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SaidAchmiz comments on White Lies - Less Wrong
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If your interests include being hostile to people who you think deserve it, then being hostile to said people furthers your interests in a fairly straightforward way, it seems to me.
(General comment: I have to admit I'm getting somewhat tired of the "how does doing X further your interests" refrain, used, as it seems often to be on Lesswrong, as a fully general criticism of any action that can be construed to be sub-optimal with respect to goals and values that are assumed to be held by some ideal rationalist, rather than the actual goals and actual values of one's interlocutor.)
I am very confused by this thread. When I ask "How does this work?" there is an implicit assumption that it does work.
Often, when people say "how does X work?", what they're actually communicating is their belief that it doesn't work. It's an expression of incredulity.
I take a different view. That question is simply a good general question to ask, and one that people can easily forget to ask themselves. In this it resembles "How sure are you of that, and on what grounds?".
Of course if you ask either question you need to be prepared for the possibility that your interlocutor has a good answer, and if you find that happening too often then you should consider that maybe your questions are more posturing than genuine helping. But I've not seen any particular sign that that's happening a lot on LW. Maybe I haven't been watching closely enough?
Yeah, that's close to the impression I've been getting from instances of such.
And if you really think, if the conversation so far is really indicating, that someone is forgetting to ask themselves this question... then sure. But when someone says, in so many words: "I deliberately, by choice, do X" — how likely is it that they've just forgotten to consider what good it does them? It seems to me that if you break out the "but what good does tha really do you?" inquiry in such a case, then you are being condescending.
It wasn't a criticism, it was a question. I'm just going with the information I have.
Should I assume the person has this goal, or should I ask him questions?
I think it's a good assumption to default to. That is, if someone claims to be deliberately doing something, and you have no information to the effect that this action doesn't further their goals, then you should default to assuming that it does.
That said, the issue was that your questions came off reading like criticisms. (Which is not itself a criticism, just an explanation of my reply.) You implied (so it seemed to me) that not trusting the people in question, rather than being hostile to them, was better, or was the sensible default, and that therefore being hostile to them was something that needed to be justified.
(And that said, the parenthetical in the grandparent was not directed at you specifically.)
How well does this go with all that heuristics and biases stuff we've been talking about for years now?
Being hostile to people makes them hostile to you. If you're a human being that sucks. So yeah, some justification would be healthy to have.
On LessWrong? Quite well, I should think.
How likely is it, do you think, that Carinthium has just not considered the fact that hostility reciprocates?
If you will allow me to suggest a rephrasing of your original question:
"You say that you deliberately act rude and hostile to the people in question. As we both know, hostility reciprocates. Do you find this consequence to be problematic for you? If not, why not? If so, how do you deal with that?"
Does that capture what you wanted to find out from Carinthium? (If not, why not? ;)
I think he has considered it and likely underestimated it. My theory of mind is limited to "neurotypicals", and if he's far on some other spectrum I have no clue what he might think.
It does, thanks. I'm not sure what was so difficult about this. Perhaps I took this a bit too personally since one man's ridiculous ultimatum wreaked havoc on my grandparents' psyches quite recently. It's not clear he knew the damage he was doing. I thought I had accepted his actions but judging from these brain farts of mine I probably haven't.