA has so much of 3. But too much can be unhelpful, esp. the “this is just a habit” kind of 3. I think 1 and 2 look quite different from 4 and 5. The main problem that it’s hard to see if something is 3 or 4 or both, and that often, you can only know if you know the intention behind a sentence. Although 1 can also sometimes be hard to tell apart from 3, 4, and 5, e.g. today I said “I could be wrong”, which triggered my 4-alarm, but I was actually doing 1. (This is alongside other norms, e.g. expert deference memes, that might encourage 4.)
I would love to see more expressions that are obviously 1, and less of what could be construed as any of 1, 3, 4, or 5. Otherwise, the main way I see to improve this communication norm is for people to individually ask themselves which of 1,3,4,5 is their intention behind a qualifier.edit: No idea, I really love 3I like your 1–5 list.
Tangentially, I just want to push back a bit on 1 and 2 being obviously good. While I think that quantification is in general good, my forecasting experience taught me that quantitative estimates without a robust track record and/or reasoning are quite unsatisfactory. I am a bit worried that misunderstanding of the Aumann agreement theorem might lead to overpraising communication of pure probabilities (which are often unhelpful).
Reply 3⁄3
“displaying uncertainty or lack of knowledge sometimes helps me be more relaxed”
I think there’s a good version of that experience and I think that’s what you’re referring to, and I agree that’s a good use of qualifiers. Just wanted to make a note to potential readers because I think the literal reading of that statement is a bit incomplete. So, this is not really addressed at you :)
I think displaying uncertainty or lack of knowledge always helps to be more relaxed even when it comes from a place of anxious social signalling. (See my first reply for what exactly I mean with that and what I contrast it to) That’s why people do it. If you usually anxiously qualify and force yourself not to do it, that feels scary. I still think, practicing not to do it will help with self-confidence, as in taking yourself more seriously, in the long run. (Apart from efficient communication)*
Of course, sometimes you just need to qualify things (in the anxious social signalling sense) to get yourself in the right state of mind (e.g. to feel safe to openly change your mind later, freely speculate, or to say anything at all in the first place), or allowing yourself the habit of anxious social signalling makes things so much more efficient, that you should absolutely go for it and not beat yourself up over it. Actually, an-almost ideal healthy confidence probably also includes some degree of what I call anxious social signalling and it’s unrealistic to get rid of all of it.
I just found one other frame for what I meant with anxious social signalling partly being rewarded in EA. Usually, that kind of signaling means others take you less seriously. I think it’s great that that’s not so much the case in EA, but I worry that sometimes it may look like people in EA take you more seriously when you do it. Maybe because EA actually endorses what I call 3 in my first reply, but—to say the same thing for the 100th time—I worry that it also encourages anxious social signalling.
Chi, I appreciate the depth of your engagement! I mostly agree with your comments.
Reply 2⁄3
I like the suggestions, and they probably-not-so-incidentally are also things that I often tell myself I should do more and that I hate. One drawback with them is that they are already quite difficult, so I’m worried that it’s too ambitious of an ask for many. At least for an individual, it might be more tractable to (encourage them to) change their excessive use of qualifiers as a first baby step than to jump right into quantification and betting. (Of course, what people find more or less difficult confidence-wise differs. But these things are definitely quite high on my personal “how scary are things” ranking, and I would expect that that’s the case for most people.) OTOH, on the community level, the approach to encourage more quantification etc. might well be more tractable. Community wide communication norms are very fuzzy and seem hard to influence on the whole. (I noticed that I didn’t draw the distinction quite where you drew it. E.g. “Acknowledgements that arguments changed your mind” are also about communication norms.) I am a little bit worried that it might have backfire effects. More quantification and betting could mostly encourage already confident people to do so (while underconfident people are still stuck at “wouldn’t even dare to write a forum comment because that’s scary.”), make the online community seem more confident, and make entry for underconfident people harder, i.e scarier. Overall, I think the reasons to encourage a culture of betting, quantification etc. are stronger than the concerns about backfiring. But I’m not sure if that’s the case for other norms that could have that effect. (See also my reply to Emery )
I agree that the mechanisms proposed in my comment are quite costly sometimes. But I think higher-effort downstream activities only need to be invoked occasionally (e.g. not everyone who downvotes needs to explain why but it’s good that someone will occasionally) — if they are invoked consistently they will be picked up by people.
Right, I think I see how this can backfire now. Maybe upvoting “ugh, I still think that this is likely but am uncomfortable about betting” might still encourage using qualifiers for reasons 1–3 while acknowledging vulnerability and reducing pressure on commenters?