Matter of what people put into their Networks, i.e. implementation error. Leaving out Black Swans. Perhaps overvaluing stability.
What is considered valuable? Simple survival vs QALYs, "education" vs competence or erudition, …
Add simulated annealing to BES? Already being done (simulated tempering)?
With great power comes great responsibility. When I collect all of the information I think I know along with their justifications in one place, such as this knowledge base, and clearly interconnect them, I imagine that someone who wants to question a part of it could feel overwhelmed. Perhaps they get the idea that I cannot be argued with, since I seem to have so much indirectly backing up any one claim and "everything fits together" for me.
If so, all I can say is: that is the opposite of its function. The knowledge base helps explore my own beliefs and reveal my "cruxes" – Raemon reflects my goal in Keep Your Beliefs Cruxy. In short, I don't mean to collect arguments backing up what I believe (that's dangerous for who wishes to stay sane), but for the opposite: helping me propagate belief changes. When a specific belief is questioned, I may reverse what I believe on that point, and then the knowledge base helps me discover what other beliefs I will also have to reverse! So it's a tool for increased fluidity of belief systems. Instead of carved into stone, my mind should be more like a whiteboard: quick and frictionless to change.
Sometimes I'll realize that something I wrote is way too opinionated, or displayed the Dunning-Kruger effect (i.e. I act like everyone else's stupid, but I'm the one who's stupid). It's embarrassing, but also so healthy. I recommend everyone to publicize their belief systems in this way.
For details of how, see Unpacking beliefs.
It's for training Calibration.
(2023: PredictionBook is going down but fatebook.io/ looks like a good successor)
The situation you find yourself in is called Warnock’s Dilemma, named after Bryan Warnock, one of the early Usenet pioneers. He said that silence can be interpreted in one of five different ways:
- The post is obviously correct, and so well researched that nothing more needs to be said.
- The post is complete and utter nonsense but no one wants to waste the time or energy to point it out.
- No one read the post.
- No one understood the post and thought it would be worth their time to ask for further clarification.
- No one cares about the post.
After reading Ryan Holiday’s book, Trust Me I’m Lying, I’m not sure that it is possible to incentivize comments without falling into the Buzzfeed trap of writing content with high emotional valence in order to drive engagement. I think that the way to improve one’s writing is to seek out people and ask them to give comments (and incentivize this, either through social means or even via financial means, if you can afford it). Relying on one’s writing alone to draw commenters sets up an incentive gradient that leads straight to Buzzfeed, and I’m not sure that there’s really any way out of it.
– www.greaterwrong.com/posts/GHBLFPDhzeSQHx2eM/writing-that-provokes-comments