wedrifid comments on Defecting by Accident - A Flaw Common to Analytical People - Less Wrong

86 Post author: lionhearted 01 December 2010 08:25AM

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Comment author: thomblake 03 December 2010 12:25:03AM 2 points [-]

Consider dropping it altogether if it's not a big deal. This about learning to prioritize - I had someone comment on my site thinking mistakenly that The Richest Man in Babylon and The Greatest Salesman in the World were by the same author. It wasn't, but who cares? It makes no difference. It's not worth pointing it out - almost everyone has an aversion to being corrected, so only do it if there's actually tangible gain. Otherwise, go do something more important and not engender the potential bad will.

I consider this particularly selfish and evil. If you know there's a place where someone's map doesn't correspond to the territory, you should tell them before they inadvertently drive off a cliff. Even if it would be a status hit to yourself. And you can't tell me that's a part of their map they weren't even using, as they had just used it!

Comment author: wedrifid 03 December 2010 01:20:19AM 1 point [-]

Wow. I don't usually expect people to be more epistemilogically idealistic than I. Yet when I remember to curb my impulses I occasionally bite my tongue and let unimportant things go. I don't consider it evil. But come to think of it my personal emotional aversion is centred around bullshit - a different kind of 'evil'.