arundelo comments on Rationality Quotes September 2014 - Less Wrong

8 Post author: jaime2000 03 September 2014 09:36PM

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Comment author: Alejandro1 01 September 2014 07:10:29PM 71 points [-]

I’m always fascinated by the number of people who proudly build columns, tweets, blog posts or Facebook posts around the same core statement: “I don’t understand how anyone could (oppose legal abortion/support a carbon tax/sympathize with the Palestinians over the Israelis/want to privatize Social Security/insert your pet issue here)." It’s such an interesting statement, because it has three layers of meaning.

The first layer is the literal meaning of the words: I lack the knowledge and understanding to figure this out. But the second, intended meaning is the opposite: I am such a superior moral being that I cannot even imagine the cognitive errors or moral turpitude that could lead someone to such obviously wrong conclusions. And yet, the third, true meaning is actually more like the first: I lack the empathy, moral imagination or analytical skills to attempt even a basic understanding of the people who disagree with me.

In short, “I’m stupid.” Something that few people would ever post so starkly on their Facebook feeds.

--Megan McArdle

Comment author: arundelo 04 September 2014 02:44:42PM 8 points [-]

I like this and agree that usually or at least often the people making these "I don't understand how anyone could ..." statements aren't interested in actually understanding the people they disagree with. But I also liked Ozy's comment:

I dunno. I feel like "I don't understand how anyone could believe X" is a much, much better position to take on issues than "I know exactly why my opponents disagree with me! It is because they are stupid and evil!" The former at least opens the possibility that your opponents believe things for good reasons that you don't understand -- which is often true!

In general, I believe it is a good thing to admit ignorance when one is actually ignorant, and I am willing to put up with a certain number of dumbass signalling games if it furthers this goal.

Comment author: arundelo 04 September 2014 03:53:27PM *  20 points [-]

Hacker School has a set of "social rules [...] designed to curtail specific behavior we've found to be destructive to a supportive, productive, and fun learning environment." One of them is "no feigning surprise":

The first rule means you shouldn't act surprised when people say they don't know something. This applies to both technical things ("What?! I can't believe you don't know what the stack is!") and non-technical things ("You don't know who RMS is?!"). Feigning surprise has absolutely no social or educational benefit: When people feign surprise, it's usually to make them feel better about themselves and others feel worse. And even when that's not the intention, it's almost always the effect. As you've probably already guessed, this rule is tightly coupled to our belief in the importance of people feeling comfortable saying "I don't know" and "I don't understand."

I think this is a good rule and when I find out someone doesn't know something that I think they "should" already know, I instead try to react as in xkcd 1053 (or by chalking it up to a momentary maladaptive brain activity change on their part, or by admitting that it's probably not that important that they know this thing). But I think "feigning surprise" is a bad name, because when I'm in this situation, I'm never pretending to be surprised in order to demonstrate how smart I am, I am always genuinely surprised. (Surprise means my model of the world is about to get better. Yay!)

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 08 September 2014 06:34:28PM *  5 points [-]

I don't think that sort of surprise is necessarily feigned. However, I do think it's usually better if that surprise isn't mentioned.

Comment author: RichardKennaway 04 September 2014 04:17:53PM *  18 points [-]

I dunno. I feel like "I don't understand how anyone could believe X" is a much, much better position to take on issues than "I know exactly why my opponents disagree with me! It is because they are stupid and evil!" The former at least opens the possibility that your opponents believe things for good reasons that you don't understand -- which is often true!

I am imagining the following exchange:

"I don't understand how anyone could believe X!"

"Great, the first step to understanding is noticing that you don't understand. Now, let me show you why X is true..."

I suspect that most people saying the first line would not take well to hearing the second.

Comment author: arundelo 04 September 2014 04:47:10PM 7 points [-]

I suspect the same, but still think "I can't understand why anyone would believe X" is probably better than "people who believe X or say they believe X only do so because they hate [children / freedom / poor people / rich people / black people / white people / this great country of ours / etc.]"

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 05 September 2014 01:30:20PM 12 points [-]

We could charitably translate "I don't understand how anyone could X" as "I notice that my model of people who X is so bad, that if I tried to explain it, I would probably generate a strawman".

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