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Recursive koans about rules, decisions, and meta-negotiation

15 tweets · January 2021 · 167 likes · 9 retweets · read on Twitter

Who gets to decide? Who gets to decide who gets to decide?

In what language do we negotiate? In what language do we negotiate what language to conduct our negotiation in?

Shall we take this action? Shall we vote on whether to take this action? Shall we vote on whether to vote on whether to take this action? Shall we vote on whether this vote needs 50% or 60% to pass? Shall we vote on what to do if we can't decide whether or not to vote?

How do we answer the question? How do we answer the question of how do we answer the question?

Malcolm Ocean 🏴‍☠️ @Malcolm_Ocean ·

How do we make decisions while we don't know the answer to this question?

What are the rules? What are the rules for changing the rules? What are the rules for interpreting the rules? What are the rules for who the rules apply to? What are the rules for what happens when someone doesn't agree to the rules?

Shall we agree to disagree, or would it be best for both of us if we didn't even agree on that?

how do we reconcile? how do we reconcile that we can't seem to reconcile? how do I reconcile that you can't seem to reconcile that we can't seem to reconcile?

Paul @paul__is__here ·

Relatedly: to deny that there is reconciliation work to be done is to refuse to participate in it, which functionally just pushes all the work to the other person

quoting @paul__is__here: Thread of further thoughts on ontological reconciliation and fairness 🧵: Reconciling ontologies is work, and the question of how that work is to be shared between the two communicating sides, is itself fairly zero-sum, so potentially a site of conflict.

twitter.com/nat_sharpe_/st…

Malcolm Ocean 🏴‍☠️ @Malcolm_Ocean ·

are we goodharting? how would we know if we were goodharting? how can we measure the extent to which we're goodharting? how can we optimize for as little goodharting as possible? how can we ensure that our goodhart-minimization doesn't goodhart?

Malcolm Ocean 🏴‍☠️ @Malcolm_Ocean ·

"he did something wrong"  "no, you're scapegoating him" "no, *you're* trying to scapegoat *me*, by claiming I'm scapegoating him"  "no, you're doing that to *me*, by claiming my calling out your scapegoating is scapegoating" ×∞  ×∞

click through for this one:

Malcolm Ocean 🏴‍☠️ @Malcolm_Ocean ·

the meta-level assumptions about how cultures need to interoperate that everyone would converge on if they were trying to converge on... x.com/Malcolm_Ocean/…

same koan

Malcolm Ocean 🏴‍☠️ @Malcolm_Ocean ·

we agree to behave in thus and such a way, for the duration of the container (circling, whatever) what is our agreement for how we behave when the bell goes off and the container ends?

Malcolm Ocean 🏴‍☠️ @Malcolm_Ocean ·

it's going to be hard for us to agree on anything while we don't agree on what agreement means

Malcolm Ocean 🏴‍☠️ @Malcolm_Ocean ·

you won't negotiate the way I want to negotiate I won't negotiate the way you want to negotiate how do we negotiate a new way to negotiate?