I have no such skill; I simply spend 2% more effort than than the median mouth-breather.
There was an article here about how people overestimate the difficulty of finding a creative middle way between two controversial options, while in reality, it's simple: you just:
1) Look for better options.
2) When you find a superior option, go with it.
These are easy steps, yet people rarely do both. (If someone knows what article I'm talking about, please link it.)
I think something similar is going on here: my "secret" to the ease you see in my verbal logic is this:
1) Look for the inferential gap between you and the other person.
2) When you find it, trace it out.
The only difficulty in applying this method (once aware of it at least) is getting over one's fear of losing a monopoly on knowledge.
I think you underestimate how hard it is to apply a little more effort in a realm where the objects of manipulation all seem vague.
What I had in mind was that you're written about the difficulties you've had with social skills, to point where you've assumed that people were deliberately giving you unfollowable advice.
I suggest that most people have as much difficulty getting started on logic as you have (had?) with social skills.
Hello fellow Less Wrongians!
Given your comments on my organizing communities series, I get the feeling that many of you are wondering why:
I'm happy to hold discussions about any of these questions or related ones. However, I haven't responded to many comments on the main series of posts because:
I wanted to created this thread as a center for questions you might have about my faith. This is not an attempt to preach -- I would be perfectly happy not having a discussion purely about religion at all. But since there seem to be many comments, well, fire away.
Some basic facts: I am a student at Stanford. I am 22. I converted to Mormonism when I was 19. I used to be atheist/agnostic. I am very much a believer, not just in it for the social perks.
Well, as it is written, AMA (= Ask Me Anything)
(Thanks Kevin for the suggestion.)
Edit: Wow, there are a lot of comments. This has been a helpful chance to clarify my thinking. I hope you have learned something useful -- perhaps using the question is 'Is there anything surprising here that he said?'.
Edit 2: Here are some answers to repeated questions. Again, this really helped me distill and clarify myself and I've enjoyed the discussion.
Why do you believe? It's a combination of
I would estimate that before this all happened, my odds ratio was about 2000:1, and now it's about 1:10. I would ballpark the odds ratios of each of the above 3 events as ~12.5:1, ~25:1, and ~62.5:1. (I was considering likelihood but didn't think in that precise of terms at the time, so any concretization is open to charges of ex post facto. And these are still ballparks.)
There are lots of arguments against Mormonism on factual and historical grounds; there are also counterarguments which I feel pretty much balance them out. (The feeling of balancing each other out was contemporaneous.)
What things could make you consider leaving the faith?
Why do you think your conversion story is disappointing to many of us?
Several possible reasons:
[1] Specifically: