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Tyrrell_McAllister comments on On Enjoying Disagreeable Company - Less Wrong
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Comments (243)
Do you get the distinction between (1) knowing how to do something, and (2) knowing when you ought to do that thing?
If you do get the distinction, do you recognize that Alicorn's OP is entirely about (1), while your criticisms are entirely about (2)?
Do you get why demonstrating (2) shows why someone giving advice on (1) should, for consistency, have applied (1)? And therefore why (2) is relevant?
I'm actually am having a little trouble grasping your meaning with these questions. I agree that someone giving advice on (1) should have applied (1). Otherwise, they don't have a justified claim to the knowledge in (1). But this is the case whether or not they demonstrate (2), which is why I'm confused by the wording of your question.
What I don't get is why it is relevant if the advice-giver failed to realize that they should have applied (1) in some particular case, even if they ought to have known that they should have applied (1).
To give a gruesome example, a professional hitman might be able to give very good advice on how to kill someone you've decided to kill, even if his advice on when to decide to kill someone is spectacularly bad.
Similarly, your evaluation of Alicorn's advice on how to like someone you've decided to like should be independent of your belief that she's very bad at deciding when to like someone.
So that's what your entire criticism amounts to? That maybe Alicorn just didn't recognize this as an opportunity to use her skills, even as she goes through the terror of seeing my comments pop up all over the place?
That would kind of require you to believe that Alicorn was lying about the whole psychological stress thing, which is a spectacularly nasty thing to lie about. If you're fine with that if it proves me wrong ... I guess that's a call you have to make.
I don't follow this inference at all.
I would guess that she "didn't recognize this as an opportunity to use her skills" because of the psychological stress.
That is, because of the psychological stress of interacting with you, she came to the mistaken conclusion that she ought not to like you, so she never tried to apply her advice. That would be my guess.
ETA: Maybe this is your reasoning (please confirm or deny): A person with the ability to choose to like anyone would choose to like everyone, especially the people that he or she really, really doesn't like. This is because disliking someone is unpleasant, and it's more unpleasant the more you dislike them. But liking someone is pleasant, so that is what someone with the power in the OP would choose to do. Therefore, someone who claims to have the power in the OP, but who also evidently doesn't like someone, is probably lying or deluded.
Fourth time: the advice applies to canceling dislike, just as much as changing to like.
So, your position is now that Alicorn suffers psychological stress from seeing my name all over her favorite[1] discussion site, but feels this is just "something she has to live with" (though it has disadvantages of its own), becuase of the severe wrongness of turning off her dislike of me?
It's okay to say "oops".
ETA:
Not even close: I listed the reasons Alicorn unnecessarily adheres to a dislike that are specific to this situation, and how the unpleasantness can be good for and the site by switching to non-dislike ... already it looks nothing like the reasoning you posited.
[1] please, please don't nitpick this one -- you get the point, I hope
Okay, how about this*:
* I'm honestly just trying to understand your view. I expect that my picture of your view is still wrong in significant respects. But the best way that I know to improve my understanding is to give you my picture so far, so that you can correct it. I am not trying to characterize your view for rhetorical purposes. Again, I know that my picture is probably wrong.
** It is not enough that she ought to know, any more than we should dismiss the hitman's advice on how to kill just because he is so clearly wrong about when to kill.
You know, I've been thinking the same thing :).
Yes, I think that that is a fair description of my position. (ETA: However, the "severe wrongness" need not be moral wrongness. Humans often want to do unpleasant things and very much don't want to do something that would increase their pleasure. It's not all that unusual. Usually this is for moral reasons, as conventionally understood, but not always.)
Did you read my edit to my last comment? Does it capture your reasoning (with "like" replaced with "not dislike", if you like)?
Cute, but considering how contorted your position has turned out to be, you can forgive me for wondering if you wanted to stick with it.
And that's what I mean: on top of the already contorted position I attributed to you, you're adding this moral-or-maybe-something else wrongness, which has no precedent in your earlier justifications. Do you think it's probably one of the non-moral-wrongness things? Is that just a matter of terminology?
My earlier comment has been revised to respond to your addition, but it's just an elaboration of "wtf? no".
Do you take enjoyment in participating in these long, often repetitive arguments? Do you not find the antagonism consistently grating or stressful? If you have been wronged, surely from experience you can see that repeatedly bringing it up is simply not going to change anything. I'm curious as to whether this apparent futility bothers you in the same way that I know it would bother me.
No.
I do find the antagonism grating and/or stressful. (The same with questions posed in the negative, but I digress.)
It's definitely going to change the cardinality of the set of non-anonymous people who can indepently confirm or disconfirm being on the receiving end of Alicorn's wisdom, which is what I was mainly hoping for.
To your broader, implied query: I'm between a rock in a hard place. I've wanted to point out what a crock Alicorn's supposed insight on the matter is since her luminosity series (this isn't the first time she's posted advice in direct contradiction of how all evidence reveals she handles situations). After about the ~8th article, I couldn't let her go on promoting this two-faced act, so I spoke up.
No, I don't enjoy becoming LW's whipping boy every three months. But what can I say -- no good deed goes unpunished.
Hmm. I thought that I laid it out very cleanly here.
I think that it's probably moral wrongness, but I'm less certain, so I'm more cautious about attributing that view to her.
But, at any rate, I honestly don't see the contortions to which you refer. Perhaps she would experience a certain increase in pleasure if she modified herself not to dislike you. If she has this power, but chooses not to use it, then you may conclude that she cares about something more than that pleasure. It's sort of like how Ghandi wouldn't take a pill to make himself like to kill people, even if he knew that he would have lots of opportunities to kill people at no cost. There is a very standard distinction between what you think you ought to do and what you think will give you the most pleasure. I would expect the inferential distance on LW for this to be very short. That is why I don't see my position as contorted.
Give me just a little credit here: yes I do understand the difference between "this increases my pleasure" and "I should do this"; and yes, there should be low inferential distance on explaining such a point on LW. That's wasn't in dispute. What's in dispute is how much contortion you have to go through to justify why that distinction would be relevant and applicable here (which even the contortion leaves out).
And you didn't lay it out very cleanly in the linked comment: you just made one distinction that is a very small part of what you have to say to specify your position.
From the very first sentence the underlying premise supporting that 'how' is that the author can, in fact, do the thing in question. It isn't presented as something known in theory, were that the case external evidence would be required, not implicit reference to personal experience. This being the case either a demonstrated strength in the area or a description of specific improvement in a weakness is required to give support to the 'how to guide' in question.
(The above is independent of whether Alicorn is hypocritical or otherwise a worthy subject of moral sanction. It is just a rejection of the claim of Tyrrell's that observations of the poster is 'entirely' irrelevant to the credibility of the advice given. With extra rejection given to the condescending tone.)
I don't see what you're saying here beyond what I myself said here, when I wrote,
To be a little more explicit, I meant "applied (1) successfully". As I go on to say, this does not contradict the distinction between (1) and (2), because:
(I'm quoting myself at length here because someone downvoted me earlier for giving just a link to another comment when I thought that the other comment said all I would want to say.)
You go on to say,
I think that this is a form of asking for impossible evidence. Of course, the evidence you request is not really impossible. Alicorn could have given all sorts of identifying details of the people she forced herself to like, and she could have described at length the circumstances under which she did so.
However, it's not reasonable to have expected her to do this in the OP. The social sanction against doing that kind of thing is too great, and with reason. It would not have helped the reception of her article to drag forth all of her grievances and peeves against someone, just to describe how she overcame all these issues and learned to like the person. To expect this of her is to have an unrealistic picture of human interaction.
Therefore, Alicorn's lack of "description of specific improvement" is not Bayesian evidence against her ability to do what she advises, nor against the possibility that she has applied her advice with success. We just have to evaluate the plausibility of her hypothesis by other means, such as consistency with our prior knowledge and our own experimental tests.
My blunt tone is intended to be a sign of respect to Silas. One of the things that I admire about him is that, when he disagrees with someone, he says so plainly, often without expressing contempt (though not often enough). He does not obscure his position by softening it to save feelings. I extend to him the same courtesy.