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Different people of course have different values for what’s good, but once you start trying to *optimize* them you leave the mainstream fast. Ecologists think in terms of saving ecosystems, not cute polar bears. Development economists think about institutions and infrastructure.
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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If you’re *not* pattern-marching each other’s positions to dumber, less nuanced ones, the two of you will rapidly start to diverge from the rest of society; you’ll become high-context, illegible, hard for most people who don’t know you to understand.
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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16. pro |
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I’m not really sure what to do about that one. I’ve always had a sense that it’s nicer/more cooperative to be easy to understand. After all, we all were newbies once at anything we’re expert in today. It feels *weird* to have thoughts I don’t expect to be able to explain.
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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If you ask yourself “is this conversation producing information?” (Like, literally Shannon information) you’d be surprised how much optimization is going on all the time to *avoid* producing too much information.
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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16. pro |
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This is in Finite and Infinite Games too. People mostly don’t want to go in directions that might have surprising or undefined outcomes.
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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16. pro |
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Anxiety about “are you judging me?” is one of many, many tactics to bring attention back to a familiar social game so it won’t go off into some uncharted wilderness.
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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16. pro |
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You know “wilderness” is nearby when it feels — not acutely bad, but “are you sure we should be doing this? this is getting kind of bizarre. this would have some weird implications.”
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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16. pro |
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I don’t know what happens if you try leaning *into* the directions that take you to new places, rather than away from them; if you don’t try to slow down the “plot clock.” Maybe the inhibition is there for good reason! Here There Be Dragons.
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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16. pro |
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But, like, the creation of quantum physics theory would be an example of people going “well we *could* model it that way, but it would take us to some weird places” and then *not stopping* and going to the weird places.
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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16. pro |
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And quantum physics (and the Bomb) is both an example of a great human achievement and a top candidate for the thing that will ultimately destroy human life. So...beware I guess?
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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16. pro |
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EA is a great example of this. When a bunch of idealistic people try to ascertain how to do the most good, they come up with weird shit. “Actually no charities are good.” “Destroy the rainforests.” “Wirehead chickens.” “AI safety.” It’s never, like, “give to United Way.”
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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16. pro |
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You either get “arcane, abstract, boring” (legal details! administrative policy! spreadsheets and models!) or you get “bizarre supervillain shit” (gene drives! carbon capture! brain uploads!)
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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16. pro |
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Honest inquiry rarely leads to “just do a nice normal thing that you probably felt like you ought to do before but you never got around to.”
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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16. pro |
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If you just want your “inquiry” to reinforce what you already think, you had better put a lot of guardrails on it so it doesn’t spit out weird shit. Being scope sensitive at all leads to weird proposals.
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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16. pro |
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This doesn’t just apply to ethical questions. The way to literally make the most money is not gonna be the same as “do the most prestigious and glamorous thing that everyone associates with rich people.”
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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16. pro |
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The way to answer a scientific question is not gonna be the same as “do what proves to the world you’re the smartest and have mastered the trickiest techniques.”
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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16. pro |
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This comes back to judgment again; if you’re trying to achieve a goal you’re gonna get judged. And you’re gonna have to think about what if anything the judgment *means* or *refers to*, not just the experience of hearing it.
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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16. pro |
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Does the feedback *in fact* tell you that you should change your plan in real life? Why is the person giving that feedback? What does that tell you about the world?
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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16. pro |
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Back to judging people; I believe doing bad things is common. “So and so has this common character flaw” is not an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence.
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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16. pro |
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It doesn’t make sense to ostracize or punish the vast, vast majority of people you suspect of having character flaws.
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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16. pro |
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It also doesn’t make sense to flip the bozo bit on people just because you think they have a blind spot.
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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16. pro |
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I generally believe in being very very slow to conclude you have nothing to learn from someone. But also being quick to expect that almost everyone engage in behavior & thought patterns that harm themselves and others.
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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16. pro |
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“I can’t believe you’re accusing this lovely person of having self-flattering biases!” Well, it would be extraordinary if she didn’t!
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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16. pro |
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“Mistake vs conflict theory” is a false dichotomy. The most typical way people do harm is through subconscious motivation. There is optimization power steering towards the outcome you don’t like; but the person doesn’t have conscious control or insight into that process.
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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16. pro |
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Most people are usually wrong when we guess at others’ subconscious motivations; but it’s not a conspiracy theory or paranoia to believe most people have some disturbing subconscious motivations.
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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16. pro |
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Some particular examples: it’s not an extraordinary claim to say someone has racial, gender, or class biases towards siding with the higher-status groups in their society. Almost all people do to some degree.
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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16. pro |
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It’s not an extraordinary claim that someone stretches or spins the truth to make themselves look good. Almost everyone does to some degree.
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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16. pro |
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It’s not an extraordinary claim that most people won’t actually follow through on everything they say they care about.
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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16. pro |
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It’s not an extraordinary claim that someone has done something illegal, especially someone who runs an organization. There are a lot of laws, not all regularly enforced. It’s surprisingly easy to break one unintentionally.
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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16. pro |
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We get stuck in semantic debates of “is it really fair to use words to describe people that have negative connotations when the people in question aren’t *that* bad?”
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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16. pro |
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Trouble is, I don’t think we *have* great words to describe problems that don’t have a judgmental or condemnatory connotation.
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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16. pro |
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“Liar” is an insult and accusation; but lots of people really do stretch and spin the truth; arguing over whether it’s fair to name someone a liar is kind of a distraction from “what is this person saying, what does he believe, what do his listeners believe...
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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16. pro |
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what’s actually true, and what impact does it have that these things are different?”
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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16. pro |
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In general everyone underinvests in finding out what literally happens, what causes it, and what effects it has. We want to skip straight to reacting to it, especially socially and emotionally.
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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16. pro |
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This is why people have processes like "Five Whys" or experimental protocols or court trials with formal rules of evidence. "Ok what literally just happened here" will not usually be done well by default.
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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16. pro |
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Also, investigating "what literally just happened here" feels wasteful or "merely intellectual" if you aren't currently on board with the notion that there *is a problem worth caring about* in the first place. This is a legit disagreement! Just not usually made explicit.
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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16. pro |
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"Why are people going into so much detail to investigate what went 'wrong'? Things seem fine to me! This is bullshit!" <= totally valid reason not to want to do a postmortem.
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Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin
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16. pro |
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But if it's socially unacceptable to appear not to care about the problem, it's more likely that people will sabotage or derail the postmortem, or argue that it's being done wrong in some way, than own up to their real issue with it.
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