army1987 comments on Rationality Quotes March 2013 - Less Wrong

9 Post author: Jayson_Virissimo 02 March 2013 10:45AM

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

Comments (341)

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

Comment author: [deleted] 02 March 2013 12:11:18PM *  1 point [-]

The subtext is definitely there on some level for the reasons you mention, but probably it wasn't a conscious, deliberate choice by the speaker, and I don't think it's all that useful to hold probably subconscious attitudes against people. (I don't know whether I had noticed the subtext if I hadn't read shminux's comment before seeing the quote itself.)

Comment author: William_Quixote 06 March 2013 04:30:20PM 2 points [-]

The subtext is definitely there on some level for the reasons you mention, but probably it wasn't a conscious, deliberate choice by the speaker, and I don't think it's all that useful to hold probably subconscious attitudes against people.

To change subconscious attitudes it helps to make them salient and make people consciously aware of them.

Comment author: [deleted] 07 March 2013 11:19:09AM *  1 point [-]

In principle, I agree, but: 1) attempts to do that can backfire if done the wrong way, and 2) Ron Dreher is most likely not reading this thread anyway.

Comment author: William_Quixote 07 March 2013 08:28:17PM 3 points [-]

I basically agree with 1 and 2. That said, although Ron Dreher is not going to read this, odds are good that the number of people on this thread that would benefit from a more conscious less automatic process for choosing words with regards to making / not making gener salient is greater than 0.

Greater than zero is a weak claim, but I do think this kind of criticism adds value.