Comment by undershirt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by undershirt | Hacker News Reader

> “Courage is the solution to despair. Reason can provide no answers.” –Ernst Toller (First Reformed, 2017)

I’ve felt the despair of this article for a time (and the quote above gave me some peace), but some recent hope came from Daniel Schmachtenberger[1]. He postulates that our conception of debate in our current information ecology selects and optimizes for bias. He refers to the Hegelian dialectic as an alternative to debate—of an earnest synthesis from understanding both a thesis and its antithesis, resolving paradox with a higher order model. I’ve heard this described as steel-manning[1] another’s argument to find its signal (as opposed to straw-manning the noise).

But Schmachtenberger, as well as Bret Weinstein I believe, proposes that the game-theoretic win/lose dynamic of our current system is so entrenched that it really selects for this type of narrative warfare which doesn’t promote this type of open and honest information ecology for this to really work yet. So there’s something to their post-game-theoretic frameworks (Bret’s “Game B”) that make me a lot less fatalistic and anarchist about the whole complexity game.

[1] The War on Sensemaking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LqaotiGWjQ

[2] a.k.a purva paksha: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purva_paksha

Interestingly, this is quite easy to do if you focus yourself on achieving knowledge (i.e. you attempt to falsify your hypotheses and test your beliefs adequately). The real problem is that this isn't, maddeningly, a winning approach. You can be right[0], know you are right, follow a logical chain to the rightness and still lose. Superior knowledge guarantees nothing!

It's sort of like the amusing story of The Wandering Earth (the short story, not the movie). In an ecosystem where other things win, the smart approach if you find truth is not necessarily to champion it. Sometimes you have to take the Kolmogorov Option https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3376 Related: The Parable of Lightning https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-...

0: Or to hold a reasonable prior of a hypothesis, if you want to be strict

Prof Daniel Cohen gives a Ted talk that I haven't watched but which, based on write ups, gives a nice antidote to this. Simply adopt the attitude that "losing" an argument is a good thing because you come away with a more refined view of the world. the real winner is the person that makes cognitive gains.

That wasn't what I was referring to. The winning there isn't winning the argument, which is really a trivial position to avoid. I first achieved it when I was a teenager and consistently achieved it in my early 20s. I have no reason to believe this is exceptional for anyone with a mild interest in epistemology (Crocker's Rules, etc. are examples of these being rapidly realized by individuals)

The thing I was referring to is winning at life. You can be less wrong (in the sense described above) and lose at life.

I.e. the more refined view of the world does not monotonically move you towards most conventional victories (improved prosperity, happiness, life standards).

Sibling comment has a link to more (and reinforces the triviality of achieving the more-information-mindset), besides SSC and Scott Aaronson https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21298154

More in this vein: Your superior knowledge won't even give you an edge in technology investing/founding.

https://www.gwern.net/Timing

I definitely find the OP's perspective a little obnoxious. Being less-wrong is actually fairly easy (in the grand scheme of things), the problem is that nobody cares about being right.

I find Schmachtenburger hard to listen to. He rejects all media outright because it's all not true or propaganda. Might as well go live in a cave. If you listen to news, whether it's a podcast, a news channel, an article, or whatever, there's always a bias. But the solution isn't to reject all bias, it's to accept that bias is fundamental to human existence and to learn how to deal with bias while consuming that media. It's why I can listen to certain kinds of conservative media and not have my head explode - even if I disagree with many of their premises, I'm able to recognize what is fact, what is supposed fact, what is informed analysis and what is pure opinion, such that I can still extract value from it. More importantly, I can generally can recognize whether somebody is making a good faith argument or simply pushing a point to achieve certain goals or push an agenda.

I'm exactly the same. I actually consider it a matter of intellectual honesty to listen to 'the other sides' of what I believe/think. I didn't know this was called Hegellian dialectic but that's exactly it (just generalized beyond dichotomy, a multi-dimensional 'tension' to account for nuance and complexity).

I find that it gives me a much better "BS" (bad faith or belief-driven argument) whichever side it comes from; and the good arguments are then free to flow irrespective of our perception of 'sides': it does not matter who said it, or whether it contradicts other elements; if there's truth to it, then it deserves to be explored, integrated. That's reality for us.

Yeah, I would discern personal bias from institutional distortion.

I can deal with biases because like you said I can sense truthfulness (good faith), and triangulate multiple sources to form an image by trusting my own bias. Bias and different perspectives are everywhere and carry valuable signals.

What I can’t sense is that I can check all sources to find what is actually true. His solution is to proxy our sense-making to some collective intelligence (community) grown in a positive-sum game. But our current game is zero-sum, and information becomes competitive rather than collaborative, which incents (guarantees) institutional distortion (e.g. obscuring, disinforming, context-shrinking).

Aside for describing the problem, I think he covers some practical ways to make sense of things in the broken information ecology, but I haven’t gone over that part in any detail yet.

I've come across the term Hegelian dialectic and tried to read up on it many times before but it wasn't until your comparison with steel-manning that I feel like I've started to make headway with understanding it. Thanks!

Enjoy a fictional exploration of this phenomenon, introducing the concept of a scissor statement. https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/

Then realize that we have algorithms optimizing for these statements already - news, social media, gossip.

Some examination: https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9sw0yr/sort...

Narrative warfare is an interesting concept with hints of Chomsky. Did you just invent this? Or is this discussed in other forums?

It’s mentioned in the first minute of Schmachtenberger interview linked in the first footnote above (now corrected!). Rebel Wisdom might be the forum/community you’re looking for. Also, I do like Chomsky’s notion that manufactured consent is not a concerted conspiracy, but a collective disposition unconsciously enacted. I find it compatible with these other concepts.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com