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SquirrelInHell comments on Open Thread April 4 - April 10, 2016 - Less Wrong
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OK, let me propose a clarification of the words we are using for this discussion:
politeness - adhering to a set of widely accepted social norms of communication
being civil - avoiding showing strongly negative emotions, or directly acting to produce such emotions in other people (in most societies, is a part of politeness)
niceness - having positive emotions directed at other people, together with the caring and pleasant behaviour that naturally result from it
So, using the above: LW is not big on politeness, and I fully support this position; LW has being civil in its established norms, and I suggest we keep it; LW norms have nothing on niceness, and I suggest we work to change this.
From experience, it results in better life quality if you call out bulls**ters without being angry inside about it.
No, I've simply tried it both ways myself.
I am sorry, you want to have norms about what kind of emotions I am supposed to be having??
I propose to steelman SquirrelInHell's proposal a little. What if we (for this discussion) define "niceness" to mean not the emotions but the behaviour those emotions typically produce? So being nice to someone means treating them as if you have positive feelings about them.
A norm in favour of that doesn't seem obviously unreasonable.
Yes, pretty much. I know this sounds controversial if you subscribe to a "common sense" understanding of emotions.
But from my point of view, the indignation you expressed in your comment is already a sign that you could benefit from being more aware of your emotions, and managing them consciously to make your life better and more fun.
Now don't misunderstand me - I'm not proposing to have a norm that says everyone needs to be perfect at this. I am merely stipulating a norm that we all try to do better in this respect.
I predict you would be surprised at how malleable your own emotions are, if you are serious about changing them, and you know that you can. I suggest that you set up an easy and quick experiment that goes along the lines of "choose a person I don't like, acknowledge that it's not useful to dislike that person, and then decide to bring my emotions about this person up to neutral".
Oh dear. Beyond the obvious observation that most people could benefit from managing their emotions better, pray tell on which basis did you come to conclusions about my current emotional state and about my ability to control my emotions? I can assure you that reading emotions from the tone of an internet comment is... fraught with dangers.
You are stipulating a norm of an internet forum that we all become better at consciously managing our emotions. Really.
Why would I do that?
The experiment is easy, quick and costs you nothing. So by asking "Why would I do that?" I here more of a "I don't want to listen and you can't make me".
It is true, of course - regarding people's emotions, I can never strong-arm anyone into doing anything.
What I can tell you is why I think disliking people is destructive to epistemic rationality.
Basically, disliking someone makes you see them through the light of the affect heuristic, and makes your thoughts about this person biased in at least a few ways (halo effect, attribution error etc.).
The same could be said to true about liking people, but I found it is not nearly as harmful in this direction, and it is much easier to prevent it from ruining your accuracy.
I hope you see why I consider it a useful skill to be able to stop disliking people (or other things you want to think clearly about). It is a simple and effective method of debiasing.
That looks doubtful. You seem to believe that I "could benefit from being more aware of [my] emotions, and managing them consciously". This implies that changing my emotional stance towards a person should be not easy or quick. And as to costs, nothing, you think so?
Nope. I know you can't make me and I know you know. My question was literal: what do you think I would gain? I don't see any obvious benefits from such an exercise, but maybe you have insights which are not obvious?
No, actually I don't.
Usually when I dislike people I dislike them for a reason. Pretending that this reason doesn't exist is unlikely to lead to good outcomes.
This method of debiasing seems to set as its goal to have no emotional reaction to people at all. Welcome, straw Vulcans :-/
Your argumentation is based on rationalist memes, not analysis. I'm claiming that disliking a whole person is useless and harmful to epistemic accuracy; I do not make this claim about any part, or particular thing about this person. Applying your negative emotion to the whole person is just what it sounds like - using the affect heuristic as a substitute for more detailed and psychologically realistic thinking.
Would you like to provide some, um, analysis as to why do you believe this to be true?
Also, when you say "useless", useless for which purpose? And does me disliking, say, broccoli, is "useless and harmful" as well?
I can; but more efficiently, I need you to realize a few things about our communication.
First, I would need an enormous amount of writing to make make my current beliefs clear and making sense in context.
So far this discussion is based on me saying something, and you voicing every issue about it that comes to your mind.
So far so good, that's how you always do it on LW, right?
Only, this doesn't work if there's a big inferential distance.
See, in case of a big inferential distance between us, your questions and the doubts you have sound perfectly reasonable to you, I'm sure.
However your doubts hit very far from the actual core of the problem - and seeing them just makes me feel tired.
I see that to explain anything well, I'd need to start with the basics, and force you to think about certain topics in order of ascending difficulty, make sure I dissolve your doubts and answer all questions at each step and so on.
Which is to say, I don't have the energy to go through this long and tedious process, and if you are at all interested in what I'm trying to say here, I need you to ask better questions.
In particular, if it's visible from your questions that you actually gave these topics some thought, and you are willing to explore them for other reasons that arguing with me; then I'm happy to cooperate with you, and work together to form more accurate beliefs and efficient policies.
So far, I see none of that; and no sign that you think longer than it takes you to type the comment.
Generally, and I hope here you are not too prideful to react badly to this, I think you might be harming yourself with your ability to argue and see problems with the opinions of others. I think that yes, writing lots of comments on LW can teach you something; but it also teaches you many harmful habits, such as the argue first - think later approach, which I deem harmful to long-term progress.
True. A great deal of things don't work if there's big inferential distance.
I'm sorry, I'm not interested in master-disciple relationships.
What kind of harm do you have in mind?
I don't know about many, but yes, arguing on teh internets is perilous. I freely admit to suffering from the curse of the gifted, but I doubt that changing my conversation habits on an internet forum is the right way to address it.
I am aware that my habits shape me and that masks have a tendency to grow into one's face. I consider the risks of snarking around on LW... acceptable.