The linkage between collective beliefs and social punishment creates distortions that are important to track. People have an incentive to lie to prevent negative-valence beliefs about themselves from appearing on shared maps (even if the beliefs are true). People who have enemies whom they hate have an incentive to lie to insert negative-valence beliefs about their enemies onto the shared map (even if the beliefs are false). The stakes are high: an erroneously thrown rock only affects its target, but an erroneous map affects everyone using that map to make decisions about the world (including decisions about throwing rocks).
-Intimidated by the stakes, some actors in Society who understand the similarity between social and physical punishment, but don't understand the relationship between social punishment and shared maps, might try to take steps to limit social punishment. It would be bad, they reason, if people were trapped in a cycle of mutual recrimination of physical punishments. Nobody wins if I throw a rock through your window to retaliate for you throwing a rock through my window, _&c._ Better to mutually foresee that and just have no one throw any rocks at all. They imagine that they can apply the same reasoning to social punishments without paying any costs to the accuracy of shared maps, that we can account for social standing and status in our communication without sacrificing any truth-seeking.
+Intimidated by the stakes, some actors in Society who understand the similarity between social and physical punishment, but don't understand the relationship between social punishment and shared maps, might try to take steps to limit social punishment. It would be bad, they reason, if people were trapped in a cycle of mutual recrimination of physical punishments. Nobody wins if I throw a rock through your window to retaliate for you throwing a rock through my window, _&c._ Better to foresee that and make sure no one throws any rocks at all. They imagine that they can apply the same reasoning to social punishments without paying any costs to the accuracy of shared maps, that we can account for social standing and status in our communication without sacrificing any truth-seeking.
It's mostly an illusion. If Alice possesses evidence that Mallory is stupid, dishonest, cruel, ugly, _&c_., she might want to publish that evidence in order to improve the accuracy of shared maps of Mallory's character and capabilities. If the evidence is real and [its recipients understand the filters through which it reached them](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DoPo4PDjgSySquHX8/heads-i-win-tails-never-heard-of-her-or-selective-reporting), publishing the evidence is prosocial, because it helps people make higher-quality decisions regarding friendship and trade opportunities with Mallory.
But it also functions as social punishment. If Alice tries to disclaim, "Look, I'm not trying to 'socially punish' Mallory; I'm just providing evidence to update the part of the shared map which happens to be about Mallory's character and capabilities", then Bob, Carol, and Dave probably won't find the disclaimer very convincing.
-And yet—might not Alice be telling the truth? There _are_ facts of the matter as to whether Mallory is stupid, dishonest, cruel, ugly, _&c_.! Those words mean things! They're not rocks—or not _only_ rocks. Is there any way to update the shared map without the update itself being construed as "punishment"?
+And yet—might not Alice be telling the truth? There _are_ facts of the matter as to whether Mallory is stupid, dishonest, cruel, ugly, _&c_.! Those words mean things! They're not rocks—or not _only_ rocks. [Is there any way to update the shared map without the update itself being construed as "punishment"?](https://benjaminrosshoffman.com/can-crimes-be-discussed-literally/)
-It's dubious. One might imagine that by applying sufficient scrutiny to nuances of tone and word choice, Alice might succeed at "neutrally" conveying the evidence in her possession without any associated scorn or judgment.
+It's questionable. One might imagine that by applying sufficient scrutiny to nuances of tone and word choice, Alice might succeed at "neutrally" conveying the evidence in her possession without any associated scorn or judgment.
-But judgments [supervene](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/supervenience/) on facts and values. If lying is bad, and Mallory lied, it logically follows that Mallory did a bad thing. There's no way to avoid that implication without denying one of the premises. Nuances of tone and wording that seem to convey an absence of judgment might only succeed at doing so by means of obfuscation: strained abuses of language whose only active function is to make it less clear to the typical reader that the thing Mallory did was lying.
+But judgments [supervene](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/supervenience/) on facts and values. If lying is bad, and Mallory lied, it logically follows that Mallory did a bad thing. There's no way to avoid that implication without denying one of the premises. Nuances of tone and wording that seem to convey an absence of judgment might only succeed at doing so by means of obfuscation: strained abuses of language whose only function is to make it less clear to the inattentive reader that the thing Mallory did was lying.
At best, Alice might hope to craft the publication of the evidence in a way that omits her own policy response. There is a real difference between merely communicating that Mallory is stupid, dishonest, cruel, ugly, _&c_. (with the understanding that other people will use this information to inform their policies about trade opportunities), and furthermore adding that "therefore I, Alice, am going to withhold trade opportunities from Mallory, and withhold trade opportunities from those who don't withhold trade opportunities from her." The additional information about Alice's own policy response might be exposed by fiery rhetoric choices and concealed by more clinical descriptions.
In the art of [improvisational theater](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvisational_theatre) ("improv" for short), actors perform scenes that they make up as they go along. Without a script, each actor's choices of what to say and do amount to implied assertions about the fictional reality being portrayed, which have implications for how the other actors should behave. A choice that establishes facts or gives direction to the scene is called an [_offer_](https://improwiki.com/en/wiki/improv/offer). If an actor opens a scene by asking their partner, "Is it serious, Doc?", that's an offer that the first actor is playing a patient awaiting diagnosis, and the second actor is playing a doctor.
-[A key principle of improv is often known as "Yes, and"](https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/yes-and-improv-rule-77269/) after [an exercise](https://www.dramanotebook.com/drama-games/yes-and/) [that involves](https://www.hooplaimpro.com/yes-and-new-ways-to-play-exercise/.html) starting replies with those words verbatim, but the principle is broader and doesn't depend on the particular words used: actors should ["accept" offers](https://willhines.substack.com/p/accepting-offers) ("Yes"), and respond with their own complementary offers ("and"). The practice of "Yes, and" is important for maintaining momentum while building out a coherent reality for the audience.
+[A key principle of improv is often known as "Yes, and"](https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/yes-and-improv-rule-77269/) after [an exercise](https://www.dramanotebook.com/drama-games/yes-and/) [that involves](https://www.hooplaimpro.com/yes-and-new-ways-to-play-exercise/.html) starting replies with those words verbatim, but the principle is broader and doesn't depend on the particular words used: actors should ["accept" offers](https://willhines.substack.com/p/accepting-offers) ("Yes"), and respond with their own complementary offers ("and"). The practice of "Yes, and" is important for maintaining momentum while building out a semi-coherent reality for the audience.
Rejecting an offer is called [_blocking_](https://www.thewayofimprovisation.com/posts/2013/06/a-bit-about-blocking.php), and is frowned upon. If one actor opens the scene with, "Surrender, Agent Stone, or I'll shoot these hostages!"—establishing a scene in which they're playing an armed villain being confronted by an Agent Stone—it wouldn't do for their partner to block by replying, "That's not my name, you don't have a gun, and there are no hostages." That would halt the momentum and confuse the audience. Better for the second actor to say, "Go ahead and shoot, Dr. Skull! You'll find that my double agent on your team has stolen your bullets"—accepting the premise ("Yes"), and adding new elements to the scene ("and", the villain's name and the double agent).
The problem is that while the individual comments might (or might not) make sense when read individually, the harmonious social exchange of mutually building on each other's contributions isn't really a conversation unless the replies connect to each other in a less superficial way that risks blocking.
-What happens when someone says something wrong or confusing or unclear? Their partner's options are either to block by forcing them to address it ("No, that's wrong, because ...", "No, I didn't understand that"), or let it pass in order to keep the scene going—the latter having the result that falsehood, confusion, and unclarity accumulate as the interaction goes on.
+What happens when someone says something wrong or confusing or unclear? Their partner's options are either to block by forcing them to address it ("No, that's wrong, because ...", "No, I didn't understand that" and to maintain that "No" until clarity is forthcoming), or let it pass in order to keep the scene going—the latter having the result that falsehood, confusion, and unclarity accumulate as the interaction goes on.
There's a reason improv is almost synonymous with improv _comedy_. Comedy thrives on absurdity: much of the thrill and joy of improv comedy is in appreciating what lengths and cleverness the actors will go to maintain the energy of a scene that has long since lost any semblance of coherence or plausibility. The rules that work for improv comedy don't even work for (non-improvised, dramatic) fiction; it certainly won't work for philosophy.
-The only way an author could reliably expect discussion of their work to illuminate what they're trying to communicate is if they knew they were saying something the audence already believed. If you're thinking carefully about what the other person said, you're often going to end up saying "No" or "I don't understand", not just "Yes, and": if you're committed to validating your interlocutor's contribution to the scene before providing your own, you're not really talking to _each other_.
+Per Garrabrant's principle, the only way an author could reliably expect discussion of their work to illuminate what they're trying to communicate is if they knew they were saying something the audence already believed. If you're thinking carefully about what the other person said, you're often going to end up saying "No" or "I don't understand", not just "Yes, and": if you're committed to validating your interlocutor's contribution to the scene before providing your own, you're not really talking to _each other_.
projects / An_Algorithmic_Lucidity.git / commitdiff