Mirzhan_Irkegulov comments on Is Scott Alexander bad at math? - Less Wrong

31 Post author: JonahSinick 04 May 2015 05:11AM

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Comment author: Mirzhan_Irkegulov 06 May 2015 11:00:50PM 4 points [-]

Dude, I apologize for sounding hostile in the above comment. I'm not here just to give you hard time. And, believe it or not, nor are Lumifer or other LWers, who seem hostile to you. At least I personally have no qualms with your math qualifications, desire to help people or whatever. That's not the point at all.

I spent years being suicidal because people pathologized me when I was doing what I was doing to help people.

If you feel suicidal right now, or even depressed, seek psychotherapeutical help immediately. It's one thing to come across as dick to random people on the Internet or being socially inept. It's another to endure serious psychological suffering. I'm not fucking ironic at all.

Again, I'm sorry if I made you feel any bad, but I don't feel capable to convey my message across without giving your bad feelings. Just my advice, don't take things on LW personal, nobody's here after you.

Comment author: JonahSinick 06 May 2015 11:15:40PM 4 points [-]

Things have changed. I finally got over it over the past 24 months, and feel so much better now. I'm just offering explanation for where my apparently aloof tone is coming from – it may seem disrespectful, but it's actually what I need to be mentally healthy: I need to be able to be open about who I am and totally discount people's reactions when they're angry and hostile in response.

For so many years, the egalitarian pressures were suffocating. The irony is that my experience probably actually has a great deal in common with the experience of many LWers on account of being smarter than others earlier on in life – mine is in the same direction, only more extreme. And I couldn't find kindred spirits even here: people who were ok with me being smart and thoughtful even when it signaled superiority in a way that would result in social backlash from mainstream society.

To the extent that I'm dismissive, that's why. A sense of the type "these people aren't on my side, they're in the same reference class as the women who construed me giving them interesting math books as an attempt to coercively obtain sexual favors, when the actual situation was that I was starved for intellectual companionship, and mistakenly thought that they were the same as me and would be happy to have someone to talk to."

Comment author: Mirzhan_Irkegulov 06 May 2015 11:50:24PM 6 points [-]

I can't talk about other people reacting to you that way, but I can talk about me. My point is, I have zero qualms with your math qualifications, desire to help people, certain philosophical beliefs, or whatever. Moreover, I have zero qualms with you saying you're better than other people, because everybody secretly thinks they are better than other people. That's not the point, people (or at least I personally) have problems with completely different things, and you seem to not get it completely, no matter how people try to explain that.

The problem is: you infer completely wrong things from people's feedback, and that even might be the reason of your previous suicidal tendencies. I don't know how many times you need to be reminded, but LWers are OK (completely!) with you being smart in math, or having original insight, or even coming across as feeling superior.

We read frigging Yudkowsky after all! The guy works on arcane mathy subjects, wrote a shitload of articles, constantly advocates socially weird beliefs (and even accuses other people and society of being weird themselves!), and sometimes uses phraseology that can be construed as smugness and superiority. And let's be honest: even if you're better than him at math (I can't judge), Yudkowsky is bigger than you. He created LessWrong, and who the hell are you?

Yet I have zero problems with Yudkowsky. My point is: I wrote my first comment to you not because I'm upset with your actual achievements or the way you present them.

See, that's the first thing you inferred wrong. I'm not upset. You're just some guy, who failed massively at social communication, so I wanted to point it out, but I was unsuccessful. I'll try again. I'll post some random opinions that you really need to ponder on before dismissing them out of hand.

  • People don't owe you shit. They don't owe you steelmanning, open-mindedness, inquisitiveness, or anything.
  • It's not for you to decide, what is the most optimal way of spending time for other people, so saying “you have better things to do” is unproductive.
  • Trying to decide what should people be doing and whom they should be will only yield F word.
  • Beware of other-optimizing.
  • Nobody cares about you, your intentions, your achievements, your personality, your childhood or anything like that. That's not a sad thing, nobody cares about me either, I don't worry about that.
  • Nobody cares that you just wasted X hours writing up an article. If people find unhelpful or troublesome in any way, they have a right to complain in comment section.
  • You're not important.
  • There are no arbitrary social rules like “If I spent X hours/Joules writing this article, you should spend same X hours/Joules writing your criticism for me to take you seriously”
  • If you know that people are massively irrational and instead of adapting and optimizing you complain and congratulate yourself how reasonable you are, you're not rational, period.
  • Finally: if you think people are being unconstructive, obtuse, unreasonable, wasting your time, wasting their time, generally behaving in the way you don't like, you always have a right and possibility to just ignore them. Seriously.

You said in another comment that you're willing to read good-intentioned criticism with great interest. Here it is. I can elaborate any point. Oh, and Crocker's rules, you can tell me whatever the hell you want.

Comment author: JonahSinick 06 May 2015 11:56:40PM *  9 points [-]

I find it funny that I'm finally getting the feedback that I needed 25 years ago, from so many people at once. See here and here: over the past ~6 months, I finally started to get it.

Thanks very much for your comment, I appreciate the time that you put into it. The points that you make have largely been made already by other commenters, and I feel a little bit sheepish that you went through so much effort, but I might find your framing of things to be helpful at the margin, even on reflection.

Comment author: johnnycoconut 05 December 2015 11:16:23PM *  0 points [-]

YES YES YES.

I LOVE when things like this happen.

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 24 May 2015 10:52:48PM 0 points [-]

If you find that something is suddenly happening a lot, probably it was always happening and you never noticed. Particularly if it is something that is easy to misinterpret, like advice.