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bcoburn comments on Take heed, for it is a trap - Less Wrong
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Comments (187)
To everyone who just read this and is about to argue with the specific details of the bullet points or the mock argument:
Don't bother, they're (hopefully) not really the point of this.
Focus on the conclusion and the point that LW beliefs have a large inferential distance. The summary of this post which is interesting to talk about is "some (maybe most) LW beliefs will appear to be crackpot beliefs to the general public" and "you can't actually explain them in a short conversation in person because the inferential distance is too large". Therefore, we should be very careful to not get into situations where we might need to explain things in short conversations in person.
Should I start staying indoors more?
You could. Or you could just refuse to get into arguments about politics/philosophy. Or you could find a social group such that these things aren't problems.
I certainly don't have amazing solutions to this particular problem, but I'm fairly sure they exist.
The solutions that I have so far are just finding groups of people who tend to be open-minded, and then discussing things from the perspective of "this is interesting, and I think somewhat compelling".
When I get back from vacation I intend to do more wandering around and talking to strangers about LWy type stuff until I get the impression that I don't sound like a crackpot. When I get good at talking about it with people with whom social mistakes are relatively cheap, I'll talk about it more with less open-minded friends.
This comment makes the OP's point effectively, in a fraction of its length and without the patronizing attitude. Comment upvoted, OP downvoted.