Over the years, you have published several pieces on ways you’ve changed your mind (e.g. about EA, another about EA, weird ideas, hedonic utilitarianism, and a bunch of other ideas). While I’ve enjoyed reading the posts and the selection of ideas, I’ve also found most of the posts frustrating (the hedonic utilitarianism one is an exception) because they mostly only give the direction of the update, without also giving the reasoning and additional evidence that caused the update* (e.g. in the EA post you write “I am erring on the side of writing this faster and including more of my conclusions, at the cost of not very clearly explaining why I’ve shifted positions”). Is there a reason you keep writing in this style (e.g. you don’t have time, or you don’t want to “give away the answers” to the reader), and if so, what is the reason?
*Why do I find this frustrating? My basic reasoning is something like this: I think this style of writing forces the reader to do a weird kind of Aumann reasoning where they have to guess what evidence/arguments Buck might have had at the start, and what evidence/arguments he subsequently saw, in order to try to reconstruct the update. When I encounter this kind of writing, I mostly just take it as social information about who believes what, without bothering to go through the Aumann reasoning (because it seems impossible or would take way too much effort). See also this comment by Wei Dai.
I think a major reason that I write those posts is because I’m worried that I persuaded someone of claims that I now believe to be false; I hope that if they hear I changed my mind, they might feel more skeptical of arguments that I made in the past.
I mostly don’t try to write up the arguments that persuaded me because it feels hard and time-consuming.
I’m definitely not trying to avoid “giving away the answers”. I’m sorry that this is annoying :( I definitely don’t feel that it’s unreasonable for people to not try to update on my mind changing.
I agree with Issa about the costs of not giving reasons. My guess is that over the long run, giving reasons why you believe what you believe will be a better strategy to avoid convincing people of false things. Saying you believed X and now believe ~X seems like it’s likely to convince people of ~X even more strongly.
Over the years, you have published several pieces on ways you’ve changed your mind (e.g. about EA, another about EA, weird ideas, hedonic utilitarianism, and a bunch of other ideas). While I’ve enjoyed reading the posts and the selection of ideas, I’ve also found most of the posts frustrating (the hedonic utilitarianism one is an exception) because they mostly only give the direction of the update, without also giving the reasoning and additional evidence that caused the update* (e.g. in the EA post you write “I am erring on the side of writing this faster and including more of my conclusions, at the cost of not very clearly explaining why I’ve shifted positions”). Is there a reason you keep writing in this style (e.g. you don’t have time, or you don’t want to “give away the answers” to the reader), and if so, what is the reason?
*Why do I find this frustrating? My basic reasoning is something like this: I think this style of writing forces the reader to do a weird kind of Aumann reasoning where they have to guess what evidence/arguments Buck might have had at the start, and what evidence/arguments he subsequently saw, in order to try to reconstruct the update. When I encounter this kind of writing, I mostly just take it as social information about who believes what, without bothering to go through the Aumann reasoning (because it seems impossible or would take way too much effort). See also this comment by Wei Dai.
I think a major reason that I write those posts is because I’m worried that I persuaded someone of claims that I now believe to be false; I hope that if they hear I changed my mind, they might feel more skeptical of arguments that I made in the past.
I mostly don’t try to write up the arguments that persuaded me because it feels hard and time-consuming.
I’m definitely not trying to avoid “giving away the answers”. I’m sorry that this is annoying :( I definitely don’t feel that it’s unreasonable for people to not try to update on my mind changing.
I agree with Issa about the costs of not giving reasons. My guess is that over the long run, giving reasons why you believe what you believe will be a better strategy to avoid convincing people of false things. Saying you believed X and now believe ~X seems like it’s likely to convince people of ~X even more strongly.