

Why Our Kind Can't Cooperate - lucumo
http://lesswrong.com/lw/3h/why_our_kind_cant_cooperate

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radu_floricica
> But it is nowhere written in either probability theory or decision theory
> that a rationalist should not care. I've looked over those equations and,
> really, it's not in there.

You know, in all my childhood of reading Asimov I never believed I'd live to
see this written in earnest (or close enough).

------
frig
The entire essay fails at some basic level for me.

Background Situation: you maintain a heavy internet presence in which you
write lots of articles on various "issues" and have attracted a sizable
community of hangers-on who like to argue about the issues. The "issues" you
write about are things you believe in strongly.

Puzzling Development: you have a fundraiser for the "issues" you care about
and are disappointed in the outcome (more on this later, see (!)). You get
some amount of donations but the most-visible response is a lot of arguing and
discussion, which you (correctly) conclude is counterproductive to the
fundraising process.

Possible Conclusion One: there's a sizable community of people who like
discussing and arguing about these issues, the same way there's a sizable
community of people who enjoy discussing lost, or star trek, or whatnot. The
underlying issue isn't that important to them (no more so than lost or trek is
important to losties or trekkies), but they sure do enjoy the arguing and
discussion.

Possible Conclusion Two: there's a sizable community of people who deeply care
about the "issues" at hand, as evidenced by the argumentation and discussion
they exhibit. Sadly, the fondness for argumentation leads to counterproductive
behavior when (eg) we try to raise funds, b/c the argumentation is public
(producing negative feedback loops) but the donations are not public.

"Possible Conclusion One" seems the most warranted; there clearly are people
who love arguing and discussion the issues but there's also clearly far fewer
of them who care enough to donate (or otherwise do more than post comments on
teh blog).

"Possible Conclusion Two" is more flattering to the writer but requires more
assumptions about the community of readers and requires drawing more
inferences from observed behavior than "Possible Conclusion One".

(!) Note that the reason the author feels disappointed is b/c the author looks
@ the amount of donations vis-a-vis the amount of passionate argument the
fundraiser provoked and is disappointed (that so much of the passion went into
arguing instead of donations). This is tantamount to assuming "Possible
Conclusion Two", as it is assuming you can correctly infer actual interest in
(doing something about) the "issues" just from apparent passion to argue and
discuss ideas pertinent to the "issues".

If you started from the assumption you had attracted a bunch of people who
like arguing and for whom your "issues" are a kind of catnip -- the way
losties and trekkies find lost and trek to be their catnip -- you might still
be disappointed but for a different reason; you'd be disappointed with your
ability to get your readers to make the leap from enjoying your work as
"entertainment" to caring about the issues it raised, instead of assuming
you'd already done that and then bemoaning their seeming inability to act
productively wrt those "issues".

~~~
jerf
While I think you're basically correct in the context of a fundraiser (Occam's
Razor suggest the more likely explanation is that most people don't donate to
most causes and you weren't special enough to get around that), I still think
Eliezer has a point in general.

I've observed this in online debating in general as well, to put it in a
larger context. If I write something even modestly controversial, and get five
replies, I guarantee each of those five replies will be nothing but sheer
negativity and disagreement. _Agreement_ is indicated by... simply ignoring
the agreeable point. It produces a harshly confrontational environment. I have
no idea how to address that, though; we eschew people simply posting "I
agree!" for a reason, after all. "Voting up" isn't supposed to mean "I agree"
either, though we all know that it sort of does in practice no matter how much
we may protest to the contrary (or even sometimes stretch ourselves and upvote
a good argument for something we disagree with; I've done it, but I'll be
honest, it's an exception, not a rule).

Note that this message is not an exception, except perhaps inasmuch as I
"throw you a bone" in the first paragraph. I don't know what to do about it,
but I'd be interested in ideas.

~~~
frig
To step over the essay and get to your larger point, I think there's a
conceptual error in assuming agreement and disagreement are sufficiently
symmetric that it'd be reasonable to expect there to be a "solution" to the
"problem" you're pointing out.

I think the actual situation is that "agreement" as such _is_ communicated by
actions (either cooperation or mimicry) and "disagreement" as such _is_
communicated by talking (eg: 'u r rong and eevil' responses).

When you look at successful ad-hoc or loosely organized groups the common
theme is outlets for mimicry or cooperation; eg:

\- 'birthers' don't post "i'm so ghey for your evidence and theories" love-
notes to each other on the movement leaders' blogs; they indicate "agreement"
by taking the message to new venues (cooperation), starting up (or taking
over) local 'patriot' organizations (cooperation + mimicry), starting new
blogs advancing the cause (mimicry) and trade strategies / information with
each other (cooperation)

\- 'raelians' are actually a fairly ad-hoc and decentralized cult as cults go;
there's lots of outlets for missionary work (mimicry + cooperation),
'spiritual practice' (mimicry + cooperation), and so on

If the "host" doesn't have outlets for cooperation + mimicry that are both (a)
visible to the host and (b) beneficial to the host then whatever agreement it
generates will either be invisible or not beneficial or both; in the same way,
if you convince people with your controversial blog post the "agreement"
you'll see will come in the form of people linking to you (at its most
visible) as 'great post by jerf' and more often it's just some invisible-to-
you uptick in what % of people have similar takes on the issue you discussed.

This makes a fundraiser for an institute to promote "rationalism" essentially
a multiply-pathological case study with predictably poor results.

EDIT: forgot one thing.

"Communication" is a broad thing (most human action is communicative at some
level or other). Different message types are best transmitted using different
communications types, and I think this is probably unavoidable / not
teachable.

When you frame it as: "I communicate messages of type A on medium B and only
get back responses of type C, but wish I also got messages of type D" it's a
little limiting; the fact of the matter is that perhaps messages of type D are
going out in other media, they're just not reaching your attention.

I'm pessimistic in general as to how malleable the message-type and media-type
pairing can be; my suspicion is that if you care about getting messages of
type D you should first figure out how those messages are communicated -- eg
medium E -- and then find a way to work with that constraint in mind.

This probably means that the current internet communications media are:

\- productivity enhancers for existing high-passion groups

\- allowing new, low-intensity, low-passion groups to get made that otherwise
wouldn't happen (cf: shirky's notion of the coasean floor)

\- ...not really going to enable the latter to graduate to the former on its
own

