michael_vassar3 comments on Professing and Cheering - Less Wrong

39 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 August 2007 07:20AM

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Comment author: michael_vassar3 02 August 2007 12:54:09PM 3 points [-]

One of my largest frustrations in life, frustrations of the type produced where one determines that one is simply not understanding something fundamental that is understood at least implicitly by many other people, is that I have generally found "to satisfy your own self-image as an X - you would have to pretend to Y much more convincingly than this woman was doing" to be falsified, but I still cannot understand what it is generally falsified by. In school, in work, etc, I have found teachers, professors, students, co-workers and management to, a small but noticeable fraction of the time, do what I think cannot even charitably be described in any way other than "doing nothing" to a degree which Scott Adams has yet to adequately describe or demonstrate in Dilbert, yet I have found that when I try to imitate this "doing nothing", I have found myself to typically be rebuked (though not by the actual 'do-nothings'). My best guesses are that a) the do-nothings are amiable people who seem comfortable with their behavior while when trying to not do anything I seem uncomfortable and/or disagreeable, or b) the do-nothings have jobs (like teaching Statistics) which no-one really wants done. (the degree to which business-people and scientists alike don't even try to understand Statistics but simply mis-use it as a talisman against criticism (So long as they tow the line in their conclusions and methods. Iconoclasts will be punished for this, a-la Kinsey) without ever attempting to understand how or why or where their procedures work depresses me.) but I am very unsure of these conclusions. Can anyone do better?