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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31611 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023

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Yes, some people use big words strictly to appear smart, but treating people that way without further evidence requires an uncharitable take on their motives.

Which is itself a problem with rationalists. In order to properly deal with people, you need to be able to conclude bad faith, and you need to be able to do this based on less than 100% clear evidence, because false negatives are as damaging as false positives. This is where quokkas come from--rationalists refusing to realistically consider the possibility that someone is acting in bad faith. We say "be charitable" because a lot of people aren't charitable enough, but there are also people who are too charitable and should ignore that advice (and it's hard to aim advice at only the people who need it.)

And here, it's not even just about bad faith. When someone uses big words that aren't needed for his point, he may be acting in bad faith, or he may just be bad at communicating. But even if he's an honest person who's just bad at communicating, he's still bad at it; it's not behavior we want to emulate, and it still deserves criticizing. If doing things poorly is low status, then yes, this is low status--communicating poorly is something we want to avoid.

Quokka is "rationalist who doesn't question progressive ideas like universal love and tolerance, gender and race equality, .....", not "rationalist who argues with trolls because they might be good faith". Having extended arguments with bad faith trolls doesn't really hurt you beyond wasting small amounts of time, whereas earnestly believing in universal love and sacrifice-for-all-humans-equally means your fortune or life is spent helping Open Philanthropy buy malaria nets instead of some other worthier cause.

edit: I might be wrong about the use of the term quokka, but still pretty sure 'arguing with bad faith trolls' isn't particularly bad.

A quokka is a creature that doesn't realize that people might want to hurt it. The metaphor from there is fairly direct.

You love this... hard-to-pin-down pattern of reasoning, and I don't love to have to keep asking you not do it. Nevertheless here we go again.

Quokka is "rationalist who doesn't question progressive ideas like universal love and tolerance, gender and race equality, .....", not "rationalist who argues with trolls because they might be good faith".

The explicit definition of quokka as a mental archetype is the guy who does not account for bad faith of other parties. It's not about wasting time on trolls on anonymous forums, per se. But it absolutely is about a robust mode of engagement with bad actors.

Here's the original thread by 0x49fa98. Here are the most relevant parts:

The quokka, like the rationalist, is a creature marked by profound innocence. The quokka can't imagine you might eat it, and the rationalist can't imagine you might deceive him. As long they stay on their islands, they survive, but both species have problems if a human shows up

In theory, rationalists like game theory, in practice, they need to adjust their priors. Real-life exchanges can be modeled as a prisoner's dilemma. In the classic version, the prisoners can't communicate, so they have to guess whether the other player will defect or cooperate. ...

The problem is, this is where rationalists hit a mental stop sign. Because in the real world, there is one more strategy that the game doesn't model: lying. See, the real best strategy is "be good at lying so that you always convince your opponent to cooperate, then defect"

Rationalists = quokkas, this explains a lot about them. Their fear instincts have atrophied. When a quokka sees a predator, he walks right up; when a rationalist talks about human biodiversity on a blog under almost his real name, he doesn't flinch away ...

The main way that you stop being a quokka is that that you realize there are people in the world who really want to hurt you. There are people who will always defect, people whose good will is fake, whose behavior will not change if they hear the good news of reciprocity

I think Bostromgate is a good illustration.

Quokka is "rationalist who doesn't question progressive ideas like universal love and tolerance", not "rationalist who argues with trolls because they might be good faith".

It's both, actually. I've seen the latter argued numerous times by right-wingers, specifically about right-wing trolls.

Right-wingers arguing that rationalists ... shouldn't listen to right-wing trolls?

Right-wingers arguing that rationalists should ban right-wing trolls more or less on sight, yes. Have you not seen this?

I was wrong about the meaning of 'quokka' in zhp's original use, but i'm still not entirely sure what you mean?

A right-wing troll comes in here. maybe it's a julius branson alt, and starts trolling. mods give the troll a warning. Hlynka puts forward the opinion that they should proceed to permaban, because it's obviously a troll.

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