EDIT: It has been bought to my attention that Scott Alexander makes a similar argument in https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/24/should-you-reverse-any-advice-you-hear/ I’m going to be very specific here because if I write platitudinously I might fall into a similar trap to the one I describe. The brief version of the argument though is just that we all take on board the worst advice for us- the advice that encourages us in the direction of the extreme aspects of our behaviour we’re out to justify. Here’s why
A proposal: general advice should be (or at least attempted to be) stated in the form of a tautology. This forces The Oracle to actually put some cognitive effort into considering edge cases (forces the mind into system 2).
I'm confident this is correct because people hate it (and the hate is very often proportional to their education/~intelligence (on a cultural, relative scale) level, something I find particularly interesting).
Note that I didn't follow my own advice here (proving my point?)!!
I think this is generally correct, but I've always considered "good" advice to be inherently context dependent, given that there are basically no "universals" among human behavior. So, because of that, advice is generally meant by the giver to nudge the recipient based on the perceived context towards one of those dyads). So the existence of contradictory maxims is a feature, since the "right" one can be deployed by the skilled advice giver to point the recipient in the correct direction.
This generally fails because both advice givers and recipients are terrible at correctly interpreting context (because most humans are bad at most things, compared to the "ideal"). So advice givers are generally giving the same "wisdom" to everyone, since they assume the recipient's internal context matches their own, and the external context they *want* would be for more people to move towards the extreme they think is "better." Similarly, if you're "looking for" advice, you will either search the internet, and find exactly what you want to hear, or ask multiple people, and remember the advice that most matches your priors (although you might also remember the most surprising advice as well).
Unless the advice giver actually has both the wisdom/experience to know the subject of the advice, and a well enough developed theory of mind to know what the recipient needs to hear, the advice will probably be neutral to bad. Of course, giving and receiving advice is probably more important for social cohesion and maintaining relations than any informational content which is exchanged, so the fact that most advice is "bad" doesn't actually matter for its existence.
Good advice is also a function of the person it's coming from as well as the timing. The skilled advice giver has rapport with the receiver and also presents the advice when the receiver is emotionally and situationally disposed to imbibe that advice. I often think about something Sam Harris said once about how sometimes all it takes to be wise is to follow your own advice: Imagine you were hired by someone who has all the exact same problems as you to be their $200/hour life coach - could you not come up with excellent and actionable advice?
So a possible consequent step might be to consider optimality: look at the pieces of contrasting advice and wonder on paper for a while where the moderate position between them might be.
Thanks for resurfacing (even if unintentionally) one of Scott's old and underrated ideas.
I'd say this situation is actually much worse than both of you state, since it raises a major problem for perhaps democracy itself, and certainly for localised, devolved democracy like a federal system. I really noticed this during the debates about religious exemptions to anti-discrimination laws. It's pretty clear that anti-discrmination laws are most needed, and least likely to be broadly applied in a way that might infringe religious freedom, in places like Mississippi or rural Texas: without the laws there'll be lots of pointless discrimination, and with even extremely broad laws there'll be strong popular resistance to applying them beyond a very narrow focus. Meanwhile, it's pretty clear that anti-discrimination laws are *least* needed, and *most* likely to be harmfully over-applied, in places like San Fransisco: even with no laws at all hardly any discrimination will occur, and with the laws there'll be enormous pressure to apply them more and more zealously and broadly at the cost of basic freedoms.
So, have a guess which places end up with the broadest laws without the tiniest hint of a religious protection, and which end up with no laws at all. Almost literally the worst possible outcome.
Of course, this would not happen if people were even remotely principled, committed to tolerance as *actual* tolerance even for, (incomprehensibly radical, I know), groups other than your own! I'm in no way minimising the eternal shame and condemnation deserved by those who've decided that "turning the spaces your group already controls into iron fisted fiefdoms where the tiniest disagreement is crushed" is an infinitely higher priority than "protecting your group's basic safety in the spaces they're really vulnerable". This is basically all of wokeness, it seems, and maybe other movements as well.
But, given that people are in fact such scum, really are so awful and unprincipled and hateful that they'd rather give up protection for their own oppressed brothers than give up the opportunity to become the oppressors in their own enclaves (and obviously I could be talking about the middle east as well), local democracy seems to be making it even worse. Creating a situation where majority opinion is not just uncorrelated, but anticorrelated, with justice. And I have no idea what to do about it.
Slatestarcodex made similar argument: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/24/should-you-reverse-any-advice-you-hear/
Oh fuck, this really is very similar.
Great minds think alike?
A proposal: general advice should be (or at least attempted to be) stated in the form of a tautology. This forces The Oracle to actually put some cognitive effort into considering edge cases (forces the mind into system 2).
I'm confident this is correct because people hate it (and the hate is very often proportional to their education/~intelligence (on a cultural, relative scale) level, something I find particularly interesting).
Note that I didn't follow my own advice here (proving my point?)!!
*Demonstrating* my point would be better.
I think this is generally correct, but I've always considered "good" advice to be inherently context dependent, given that there are basically no "universals" among human behavior. So, because of that, advice is generally meant by the giver to nudge the recipient based on the perceived context towards one of those dyads). So the existence of contradictory maxims is a feature, since the "right" one can be deployed by the skilled advice giver to point the recipient in the correct direction.
This generally fails because both advice givers and recipients are terrible at correctly interpreting context (because most humans are bad at most things, compared to the "ideal"). So advice givers are generally giving the same "wisdom" to everyone, since they assume the recipient's internal context matches their own, and the external context they *want* would be for more people to move towards the extreme they think is "better." Similarly, if you're "looking for" advice, you will either search the internet, and find exactly what you want to hear, or ask multiple people, and remember the advice that most matches your priors (although you might also remember the most surprising advice as well).
Unless the advice giver actually has both the wisdom/experience to know the subject of the advice, and a well enough developed theory of mind to know what the recipient needs to hear, the advice will probably be neutral to bad. Of course, giving and receiving advice is probably more important for social cohesion and maintaining relations than any informational content which is exchanged, so the fact that most advice is "bad" doesn't actually matter for its existence.
Good advice is also a function of the person it's coming from as well as the timing. The skilled advice giver has rapport with the receiver and also presents the advice when the receiver is emotionally and situationally disposed to imbibe that advice. I often think about something Sam Harris said once about how sometimes all it takes to be wise is to follow your own advice: Imagine you were hired by someone who has all the exact same problems as you to be their $200/hour life coach - could you not come up with excellent and actionable advice?
So a possible consequent step might be to consider optimality: look at the pieces of contrasting advice and wonder on paper for a while where the moderate position between them might be.
Although: https://www.logicalfallacies.org/middle-ground.html
Thanks for resurfacing (even if unintentionally) one of Scott's old and underrated ideas.
I'd say this situation is actually much worse than both of you state, since it raises a major problem for perhaps democracy itself, and certainly for localised, devolved democracy like a federal system. I really noticed this during the debates about religious exemptions to anti-discrimination laws. It's pretty clear that anti-discrmination laws are most needed, and least likely to be broadly applied in a way that might infringe religious freedom, in places like Mississippi or rural Texas: without the laws there'll be lots of pointless discrimination, and with even extremely broad laws there'll be strong popular resistance to applying them beyond a very narrow focus. Meanwhile, it's pretty clear that anti-discrimination laws are *least* needed, and *most* likely to be harmfully over-applied, in places like San Fransisco: even with no laws at all hardly any discrimination will occur, and with the laws there'll be enormous pressure to apply them more and more zealously and broadly at the cost of basic freedoms.
So, have a guess which places end up with the broadest laws without the tiniest hint of a religious protection, and which end up with no laws at all. Almost literally the worst possible outcome.
Of course, this would not happen if people were even remotely principled, committed to tolerance as *actual* tolerance even for, (incomprehensibly radical, I know), groups other than your own! I'm in no way minimising the eternal shame and condemnation deserved by those who've decided that "turning the spaces your group already controls into iron fisted fiefdoms where the tiniest disagreement is crushed" is an infinitely higher priority than "protecting your group's basic safety in the spaces they're really vulnerable". This is basically all of wokeness, it seems, and maybe other movements as well.
But, given that people are in fact such scum, really are so awful and unprincipled and hateful that they'd rather give up protection for their own oppressed brothers than give up the opportunity to become the oppressors in their own enclaves (and obviously I could be talking about the middle east as well), local democracy seems to be making it even worse. Creating a situation where majority opinion is not just uncorrelated, but anticorrelated, with justice. And I have no idea what to do about it.