How can we get more and better LW contrarians?

I'm not trying to spawn new contrarians for the sake of having more contrarians, nor want to encourage debate for the sake of having more disagreements. What I care about is (me personally as well as this community as a whole) having correct beliefs on the topics that I think are most important, namely the core rationality and Singularity-related topics, and I think having more contrarians who disagree about these core topics would help with that. Your suggestion doesn't seem to help with my goals, or at least it's not obvious to me how it would.

(BTW, I note that you've personally made 2 meta/community posts out of 7, whereas I've only made about 3 out of 58 (plus or minus a few counting errors). So maybe you can give me a pass on this one? :)

LW seems to be slowly becoming self-obsessed.

It waxes and wanes. Try looking at all articles labeled "meta"; there were 10(!) in April of 2009 that fit your description of meta-debates (arguing about the karma system, the proper use of the wiki, the first survey, and an Eliezer post about getting less meta).

Granted, that was near the beginning of Less Wrong... but then there was another burst with 5 such articles in April 2010 as well. (I don't know what it is about springtime...) Starting the Discussion area in September 2010 seems to have siphoned most of it off of Main; there have been 3-5 meta-ish posts per month since then (except for April 2011, in which there were 9... seriously, what the hell is going on here?)

LW seems to be slowly becoming self-obsessed.

I don't see how you could possibly be observing that trend. The earliest active comment threads on Less Wrong were voting / karma debates. Going meta is not only what we love best, it's what we're best at, and that's always been so.

You post a question about calculus in the discussion section and get downvoted, since it is "off topic" - ask on MathOverflow. A question about biology? Downvoted, if it is not an ev-psych speculation. Physics? Downvoted, even if it is of the most popular QM-interpretational sort. A puzzle? Downvoted.

Whut?

Links or it didn't happen.

LW seems to be slowly becoming self-obsessed.

This is a good point. Maybe future meta-discussions could be on talk pages for wiki articles, about specific changes to those articles, especially the about page and the FAQ? These actually represent how LW culture is being codified for new users, but unfortunately none of the recent debates seem to of resulted in substantial modification to them.

It's too bad that automatic wiki editing privileges don't come with a certain level of karma; would remove a trivial inconvenience and eliminate wiki spam.

You post a question about calculus in the discussion section and get downvoted, since it is "off topic" - ask on MathOverflow. A question about biology? Downvoted, if it is not an ev-psych speculation. Physics? Downvoted, even if it is of the most popular QM-interpretational sort. A puzzle? Downvoted.

Do you have examples of this sort of stuff so I can go vote it up?

I made a post on a personal blog on one of the more significant points against utilitarianism in my view. It's very rough, but I could cross-post it to Discussion if people wanted.

To generalize, this suggests re-purposing existing LWers to the role of contrarians, rather than looking for new people.

Yes, a list of Carl's best arguments against standard positions is going to be of vastly higher quality than anything we would be likely to get from the best contrarians we can find.

I haven't been following LessWrong for that long, but I gather that there was a time when Will Newsome's comments were a lot more.... orthodox. I'm guessing that fact has a lot to do with the way his criticisms are received now.

He can still be found on the SingInst about us page.

Another big reason I avoid talking about my disagreements is that they are sufficiently fundamental that I expect a large amount of pushback. I know I find it very hard to disengage from argument, and I suspect that's also true of a significant proportion of the posters here, so I'm worried that the discussion will be a horrible time suck. I really can't afford that right now. Perhaps at some time in the future, when I have a little more time, I'll write a discussion post detailing some of my objections.

You do your name justice.

Stream of consciousness. Judge me that ye may be judged. If you judge it by first-level Less Wrong standards, it should be downvoted (vague unjustifiied assertions, thoughtlessly rude), but maybe the information is useful. I look first for the heavily downvoted posts and enjoy the responses to them best.

I found the discussion on dietary supplementation interesting, in your link and elsewhere. As I recall, the tendency was for the responses (not entrants, but peoples comments around town) to be both crazy and stupid (with many exceptions, e.g., Yvain, Xacharaiah). I recall another thread on the topic where the correct comment ("careful!") was downvoted and its obvious explanation ("evolution works!") offered afterward was upvoted. Since I detected no secondary reasons for this, it was interesting in implying Less Wrongians did not see the obvious. Low certainties attached since I know I know nothing about this place. I'm deliberately being vague.

In general, Less Wrongians strike me as a group of people of impaired instrumental rationality who are working to overcome it. Give or take, most of you seem to be smarter than average but also less trustworthy, less able to exhibit strong commitments, etc. Probably this has been written somewhere hereabouts, but a lot of irrationalities are hard to overcome local optima; have you really gone far enough onto the other side? Incidentally, that could be a definition for x-rationality (if never actually done): Actually epistemically rational enough that it's instrumentally useful. Probably a brutally hard threshold to achieve and seems untrue of here, as I believe I've seen threads comment.

I was curious about the background of the people offering lessons at the rationality bootcamp, and saw some blog entry by one of them against, oh, being conservative in outlook (re: risk aversion). It was incredibly stupid; I mean, almost exclusively circular reasoning. You obviously deviate from the norm in your risk aversion. You're not obviously more successful than the norm (or are you? perhaps I'm mistaken). Maybe it's just a tough row to hoe, but that's the real task.

Personal comment: I realize Dmitry has been criticized a bit elsewhere and the voting trend doesn't support generalization to the community at large, but my conversation with him illustrates what I generally believe about this place. I knew more than he did. I said enough that he should realize this. He didn't realize it and shoehorned his response into a boring framework. I had specific advice to give, which I didn't get to, and realized I was reluctant to give (most Less Wrong stuff seems weak to me).

A whole lot of Less Wrong seems to be going for less detail, less knowledge, more use of frameworks of universal applicability and little precision. The sequences seem similar to me: Boring where I can judge meaning, meaningless where I can't. And always too long. I've read about four paragraphs of them in total. The quality of conversation here is high for a blog, of course, but low for a good academic setting. Some of the mild sneering at academics around here sounds ridiculous (an AI researcher believes in God). AI's a weak field. All round, papers don't quite capture any field and are often way way behind what people roughly feel.

Real question: Do you want me here?

I like you guys. I agree with you philosophically. I have nothing much to offer unless I put some effort into it (e.g., actually read what people write, etc). No confusion: You should be downvoting posts like this in general. You might want to make an exception 'cause it's worth hearing a particular rambling mindset once. My effort is better spent elsewhere (I can't imagine you'd disagree). I can't see anything that can be offered to me. I feel like I was more rational at age 7 than you are now (I wrote a pro and con list for castrating myself for the longevity and potential continuity of personality gains; e.g., maintaining the me of 7). A million other things. I'm working on real problems in other areas now.

I like this idea and am even willing to put money towards it, but some other similar experiments (of mine; maybe others would be better at this) didn't turn out so well ( this one got no entries, spaced repetition turned out okay, it but only got one good submission). Let me know if you're interested in putting effort into this (it wouldn't be hard to convince me to also do so, but I probably need someone else to help).

with LW census

(consensus)

And what do you mean "no longer"? Is the idea "upvote if your contrarianism has been downvoted out of you", or what?

I'm curious, do you? If you do, why?

This poll is poorly designed; karma balances often get downvoted less than the vote options get upvoted, so this will tend to over-estimate how many people no longer dissent.

For example, when I loaded this page, this comment was at 5 and the karma balance was at -3

Nitpick-- that should be the LW consensus, not LW census.

Karma balance

(or downvote this, if you don't like the idea of this poll)

Change the mouseovers on the thumbs-up/thumbs-down icons from "Vote up"/"Vote down" to "More like this"/"Less like this". I've suggested this before and it got upvotes, I suggest now it might be time to implement it.

Edited wiki.

Me too:

I would bet against Many Worlds. I am not a consequentialist. I am not really interested in cryonics. I think the flavor of decision theory practiced here is just cool math without foreseeable applications. I give very low probability to FOOM. I think FAI as a goal is unfeasible, for more than one reason.

I used to be very active on Less Wrong, posting one or two comments every day, and a large fraction of my comments (especially at first) expressed disagreement with the consensus. I very much enjoyed the training in arguing more effectively (I wanted to learn to be more comfortable with confrontation) and I even more enjoyed assimilating the new ideas and perspectives of Less Wrong that I came to agree with.

But after a long while (about two years), I got really, really bored. I visit from time to time just to confirm that, yes, indeed, there is nothing of interest for me here. Well, I'm sure that's no big deal: people have different interests and they are free to come and go.

This is the first post that has interested me in a while, because it gives me a reason to analyze why I find Less Wrong so boring. I would consider myself the type of "reasonable contrarian" the author of this post seems to be looking for -- I am motivated to argue if I disagree, and have the correct attitude in that I'm quite willing to think counter-arguments through and change my position if I disagree. If only, alas, I disagreed about anything.

On all the topics that I used to enjoy being contrary about, I've either been assimilated into Less Wrong (for example, I'm no longer a theist) or I have identified that either (a) the reason for the difference in opinion was a difference in values or (b) the argument in question had no immediate material meaning, and, so arguing about either was completely pointless. My disinterest in cryonics is an example of (a), and belief or disbelief in many worlds is an example of (b).

I do wish Less Wrong was more interesting, because I used to enjoy spending time here. I realize this is a completely self-centered perspective, because presumably many do continue to find Less Wrong entertaining. But I want to learn things, and be challenged and stretched as much possible, and now that I'm already atheist that challenge isn't there. I'd like to understand how the "world works" and now that I've got materialism under my belt, what's next? I wish Less Wrong would try and tackle taboo topics like politics, because this an area where I observe I'm completely clueless. On the other hand, I also understand that these questions are probably just too difficult to tackle, and such a conversation would have a large probability of being fruitless.

Still, I agree with prase, currently the top comment, that Less Wrong topics tend to be too narrow. My secondary criticism would be that for me (just my opinion) the posts are kind of bland. Maybe people are too reasonable (!?), but there doesn't seem to be anything to argue with.

You should make some discussion posts about your reasons for disagreeing with the perceived consensus on each of those issues. If they are articulate, specific, and uses the techniques of epistemic rationality, they should be well-received. (If you have good reasons for disagreeing with the techniques of epistemic rationality, then that's an even better post).

A perfect example of the problem, I guess.

Many pro-LW-mainstream arguments are weak if you have significantly different priors. People with minority view quickly learn the difference in priors and learn to express their views less often and defend them less.

I also consider FOOM-as-described-on-LW quite improbable and the writings of Eliezer on the topic simply raise a few red flags; I see that it is a popular position here, but most people don't find it worth the effort to fight mainstream.

There are still many topics on LW where no relevant values or priors are parts of LW majority's collective identity and I get some entertainment and information form reading these discussions and participating in them. There are also topics close to things that are accessible to science with all its rigidity (but also stability) compared to Bayesian inference. These are very informative too.

It took me much longer than it should have to mentally move you from the "troll" category to the "contrarian" one. That's my fault, but it makes for an interesting case study:

I quickly got irritated that you made the same criticisms again and again, without acknowledging the points people had argued against you each time. To a reader who disagrees with you, that style looks like the work of a troll or crank; to a reader who agrees with you, it's the best that you can do when arguing against someone more eloquent, with a bigger platform, who's gone wrong at some key step.

It should be noted that I don't instinctively think any more highly of contrarians who constantly change their line of attack; it seems to be a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" tribal response.

The way I changed my mind was that you made an incisive comment about something that wasn't part of your big disagreement with the Less Wrong community, and I was forced to update. For any would-be respected contrarians out there, this might be a good tactic to circumvent our natural impulse towards closing ranks.

Here's a case for the value of controversy.

• LessWrong orthodoxy includes a large number of propositions (over a hundred posts in just core sequences, at least one thesis per post)
• The deductions that lead to each claim are largely independent (if post B was an obvious corollary of post A, it would have saved writer's and readers' time not to write it)
• Reasoning is error-prone, especially when not formalized (this is a point made in the sequences; if it's wrong then q.e.d.)
• Even if each deduction is overwhelmingly likely (let's say 99%) to be correct, it would be likely (63% in this case) that at least one out of a hundred would be incorrect
• Because these are deductive chains of reasoning (they're "the sequences", not just "the set"), one false deduction can invalidate any number of conclusions which follow from it. The Principle of Explosion has been defeating brilliant people for millennia.

In other words, even if you believe that each item of LessWrong consensus is almost certain to be correct, you should still be doubtful that every item of LessWrong consensus is likely to be correct. And if there are significant errors, then how else will they be found and publicized other than via a controversial discussion?

Controversial doesn't necessarily mean weird-sounding. For example, we could talk more about medicine, an area with a great deal of disagreement, without seeming like clown-suit wearing crazies. Mainstream topics should be more than enough to fill the controversy quota.

This wouldn't be an issue except it's entirely unclear to me that LessWrong is making much in the way of progress of whatever sort. There's the meetup groups, which sometimes look good and sometimes sputter.

But perhaps I'm wrong and there's a list of things that are reasonable evidence of progress of whatever sort.

See Wei Dai's comment here—he doesn't value controversy qua controversy.

This reminds me of days in +x debate, where the topic was set in advance, and you were assigned to oppose or affirm each round. Learning to find persuasive arguments for ideas you actually support is not an intuitive skill, but certainly one that can be learned with practice. I, for one, would greatly enjoy +x debate over issues in the less wrong community.

The General Contrarian Heuristic:

• Assume these and such people who claim to be right actually are at-least-somewhat-straightforwardly right, and they have good evidence or arguments that you're just not aware of. (There are many plausible reasons for your ignorance; e.g. for the longest time I thought Christianity and ufology were just obviously stupid, because I'd only read atheist/skeptic/scientismist diatribes. What evidence filtered evidence?) What is the most plausible evidence or argument that can be found while searching in good faith? This often splits in two directions:

• • The Vassarian steel method: E.g., you hear lots of stuff about fairies, so you go digging around and find Charles Bonnet syndrome. This might be akin to constructing steel men, but beware!, for it is often a path to sophistry & syncretism. You know how in Dan Brown novels he keeps constructing these shallow connections between spirituality and science in order to show that they're not actually at odds? Don't be Dan Brown.
• • The Newsomelike schizophrenic method: You find Charles Bonnet syndrome but decide that even that isn't enough—you postulate that daimons are taking advantage of any plausible excuse (e.g. stroke, optical damage, sleep paralysis) to manipulate people into delusion. (You then independently re-derive justifications for burning witches or whatever, 'cuz why not?) This might be akin to paranoid schizophrenia, but beware!, for it is often the path to, um, paranoid schizophrenia.

Some contrarian topics I've had fun exploring:

• Assume UFO phenomena and Marian apparitions are legit, i.e. caused by some transhumanly powerful process. E.g., the Miracle at Fatima. What would be the mechanism? More pertinently, what would be the motivations?

• Assume legit retroscausal psi effects in parapsychology: What would be the mechanism?

• Assuming it is legit, i.e. retrocausal results are legit, why is psi capricious?

• Assume intelligent life isn't fantastically unlikely. Why no signs of intelligent life? (Related to "why is psi capricious" question.)

Remember, skepticism is easy, it's the default position: if the phenomenon you're modeling is actually complex, your explanation will have to be subtle. It's always too easy to shout "confirmation bias", "mass hallucination", "memetic selection pressures", and what have you. Don't fall for that trap; it's just as much of an error as the Dan Brown trap—maybe moreso, because at least the Dan Brown trap doesn't tell you to ignore important evidence.

If you make an argument along the lines of "the prior probability of that hypothesis is low", deduct 10 of your contrarian points. If you make a reference to the universal prior, deduct 20 points and feel guilty for the next few weeks.

Note that I think I'm a decent contrarian but I'm bad at communicating contrarian ideas; I'm not sure to what extent this is a personal quirk or a general problem when talking to people who start out assuming that you're crazy/deluded/trolling/whatever. If there is a General Contrarian Heuristic that's more amenable to communicating resultant insights then maybe that heuristic is better.

"May we not forget interpretations consistent with the evidence, even at the cost of overweighting them."

I think this is the best comment, at least the one that best captures my own views, on this thread.

Another way of looking at the problem expressed in buybuydandavis's first two paragraphs is that most people are so busy signalling, rather than thinking, that their concepts are usually "not even wrong".

Maybe we could have a "contrarian of the month" award?

Can we please not do this? I already feel a pre-emptive contrarian outrage against whatever consensus is arrived at when awarding this "official contrarily" award. Then I start thinking of court Jesters. This is a way to get people to think in the predetermined 'outside the box box' and change their 'mainstream' uniform to the 'rebel' uniform. That's not the way to get useful contrarians.

This could also encourage normally agreeable Less Wrong users to argue against consensus positions in hopes of winning the award.

You're advocating this as a good thing?

Awarded to a nonconformist in black or a nonconformist in a clown suit? The latter is likely to get the tone argument (where someone's claimed rejection is the tone of the statement rather than its content).

Suggestion: whenever you're tempted to respond with a tone argument ("stop being so rude/dismissive/such a flaming arsehole/etc"), try really hard to respond to the substance as if the tone is lovely. The effort will net you upvotes ;-)

I'm not sure how much I like this idea (or the version I'm about to propose) but I think it would be better to treat it as a "Contrarian Quotes of the Month" type thing, kind of like the Rationality Quotes thread but using contrarian lesswrong comments.

Would this award have content?

We need a handy way of saying "Yes I understand the standard arguments for P but I still think it's worth your while considering this argument for ¬P rather than just telling me the standard arguments for P."

Agreed. In my experience this problem of standard-argument-affirming shows up a lot during debates about uFAI risks. If I try to suggest some non-obvious argument against the Eliezerian position then I tend to mostly get re-assertions or re-phrasings of the standard Eliezerian arguments, which is distracting and a tad insulting. It seems some people identify me as a mainstream-view-loving enemy who is trying to unfairly marginalize the Eliezerian position, and thus don't bother to carefully check if my argument might be reasonable on its own terms.

In the last few months I've been averaging like 5 to 10 karma on my anti-Eliezerian AI risk arguments, and I think that's because I've expressed them more clearly and redundantly. But they're the same arguments that were getting downvoted to -5 or so back a year or two ago when I wasn't taking special care not to trigger local immune responses. (Weirdly, even saying that I'd spent a year or so with the Visiting Fellows talking to a lot of SingInst people who didn't think I was clearly stupid or insane didn't dissuade people from thinking I was clearly mistaken about basic SingInst arguments. I still don't really understand that... maybe I was interpreted as making an unjustified claim to authority that shouldn't be taken as evidence, or something.)

Conversely, we could establish the convention of downvoting stuff we consider valueless and upvoting stuff we consider valuable, and leave right and wrong out of it except insofar as voters value right things and antivalue wrong things. If we did that, we'd understand that highly upvoted comments were considered valuable, but not necessarily agreed with.

Oh, wait.

Sure, we could also create a mechanism whereby people could indicate whether they agreed with it (also whether they thought it was well-worded, clear, logical, funny, properly spelled, whether it rhymed, and various other attributes), but before doing that it's worth asking what the benefit of that would be.

I understand wanting to facilitate finding valuable comments and hiding valueless ones, but for the other stuff I'd like to see the benefits articulated, not just labelled "better".

Is Holden's view really the same as the mainstream view, or is it just a surface similarity?

For example, a typical outsider would doubt about SIAI abilities, because a typical outsider thinks intelligent machines belong to sci-fi, not real life. Holden worries about lack of credentials. Among those who think intelligent machines are possible, a typical person thinks it will be OK, because obviously the machines will do only what we tell them to do. Holden worries that a (supposedly) Friendly AI is more risky than a "Tool AI". Etc.

It implies anyone who disagrees is doing so to play out a role rather than out of actual disagreement.

I don't think that's the standard definition of contrarian.

Yes, being a "contrarian" is irrational for the individual, but may be good for the group. I wouldn't try to turn someone into a "contrarian" for my own benefits, but I don't feel qualms about making better use of people who already are.

I think there's a difference between "contrarian about X" and "contrarian". The former has (hopefully) looked at the evidence around X and come to a position on X that differs from the mainstream. The latter values being different over being right.

I think the first sort can be valuable, and shouldn't be driven away.

I sometimes argue in favor of positions I don't really believe (i.e., assign p<.5 to) if I think the probability is higher than general consensus and I suspect at least Will Newsome frequently does the same.

"Contrarian" is to have written a bottom line already: disagree with everything everyone else agrees with.

Contrarians get to pick and choose their battle grounds. All they have to do to be right is to seek out places where a lot of people are wrong.

This comment should have 99 upvotes and should be moved to "Main" as a separate article. Then we should link it whenever the same topic appears again.

Reversing group-think is like reversing stupidity, or like an underconfidence at group level. It can be done. It can be interesting. But I prefer reading rational people's best estimates of reality. And I prefer disagreement based on genuine experience and belief, not because someone has felt a duty to artificially maintain diversity.

If you disagree with whatever, for example many-worlds interpretation, say it. Say "I disagree because of X and Y". Or say "I disagree, because if feels wrong, and because many people disagree, including some experts in the field (which is a good Bayesian evidence)". That's all OK. But don't say or imply things like "we should attract more people who disagree with many-world interpretation, to keep our discussion balanced". That is manipulating evidence.

If anything, we should discuss wider range of topics. Then naturally we will attract people who agree with N-1 topics, and disagree with 1 topic; and they will say it, and we will know they mean it.

Hm... I think you're lying to be contrary. E.g.:

To style oneself a "contrarian" is a giant red warning light that the person has nothing useful to say. That rule has not failed me yet.

I think you think Robin Hanson and Eliezer Yudkowsky have useful things to say. Both have styled themselves contrarians.

Your points are clearly dumb cliches—I think you did that purposefully, but I think the way in which you did it is self-contradictory, thus your meta-level point would also be invalid. So maybe you're calling attention to the meta-level problem of determining what a "contrarian" is?

but still driving them away because what seemed like constructive argument from one side didn't from the other.

Or still driving them away because the comment stream petered out before people got around to expressing their changed viewpoint and the contrarian left because he never realized he was having an impact. The post and comment format isn't really very good for a serious back-and-forth discussion. Especially when posts are so briefly on the front page, note that this is another good reason for getting meet-up announcements OFF of the discussion page.

It's so difficult to find someone who will communicate on our level and yet disagrees on object-level things.

Is this because people smart enough to communicate on our level largely agree with a lot of what is generally agreed on here, for the same reason that most people all agree that 2+2=4?

Or is it because LessWrong is, for reasons unconnected with rationality, largely drawn from a certain very narrow demographic range, who grab onto this constellation of ideas like an enzyme to its substrate, and "communicating on our level" just means being that sort of person?

Asymmetrical motivation is the problem. If you disagree with a mainstream position, arguing against it feels worth while. If you agree with a fringe position, arguing in favour of it feels worth while. But if you disagree with a fringe position, why bother?

Where the LW "consensus" agrees with the mainstream, then the lack of good contrarians (who would feel their time well spent) is evidence of a sort that the LW "consensus" is true. But such weak evidence is hardly needed.

But where the LW "consensus" is itself the fringe position, we expect that good contrarians would have better things to do than try to set us straight. Thus the lack of good contrarians is both what we expect when a fringe LW "consensus" position is true (which makes it hard to dispute) and when it is false (why bother?). Consequently the lack of good contrarians tells us nothing at all in exactly the case when we look to it for clues.

What is the optimal number of people who are intelligent but, on reflection, don't agree with the LessWrong consensus?

It's unlikely that the "LW mainstream position" is currently right about all of its weird beliefs, though I wouldn't be surprised if we're right to take each of the ideas more seriously than the normal mainstream does.

EDIT: never mind, I didn't catch that you were doing this.

Disagree. Insightful-sounding questions are much much easier to come up with than genuinely insightful answers, so despite the fact that the former is a prerequisite to the latter, rewarding them equally would provide perverse incentives.

At least, that's true if our goal is to maximize the number of insightful results we generate -- which seems like a pretty reasonable assumption to me.

Matt.

Are there "people/communitites who are right"? There are usually ones who are right about some things, wrong about other things.

Motivation to find contrarians can stem from two directions: to be less wrong even if a falsehood is temporarily considered proven; and to get a wider set of ideas when brainstorming.

Note that when brainstorming you benefit from completely unfeasible but relevant ideas. Wild ideas give new points of view and increase the range of feasible ideas you can think of.

is insanely contrarian

Emphasis on the insane. It's based on plainly absurd mythological nonsense used to maintain status hierarchies.

(Disclaimer: I happen to think the Catholics are right about pretty much everything, especially the important stuff.)

You are blatantly trolling. Does replying to you rather than systematically downvoting constitute feeding a troll?

(Disclaimer: I happen to think the Catholics are right about pretty much everything, especially the important stuff.)

Why even say something like this without explanation? You should know such a statement is about as meaningful as a shit stained homeless person screaming about the apocalypse, and that leads me to think you may either be socially incompetent, marginally insane or having a bit of fun.