I like this framing of improving the commons of the internet and pointing to when something changes our mind. Initial rejection to ideas and changes is very ego-driven but most times I notice ideas that I have initially rejected would seep back in my consciousness and pop up times later. So now I read ideas like these and let them gestate.
Also important to point out rage porn satisfaction out of engaging with someone that seems stupid online, the satisfaction of winning an online battle and then how can we shift the model for the higher satisfaction that of a good human internet argument.
> Pray for those who need it to get power quickly. The world cannot afford to lose them
Yes, this article is for them. I feel like I have found a lot of these people, and they have been waiting for someone to step aside to ask them to be in power. That day will never come. The path is laid out for them, all they need to do is to find the courage to step forward. The vitriol on the incompetent people in power will keep getting growing, and it will cause "friendly fire", but they need to not let that either (1) scare them from stepping up (2) blind them to all feedback.
I am triggered. You write like someone who lives in a beautiful bubble with your own open-minded metropolitan companions. You write like someone who hasn’t REALLY stepped outside your territory, to talk to the real gremlins of society who are actually causing the damage.
I understand that this is advice meant for a “general” audience, and therefore it applies “generally”. It reflects the democratic spirit, which is essentially true… People are generally cooperative and want what’s best. There are exceptions. Criminals and psychologically unsound homeless people are (generally) in the “unreasonable” bucket and we deal with them in a different way. We all know this is how things should be. We don’t talk to repeat offenders to try to get them to change their perspective, we put them in a box.
I’ll stick with these examples for a second here. Maybe you’d argue that violent repeat offenders, for example, WOULD respond to reason. But here lies the issue. We aren’t interested enough in sitting down with these people to try to shape the rhetoric and axioms necessary to get them to understand that they shouldn’t stab people. If this is the case, does this mean we aren’t smart, and we should take more responsibility? Maybe so. Maybe that should be our North Star. Perhaps it’s worth testing. If you are interested, go ahead and talk with the people at the bottom. Sincerely try to help them and see how they interact with you. I’ve done it myself, and I’ll be honest, it really wears me out. I will continue to try to help, but there is a real burden that comes with this. They are dirty, they are stupid, and they are ungrateful. I’ve heard stories of homeless drunks getting entire apartments to themselves due to special programs and they just end up trashing it and losing it. At a certain point, it is not unreasonable to simply stop engaging with the homeless person and let them live in squalor. And at a certain point, it is not unreasonable and lock criminals in a box.
But criminals and homeless people are human beings, and this means they’re not that different from us. Even if we view them as separate, it’s really a (non-linear) gradient from “normal”/“responsible” person to homeless person. We are all, to an extent, criminals or homeless people. We are all, to an extent, antisocial or irresponsible under certain circumstances. If you really talk to a lot of different kinds of people, you’ll notice this gradient I’m talking about.
And in the same way that we cannot remain patient and open-minded for long with what polite society calls “basic expectations” when speaking with these outsiders, those of us closer to some ideal on some (non-linear) awful-to-ideal human gradient will frequently relinquish patience when speaking with those lower on the gradient. And due to the algorithmic pull, I am frequently drawn to those I disagree with most, and soon after I engage with them, my entire digital universe is full of them. They become “generalized”, so to speak, in my timeline. This scenario, which is frequent, renders this general advice moot.
It’s a matter of opportunity cost, which is a matter of energy. If I am intelligent and have a sense of urgency in my life, I hold these ideas in my mind as incredibly important.
Therefore, no, it is not my responsibility to argue with most people online—and this is my response to you, given that this is general advice. Many, many people will remain in the “unreasonable” bucket and will be duly dismissed by me.
Internet arguments suck. That is not a me problem.
And yet! Am I not arguing with you? Well, when I say “internet arguments suck”, I too am making a general statement. Expressing myself clearly in a way that actually reaches people is very valuable. And since my target audience is you, I’m currently making the effort.
I think we agree. I can't imagine you spending time articulating an idea on someone you know will reject it. You described this here today because you expect it will either update my world model, or that of a reader. At the very least it may surface a counter arg from me that will cause you to update. In all cases, you are winning, your time is not wasted.
Therefore: if someone are spending their time arguing on things that are lose-lose, then it is 100% their fault. They made the wrong decision/investment of where they put their time & energy. The problem isn't "internet arguments", it's people making choices that they regret and then not learning from them.
As the Minnesotans say: "there's no such thing as bad weather, only unprepared people". Something like that here
>>"You wake up one day and realize, you’ve identified as a good person all your life, but actually, YOU have been the cause of lot of evil."
During the Late Devonian mass extinction, plants and fungi were working together very *effectively* to digest rock and churn out minerals, which washed away into the oceans, and caused algae blooms, which eventually died and decomposed and the resultant gasses (emitted by the microbes that digested the dead algae) killed 75% of species. What I notice from what I look at (and this might not be evident to someone who focuses on AI risk) is that complex civilizations face a similar predicament as the early plant-fungus team, because even if we refrained from the low-hanging-fruit misaligned activity, our peculiar approach to meeting our essential needs (food, water, thermoregulation) is still misaligned.
Which leads into...
>> "They are a puzzle."
I think that people are more open to facing the internalized evil that has an easy fix. Advocate for a composting system at your company cafeteria, become a more critical consumer of news media, etc. Versus realizing that every day that the sun rises, the very minimum that we do to keep members of our species alive also pushes us toward a hell-planet future. And the average person isn't really equipped to do much about it, or at least nothing that is both immediate and easy to brag about. So instead people just insist that "That can't be it. The evil can't go as deep as you're saying."
Really good point about people not telling you they've changed their minds. In a similar vein, I'm generally content to get an idea caught in someone's head; even if they don't agree with me right now, they'll know the idea is there when they're ready. So many beliefs are just a failure to realize you can believe otherwise.
One interesting exception to this that I know of is the podcast "Breaking Down: Collapse". The host mentions that it's common for listeners to write in and express gratitude for putting words to what they were already intuiting (and I trust him on that - I'm one of them!) ... Edit: It wasn't a mind change in the sense of flipping someone who *actively* believes the opposite. It's more like he provided "solid" info to fill in a part of my mind that previously had contained unexamined, fluffy assumptions
“They want someone to tell them if they are doing something evil, and they will change their behavior once they figure out what it is they’ve been doing that is evil.”
yes, sorry, I just woke up and was grumpy - I should have said: you're right, this doesn't "actually work". What I was wanted to show you by doing a "public bet" is if we pick a target (who is actually malicious, not just misinformed), then we can play this game that will erode *his* audience's faith in him. I am describing launching a propaganda campaign (but, transparently, "pro social")
The reason this is so effective is because this is essentially an infiltration. You don't attack the malicious belief "from the outside", you question it "from the inside". Like it wouldn't be a left wing person attacking a right wing belief, it would be a right wing person who wants to find out what is true asking innocent questions that are difficult to answer (this is usually enough, planting the seed / framing it changes how they consume new information)
This is what I mean by "turn culture war into culture science". The bad guys already use all available means to propagate their ideas effectively, and I think the good guys can (1) use effective strategies that actually work and (2) WITHOUT using things that make the information/epistemic commons worse (like what you describe is as "Discourse Style: Mockery as Method"), for those we can develop defenses / counter attacks against it that pull it towards the good
You should address the studies that show people are highly unlikely to change their minds as a result of debate. It’s a bit overblown by the avoidant but not worth ignoring
I might write an essay in response to this but tldr the studies aren't wrong. "Debate" is NOT how people change their mind. There is almost an algorithm for how to change people's minds (which is currently weapnizwd against people, aka propaganda), and what I'm teaching here is the method for individuals to use it to propagate the truth they believe is true
You don't change people's minds by giving them facts, you change their mind by understanding their existing world model and extending it. Most of the time what you're doing is trying to convert someone. People convert to the beliefs of their friends/family/tribe.
basically - you can test this for yourself. Find someone whose belief you want to change, ideally on the internet so that when it fails, we can debug it/I can tell you where you went wrong.
I agree then. Less on atomised rationalism, more on affective empathy. This has been true in my experience. Maybe it gets blown off course by e.g. autistic or highly intelligent people? But that would be a whole other thing
I like this framing of improving the commons of the internet and pointing to when something changes our mind. Initial rejection to ideas and changes is very ego-driven but most times I notice ideas that I have initially rejected would seep back in my consciousness and pop up times later. So now I read ideas like these and let them gestate.
Also important to point out rage porn satisfaction out of engaging with someone that seems stupid online, the satisfaction of winning an online battle and then how can we shift the model for the higher satisfaction that of a good human internet argument.
Once again lovely article my friend
Fantastic article defender, even if it is a draft.
Pray for those who need it to get power quickly. The world cannot afford to lose them
Thank you 🙏
> Pray for those who need it to get power quickly. The world cannot afford to lose them
Yes, this article is for them. I feel like I have found a lot of these people, and they have been waiting for someone to step aside to ask them to be in power. That day will never come. The path is laid out for them, all they need to do is to find the courage to step forward. The vitriol on the incompetent people in power will keep getting growing, and it will cause "friendly fire", but they need to not let that either (1) scare them from stepping up (2) blind them to all feedback.
"Heavy is the crown...only for the weak"
Give it a title and mark your todo done. It's a pretty good ending, as it is.
This article feels like B, but I think it's actually A.
I am triggered. You write like someone who lives in a beautiful bubble with your own open-minded metropolitan companions. You write like someone who hasn’t REALLY stepped outside your territory, to talk to the real gremlins of society who are actually causing the damage.
I understand that this is advice meant for a “general” audience, and therefore it applies “generally”. It reflects the democratic spirit, which is essentially true… People are generally cooperative and want what’s best. There are exceptions. Criminals and psychologically unsound homeless people are (generally) in the “unreasonable” bucket and we deal with them in a different way. We all know this is how things should be. We don’t talk to repeat offenders to try to get them to change their perspective, we put them in a box.
I’ll stick with these examples for a second here. Maybe you’d argue that violent repeat offenders, for example, WOULD respond to reason. But here lies the issue. We aren’t interested enough in sitting down with these people to try to shape the rhetoric and axioms necessary to get them to understand that they shouldn’t stab people. If this is the case, does this mean we aren’t smart, and we should take more responsibility? Maybe so. Maybe that should be our North Star. Perhaps it’s worth testing. If you are interested, go ahead and talk with the people at the bottom. Sincerely try to help them and see how they interact with you. I’ve done it myself, and I’ll be honest, it really wears me out. I will continue to try to help, but there is a real burden that comes with this. They are dirty, they are stupid, and they are ungrateful. I’ve heard stories of homeless drunks getting entire apartments to themselves due to special programs and they just end up trashing it and losing it. At a certain point, it is not unreasonable to simply stop engaging with the homeless person and let them live in squalor. And at a certain point, it is not unreasonable and lock criminals in a box.
But criminals and homeless people are human beings, and this means they’re not that different from us. Even if we view them as separate, it’s really a (non-linear) gradient from “normal”/“responsible” person to homeless person. We are all, to an extent, criminals or homeless people. We are all, to an extent, antisocial or irresponsible under certain circumstances. If you really talk to a lot of different kinds of people, you’ll notice this gradient I’m talking about.
And in the same way that we cannot remain patient and open-minded for long with what polite society calls “basic expectations” when speaking with these outsiders, those of us closer to some ideal on some (non-linear) awful-to-ideal human gradient will frequently relinquish patience when speaking with those lower on the gradient. And due to the algorithmic pull, I am frequently drawn to those I disagree with most, and soon after I engage with them, my entire digital universe is full of them. They become “generalized”, so to speak, in my timeline. This scenario, which is frequent, renders this general advice moot.
It’s a matter of opportunity cost, which is a matter of energy. If I am intelligent and have a sense of urgency in my life, I hold these ideas in my mind as incredibly important.
Therefore, no, it is not my responsibility to argue with most people online—and this is my response to you, given that this is general advice. Many, many people will remain in the “unreasonable” bucket and will be duly dismissed by me.
Internet arguments suck. That is not a me problem.
And yet! Am I not arguing with you? Well, when I say “internet arguments suck”, I too am making a general statement. Expressing myself clearly in a way that actually reaches people is very valuable. And since my target audience is you, I’m currently making the effort.
ChatGPT summary:
1. Humans vary widely in reasoning capacity and incentives.
2. Attention and time are scarce resources.
3. Online ecosystems distort communication and reward hostility.
4. Therefore it is irrational to try to engage everyone in good faith debate.
5. The better strategy is to articulate ideas clearly for audiences where they can propagate.
I think we agree. I can't imagine you spending time articulating an idea on someone you know will reject it. You described this here today because you expect it will either update my world model, or that of a reader. At the very least it may surface a counter arg from me that will cause you to update. In all cases, you are winning, your time is not wasted.
Therefore: if someone are spending their time arguing on things that are lose-lose, then it is 100% their fault. They made the wrong decision/investment of where they put their time & energy. The problem isn't "internet arguments", it's people making choices that they regret and then not learning from them.
As the Minnesotans say: "there's no such thing as bad weather, only unprepared people". Something like that here
>>"You wake up one day and realize, you’ve identified as a good person all your life, but actually, YOU have been the cause of lot of evil."
During the Late Devonian mass extinction, plants and fungi were working together very *effectively* to digest rock and churn out minerals, which washed away into the oceans, and caused algae blooms, which eventually died and decomposed and the resultant gasses (emitted by the microbes that digested the dead algae) killed 75% of species. What I notice from what I look at (and this might not be evident to someone who focuses on AI risk) is that complex civilizations face a similar predicament as the early plant-fungus team, because even if we refrained from the low-hanging-fruit misaligned activity, our peculiar approach to meeting our essential needs (food, water, thermoregulation) is still misaligned.
Which leads into...
>> "They are a puzzle."
I think that people are more open to facing the internalized evil that has an easy fix. Advocate for a composting system at your company cafeteria, become a more critical consumer of news media, etc. Versus realizing that every day that the sun rises, the very minimum that we do to keep members of our species alive also pushes us toward a hell-planet future. And the average person isn't really equipped to do much about it, or at least nothing that is both immediate and easy to brag about. So instead people just insist that "That can't be it. The evil can't go as deep as you're saying."
Really good point about people not telling you they've changed their minds. In a similar vein, I'm generally content to get an idea caught in someone's head; even if they don't agree with me right now, they'll know the idea is there when they're ready. So many beliefs are just a failure to realize you can believe otherwise.
One interesting exception to this that I know of is the podcast "Breaking Down: Collapse". The host mentions that it's common for listeners to write in and express gratitude for putting words to what they were already intuiting (and I trust him on that - I'm one of them!) ... Edit: It wasn't a mind change in the sense of flipping someone who *actively* believes the opposite. It's more like he provided "solid" info to fill in a part of my mind that previously had contained unexamined, fluffy assumptions
“They want someone to tell them if they are doing something evil, and they will change their behavior once they figure out what it is they’ve been doing that is evil.”
Lol. Lmfao even.
I would like to make a public bet with you on this! No money involved, I mean I want to find out if you're right/test my claim
I think you'll want to acquaint yourself with my work first. Suffice to say, I have pretty evidence-based reasons for my skepticism.
https://edokwin.substack.com/p/the-outrage-merchants-how-edgy-voices
yes, sorry, I just woke up and was grumpy - I should have said: you're right, this doesn't "actually work". What I was wanted to show you by doing a "public bet" is if we pick a target (who is actually malicious, not just misinformed), then we can play this game that will erode *his* audience's faith in him. I am describing launching a propaganda campaign (but, transparently, "pro social")
The reason this is so effective is because this is essentially an infiltration. You don't attack the malicious belief "from the outside", you question it "from the inside". Like it wouldn't be a left wing person attacking a right wing belief, it would be a right wing person who wants to find out what is true asking innocent questions that are difficult to answer (this is usually enough, planting the seed / framing it changes how they consume new information)
This is what I mean by "turn culture war into culture science". The bad guys already use all available means to propagate their ideas effectively, and I think the good guys can (1) use effective strategies that actually work and (2) WITHOUT using things that make the information/epistemic commons worse (like what you describe is as "Discourse Style: Mockery as Method"), for those we can develop defenses / counter attacks against it that pull it towards the good
You should address the studies that show people are highly unlikely to change their minds as a result of debate. It’s a bit overblown by the avoidant but not worth ignoring
I might write an essay in response to this but tldr the studies aren't wrong. "Debate" is NOT how people change their mind. There is almost an algorithm for how to change people's minds (which is currently weapnizwd against people, aka propaganda), and what I'm teaching here is the method for individuals to use it to propagate the truth they believe is true
You don't change people's minds by giving them facts, you change their mind by understanding their existing world model and extending it. Most of the time what you're doing is trying to convert someone. People convert to the beliefs of their friends/family/tribe.
basically - you can test this for yourself. Find someone whose belief you want to change, ideally on the internet so that when it fails, we can debug it/I can tell you where you went wrong.
I agree then. Less on atomised rationalism, more on affective empathy. This has been true in my experience. Maybe it gets blown off course by e.g. autistic or highly intelligent people? But that would be a whole other thing
my reply to Quinn here has some more color - I didn’t get a meaningful response from him but it might be useful to you!
https://substack.com/@defenderofbasic/note/c-195539080?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=2v2evb
this seems to only apply to high status poasters
"this" is referring to what part?