Really intrigued by the idea of debates! I was briefly reluctant about the concept at first, because what I associate with “debates” is usually from politics, religious disputes, debating contests, etc. where the debaters are usually lacking so much of essential internal epistemic infrastructure that the debating format often just makes it worse. Rambly, before I head off to bed:
Conditional on it being good for EA to have more of a culture for debating, how would we go about practically bring that about?
I wonder if EA Global features debates. I haven’t seen any. It’s mostly just people agreeing with each other and perhaps adding some nuance.
You don’t need to have people hostile towards each other in order for it to qualify as “debate”, I do think one of the key benefits of debates is that the disagreement is visible.
For one, it primes the debaters to hone in on disagreements, whereas perhaps EA in-group are overly primed to find agreements with each other in order to be nice.
Making disagreements more visible will hopefwly dispel the illusion that EA as a paradigm is “mostly settled”, and get people to question assumptions. This isn’t always the best course of action, but I think it’s still very needed on the margin, and could get into why if asked.
If the debate (and the mutually-agreed-upon mindset of trying to find each others’ weakest points) is handled well, it can onlookers feel like head-on disagreeing is more ok. I think we’re mostly a nice community, reluctant to step on toes, so if we don’t see any real disagreements, we might start to feel like the absence of disagreement is the polite thing to do.
A downside risk is that debating culture is often steeped in the “world of arguments”, or as Nate Soares put it: “The world is not made of arguments. Think not “which of whese arguments, for these two opposing sides, is more compelling? And how reliable is compellingness?” Think instead of the objects the arguments discuss, and let the arguments guide your thoughts about them.”
We shouldn’t be adopting mainstream debating norms, it won’t do anything for us. What I’m excited about is the idea making spaces for good-natured visible disagreements where people are encouraged to attack each others’ weakest points. I don’t think that mindset comes about naturally, so it could make sense to deliberately make room for it.
Also, if you want people to debate you, maybe you should make a shortlist of the top things you feel would be productive to debate you on. : )
Part of what’s going on here is that Popperian epistemology says, in brief summary, we learn by critical thinking and debate (both within our mind and with others). Bayesian epistemology does not say that. It (comparatively) downplays the roles of debate and criticism.
In the Popperian view, a rational debate is basically the same process as rational thinking but externalized to involve other people. Or put the other way around, trying to make critical arguments about ideas in your head that you’re considering is one of the main aspects of thinking.
I’m unaware of any Bayesian who claims to have adequate knowledge of Popper who has written some kind of refutation of Popperian epistemology, or who endorses and takes responsibility for a particular refutation written by someone familiar with Popper’s views. This is asymmetric. Popper wrote refutations of Bayesian ideas and generally made a significant effort to critically analyze other schools of thought besides his own and to engage with critics.
Also, if you want people to debate you, maybe you should make a shortlist of the top things you feel would be productive to debate you on. : )
The things I’m most interested in debating are broad, big picture issues like about debate methodology or what the current state of the Popper/Bayes debate is (e.g. what literature exists, what is answered by what, what is unanswered). Attempts to debate other topics will turn into big picture discussions anyway because I will challenge premises, foundations or methodology.
The debate topic doesn’t really matter to me because, if it isn’t one of these big picture issues, I’ll just change the topic. The bigger picture issues have logical priority. Reaching a conclusion related to e.g. poverty depends on debate and thinking methodology, what epistemology is correct, what knowledge is, what is a good argument, what does it take to reach a conclusion about an issue, how should people behave during debates, when should people use literature references or write fresh arguments, etc. I don’t want to name some attention-getting issues as potential debate topics and then effectively bait-and-switch people by only talking philosophy. I’ll either talk about the issues I think have logical priority or else, if we disagree about that, then about which issues have logical priority and why. Either way it’ll be fairly far removed from any EA causes, though it’ll have implications for EA causes.
Really intrigued by the idea of debates! I was briefly reluctant about the concept at first, because what I associate with “debates” is usually from politics, religious disputes, debating contests, etc. where the debaters are usually lacking so much of essential internal epistemic infrastructure that the debating format often just makes it worse. Rambly, before I head off to bed:
Conditional on it being good for EA to have more of a culture for debating, how would we go about practically bring that about?
I wonder if EA Global features debates. I haven’t seen any. It’s mostly just people agreeing with each other and perhaps adding some nuance.
You don’t need to have people hostile towards each other in order for it to qualify as “debate”, I do think one of the key benefits of debates is that the disagreement is visible.
For one, it primes the debaters to hone in on disagreements, whereas perhaps EA in-group are overly primed to find agreements with each other in order to be nice.
Making disagreements more visible will hopefwly dispel the illusion that EA as a paradigm is “mostly settled”, and get people to question assumptions. This isn’t always the best course of action, but I think it’s still very needed on the margin, and could get into why if asked.
If the debate (and the mutually-agreed-upon mindset of trying to find each others’ weakest points) is handled well, it can onlookers feel like head-on disagreeing is more ok. I think we’re mostly a nice community, reluctant to step on toes, so if we don’t see any real disagreements, we might start to feel like the absence of disagreement is the polite thing to do.
A downside risk is that debating culture is often steeped in the “world of arguments”, or as Nate Soares put it: “The world is not made of arguments. Think not “which of whese arguments, for these two opposing sides, is more compelling? And how reliable is compellingness?” Think instead of the objects the arguments discuss, and let the arguments guide your thoughts about them.”
We shouldn’t be adopting mainstream debating norms, it won’t do anything for us. What I’m excited about is the idea making spaces for good-natured visible disagreements where people are encouraged to attack each others’ weakest points. I don’t think that mindset comes about naturally, so it could make sense to deliberately make room for it.
Also, if you want people to debate you, maybe you should make a shortlist of the top things you feel would be productive to debate you on. : )
Part of what’s going on here is that Popperian epistemology says, in brief summary, we learn by critical thinking and debate (both within our mind and with others). Bayesian epistemology does not say that. It (comparatively) downplays the roles of debate and criticism.
In the Popperian view, a rational debate is basically the same process as rational thinking but externalized to involve other people. Or put the other way around, trying to make critical arguments about ideas in your head that you’re considering is one of the main aspects of thinking.
I’m unaware of any Bayesian who claims to have adequate knowledge of Popper who has written some kind of refutation of Popperian epistemology, or who endorses and takes responsibility for a particular refutation written by someone familiar with Popper’s views. This is asymmetric. Popper wrote refutations of Bayesian ideas and generally made a significant effort to critically analyze other schools of thought besides his own and to engage with critics.
The things I’m most interested in debating are broad, big picture issues like about debate methodology or what the current state of the Popper/Bayes debate is (e.g. what literature exists, what is answered by what, what is unanswered). Attempts to debate other topics will turn into big picture discussions anyway because I will challenge premises, foundations or methodology.
The debate topic doesn’t really matter to me because, if it isn’t one of these big picture issues, I’ll just change the topic. The bigger picture issues have logical priority. Reaching a conclusion related to e.g. poverty depends on debate and thinking methodology, what epistemology is correct, what knowledge is, what is a good argument, what does it take to reach a conclusion about an issue, how should people behave during debates, when should people use literature references or write fresh arguments, etc. I don’t want to name some attention-getting issues as potential debate topics and then effectively bait-and-switch people by only talking philosophy. I’ll either talk about the issues I think have logical priority or else, if we disagree about that, then about which issues have logical priority and why. Either way it’ll be fairly far removed from any EA causes, though it’ll have implications for EA causes.