Rationalist's Taboo
Key Question: How do we clarify our thoughts?
Deep down inside of me
Have you ever gotten into an argument with your friends about who is the hottest movie star on the planet? Ever been snared in heated debates about the best genre of music? Has anybody ever mocked you for liking “Why this Kolaveri di”? (Youngsters be like “huh?! what’s that? never heard of it.”) For example:
The Dark Knight is the best movie ever.
What do you think? Do you agree with the statement? In my heart, I feel like I kind of do. It is a pretty damn awesome movie! So, is the statement true or false?
What about this one?
Scarlett Johannsson is the hottest woman alive.
We’ve already seen the problem with a statement like “India is a great country”. As such, it’s unfalsifiable. Yet, it does put forth some idea that is in our mind. Somewhere in our head, we do have some things that we forbid. We don’t expect India to have zero World Cup wins or whatever, for example. We need to bring these vague ideas to the surface. But how?
Welcome to Rationalist’s Taboo!
Mum’s the Word
Rationalist’s Taboo is a game you play whenever you feel yourself being stuck or confused. Why is it called Taboo? Because you have to force yourself to not use some words.
So, I say The Dark Knight is the best movie ever. Now, I must taboo the word “best” and then try to make my statement. “The Dark Knight is the ___ movie ever.” What do I really intend to say?
More to the point, what do I expect to see? Do I expect it to be the highest grossing movie ever? Do I expect it to be the top-rated IMDB movie? Or, perhaps, do I expect to see way more Facebook posts about it than for any other movie? Or, on a personal level, do I expect to be happier watching it than watching any other movie?
Suddenly, we’ve turned a disputed statement into a precise, testable one. We’ve started thinking narrowly! We no longer have to sit through me-vs-you debates with somebody insisting that The Godfather is “way better”. All the empty arguments go down the drain. Whatever our beliefs are, we can go test them.
Similarly, how “hot” really is Scarlett Johannsson? We don’t have to get into pedantic debates about the “definition” of hotness. Definitions are for dumbasses. We care about narrow, testable predictions. Put up or shut up.
Taboo the word “hot”. Now what exactly does she do for you? Do you expect to be 10x as happy watching her beat up baddies in Avengers than watching other actresses (or even just normal women)? Do you expect a large percentage of men to say they’re attracted to her? Do you expect her to be in the top three on world’s hottest celebrities lists?
No more futile debates. Resolve your arguments through the power of empirical evidence!
What do you say about this?!
Taboo is about holding up variables and asking what your hypothesis predicts about them. The more questions you ask a hypothesis, the more chances you have of either falsifying or increasing your confidence in it.
The aim of the game is to constrain as many variables as possible that the hypothesis touches on. If it seems even remotely connected to a variable, you must talk about what it predicts, or more importantly, what it forbids. The narrower your predictions, the better.
We saw above how taboo completely deflated debates that were previously intractable. Why does Rationalist’s Taboo work?
Words let you hide behind them. When you can throw around words, you don’t have to take the trouble of specifying your narrow predictions. You think you know what you mean. The other person thinks they know what you mean. And so you fight on the level of words (“Dhoni is a better finisher than Michael Bevan.” “No, he’s not, look at …”) and those fights can go on forever because there is nothing to decide who will win.
In short, when you keep using certain words without bothering to pin down your predictions, your arguments become unfalsifiable. They become safe from contradiction. Nobody can prove you wrong, for you can make words mean pretty much anything. Like “spirituality”. How can you attack it? They’ll just say they meant something else.
Taboo 101
What does it even mean to “explain” some concept without using key words? It means to talk in terms of well-understood simpler words, those for which you know precisely what to expect. XKCD’s Randall Munroe has a new book based on this exact theme, aptly titled Thing Explainer. (For inspiration, see how he explains the Saturn V rocket - Up Goer Five.)
Block out vague adjectives, verbs, and nouns in key statements. “Best”, “great”, “beautiful”, “intelligent”, etc. are all obvious targets. So are “study”, “learn”, “help poor people”, and “improve myself”. Ditto for “student”, “friend”, “country”, “purpose”, and “true love”. Keep an eye out.
Unpack your categories. Ask what their members are. This will narrow your predictions. “He has got some respiratory viral disease” - no, unpack it - it’s either cold, influenza, or measles. By stating this, you’re implicitly saying that it’s not mumps or rubella (I’m not a doctor). So, you predict that he will have symptoms of cold or influenza, and won’t have those of mumps, etc.
No Place to Hide
When you start talking in terms of predictions, not definitions, suddenly all questions become questions of fact. Much of the moral, subjective tone drains out of conversations. Now any question can be answered. If it can’t, if it doesn’t constrain any variables whatsoever, there’s no point talking about it.
Corollary: No indefensible statements. If it matters in some way, it is falsifiable. Why do I bring this up? Because there are lots of people out there who say that certain of their statements can’t be questioned or falsified. Like their “faith”. Or, their political beliefs. Nope, you can question political beliefs. How? Taboo. Ask exactly what they think will be the consequences of some policy (legalizing or not legalizing abortion or whatever) and test them against empirical evidence as far as possible.
When pushed, others will hit back with “I’m entitled to my own opinions”. No, sweetheart, you’re not.
Just because I’m ignorant about the universe doesn’t mean that I’m unsure about how I should reason in the presence of my uncertainty. The laws for thinking with probabilities are no less iron than the laws that govern old-fashioned logic, and what you just did is not allowed.
– Harry Potter, HPMOR Chapter 17: Locating the Hypothesis
You’re never entitled to your own opinion about politics, or music, or religion, or whatever. They all boil down to questions of fact. Even things like “I like this song. That’s all. I don’t care what you think.” Nope. Even that comes down to questions of fact.
Dafuq?
Taboo “like”. What do you expect will happen when you hear this song? Will you go into bliss, as if you’re on drugs? How many times will you smile (be precise - three? eight?)? How much will your stress levels go down? Will you get a warm feeling inside when others say they like this song too? That too is a question of fact. Your brain is part of this world. Your emotions can be measured too. Every damn f*cking thing is a question of fact. Not even your “personal tastes” are indefensible. Once you break it down, you will find that even your beliefs about yourself are fair game for contention.
Nothing is safe! All our beliefs are open to falsification. The sooner we realize this and start tabooing our beliefs, the quicker we will get to accurate ones.
Notes
I learned about the concept of Rationalist’s Taboo from Eliezer Yudkowsky, who put it much better than I have.
Scientists call taboo as “operationalization”. It’s what they do before running an experiment. They isolate the exact variables of interest and the predictions that their hypotheses make for these variables, and then test those predictions by observing or manipulating some variables.
It’s just the beginning
I myself am not an expert at this right now. I can do it on demand, so if I sit down to it, I can taboo pretty much any statement thrown at me. But, the trick is in doing it when you’re thinking informally. That’s where the money is.
An exercise that has served me well in the past: Go through each sentence of your favourite works and taboo all the verbs, nouns, and adjectives. I’ve done this on essays by Paul Graham, random blog posts online, and chapters from my favourite books.
This is the tip of the iceberg.
Thala style-la sollanum-na… “It’s just the beginning!”
– Kakki Sattai
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