Thread by @EpistemicHope

I like this post.

benjaminrosshoffman.com/model-building…

I think this zeros in on a narrow category ("scapegoating"), that is a member of a larger class of phenomena.

In a conversation that with semantic content about anything important, there are two "layers" that are unfolding in parallel:

There's abstracted, literal modeling of a situation.

And there's social-political effects of the speech acts.

Being a "high decoupler" means that you're focused more on the first thing. Being a "low decoupler" means that you focus more on that second thing.

The social-political effects include:
* Implications an interlocutor might draw from a literal statement.
* Implications that ONLOOKERS might draw from an literal statement and actions those implications that motivate (or be used to justify).

* Implications that onlookers or interlocutors don't make themselves, but that they are concerned that OTHERS will make. [This is a big deal.]

* Some tribe being supported by my speech act, and some tribe being criticized, and the associated reactions (defensive/ triggered, smug, proud) in both interlocutor and onlooker.
* The directions in which a speech act shifts the local overton window.

* The bucket errors you might make YOURSELF, if you accept some point which seems correct but also seems suspicious somehow.

lesswrong.com/posts/EEv9JeuY…

There's a kind of nerd who is denigrating of "all that tribal stuff". They read that arguments are soldiers, thought that that was obviously stupid, it just gets in the way of effective truth-seeking, and they were not going to do that.

lesswrong.com/tag/arguments-…

(This is often the default attitude of young, somewhat naive, nerds. But there are also some more sophisticated folks who endorse some some version of this policy.

@robinhanson seems to me to be a sophisticated exemplar of something like this attitude.

@robinhanson For instance, his "Against Disclaimers" explicitly endorses a policy of not bothering with or attempting to make accommodations fro (at least some of) social political effects.
overcomingbias.com/2008/06/agains…

@robinhanson I don't know him as well, but I think that @zackmdavis's deal is repeatedly standing up for something like "God Damn it, let's just say what's true, independently of the social-political connotations.")

@robinhanson @zackmdavis There is absolutely something admirable about the that attitude.

@robinhanson @zackmdavis For one thing, it seems strongly connected, somehow, with ability to reason. Everyone I know who can think is a default high-decoupler, and the people who are the most impressive thinkers tend to be even more extremely so.

@robinhanson @zackmdavis (I can think of one example of a person who's ability to think is impressive, and who seems to be only a medium-high decoupler.

And I admit the possibility that the correlation between decoupling and ability-to-think is mostly a artifact of my filter bubble.)

@robinhanson @zackmdavis But also, I think the nerd who denigrates "all that tribal stuff", is failing to take the problem seriously enough. But also, I think the nerd who denigrates "all that tribal stuff", is failing to take the problem seriously enough.

@robinhanson @zackmdavis It isn't like "that tribal stuff" is epiphenomenal. There are actual cultural-political battles being waged, with actual stakes. Who wins what battles actually impacts people's lives.

(At least some of the time.)

@robinhanson @zackmdavis I think the straw-LessWronger is imagining that everyone else is treating arguments as soldiers because they're irrational.

But it's closer to "everyone else is treating arguments like soldiers BECAUSE they're instrumentally rational.

@robinhanson @zackmdavis They have interests and their speech acts have consequences for their interests.

Ignoring those consequences is the weird and crazy thing.

@robinhanson @zackmdavis And you can't escape from the fact that your speech acts have consequences by asserting that playing social political games is bad collective epistemology.

It really IS bad epistemology. But you have to track that ignoring those games is deciding to eat a big cost.

@robinhanson @zackmdavis (At least for most people. For nerds the costs might be lower.

But, I think in general, nerds are nerds not because they don't care about the social-political stuff (though they're often bad at it), but because they care about other things MORE.)

paulgraham.com/nerds.html

@robinhanson @zackmdavis I think it is not just psychologically unrealistic to ignore the social-political level of our discourse.

It's pragmatically unrealistic.

@robinhanson @zackmdavis I'm not sure if, on net, you get worse results this way. Truth-tracking is just really powerful.

@robinhanson @zackmdavis But, at minimum, I know that you'll be a less effective communicator if you ignore this level, because most everyone you talk to, including other nerds, will be responding to you at least in part on the social-political level.

@robinhanson @zackmdavis My contention: if you attend to the social-political level, it increases your ability to think, individually and collectively, at the literal semantic level.

@robinhanson @zackmdavis You don't have to ignore the social political effects of speech. You can, at least in some contexts, factor it out.

@robinhanson @zackmdavis Language has a lot of expressive power. Much (maybe most?) of the time, it is possible to make nuanced statements, and be attentiveness to people's interests in such a way that you can model a situation on the literal level without "leaking" meaning on the social-political level.

@robinhanson @zackmdavis You can skillfully say X in a way that doesn't trigger a hyper-vigilant reaction from one of the interests of the other parties involved.

@robinhanson @zackmdavis If all of the pressing concerns are held, then you can all, creatively work to understand the situation and figure out how to meet everyone's needs.

You side-step the political battle.

musingsandroughdrafts.wordpress.com/2018/12/24/usi…

@robinhanson @zackmdavis (By the way, I'm quite impressed with these people, and this process, for doing exactly that. convergentfacilitation.org)

@robinhanson @zackmdavis The part that @diviacaroline liked of the conversation that I had with Jack last year is a good example of this.

https://twitter.com/diviacaroline/status/1300866571942768642?s=20

@robinhanson @zackmdavis @diviacaroline The problem is that anything like this requires extremely high bandwidth.

And we're living in a low bandwidth world.

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