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nancyhua comments on [Link] Inside the Cold, Calculating Mind of LessWrong? - Less Wrong
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Comments (67)
Really? There's an article link in the OP. The Wall Street Journal did an article on LessWrong. Why don't you read it?
The article links to a survey that LessWrongers did and so does the OP.
I see you're new here. FYI people are not going to take kindly to it if you comment on threads without reading the OP and/or closely related materials (such as the WSJ link and survey in the OP). This is because a lot of the people here are very well read. Maybe you are, too, and can understand this. They also don't take kindly to it if people haven't endeavored to read about reasoning skills. Maybe you have already read some books on things like logic and biases or have read the sequences or something. If not, I'll let you know that you need familiarity with these types of subjects if you want to fit in.
I had read the article extract included in the OP, didn't look at the link. The article itself says that lesswrongers were part of the data set but I didn't take this to mean this was about lesswrong in general.
What are the reasoning skills you identified as lacking in my comments? I clicked on all the links, certainly. The WSJ refers to the yourmorals and I had clicked on that but didn't think it was lesswrong because it's offsite and seems inaccessible. My information on the plurality being liberal/socialist is from a 2011 lesswrong census I read on this site, although I may be misremembering.
Is the point you're disagreeing with that calling libertarians "cold and calculating" does not equal calling lesswrongers this? I agree that it's calling a subset of lesswrongers "cold and calculating"- the libertarian subset.
I think to a certain audience I would describe myself as libertarian, although not to the lesswrong audience. My impression is that in general liberals are stereotyped as emotional, educated hippies whereas conservatives are stereotyped as selfish, stupid traditionalists. I had less idea what libertarians were stereotyped as, probably since there are less of them so people don't really bother.
I want to know if I'm being irrational, that's the whole point of this. But I'm unsure how to interpret your words or your tone. Is it a language thing, like you're saying specific libertarian lesswrongers were called cold and calculating but I'm saying lesswrong as a community is not called this? Maybe it's common for people to say things like this to each other, and I appreciate if you're trying to help me, but that's not how I'm left feeling after this interaction- maybe it'd be more helpful if you were more specific, just my impression- please don't interpret this as a plea for you to sink time into educating me or something, I guess unless you want to of your own volition.
Sorry if I somehow offended you in the first place. Maybe you're annoyed I didn't get your child/rapist example? I think I understood your point about people fearing the rapist more, but I don't see how it relates to the "cold and calculating" topic, unless you're suggesting the kid would not be called this. It can be hard to communicate tone via the internet and I'm new to all internet forums as of a few months ago so I'm not desensitized yet or accustomed to internet culture. I've already realized people often come off very differently online vs offline.
I read the subject line for the OP but the title of the article was so similar I didn't notice it wasn't exactly the same. Sigh. I think I've been had by change blindness. (There's an interesting LW article I'm being reminded of right now.). My title oversight explains most of the confusion here.
None. It was perceived lack of motivation to read things that prompted that. This perception is fixed now. I'm sorry about that.
I am constantly alienated and usually somewhere near my limit for alienation. Often past it, often just below it. If I seem annoyed, that is probably to blame more than anything. I'm perma-annoyed.
If you want to continue after my oversight with the title, I will engage, but I should probably start over and re-focus. What specific perception(s) do you want to discuss?
Thanks for your reply, it makes me feel much better and I'm glad and impressed we're not annoyed at each other, especially considering I can also be easily annoyed. I think a lot of people can understand being alienated but I don't know what the rationalist solution is. For me, it was one of those things that was a feedback loop and thus really hard to get out of. That's part of why I like HPMOR- Harry is like an alien trying to make a single friend. In his case, he's alone because he's superior to everyone and thus can't rely on anyone else, which may be some cold comfort, but that wasn't exactly my situation...
Oh! Yay! (:
It seems to me that many on LW are alienated, and it's resulting in the most ridiculous clusterf... People desire to quickly jump to the conclusion that the person they're talking to is not worth talking to (I think this might apply more to new people than others)... because they are so alienated and have to do something about it, but there's this wild mix of causes of annoyance and it just makes a mess. There are older users who are spitting out logical fallacies, newer users who are clueless, new users who are sharp, old users who are sharp of course... and sometimes one annoys one's self (which is what happened to me just now). And of course if people DON'T ignore annoying users, or at least tell them that they're doing it wrong, they're encouraged to stick around without improving the annoying behavior... but this is wrought with peril because as you have seen, if I am the one who made the mistake, and I tell you that you've made a mistake, I get to look like an idiot, and you get to feel bad for no reason. Many times, when somebody points out my mistake, it's the same problem - they made a mistake but didn't notice it, possibly because they're so annoyed with the last 10 people that annoyed them that they're not giving me the benefit of the doubt. Occasionally they do point out some mistake I made, so that's good. But it seems like people here are a bit too apt to reach for the 2 x 4.
What was your exact situation?
I am an alien for sure. I relate to not being able to rely on anyone else, but it is not comforting that I'm usually better at figuring things out than those around me. I have plenty of friends but the friendships are one-sided: I am understanding and emotionally supportive to them, but they do not understand me deeply enough so they aren't really useful for me to talk to about my thoughts and feelings. I've noticed that most of the other aliens haven't mastered staying rational when they've discovered an interesting alien they might get close to. This has ruined the vast majority of my attempts to get to know other aliens. I used to have a problem with staying rational when meeting other aliens myself - but that's not my problem anymore. Now my problem is that nearly everybody else is going about it in dysfunctional ways and I'm burnt out on that. I have no idea how to solve this, so I'm just walking away from that catastrophe and I've decided to fill my time up with group projects for now.
I think I especially have this problem on the internet. For me part of it is I can't see the person and my mental model for "random internet person" is a jerky male idiot so I assume this is who's talking if I disagree with the remark (if I agree, then my mental model shows a smart, nice person). This mental model has not been accurate so I've been trying to imagine these internet personalities as more normal humans so I don't end up saying something I wouldn't say in real life. Not to imply that I am always super charming in real life!
I think I generally got along well with nerds or artsy people but when I entered my teens and got increasingly judgmental I also became awkward and shy with people whose virtues weren't immediately obvious to me. If I thought you were smart or talented, we'd be friends right away, but if I thought you weren't, then I just had nothing to say. The set of people I judged to be worthy decreased to single digits for a few years- others seemed subhuman to me, which is ridiculous considering I was just a kid and didn't know anything about almost all the people I judged. Also, ignoring me was a sign of idiocy bc it should be obvious to intelligent people that I was awesome; thus it could be tricky to be judged positively by me.
I became a lot better adjusted as a result of nerd camps, gifted programs, and selective art classes, I think partly because I got used to assuming everyone around me was a real human being worth talking to. I'm getting better adjusted all the time, but I'm still judgmental. So, unlike Harry, I wasn't an alien to many people because I was smarter than them; I was an alien to many people because I was judgmental and egotistical. In fiction, judgmental people fear being judged themselves and have some gaping insecurity, which is more reason for me to try to not be that way.
If you're doing group projects, that sounds like you're not super alienated. In past group projects, sometimes one part of the group would say I was a great collaborator while the other part would say I had trouble communicating. I think this was because I highly favored the opinions of people I deemed cool, which was probably not someone less successful than me (normalizing somewhat for individual situations), and almost certainly not some random I'd never even met. Why try to win over people who "don't matter"? Is trying to have mass appeal being Slytherin, or is it just being more compassionate and empathetic, relating better with your fellow humans? Either way, I only recently decided to make an effort to be more like my one friend who absolutely everyone loves and respects. Everyone wants to work with him and likes him, whereas mainly nerds want to work with me. For a time, I thought that was what I wanted, but often you have to cooperate with people you wouldn't normally choose for your team (and vice versa), so even from a purely pragmatic perspective I am trying to not be alienated from anyone.
Instead of judging someone's perspective as boring, I'm trying to use my imagination to think about things from their perspective more, and also communicate my perspective more effectively even if I think it could be a waste of time. I also remind myself that many people more talented than me are still friends with me, so I should try to learn from them. I think my most effective form of communication is writing, which is suboptimal because most strangers don't want to read my lengthy musings, so I am trying to practice to communicate more effectively with all types of people in person. I should probably also practice writing with less words...