jooyous comments on Rationality Quotes May 2012 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: OpenThreadGuy 01 May 2012 11:37PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (696)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Grognor 02 May 2012 03:42:19AM *  73 points [-]

Tags like "stupid," "bad at __", "sloppy," and so on, are ways of saying "You're performing badly and I don't know why." Once you move it to "you're performing badly because you have the wrong fingerings," or "you're performing badly because you don't understand what a limit is," it's no longer a vague personal failing but a causal necessity. Anyone who never understood limits will flunk calculus. It's not you, it's the bug.

-celandine13 (Hat-tip to Frank Adamek. In addition, the linked article is so good that I had trouble picking something to put in rationality quotes; in other words, I recommend it.)

Comment author: jooyous 27 January 2013 12:26:02AM 2 points [-]

I've been trying to change my impulse to think "this person is an idiot!" into "this person is a noob," because the term still kinda has that slightly useful predictive meaning that suggests incompetence, but it also contains the idea that they have the potential to get better, rather than being inherently incompetent.