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Morendil comments on Open Thread: March 2010, part 3 - Less Wrong
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Comments (254)
May I suggest "I'm tapping out", perhaps with a link to this very comment? It's a good line (and perhaps one way the dojo metaphor is valuable).
I think in this comment you did fine. Don't sweat it if the comment that signals "I'm stopping here" is downvoted, don't try to avoid it.
In this comment I think you are crossing the "mind reading" line, where you ascribe intent to someone else. Stop before posting those.
I like mind reading. I'm good at it.
Absent statistical evidence drawn from written and dated notes, you should hold it very plausible that your impression you're good at it is due to cognitive bias. Key effects here include hindsight bias, the tendency to remember successes better than failures, the tendency to rewrite your memories after the fact so that you appear to have predicted the outcome, and the tendency to count a prediction as a success - the thousand-and-one-fold effect.
You're good at listing biases. I'm good at creating mental models of other people from limited information.
Absent statistical information, you should hold it very plausible that I am under the effect of biases, as I'm certainly not giving you enough data to update to the point where you should consider me good at anticipating people's actions and thoughts.
However, obtaining enough written and statistical evidence to allow you to update to the same level of belief that I hold (I would appropriately update as well), is far too difficult considering the time spans between predictions, their nature of requiring my engagement in the moment, etc.
My weak evidence is that, having subscribed to sl4 several years ago, following OB and now LW on at least a monthly basis, and having read and incorporated much of what is written here into my own practices, I still have this belief, and feel that it is very unlikely to be a wrong belief. Or perhaps you're overestimating my "good" qualifier and we're closer than we think.
At any rate, I apologize for stating a belief that I am unwilling to provide strong evidence to support.
I'd update on you saying "I have good statistical evidence drawn based on written, dated notes" even if you didn't show me the evidence.
EDIT: to make this point clearer - I would update more strongly on your assurances if I could think of another likely mechanism than the one I propose by which one could gain confidence in the superiority of one's mind-reading skills.
It's not that sort of prediction, I don't think. It's more social and inferential, based on past and current events, and rarely works as well for the future (more than a few hours), though it does to some degree.
I don't carry a notebook with me, and oftentimes this is used in a highly social environment, so writing it down would not be appropriate or easy to do. I consider it a form of pattern matching, where I determine the thoughts and feelings of the other person through my knowledge of them and by using real-time interaction, body language, etc.
It's rapid correlation of environmental cues and developed mental models. Examples of its use: "What does it mean that they stopped talking? What does that slight glance to the left mean? What does it mean that they used that particular word? Why didn't they take action X? Why did they take action Y, but Z didn't come of it?"
I think the phrase "mind reading" is a bit much. Note the original context: "ascribing intent." I'm just using tells that I've learned over time to discern what someone else is thinking or feeling, with my own feeling as to how likely it is that I'm correct (internal, subjective bayesometer?). I've learned to trust it over time because it's been so useful and accurate.
Also note that the training period, where I initially develop the mental model, tends to consist of things like asking the other person, "What do you mean?" and then remembering their answer when a similar event comes around again. :-P
ETA: I think my pattern matching and memory skills are also what give me my wicked déjà vu. And it's likely more normal people would call this "social skills," though I seem to lack such innate capability.
Even if you're good at ascribing intent to others, stating it is likely to do more harm than good. I've tried in the past to give people my analysis of why they're thinking what they're thinking. It inevitably reinforces their resistance rather than lessening it, since agreeing with my analysis would mean publicly acknowledging a character flaw.
It's much better to leave them a line of retreat, letting them think of changing their mind in terms of "updating on new evidence" rather than "admitting irrationality".
P.S. I'm not responding to the linked example, but to the general practice which I think is counterproductive.
I'll provisionally agree that it's not all that useful to tell people what you think of their intent. This is why I linked it as a 'bad thing' for me to say: I considered it a generally combative post, where my intent was to sneer at the other person rather than alter their behavior for the better.
I tend to get around this in real world conversations with the use of questions rather than statements, but that requires rapid back and forth. Text forums are just about the worst place to use my most-developed methods of discussion...
Indulge in private. :)