= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Yes, quite right - in which case it is a power-play, pure and simple.
I just wanted to present an alternative to show that it's not always so cut and dried.
What makes you so sure anyone's playing for power in my scenario?
Bob is attempting to solve a problem that's causing both Alice and Bob suffering.
Alice may be playing for power, or she may not want to burden Bob with her personal problems, and may be honestly unaware that she's causing Bob to suffer.
Given as everyone seems to want to pile unjustified extra assumptions onto the scenario, here are several actual scenarios that I know have occured that took this form:
Alice is angry/upset because of something Bob did. Bob is unaware of what he did, but has picked up on Alice's anger and wants to help her. a. Alice is trying to convince herself that it doesn't matter. -----b. Alice thinks Bob knowing what caused her anger will cause further problems.
Alice wasn't actually angry/upset at all. Bob believed she was, but was incorrect. His repeated questioning has resulted in her getting angry; making him more confident that there is a problem.
Alice is emotionally abusing Bob, manipulating him so that he will grovel for an explanation, such that when she tells him what she wants him to do, he'll be forced to do it.
Alice is angry at Bob for something he did. Bob is aware what this is, but wants to pretend he isn't in order to be able to make Alice feel as though she's over-reacting
Alice is angry/upset for reasons that have nothing to do with Bob. Bob is concerned for Alice's wellbeing, but Alice doesn't want to share.
Alice is angry. Bob knows this, but Alice is actually, honestly, unaware of this fact.
As a side note: in several of these scenarios I saw, Alice was male. In several, Bob was female.
Usually, men in this situation repeatedly ask Alice what they did wrong, and Alice will adamantly refuse to say. Whatever they're doing wrong, it's not failing to take time and effort. How many times do you see something like this:
"What, what's wrong, Alice?"
Nothing.
"It ... doesn't sound like that. Really, what's wrong."
NOTHING. EVERYTHING'S FINE.
"Please, Alice. I want to know what I did. Just tell me."
...
Given as everyone seems to want to pile unjustified extra assumptions onto the scenario, here are several actual scenarios that I know have occured that took this form:
Alice is angry/upset because of something Bob did. Bob is unaware of what he did, but has picked up on Alice's anger and wants to help her. a. Alice is trying to convince herself that it doesn't matter. -----b. Alice thinks Bob knowing what caused her anger will cause further problems.
Alice wasn't actually angry/upset at all. Bob believed she was, but was incorrect. His repeated questioning has resulted in her getting angry; making him more confident that there is a problem.
Alice is emotionally abusing Bob, manipulating him so that he will grovel for an explanation, such that when she tells him what she wants him to do, he'll be forced to do it.
Alice is angry at Bob for something he did. Bob is aware what this is, but wants to pretend he isn't in order to be able to make Alice feel as though she's over-reacting
Alice is angry/upset for reasons that have nothing to do with Bob. Bob is concerned for Alice's wellbeing, but Alice doesn't want to share.
Alice is angry. Bob knows this, but Alice is actually, honestly, unaware of this fact.
Copying my example from another reply:
Let me build on this hypothetical example to explain why she does that:
Bob has clearly done something wrong. Alice is currently in a highly emotional state and recognises that she is likely not able to talk reasonably about what has happened without either becoming very angry or extremely upset and crying.
Therefore she really doesn't want to talk about it right now.
Bobs insistence on demanding all the answers right now is not helping her highly emotional state and is, in fact, just adding to her feelings of anger and panic... given that clearly he did something wrong, she believes he has no right to currently dominate the timing of when she discusses this highly sensitive issue (whatever it is).
But right now, she is too emotionally fraught even to be able to say that without shouting... so she just blocks.
The best thing for Bob to do is to courteously withdraw for a little while until Alice calms down... then to return at a later date when she's clearly had some time to reflect... and ask then.
I've seen this scenario occur several times where Bob HASN'T done anything wrong. Alice is annoyed for some reason, and is passive aggressively taking it out on Bob, and Bob wants to solve the problem that's causing them both to suffer.
The assumption that it's Bobs fault is entirely unjustified from the scenario presented.
In response to
How to understand people better
I'd really like to know some basic, repeatable exercises that build empathy and social skills. Changing your everyday behavior to incorporate little bits of training here and there is not very effective. It's like wanting to get fit and deciding to walk a little faster whenever you need to get somewhere, instead of joining the gym. Or wanting to be a musician and deciding to hum along to songs more often, instead of getting a tutor.
The problem is the repeatability. Social skills, by their very nature, require interaction with people. And people are unpredictable; at least, until you have good enough social skills :p.
The closest I can come to an exercise regime suggestion* is to go into bars, coffee shops, or other gathering places; and look around for a person (or people) who seems bored, lonely, or otherwise in need of company.
Go up to said person(s) and greet them in a manner you deem appropriate. If it works; you just correctly judged someone's state, you approached them in an acceptable manner, and you now get to converse with them (giving you practise on other social skills). If not; consider why not? Did you misread their state? Did you approach them in an unacceptable manner? What should you try differently next time?
*(and something I actually did, that seemed to help me personally: in fact I met my girlfriend due to this practise)
Amusing, but I am embarrassed that this so highly voted (which I am attributing to this being written by luke).
Why shouldn't it be highly voted? When you're talking to a random outsider, and want to demonstrate the usefulness of bayesian techniques, using the example of clippy is a funny, and interesting, way to make your point.
As such, this is a valuable contribution for anyone who might, at some point, want to convert someone to bayesian techniques.
Given that it takes very little time to read, this means that it's value:time ratio is very good. As it is a discussion post, rather than a main post, this is sufficient justification to upvote it.*
*(with a main post I'd also expect a significant amount of content)
In response to
Anti-akrasia tool: like stickK.com for data nerds
Clearing up some confusion that has come up: (and holy crap, thanks so much for the flood of interest since this hit the frontpage!)
What if you just want a flat yellow brick road to force yourself to do, say, a minimum of 60 minutes of studying per day?
The answer is that that's not a flat yellow brick road, that's a yellow brick road that slopes up at the rate of 60 minutes per day. In other words, you'll have a graph with total cumulative number of minutes of studying on the y-axis and time on the x-axis.
Also, if you literally want to force yourself to do a minimum of 60 minutes each day, we don't quite support that. What you can force yourself to do with Beeminder is maintain an average of X minutes per day. When you do more you end up above the road which will give you a safety buffer. You can then make the road steeper (increase X) to get rid of that safety buffer.
Note that if you only ever do the bare minimum then Beeminder will enforce that 60 minutes every day, because you'll always be skating the bottom edge and that's the amount you'll have to do each day to stay on the road.
Can't you also have a 60 minute study, with no safety buffer, by using the "personal max" option on a flat road?
Certainly seems like that'd work to me.
In response to
comment
by
[deleted]
on
Rationality Lessons Learned from Irrational Adventures in Romance
Can't speak for anyone else, but I've brought this up re: race and sexual orientation as well in conversations on this site. I don't go looking for it, so the conversation usually has to be fairly current (ie, comments are showing up on the sidebar or it was recently posted to Discussion).
In general I don't start conversations about such things here because I'm well aware my own beliefs and perspective on issues like this are in the minority on this site, and if there's one thing I don't need more of in my life it's arguing with a population comprised mostly of wealthy, white Libertarian-esque cisgendered/heterosexual men whether or not you can be racist/sexist/whatever without intentionally being a bigot.
I'm much more apt to get involved in an existing conversation when some comment grabs my attention and I feel able to reply (or provoked to annoyance by it -- that happens). I critique what passes into my attention, assuming I've get the energy and wherewithal to get into what will most likely be another unproductive argument about it (unproductive because apparently it just feels like mind-killing politics to many of the posters here, who don't have some hands-on experience with being in a social minority and are not apt to readily grasp the difference between "I am angry/hurt by this AND think it is incorrect" and "my disagreement is purely emotional").
In response to
comment
by
[deleted]
on
Rationality Lessons Learned from Irrational Adventures in Romance
whether or not you can be racist/sexist/whatever without intentionally being a bigot.
I'd be intrigued to see an example of an argument for the statement:
"You can't be racist/sexist/whatever without intentionally being a bigot"
because I have never seen that sentiment expressed in my life. And I find it hard to see many people agreeing with it. Reasoning that it is false is far too simple.*
*(imagine a world where the general belief is that green people are brutish and ignorant, and should be killed on sight. Now imagine a farmer who has been told this, and believes it, and has never seen any evidence to the contrary. Has he ever made a decision of the form "Should I be bigoted? Yes I should"?)
Can I mitigate people's negative feelings by mostly offering cites of old criticisms?
That should help, but I'm not certain how much. The problem is that whatever the reason for the rule originally, it's now ingrained as a moral absolute in some people's minds.
= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d){kind=logo}
Well, since this is the first reference in this thread to "What can't we say?", which of the commenters would you say "feels it's important to take civil rights away from people"?
But seriously, you should get out of the habit of assuming sinister motives of people who disagree with you.
Ummm, Eliezer Yudkowsky's post, on which this discussion is based, is about "What can't we say?" ie. why can't we say there are racial differences in IQ.
So this thread doesn't seem to be evidence against Nisan's statement.