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RainbowSpacedancer comments on Open Thread Feb 22 - Feb 28, 2016 - Less Wrong
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What exactly are you doing that you have PR problems?
Are you simply relabeling normal conversations with friends as PR?
Something like,
A: I've been reading a lot about rationality in the last year or two. It's pretty great.
B: What's that?
A: Explanation of instrumental + epistemic OR Biases a la Kahneman
B: Sounds dumb. I do that already.
A: I've found it great because X, Y, Z.
B: I think emotion is much more important than rationality. I don't want to be a robot.
Yes. Sorry for the lack of clarity.
The problem isn't simply clarity. The frame of mind of treating a conversation with your friends as PR is not useful for getting your friends to trust you and positively respond to what you are saying. If you do that, it's no wonder that someone thinks you are a Straw Vulcan because that mindset is communicating that vibe.
That said, let's focus on your message. You aren't telling people that you are using rationality to make you life better. You are telling people that you read about rationality. That doesn't show a person the value of rationality.
If I want to talk about the value of rationality I could take about how I'm making predictions in my daily life and the value that brings me. I can talk about how great it is to play double crux with other rationalists and actually have them change their mind.
If I want to talk about the effect it has on friends, I can talk about how a fellow rationalist who thought he only cared about the people he's interacting with used rationality techniques to discover that he actually cares about rescuing children in the third world from dying from malaria.
If I want to talk about society then I can talk about how the Good Judgement project outperforms CIA analysts who have access to classified information by 30%. I can talk about how better predictions of the CIA before the Iraq war might have stopped the war and therefore really matter a great deal. Superforcasting is a great book for having those war-stories.
In this case it is. I believe I have been less than clear again.
Agreed - but I've never done that. The conversations are ordinary in that I share rationality in the same way I would share a book or movie I've enjoyed. It is "I enjoy X, you should try it I bet you would enjoy it too" as opposed to, "I want to spread X and my friends are good targets for that." I literally meant I relabeled an ordinary conversation as PR, not that I was in the spread rationality mindset. My brain did a thing where,
'I'm having trouble sharing rationality with friends in a way that doesn't happen with my other interests. I bet other rationalists have similar problems. I wonder if there is any PR material on LW that might help with this.'
... and boom my brain labels it as a PR problem. I'm trying to not get caught up in the words here, do you follow my meaning?
Your recommendations on talking about the value rationality brings me look good. Thank you for them.
We don't enjoy a topic as diverse as rationality in the same way we enjoy a book or movie. A book or movie is a much more concrete experience.
You could speak about individual books like Kahnmann's instead of using the label rationality.