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109Why Our Kind Can't Cooperate
Imagine that you're at a conference, and the speaker gives a 30-minute talk. People line up at the microphone.
The first person says, "I agree with everything you said in your talk, and I think you're brilliant." Then steps aside.
The second person says, "Slide 14 was beautiful, I learned a lot from it. You're awesome." Steps aside.
The third person -
Well, you'll never know what the third person at the microphone had to say, because by this time, you've fled screaming out of the room, propelled by a bone-deep terror as if Cthulhu had erupted from the podium, the fear of the impossibly unnatural phenomenon that has invaded your conference.
Yes, a group which can't tolerate disagreement is not rational. But if you tolerate only disagreement - if you tolerate disagreement but not agreement - then you also are not rational. You're only willing to hear some honest thoughts, but not others. You are a dangerous half-a-rationalist.
...
Doing worse with more knowledge means you are doing something very wrong. You should always be able to at least implement the same strategy you would use if you are ignorant, and preferably do better. You definitely should not do worse. If you find yourself regretting your "rationality" then you should reconsider what is rational.
...
Can you imagine training prospective rationalists to wear a uniform and march in lockstep, and practice sessions where they agree with each other and applaud everything a speaker on a podium says? It sounds like unspeakable horror, doesn't it, like the whole thing has admitted outright to being an evil cult? But why is it not okay to practice that, while it is okay to practice disagreeing with everyone else in the crowd? Are you never going to have to agree with the majority?
Our culture puts all the emphasis on heroic disagreement and heroic defiance, and none on heroic agreement or heroic group consensus. We signal our superior intelligence and our membership in the nonconformist community by inventing clever objections to others' arguments.
...
Or perhaps a related mistake, rationality as cynicism - trying to signal your superior world-weary sophistication by showing that you care less than others. Being careful to ostentatiously, publicly look down on those so naive as to show they care strongly about anything. 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.
...
But even if you disagree with that part, then let us say that both supporting and countersupporting opinions should have been publicly voiced. Supporters being faced by an apparently solid wall of objections and disagreements - even if it resulted from their own uncomfortable self-censorship - is not group rationality. It is the mere mirror image of what Dark Side groups do to keep their followers. Reversed stupidity is not intelligence.
Imagine that you're at a conference, and the speaker gives a 30-minute talk. People line up at the microphone.
The first person says, "I agree with everything you said in your talk, and I think you're brilliant." Then steps aside.
The second person says, "Slide 14 was beautiful, I learned a lot from it. You're awesome." Steps aside.
The third person -
Well, you'll never know what the third person at the microphone had to say, because by this time, you've fled screaming out of the room, propelled by a bone-deep terror as if Cthulhu had erupted from the podium, the fear of the impossibly unnatural phenomenon that has invaded your conference.
Yes, a group which can't tolerate disagreement is not rational. But if you tolerate only disagreement - if you tolerate disagreement but not agreement - then you also are not rational. You're only willing to hear some honest thoughts, but not others. You are a dangerous half-a-rationalist.
...
Doing worse with more knowledge means you are doing something very wrong. You should always be able to at least implement the same strategy you would use if you are ignorant, and preferably do better. You definitely should not do worse. If you find yourself regretting your "rationality" then you should reconsider what is rational.
...
Can you imagine training prospective rationalists to wear a uniform and march in lockstep, and practice sessions where they agree with each other and applaud everything a speaker on a podium says? It sounds like unspeakable horror, doesn't it, like the whole thing has admitted outright to being an evil cult? But why is it not okay to practice that, while it is okay to practice disagreeing with everyone else in the crowd? Are you never going to have to agree with the majority?
Our culture puts all the emphasis on heroic disagreement and heroic defiance, and none on heroic agreement or heroic group consensus. We signal our superior intelligence and our membership in the nonconformist community by inventing clever objections to others' arguments.
...
Or perhaps a related mistake, rationality as cynicism - trying to signal your superior world-weary sophistication by showing that you care less than others. Being careful to ostentatiously, publicly look down on those so naive as to show they care strongly about anything. 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.
...
But even if you disagree with that part, then let us say that both supporting and countersupporting opinions should have been publicly voiced. Supporters being faced by an apparently solid wall of objections and disagreements - even if it resulted from their own uncomfortable self-censorship - is not group rationality. It is the mere mirror image of what Dark Side groups do to keep their followers. Reversed stupidity is not intelligence.
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Date: 2010-12-03 10:32 am (UTC)В России, правда, хвалят чуть чаще, чем никогда; а если захваливают - то с иными целями.