[HN Gopher] Epistemic legibility: being easy to argue with is a ...
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Epistemic legibility: being easy to argue with is a virtue
Author : shrikant
Score : 183 points
Date : 2022-03-25 14:09 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (acesounderglass.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (acesounderglass.com)
| bertil wrote:
| I believe that this is a key aspect of data-driven leadership,
| and the Friday meeting that Google founders started and many
| other companies imitated: make it easier for employees to argue
| against decisions. No organisation is perfect, or even good, so
| any effort to make complaints louder, clearer, more structured is
| incredibly valuable. One grostesque example of where that chain
| of information is broken is how Customer service teams are
| isolated.
| padobson wrote:
| I thought the concept of Epistemic Spot Checks was a great idea,
| so I was hoping that there might be some on the blog checking
| materials I had previously read so I could compare my intuitions
| with the author's hobby, but I didn't find anything.
|
| The About Me says the author gave up the project after a year or
| so, but I'm still curious about updating my own epistemological
| toolbox. Does anyone have any suggestions?
| skybrian wrote:
| Maybe check out other posts on the blog to see how they did it?
| They've done epistemic spot checks on book chapters. It sounds
| like a lot of work!
|
| Looks like these blog posts are tagged:
|
| https://acesounderglass.com/tag/epistemicspotcheck/
| dilippkumar wrote:
| Is this author well known in some community? Their writing is
| superb, and I have to ask who this is.
| red_admiral wrote:
| This author is certainly known in the rationalist-ish ("less
| wrong", Scott Alexander etc.) community; whether or not they'd
| consider themselves a member I don't know. Not all rationalist
| posts are that well written, but there are certainly more I've
| enjoyed like that.
|
| I think the author might have heard of Seeing Like a State and
| the idea of legibility through the book review on
| slatestarcodex, for example.
|
| EDIT: from their about page, "Before this, I was a software
| engineer first at a few FAANG companies and later at start
| ups." I guess that counts as another community of sorts?
| version_five wrote:
| I didn't see it mentioned, I think I "epistemic literacy" is the
| other side of the coin. I see examples of people demanding
| citations for reasoning that is part of a work, of people just
| not understanding something, or of only really being able to
| blindly follow based on province or authority without trying to
| reconcile back to what they know.
|
| If there is going to be a standard for legibility, there should
| be one for literacy too - it's especially important when learning
| from a debate where readers and writers (or sources and sinks)
| switch roles, to understand how different positions are engaging
| with each other's arguments, not just how they are making them
| civilized wrote:
| 2 + 2 = 4 [citation needed]
| awb wrote:
| > I see examples of people demanding citations for reasoning
| that is part of a work, of people just not understanding
| something, or of only really being able to blindly follow based
| on province or authority without trying to reconcile back to
| what they know.
|
| That's a tricky one for me because I see a lot of utility in
| asking for sources:
|
| a) Curiosity. Maybe I really want to know how this person came
| to believe what they did even if I'm pretty sure they're wrong.
|
| b) Challenge. A version of the Socratic Method, helping them
| learn through questioning their assumptions.
|
| c) Learning. A genuine quest for knowledge, that perhaps might
| yield more unique or varied results than Google.
|
| d) Depth. Possibly helping others in a public thread (or the
| author) realize that it might be an epistemically illegible
| argument requiring greater scrutiny, discussion or evidence.
|
| I get that asking for sources can also be lazy or ill
| intentioned, but for the most part I don't mind it.
| adfgadfgaery wrote:
| I think you misunderstand OP. The purpose of citations is to
| prove facts. The argument made based on those facts does not
| need a citation.
|
| Much of the time it isn't fair to ask for citations even for
| specific facts, but that's a separate problem.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| This is actually a huge pet peeve of mine; when people ask for
| a citation for reasoning, and then smugly declaring victory
| when no such citation is provided, as if you even could "cite"
| analysis.
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| It's a bit more than a pet peeve for me. It's exactly
| shirking any ability to perform or judge analysis, instead
| granting total deference to "authorities" that should be
| cited to provide credibility.
| dataduck wrote:
| That's especially fair, as there's a good-faith way of
| engaging with such things that they've avoided: "Could you
| expand on this please?"
| jgod wrote:
| Source?
| skybrian wrote:
| Even expert analysis isn't evidence. At its best, an expert
| can give you a sense of the range of possibilities, which
| might include things you never thought of. But actually
| knowing what's happening in a specific case requires
| evidence.
|
| It seems like being clear about what you're doing (are you
| just discussing possibilities or trying to claim something
| specific) would go a long way in avoiding such
| misunderstandings.
|
| (And I of course don't know which cases you're talking about,
| so I'm just talking about possibilities.)
| egberts1 wrote:
| "That's gibberish" probably could be better said as "that goes
| against all factual truths that I've learned."
| [deleted]
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| No, "that's gibberish" means " _I can 't tell_ whether it goes
| against factual truths, because I can't tell what it's actually
| claiming."
|
| [Edit: And one of the marks of at least some kinds of BS is
| that it tries to obscure what is actually being claimed, so
| that you can't disprove it.]
| yboris wrote:
| Any time I heard "epistemic" I am reminded of the stellar paper
| "In Praise of Epistemic Irresponsibility: How Lazy and Ignorant
| Can You Be?" by Michael Bishop
|
| Arguing that in numerous settings, even crude simple linear
| mathematical models outperform experts in a variety of tasks.
|
| https://www.jstor.org/stable/20118248
| [deleted]
| bruhvinston wrote:
| MaxMoney wrote:
| ganzuul wrote:
| ...Falsifiable? The author uses a lot of words and seems to
| appreciate brevity, but isn't the entire article summarized by
| this one word?
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| I took it as more in the realm of information theory and less
| about hard science or even content.
|
| Less about falsifiable or correct and "does this compile".
|
| More "can I easily grok what this function is trying to do even
| if it isn't compiling".
|
| I see this term as an attempt to define a precursor to "Cogent"
| or maybe it's an attempt to give "Cogent" a more formalized
| definition.
| ganzuul wrote:
| I got the additional impression that there are bounds to how
| freely the reader can interpret the narrative. Thus freed
| from endless mental contortion to make the argument work, the
| reader can assume that they are not too ignorant to
| understand the wit of the author but actually able to judge
| them as lacking. - The author has not made themself beyond
| reproach by presenting an irrefutable argument.
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| Ah, yeah, that makes sense.
|
| I hadn't thought in terms of hostile argument... you see
| this in verbal argument sometimes, where a person rambles
| or says vaguely contradicting things to prevent themselves
| from alienating their fan base.
|
| Ambiguity lets people who endorse you to contort their
| interpretation into something they like.
|
| So I think their advocating for specificity makes sense, it
| helps ensure that the argument is about some _thing_ and
| you're not engaging with some unknown meta game that lives
| outside the argument itself.
| [deleted]
| khafra wrote:
| Falsifiability is about grounding out in an experiment that can
| be performed. Epistemic legibility is a generalization of the
| concept, where the arguer highlights the cruxes of potential
| disagreement, and points to whatever evidence they feel is
| convincing--whether that's experiments you can replicate,
| official records, expert opinions, or their own introspection.
| ganzuul wrote:
| Ah, refutable.
| jl6 wrote:
| An excellent piece of terminology. Closely related to the concept
| of "not even wrong", I think?
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| That description ("not ever wrong") is some of my favorite
| academic side-eye.
| beebmam wrote:
| Superbly written and argued. Assessing an argument's Epistemic
| Legibility is a new tool in my toolbox for identifying weak
| arguments.
|
| > I expect having a handle with which to say "no I don't have a
| concise argument about why this work is wrong, and that's a fact
| about the work" to be very useful.
|
| This was my favorite quote from the article
| awb wrote:
| I've seen "Source?" used as a concise critique against what I
| consider to be epistemically illegible arguments.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Yeah, but P(Valid Critique | Source) is low. For instance,
| behold as I use it illegitimately against you: "Would you
| mind linking to where you've seen this use of 'Source?'?"
|
| Besides, legibility is about the argument - it doesn't make
| sense to talk about a "Source". The source is me. I am the
| one making the argument.
|
| Statements of fact aren't arguments. "There is a giant
| octopus besieging NYC right now". There's no argument there.
| It is merely a statement.
|
| An example legible argument is:
|
| - There is likely a lot of squid ink covering NYC
|
| - This is likely because there is a positively colossal squid
| creature floating above NYC at the moment
|
| - Squid creatures (colossal or otherwise) discharge ink when
| attacked
|
| - We are attacking this humongous monstrosity
|
| In fact, "Source?" works better against a legible argument
| since you can identify which part needs the extra stuff. This
| argument is fairly legible and is practically just
| syllogisms. It's merely the case that a premise is wrong -
| something which you can conclude by asking for the source for
| a crucial premise.
|
| With an illegible argument, you could debunk the source of
| one of the claims and still be unable to trace its impact on
| the conclusion.
|
| For instance:
|
| It's probably raining in NYC right now because it's kind of
| the conditions that would cause rain if you know what I mean.
| But there's also this squid creature in the air. It rains
| when there's squids. Here, read this article about colossal
| squid ink rain. We all know that squid rain is a thing.
| yboris wrote:
| Also reminds me of "computational kindness" where, for example,
| you give people 2 specific date-times to have lunch, rather than
| asking them to look through their entire calendar and come up
| with something (it's easier to check two time slots than to think
| about all your obligations).
|
| Comes from Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths' "Algorithms to Live
| By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions"
|
| https://boingboing.net/2016/06/17/algorithms-to-live-by-what...
| chrisweekly wrote:
| ATLB is such a great book. I need to reread it now that I've
| learned how to take better notes.
| fsociety wrote:
| What'd you learn for taking better notes? Always curious how
| to improve note-taking.
| leobg wrote:
| Exactly. Have been hoping to find more books by the same
| author, but apparently it's the only one he has written?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| One of the authors has another couple of books that sound
| similarly interesting.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Christian
| leobg wrote:
| Good point. Thank you.
| miga wrote:
| How different is "comprehensibility" from "epistemic legibility"?
|
| Comprehensible arguments are easier to argue with, and favoured
| by rhetorics.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| A comprehensible argument isnt necessarily easy to test.
|
| One of the first points he makes in the piece!
| morelisp wrote:
| No.
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