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Adversarial Collaboration

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Re: Adversarial Collaboration

#61

Post by BlueDingo »

hackerlight wrote: post #55
BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if there is a term for this kind of objection. I’m starting to see more and more people demand quantifiers or conditional disqualifiers on statements that shouldn’t reasonably be considered as absolutes. And, the fact that bringing up that whatever assertion is being made is not a universal absolute doesn’t really add anything to the understanding. Which statement is better, “people don’t like the smell of s…

I advocate for everyone to use basic declarative statements when they are not completely certain, with uncertainty left implied and up to the reader to figure out. If the writer is certain about something or wants to make an absolute statement, then that's when the verbosity comes into play. That's when the writer can start to add all the fluff words. That's a convention that's way better, because the large majority…

I hear you, but I'm also the type of person to admit my own uncertainty. And the people around me get way more uptake of their ideas by just leaving out those words, even when they have less or terrible foundations.

Re: Adversarial Collaboration

#62

Post by WalterBright »

bigmatto wrote: post #3

One of the most disappointing things that I have learned is that most people hold opinions in order to be part of some group. If someone is a member of a group, it is almost not worth listening to their arguments, especially arguments in support of views held strongly by that group. They are arguing in order to maintain their group membership, not to find the truth. It appears this is true of academic and scientific…

Join us, the non-conformists!

Re: Adversarial Collaboration

#63

Post by safety1st »

bigmatto wrote: post #3

One of the most disappointing things that I have learned is that most people hold opinions in order to be part of some group. If someone is a member of a group, it is almost not worth listening to their arguments, especially arguments in support of views held strongly by that group. They are arguing in order to maintain their group membership, not to find the truth. It appears this is true of academic and scientific…

There's some truth to this but it's a pessimistic and ultimately counterproductive take on people.

Rather I would say that high agreeableness (and maybe to some degree conscientiousness or extroversion) [1] is correlated with the likelihood that someone will change their opinions in order to conform with a group.

So if you don't like that personality trait, you can seek out less agreeable people, there are plenty of them out there. The only trouble will be that if you need to collaborate with them, you may have a hard time getting anything done!

There is survivor bias among groups - if a bunch of people all have different opinions and aren't willing to modify them, they're unlikely to remain a group for long.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

Re: Adversarial Collaboration

#64

Post by AlbertCory »

I was lucky enough to be in the group that ran Dr. Kahneman's talk at Google, so I was at lunch with him & 8 or so others. I asked him,

"Dr. Kahneman, you've been writing about thinking for 40 years. Do you think you've changed how people think at all?"

He said, "No, not even me." He proceeded to tell a story where he fell into the "eloquence trap" that he, himself, wrote about: a doctor said something, and he said to his daughter, "that doctor is very impressive!"

She'd learned his lessons better than he had: she said that what mattered was how much experience the doctor had in this particular area, not how good she sounded.

Re: Adversarial Collaboration

#65

Post by kornhole »

bigmatto wrote: post #3

One of the most disappointing things that I have learned is that most people hold opinions in order to be part of some group. If someone is a member of a group, it is almost not worth listening to their arguments, especially arguments in support of views held strongly by that group. They are arguing in order to maintain their group membership, not to find the truth. It appears this is true of academic and scientific…

What do you think of the wisdom of the great Groucho Marx: I wouldn't be a member of any group that would have me as a member.

Re: Adversarial Collaboration

#66

Post by tmnvix »

eloff wrote: post #57
lapcat wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If someone is a member of a group, it is almost not worth listening to their arguments, especially arguments in support of views held strongly by that group. Who isn't a member of a group? We're all members of a number of groups. It's refreshing that Kahneman honestly admits that he doesn't change his mind either, and his tastes were formed when he was relatively young. He's not putting himself above the rest of hu…

Maybe I'm uncommon in this aspect, but I don't feel like I'm a member of many groups. I'm not religious, but don't really consider myself an atheist. I'm not for any particular party. I don't care about sports. I'm Canadian, but don't live there and don't feel like I belong there either. I suppose you could say I'm part of the group of Caucasian males by birth or part of the group of software engineers by trade, but…

I think this is not at all uncommon. I am largely in the same boat and assumed this was the 'de facto norm' amongst my peers as a teen (90s NZ), but it's interesting to consider that groups are often defined by what they are not.

Re: Adversarial Collaboration

#67

Post by sitkack »

jiggawatts wrote: post #50
Cd00d wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most important thing I learned from my graduate advisor: anyone can have a worthwhile idea. I watched him for years coming into weekly colloquia and seeming to tune out reading papers. But, occasionally there would be a speaker that was less than credible, and you could feel the entire hall close off. But, my advisor would hear a tidbit of a good idea (even amongst loads of bunk), and look up from his journals an…

My hobby is to look for a physics theory of everything (ToE). I have virtually no chance at succeeding at this, but it's fun reading through random junk on ArXiV. I noticed something similar: You can find papers by clearly crazy people that have nuggets of good ideas in them. Odd bits of mathematics they reference might be an interesting rabbithole to go down, even if it ultimately leads nowhere. The whole thing remi…

If you want a good idea killed, have it presented by the wrong person. We attach an outsized amount of meaning between the two, sometimes so much that we kill the person delivering it.

Re: Adversarial Collaboration

#68

Post by sitkack »

christophilus wrote: post #26
ARandomerDude wrote: post #2

> Let's start from the main domains where we know people don't change their minds—politics or religion. > In politics and in religion, the main driver is social. We believe what the people we love and trust believe. Except I've changed my mind on both, despite enormous pressure by people I love not to. Also this article seems to be self-defeating: if we don't change our minds, why attempt to convince us of that fact?…

I’m in the same boat as you, having changed my mind on many big, cherished ideas. Obviously, people change their minds. Having some familiarity with Kahneman, my guess is he means this is a general, but not absolute rule. Sort of like “You can’t convince someone of a wrong if their paycheck depends on them seeing it as a right.” It’s a helpful general, but not absolute rule.

To be truly free, we should be paid by no one.

Re: Adversarial Collaboration

#69

Post by hackerlight »

BlueDingo wrote: post #61
hackerlight wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I advocate for everyone to use basic declarative statements when they are not completely certain, with uncertainty left implied and up to the reader to figure out. If the writer is certain about something or wants to make an absolute statement, then that's when the verbosity comes into play. That's when the writer can start to add all the fluff words. That's a convention that's way better, because the large majority…

I hear you, but I'm also the type of person to admit my own uncertainty. And the people around me get way more uptake of their ideas by just leaving out those words, even when they have less or terrible foundations.

It's a cultural thing. The cultural norm in academic or technical circles is extreme precision as well as fear of being held to account by enforcers of that norm. It's a spillover of rigorous academic publishing norms into general conversation. It's a fool's errand given that speech is intrinsically imprecise, and given that everyday speech is just a communication tool and not a vehicle for perfect applied epistemology.

We should hedge statements depending on whether the context makes it self-explanatory that there's uncertainty. Any less, and we're being deceptive. Any more, and we're adding words without adding information.

You know what would be a cool? Some notation to denote the level of certainty that doesn't take up horizontal space in the sentence. Or an API to a fine tuned GPT-3 that can strip out caveats and hedges from text on a screen.

Re: Adversarial Collaboration

#70

Post by lostcolony »

ekianjo wrote: post #42
markdown wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for those students who come to Yale, we expect them to be versed in issues of social justice. We encourage them to be vocal when they see an opportunity for change in our institution and in the world. Would you want anything less in an academic institution? That's the entire point of places of higher learning.

Social justice is not an innocent word. It is charged with a political agenda.

So was "abolition".

You can decide you -disagree- with the ideas of 'social justice', or the implementation, or whatever, but I think you'll need a stronger case than "it's political" to warrant the dismissal of an educational institution trying to incorporate the term.

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