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Error comments on Don't Get Offended - LessWrong
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Comments (588)
FYI, this pattern matches on "disagreeing with my complaint makes you part of the problem," at least to me, with all the problems that implies. The first two statements in particular are quite true, although insufficient in themselves to defeat your point.
For the record, I don't think that's how you meant it.
This, on the other hand, I wholly agree with. Getting offended in such a case is silly. I think it may arise from the perception that it grants others power over you if you have to change your behavior to suit them. I think the cure is to realize that you don't have to change anything -- but might choose to based on the extra information they were kind enough to give you.
I for one wish people would tell me about such impressions more often. I've alienated a few people in my time because I was doing something irritating, lacked the social skills to realize it, and was never informed. (and therefore could not correct the problem)
Interesting. I see what you mean, but I don't see a clearer way of pointing to a particular cached-thought reaction that I anticipate some readers having. Any ideas?
Honestly, I'm not sure. Your intent seemed to be to pre-empt certain arguments you believe to be bogus. Doing that without appearing to discredit dissent in itself, may be difficult.
"Catch-phrases such as...." implies that all similar arguments are presumed bogus, and "...yeah, that's the defensiveness" appears to discredit them based on the mindset of the arguer rather than the merit of the argument.
Listing specific arguments along with why each of them is wrong (edit:or insufficient to reach conclusion) probably would not have given me the same impression. I am thinking of some religious figure who, writing to argue for God's existence, gave a series of statements along the lines of "these are the objections to my argument that are known to me; I answer each of them thusly...." I think it might have been Aquinas. I remember being impressed by the honesty of the approach even though I don't believe in the conclusion.
(I am not sure who downvoted you or why. Responding to honest criticism with a request for suggestions seems laudable to me.)
On reflection, I think this statement specifically is my problem, and not because of what it's saying about the argument, but about the arguer. My reaction is something like "well, damn, now if I object I'll appear to be an unnecessarily defensive jerk, even if I'm right."
It feels like "God will send you to hell if you question his existence"; where that one exacts penalties for the act of figuring out if there really are penalties, yours socially censures the act of questioning the justification of censure. Such double binds always strike me as intellectually dishonest.
Again, I don't think you actually meant it that way; it just pattern matched on certain similar arguments (which I'll leave unstated to avoid a mindkiller subthread) by people who actually do mean it that way.
The problem with caching is just that sometimes the cache falls out of sync; you want to evaluate some complex problem f(x), and if you've previously evaluated some similar f(y) it's faster to evaluate "if (resembles_y(x)) then cached_f(y) else f(x)", but if resembles_y(x) isn't precise enough, then you've overgeneralized.
But the correction "Stifle it" doesn't seem to be pinpoint-precise either, does it? It's an overgeneralization that just generalizes to the opposite conclusion.
If you don't want people to overgeneralize, then you have to be specific - "in cases where A, B, or C hold, then you want to avoid giving offense; if D, E, or F hold then giving offense may have higher utility", etc - and just trying to begin nailing down this kind of precision is likely to require hundreds of comments, not just a couple sentences.