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Rational_Brony comments on A place for casual, non-karmic discussion for lesswrongers? - Less Wrong Discussion
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... The ideal would be to find people that I disagree with, who don't express their disagreeable opinions in a way that makes me reject them. Example; mormons, the nicer variety of zionists, anarchists, the nicer variety of randians...
But if I'm only willing to listen to people who express themselves nicely and politely and are civil about stuff, that's already a bias in itself, huh?
God isn't real. Anarchism and objectivism are tribal banners, not ways of knowing or doing. Am I missing something?
Tribal banners are usually tighly associated with ways of knowing and doing.
Nevertheless, I think we're heading away from the topic. What worries me is not understanding special tribes, but normal people. And it isn't so much that I disagree with them, more like I can`t understand them in the first place. Their opinions tend to be few and unworded, so there's little to disagree upon, let alone argue. Not to mention, they don't like to argue, they don't like philosophical or political discussions besides reconfirming whatever they already happen to believe at the moment.
It's these people that I need to fully grasp if I want to make them leave a conversation in the state of mind I want them to be in, and do the things that I want them to do. Or, barring that, at least being able to predict their behaviour would be nice.
I don't know what to tell you about that. It's a different problem from the one you first mentioned.
You're kinda right, but it's still related. It's like we're this very specialized group who drifts away from the concerns of the mainstream more and more, developing our slang and lingo and environment... which wouldn't be different from any other group such as rock geeks or art fandoms or the like... except our focus of geekery is the improvement of the human mind. This makes communicating with defenctive people complicated, because they don't know they're thinking wrong, they'll confuse your cleverness for insanity, and your attempts to help them for arrogance. It's like when you know yoga and talk about it to people and they go "Are you going to teach me how to breathe?" I've had places were I've delcared myself a lesswronger, and where I was told my company was welcome as long as I didn't try to teach them how to think.
And that's just people in general. But there's that subset of people, the normal-normal people, people without dreams, without ambition, without curiosity, without any motivation besides making it to the next month. Talking with those people frustrates me enough as it is, and I fear the company of intelligent, ambitious, witty people such as the ones found here is not going to help assuage that.
This Promethean feeling is temporary, I think. Or at least the prone-to-proselytizing period is temporary. In my experience, you eventually get a better sense of when to shut up and when to introduce doubt. But it can be a tough road in the meantime.