Nornagest comments on White Lies - Less Wrong

38 Post author: ChrisHallquist 08 February 2014 01:20AM

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Comment author: Nornagest 08 February 2014 05:25:41AM 6 points [-]

You seem to be treating lack of social skills as a static attribute rather than a mutable trait. This may not be the most productive frame for the issue.

Comment author: Carinthium 08 February 2014 05:31:58AM 6 points [-]

Improving my social skills is HARD. I could invest a massive effort into it if I tried, but I'm at university right now and my marks would take a nosedive. It's not worth the price.

Comment author: Nornagest 08 February 2014 05:46:58AM *  1 point [-]

Never claimed it wasn't. As a matter of cost-benefit analysis, though, I think you might nonetheless find it attractive in comparison to unilaterally declaring war on the liars of the world, which I'd expect to be strenuous, socially costly, and largely ineffective in preventing manipulation.

As a matter of fact, drawing a sufficiently hard line on lying opens up entirely new avenues for manipulation of your trust.

Comment author: wedrifid 08 February 2014 06:40:41AM *  2 points [-]

As a matter of cost-benefit analysis, though, I think you might nonetheless find it attractive in comparison to unilaterally declaring war on the liars of the world,

I did not read Carinthium's statement to be a declaration of war against liars. At most it would be analogous to a trade embargo.

One can make choices about what one welcomes in one's own personal life and attempting to change or fight everyone who doesn't do those things. The choice to not welcome lies limits Carinthium's social options quite significantly but it needn't be as strenuous or overt as you suggest.

Comment author: Strange7 09 February 2014 02:33:49AM 0 points [-]

There's a widely-used term for the political environment embargoes create: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_war

Comment author: wedrifid 09 February 2014 07:21:35AM *  1 point [-]

There's a widely-used term for the political environment embargoes create: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_war

It's a good term (ie. I signal that downvote you received wasn't from me but rather the compensating upvote was so as to slight facilitate future cooperation). I do observe that I was uncomfortable with saying 'trade embargo' while I was saying it. It felt off because 'embargo' has too much of a connotation of "trying to punish or damage an enemy for some reason" where I wanted to more emphasise "choosing systematically to avoid trading with the person because you deem them to be bad trading partners and expect to lose out on deals".

This does depend a little on implementation detail. I don't know Carinthium and don't know to what extent he really does try enforce his will upon the world in general rather than choose which parts of it to hang out in and clumsily keep the rest away. I chose to interpret it the most charitable way (ie. assuming that it is an awkward pattern that could kinda work rather than the rather glaringly self destructive and futile one).

Comment author: wedrifid 08 February 2014 06:36:04AM 4 points [-]

You seem to be treating lack of social skills as a static attribute rather than a mutable trait. This may not be the most productive frame for the issue.

Neither the extreme of treating social skills as static nor the extremes of refusing to take into account current skill or refusing to acknowledge a comparative neurological weakness in that particular area are likely to be optimal.