Comment on Avoid inflationary use of terms

Thu, 31 May 2012 14:56:53 GMT

One data point is that lately I have been trying specifically to react positively to criticism lately.

(A month or so ago as part of a slightly woo-like exercise called EFT that I sometimes do to put myself to sleep or cope with stress, I replaced the words from the setup phrase "completely and deeply love, accept, and forgive myself" with a longer phrase "completely and deeply accept all valid criticism, and honestly and earnestly attempt to learn from, change, and use this information for personal development and self improvement" -- something like that. Followed by imagining tapping the various woo points, er "energy points" on my body. No telling what impact this has or even if it's relevant, but thought I'd mention it.)

Also I was able to change the title fairly quickly and thus de-escalate the situation and switch it to a slightly more academic context rather than taking a purely defensive posture because I happened to be logged into the IRC chatroom where Konkvistador was complaining about it. Since I didn't want to come across as a moron in front of my peers, I asked the channel politely for reasons to change it, then for suggestions as to what to change it to. I don't think anyone there actually said "inflationary use", that's a term I got from a comment by Eugen Leitl and is what my mind filled in the blanks with when searching for an explanation. Apart from the new title "What is the best programming language?" I'm not sure there was any actual information content apart from "some people agree with this", but interacting with the channel calmed me down a bit and put me in a better frame of mind for it.

In any case, I would say the non-antagonistic responses definitely helped. I'm not sure whether they would work on just anybody, one of my mind's specific deviations from the norm is that I am more patient and willing to look for validity in criticisms to begin with. (I'm obsessed with the excluded middle ground, so while I may try very hard to spot a problem in the criticism I rarely reject it whole cloth.) But I think a large proportion of lesswrongers fit the same general profile and/or it is a learnable tendency for people specifically trying to do it. Perhaps a rationality technique centered on pattern-matching one's responses to criticism and/or one's crisis cycle level would be of use.

Discuss