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Will_Newsome comments on The 5-Second Level - Less Wrong
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When you do this in person, hopefully you give them as long as they'd like to respond? It is not uncommon for people to take 30 seconds or more to come up with their best example. (Oftentimes they're afraid of giving less than best, since they assume whatever examples they give will be unfairly assumed to be their best, especially if they're already modelling you as socially adversarial.) Calling bluffs is fine I guess, even if I don't like the precedent or aesthetics of "why do you believe what you believe?" being used in Status Attack Mode, but such a social maneuver should probably only be done when the bluffer gets a legitimate chance to show their hand. That basically limits it to heads-up games.
ETA: I should clarify that though Louie's point is perhaps underappreciated (most people asking for examples really are just using an annoyingly hard-to-diffuse piece of rhetoric, and to many your question will thus pattern match), I don't agree with his (admittedly obviously hyperbolic but still pretty bizarre) larger point that Eliezer/rationalists shouldn't be asking Eliezer/rationalists for concrete examples.
30 seconds is actually a pretty long time in conversation, so if they don't say anything like "I'm thinking" I will have probably made a suggestion myself, or asked other questions intended to narrow things down.
Oh ah, even better. I'm glad you're willing to do that even when you think they're bluffing. I think the fact that you're Eliezer effing Yudkowsky omgz and that you're known to judge folk quickly makes people automatically assume you're challenging them, at least in the conversations I've been around, which generally doesn't do much for their ability to think clearly. Perhaps you haven't noticed this phenomenon much in yourself, but many people drop 15 IQ points in that kind of social context. This should definitely be part of your model when meeting/interviewing nerds if it wasn't already.
I'm surprised (assuming it is the case) that you don't have much problem recalling reasons for beliefs. I don't think that's the case with many people, including Michael Vassar (though maybe my impressions are off), which makes me think it might be a quirk of your neurology. Uhm, have you gotten an fMRI or DNA sequencing etc done yet? If you did/will, would you share any interesting results? :)
Knowing that someone admits to judging folk quickly (and to others, no less!) hardly makes them intimidating to talk to for me than an average person would. I probably feel this way because I assume everyone else is judging just as quickly.
Of course, this might make the conversations in question less intimidating than most merely by increasing intimidation in the others rather than decreasing the intimidation in this set.