On idea-driven ideas

A long time ago, in the pre-Covid century, I remember the economist Anthony Lee Zhang describing to me his distinction between "idea-driven ideas" and "data-driven ideas".

很久以前，在新冠疫情之前的世纪，我记得经济学家安东尼·李·张向我描述了他对“想法驱动的想法”和“数据驱动的想法”之间的区别。

An idea-driven idea is an idea where you start off with some high-level philosophical frame - eg.

想法驱动的想法是从一些高级哲学框架开始的想法 - 例如。

markets are rational, power concentration is dangerous, time-worn traditions are wise - and deduce a more concrete insight from that frame plus some logical reasoning.

市场是理性的，权力集中是危险的，陈旧的传统是明智的——并从这个框架和一些逻辑推理中推断出更具体的见解。

A data-driven idea is, in its pure form, an idea that comes out of a process where you start with no preconceptions, do some analysis on data, and endorse whatever conclusion you get.

就其纯粹形式而言，数据驱动的想法是一种从没有先入之见的过程中产生的想法，对数据进行一些分析，并认可所得到的任何结论。

The implication: data-driven ideas are clearly the better type of ideas to have and promote.

这意味着：数据驱动的想法显然是更值得拥有和推广的想法。

Last month, Gabriel from Conjecture critiqued my approach to d/acc by arguing that instead of starting from an "ideology" and trying to make it more compatible with other human goals, I should effectively just be a pragmatist, and neutrally seek whatever strategies do the best job of meeting the entire set of human values.

上个月，Conjecture 的 Gabriel 批评了我的 d/acc 方法，他认为我不应该从“意识形态”开始并试图使其与其他人类目标更加兼容，而应该有效地成为一个实用主义者，并中立地寻求最能满足整个人类价值观的策略。

These are common sentiments.

这些都是常见的情绪。

So what is the proper role of what might alternatively be called ideologies, principles, ideas built on top of ideas, crystallized goals , or consistent guiding thoughts in a person's thinking?

那么，意识形态、原则、建立在想法之上的想法、具体目标或一致的指导思想在一个人的思维中的正确作用是什么？

And, on the flip side, how do these thinking styles fail?

另一方面，这些思维方式为何会失败？

This post will attempt to describe my thoughts on the topic.

这篇文章将尝试描述我对此主题的想法。

The argument I will make is as follows:

我将提出的论点如下：

Imagine that you are trying to improve how you play chess.

想象一下，您正在努力提高下棋的方式。

In chess, there is a common rule of thumb: a queen is worth nine pawns, rook is worth five pawns, and a bishop or knight are worth three pawns.

在国际象棋中，有一个共同的经验法则：皇后相当于九个棋子，车相当于五个棋子，象或马相当于三个棋子。

Thus, a rook plus a pawn for a bishop and a knight is an ok trade to make, but a rook for a knight is not.

因此，一辆车加上一个棋子换取主教和马是一个不错的交易，但车换取马则不然。

This insight has many implications.

这一见解有很多含义。

If you are trying to come up with good tactics in chess, one place to look is to find ways to use your knight to "fork" two of your opponent's stronger pieces: two rooks, or a rook and a queen, etc. Your opponent is forced to accept your knight eating one of the two strong pieces, in exchange for being able to eat the knight (a weaker piece) right after.

如果你想在国际象棋中想出好的战术，一个值得关注的地方就是想办法用你的马“分叉”对手的两个更强的棋子：两个车，或者一个车和一个后，等等。你的对手被迫接受你的马吃掉两个强棋子之一，以换取能够立即吃掉马（一个较弱的棋子）。

White to move.

白要动。

Knight to f7 is a good move, but you need to know the "knight = 3 pawns, rook = 5 lawns" rule to easily recognize it as such.

马到 f7 是一个好棋，但您需要了解“马 = 3 个兵，车 = 5 个草坪”规则才能轻松识别它。

Here, "queen = 9 pawns, rook = 5 pawns, knight = bishop = 3 pawns" functions as a generator of further downstream ideas: it's an insight that you can start with that is much more likely to generate effective tactics than searching completely randomly.

在这里，“queen = 9 pawns，rook = 5 pawns，knight = bishop = 3 pawns”作为进一步下游想法的生成器：这是一个您可以开始的洞察力，它比完全随机搜索更有可能生成有效的战术。

We can think of that statement as being an "ideology".

我们可以将这种说法视为一种“意识形态”。

Since pieces on the board in chess are called material , let us overload an already-overloaded term and call this ideology " materialism ".

既然国际象棋棋盘上的棋子被称为物质，那么让我们超载一个已经超载的术语，并将这种意识形态称为“唯物主义”。

One could imagine someone who disagrees with materialism, either partially or fully.

人们可以想象有人部分或完全不同意唯物主义。

Often, sacrificing material is okay in service of positional goals, such as exposing the opponent's king or claiming the center of the board.

通常，为了位置目标而牺牲材料是可以的，例如暴露对手的国王或占领棋盘的中心。

The value of material can also be context-dependent.

材料的价值也可能取决于上下文。

In an endgame, I've found that single knight is worth more than a single bishop, whereas two bishops are worth more than two knights.

在残局中，我发现单个马比单个主教更有价值，而两个主教比两个马更有价值。

If your opponent has one bishop left, pawns might be worth more if they are on squares of the opposite color to that bishop.

如果你的对手还剩下一名主教，如果棋子位于与该主教颜色相反的方格上，它们可能会更有价值。

A person whose approach to chess tactics focuses on exploiting these situations might call themselves a " positionist ".

一个专注于利用这些情况的国际象棋战术的人可能会称自己为“位置主义者”。

Positionists and materialists may disagree on practical issues, such as whether or not to trade two pawns for a bishop in a situation like this:

立场主义者和唯物主义者可能在实际问题上存在分歧，例如在这种情况下是否用两个棋子换一个主教：

An ideal chess player might be able to combine the materialist and positionist perspectives, juggling between them based on what the details of the situation demands.

理想的国际象棋棋手可能能够将唯物主义和位置主义的观点结合起来，根据情况细节的需要在它们之间进行权衡。

This is like Hegelian synthesis .

这就像黑格尔的综合。

However, actually doing this requires having some specific ideas about when to focus on materialist arguments and when to focus on positionist arguments, and these ideas themselves can be viewed as a new ideology.

然而，实际上这样做需要对何时关注唯物主义论证、何时关注立场主义论证有一些具体的想法，而这些想法本身可以被视为一种新的意识形态。

Effective action in the modern world has to be collective action: actions taken by hundreds or millions of people simultaneously that all act towards the same goal.

现代世界的有效行动必须是集体行动：数百或数百万人同时采取的行动，所有人都朝着同一目标努力。

Some of this can be accomplished with money (or physical coercion), but this is limited; much of what we do relies on intrinsic and social motivation to truly be effective.

其中一些可以通过金钱（或身体强制）来完成，但这也是有限的；我们所做的很多事情都依赖于内在和社会动机才能真正有效。

In my post on Plurality , I describe how communities have three primary options in this regard:

在我关于多元化的文章中，我描述了社区在这方面如何拥有三个主要选择：

Coordinating around a task is powerful: if you can convince lots of people that it would be really valuable to go to the moon, then once they start working, you have lots of people who will put a lot of hard work, creativity and energy into going to the moon.

围绕一项任务进行协调是非常强大的：如果你能让很多人相信登上月球确实很有价值，那么一旦他们开始工作，就会有很多人为登上月球付出大量的努力、创造力和精力。

Ethereum's Merge (switch from proof of work to proof of stake in 2022) was like this for many people in the community.

以太坊的 Merge（2022 年从工作证明转向权益证明）对于社区中的许多人来说就是这样。

But a task is one-time, and you don't want all the social capital that was built up after the task is complete to dissipate.

但任务是一次性的，你不希望任务完成后建立的所有社会资本都消散。

Principles and leaders are both powerful because they are generators of tasks: they can keep pointing to new valuable tasks to perform as old ones finish.

原则和领导者都很强大，因为他们是任务的生成者：他们可以在旧任务完成后不断指出新的有价值的任务来执行。

Coordination around leaders has a well-understood risk: leaders are fragile .

围绕领导者进行协调存在一个众所周知的风险：领导者很脆弱。

There are many tales in history of leaders going crazy, or priorities and values drifting in milder but still highly consequential ways.

历史上有很多领导人发疯的故事，或者优先事项和价值观以温和但仍然非常重要的方式发生变化的故事。

This applies not just when the leader is an individual, but also when the leader is a group.

这不仅适用于领导者是个人的情况，也适用于领导者是群体的情况。

Coordination around principles - especially, principles that are not consequentialist - can be much more robust.

围绕原则（尤其是非结果主义的原则）进行协调可能会更加稳健。

A key property of (well-chosen) principles as a coordination technique is what I call " galaxy brain resistance ".

作为协调技术的（精心选择的）原则的一个关键属性是我所说的“星系脑阻力”。

A weakness of consequentialism is that it's vulnerable to leaders making clever arguments about how pretty much anything they choose might actually have the best consequences for complicated 4D-chess second-order reasons.

结果主义的一个弱点是，领导者很容易就他们选择的任何事情实际上可能因复杂的 4D 国际象棋二阶原因而产生最佳后果提出巧妙的论点。

Principles are effective at serving as a brake on that, saying "no matter how clever your arguments are, we have some easily legible barriers against some things that we just don't do".

原则可以有效地抑制这种情况，它说“无论你的论点多么聪明，我们对某些我们不做的事情都有一些容易理解的障碍”。

In this sense, a major weakness of ideologies - that ideologies are dumb - can actually be an advantage.

从这个意义上说，意识形态的一个主要弱点——意识形态是愚蠢的——实际上可以成为一种优势。

One other form of coordination that is important is internal coordination , or what is often called "motivation".

另一种重要的协调形式是内部协调，或者通常称为“动机”。

I have often found that you can take insights about coordination between people, and apply those insights to the different "sub-agents" that have different perspectives and goals inside a single person's mind.

我经常发现，你可以深入了解人与人之间的协调，并将这些见解应用于不同的“子代理”，这些“子代理”在一个人的头脑中有不同的观点和目标。

Here, the analogy is: having a clear principle or goal that you're internally aligned on can both make you more motivated to do your work, and prevent you from going off the rails and self-justify doing something wrong.

在这里，类比是：拥有一个明确的原则或目标，让你内部一致，既可以让你更有动力去做你的工作，又可以防止你偏离轨道并自我辩解做错事。

It can be useful for different people to have different goals, if these people are in different sub-units of an organization that have particular missions.

如果不同的人位于具有特定使命的组织的不同子单位，那么不同的人拥有不同的目标可能会很有用。

A company has a marketing department, and it has a software development department, and many more departments.

一家公司有一个营销部门，还有一个软件开发部门，还有更多的部门。

You don't actually want the marketing department to be extremely open-minded and constantly thinking about any way to make the company more successful.

你实际上并不希望营销部门思想极其开放，不断思考任何让公司更成功的方法。

You want it to focus on marketing.

您希望它专注于营销。

This again seems to deviate from pure consequentialism, but the rigorous division of labor enables the kind of order that lets the company reliably get things done.

这似乎又背离了纯粹的结果主义，但严格的分工使得公司能够可靠地完成工作。

I would argue that the general project of human civilization has similar properties: you want different people to internalize and focus on different civilizational sub-goals.

我认为人类文明的总体计划具有相似的属性：你希望不同的人内化并专注于不同的文明子目标。

One subtle and underrated reason why this is the case is that it enables measurement .

造成这种情况的一个微妙且被低估的原因是它可以进行测量。

If an agent has a goal to "do all the useful things", it is difficult to tell if it's performing well or poorly (both internally, from the agent's own self-improvement view, and externally, for accountability).

如果一个代理的目标是“做所有有用的事情”，那么很难判断它的表现是好还是差（无论是在内部，从代理自身的自我完善角度，还是在外部，为了问责制）。

But if an agent has a more narrow goal in mind, then you can tell how well it's doing and how it might be improved.

但如果代理心中有一个更狭窄的目标，那么您就可以知道它的表现如何以及如何改进。

The benefits of this can be great - plausibly, sometimes great enough to outweigh the downsides of different agents with different sub-goals having some coordination failures.

这样做的好处可能是巨大的——有时甚至足以抵消具有不同子目标的不同代理在协调失败时所带来的缺点。

In this post so far, I have been talking about ideologies primarily as being about means : they are sets of claims about what actions best achieve some commonly-agreed goals.

到目前为止，在这篇文章中，我一直在谈论意识形态，主要是关于手段：它们是关于哪些行动最好地实现某些共同商定的目标的一系列主张。

In Gabriel's post , ideologies are primarily about ends : what goals to focus on in the first place.

在加布里埃尔的帖子中，意识形态主要是关于目的：首先要关注的目标是什么。

In reality, ideologies are always a complicated and messy mix of both.

事实上，意识形态总是两者的复杂而混乱的混合体。

But to the extent that ideologies are about ends, how do I take this into account in the arguments that I made above?

但就意识形态与目的有关而言，我如何在上面提出的论点中考虑到这一点？

Here, I will answer the question by cheating somewhat: I argue that any goals that we crystallize enough to form into an ideology or write down on paper are actually a type of means .

在这里，我会稍微作弊地回答这个问题：我认为，任何我们具体化到足以形成意识形态或写在纸上的目标实际上都是一种手段。

To see why, consider the case of someone who really values freedom.

要了解其中的原因，请考虑一下真正重视自由的人的情况。

At first, they might say that they value freedom because it enables a more efficient economy and a more robust society.

起初，他们可能会说他们重视自由，因为它可以实现更高效的经济和更强大的社会。

But then, suppose that you come in and show them a way to have a very efficient economy and a robust society without much freedom.

但是，假设你进来并向他们展示了一种在没有太多自由的情况下拥有非常高效的经济和健全的社会的方法。

Perhaps, you could have an advanced computer that controls the economy and tells everyone where to work, and robustness comes from some democratic voting mechanism that runs every month that can adjust the computer's inputs or replace it entirely.

也许，你可以拥有一台先进的计算机来控制经济并告诉每个人在哪里工作，而稳健性来自于每月运行的某种民主投票机制，可以调整计算机的输入或完全替换它。

This libertarian sees your vision of this society, and they feel really uneasy, and they just know that if this was put into practice, they would immediately start plotting to rebel against it.

这个自由主义者看到你对这个社会的愿景，他们感到非常不安，他们只知道如果这付诸实践，他们会立即开始密谋反抗。

What is going on here?

这是怎么回事？

I would argue that "crystallized values" are themselves tactics or predictions, where the real ultimate goal (the "win condition" that they are targeting) is a highly illegible and complicated mass of conditions and preferences that are inside each of our brains .

我认为“具体化的价值观”本身就是策略或预测，其中真正的最终目标（他们所针对的“胜利条件”）是我们每个人大脑中的大量难以辨认且复杂的条件和偏好。

When this libertarian hears about this proposal for an efficient and robust, but unfree, society, they are making a realization that, actually, efficiency and robustness are analogous to material in chess: an important part of winning the game, but not the only part.

当这位自由主义者听到这个关于建立一个高效、稳健但不自由的社会的提议时，他们意识到，实际上，效率和稳健性类似于国际象棋中的材料：赢得比赛的重要部分，但不是唯一的部分。

Climate change hawks will often say that they support degrowth -style policies because they are the only way to avoid the planet overheating.

气候变化鹰派经常说他们支持去增长式政策，因为这是避免地球过热的唯一途径。

But if you suggest solar power (or worse, solar geoengineering ) as a way to avoid the planet overheating without needing to interfere with material abundance or capitalism, they always seem a little too enthusiastic to come up with reasons why such a plan would not work or would have too many "unintended consequences".

但如果你建议用太阳能（或者更糟糕的是，太阳能地球工程）作为避免地球过热的一种方法，而不需要干扰物质丰富或资本主义，他们似乎总是有点过于热情，无法找出为什么这样的计划行不通或会产生太多“意想不到的后果”的原因。

Cryptocurrency enthusiasts will often say that they want to improve global finance accessibility, create trustworthy property rights, and solve all kinds of social problems with blockchains.

加密货币爱好者经常会说，他们希望通过区块链提高全球金融的可及性，创造值得信赖的产权，解决各种社会问题。

But if you show them a way to solve the same problem without any blockchain at all, they always seem a little too enthusiastic to come up with reasons why your plan would break, perhaps because it's "too centralized" or it "doesn't have enough incentives".

但是，如果你向他们展示一种在没有任何区块链的情况下解决同样问题的方法，他们似乎总是有点过于热情，无法找出你的计划失败的原因，也许是因为它“太中心化”或者“没有足够的激励”。

Both of these examples are somewhat like the example of a libertarian that I gave above, but they are not quite like that example.

这两个例子都有点像我上面给出的自由主义者的例子，但又不太像那个例子。

It's reasonable to value freedom as an end in itself (as long as that's not your only value); freedom is a goal that is deeply engrained in humans as a result of millions of years of evolution.

将自由视为目的本身是合理的（只要这不是你唯一的价值观）；自由是经过数百万年进化而根深蒂固的目标。

It's not reasonable to value abolishing capitalism, or mass adoption of blockchains, in the same way.

以同样的方式评价废除资本主义或大规模采用区块链是不合理的。

I would argue that this is basically the failure mode that we need to watch out for: elevating something to being an end-in-itself when it isn't, in a way that ends up greatly harming the underlying goals.

我认为这基本上是我们需要警惕的失败模式：当某件事不是最终目的时，将其提升为最终目的，最终会极大地损害根本目标。

"But I have more and much stronger pieces left on the board, so it doesn't matter that I got checkmated, spiritually it was I who won the game"

“但棋盘上我还有更多、更强的棋子，所以被将死并不重要，精神上是我赢得了比赛”

In the above sections, I identified two positive use cases of the thing you might call "ideologies", "principles" or "idea-driven ideas":

在上面的部分中，我确定了您可能称之为“意识形态”、“原则”或“想法驱动的想法”的两个积极用例：

Often, movements in society will have some of both.

通常，社会运动会兼具两者。

Externally, they work to defend a principle, reducing the chance that society drifts to over-reliance on an elite.

在外部，他们努力捍卫原则，减少社会过度依赖精英的机会。

Internally, they become very proficient at deeply exploring particular themes that then generate valuable ideas and strategies for improving the world.

在内部，他们非常擅长深入探索特定主题，然后产生有价值的想法和策略来改善世界。

Libertarian economists defend freedom in society, and they also invent prediction markets, refine congestion pricing proposals, and a number of other valuable ideas.

自由主义经济学家捍卫社会自由，他们还发明了预测市场、完善拥堵定价提案以及许多其他有价值的想法。

Environmentalists guard our society against making irreversible damage to the environment through political advocacy, and they also invent technologies like clean energy and synthetic meat.

环保主义者通过政治宣传保护我们的社会免遭对环境造成不可逆转的破坏，他们还发明了清洁能源和人造肉等技术。

Meanwhile, I see two failure modes of this kind of approach.

同时，我看到这种方法有两种失败模式。

First, there is the risk that an instrumental objective overly crystallizes and gets pursued to extreme extents that subvert the original underlying goal.

首先，工具性目标存在过度具体化和追求极端程度的风险，从而颠覆了最初的基本目标。

Second, there is the risk that coordinating around unbounded goals slides into coordinating around a caste of elites that are tasked with interpreting the goals.

其次，围绕无限目标的协调存在着滑向围绕负责解释目标的精英阶层的协调的风险。

This is what Balaji Srinivasan means when he says things like " democracy is rule by Democrats ", or what critics of effective altruism often point to when criticizing part of the movement's drift from a broad focus on identifying and encouraging highly effective charity to a much narrower approach of solving AI safety by directing grants to people within their own social cluster.

这就是巴拉吉·斯里尼瓦桑（Balaji Srinivasan）所说的“民主是由民主党人统治”之类的意思，或者是有效利他主义的批评者在批评该运动的部分内容时经常指出的内容，该运动从广泛关注识别和鼓励高效慈善事业转向通过向自己社会群体内的人们提供资助来解决人工智能安全问题的狭隘方法。

I propose two compromises to try to balance between these benefits and downsides:

我提出两个妥协方案来尝试平衡这些优点和缺点：

The fact that the world and our (individual and collective) minds are both complex and have a lot of internal structure means that the direct solution of "reason about the whole sum of values and do the data-driven thing that best meets them" often ends up breaking in practice in various ways.

世界和我们（个人和集体）的思想都很复杂，并且有很多内部结构，这一事实意味着“对整个价值总和进行推理并做最符合它们的数据驱动的事情”的直接解决方案往往最终会在实践中以各种方式破裂。

At the same time, leaning in too much to some of that structure often breaks too, sometimes in ways that are even worse.

与此同时，过于依赖其中的某些结构也常常会遭到破坏，有时甚至会导致更糟糕的情况。

Balances like this are most likely to get more of the benefits while minimizing more of the downside of both sides.

这样的平衡最有可能获得更多的好处，同时最大限度地减少双方的负面影响。