All of AlexZ's Comments + Replies

If I'm chatting with other rationalists I will use a term like akrasia but in other contexts I will say procastination. I'm prefectly able to use different words in different social contexts. There are ways of studying rationality that do have those effects. I don't think going to a CFAR workshop is going to make a person less likely to convince the average person. Conving a person who believes in sciencism that science doesn't work that way is similar to trying to convince a theist that there's no god. Both are hard problems that you can't easily solve by making emotional appeals even if you are good at making emotional appeal. I don't believe that to be true. In many cases it's possible to convince other people by making generalized statements that different human beings will interpret differently and where it's not important that you know which interpretation the other person chooses. In NLP that principle is called the Milton model. I think it would be more accurate to say humans have a tendency to model other humans as they believe themselves to be. From an LW perspective I think abortion is obviously murder is an argument with little substance because it's about the definitions of words. My reflex through ratioanlity training would be to taboo murder. I don't think that the average rationalist has the same opinon on any of those subjects. There a sizeable portion of EA people in this community but not everybody agrees with the EA frame. I had a Hemming circle at our local LW meetup where pride was very important to the circled person. He choose actions because he wanted to achive results that make him feel pride. For myself pride is no important concept or emotion. It's not an emotion that I seek. The Hamming cirlce allowed me to have a perspective into the workings of a mind that in that regard significantly different then myself. Hamming circles are a good way to learn to model people different than yourself. There are people in this community who

Sometimes it can help to understand where the person is coming from, why they have formed the impression that they have. It doesn't mean that they are right about the claims. But it can make it less frustrating to listen to them, and may provide an opportunity for gently nudging them in a better direction, or educating them as to a more accurate picture of the situation. Defensiveness is what John Gottman calls one of the 4 Horsemen of Relationships. Gottman studies couples in his lab, so his ideas about relationships are based on data. There is discussion of defensiveness in his books, and several posts on the Gottman Institute blog, such as this post http://www.gottmanblog.com/archives/2014/10/31/self-care-defensiveness?rq=self%20care The other thing to look into is why it stings so much. If you can figure out why it bothers you more than more neutral topics, then you might be able to see past the things that are making it difficult to evaluate the claims. It's also possible that all of the specific claims are not true, but that there is nevertheless a problem, just in a different area than the person who is making the claim thinks there is. There might be something else you could do that seems unrelated, but fixes whatever issue you are having, and adjusts your behavior enough that the person stops wanting to make those claims.

I think it's very easy to go from "person has made claim which, if it actually became policy and was followed through harshly, would make my life very bad" to "that inimical policy is right here and much be opposed with all available force". It can be worth checking on the actual threat level.

A useful tool when you try to leave a defensive "I believe that..." stance is to leave it in a specific direction: The aggressive "I want to find out if..." stance. Because the anger means it is a strongly motivated behavior, and you can't simply stop being motivated - but sometimes you can build up an alternative motivation that happens to compete with the one you want to let go of, and pursue it. Of course this only works if you actually "want to know if" more than you want to defend "your" position - but since you're on LW, there's a good chance your thirst for knowledge is way above average, so maybe it can win out. I don't know if the following is true for you specifically, but for some people, issues like you're having can be the result of having had past confrontations about specific topics that went bad. More to the point, confrontations with people who were not open to sober evaluations and a search for common ground. In such situations, getting angry can be adaptive in that it at least gets you out of an unwinnable argument, so maybe you learned that behavior in that kind of situation. Does that ring a bell? If it does, simply recognizing that's what's happening is much of the work needed to change it. The rest could be to very consciously remind yourself who you're talking to, who you're not talking to, and be aware of the differences between them.

Look up mindfulness. T here's books like The Power of Now, apps like headspace, etc that focus on the concept of not becomig attached to your thoughts, beliefs, and emotions.

You might want to examine what sort of in-group out-group dynamics are at play here, as well as some related issues. I know I run into these things frequently--I find the best defense mechanism for me is to try to examine the root of where feelings come from originally, and why certain ideas are so threatening. Some questions that you can ask yourself: 1. Are these claims (or their claimants) subtly implying that I am in a group of "the bad guys"? 2. Is part of my identity wrapped up in the things that these claims are against? 3. Do I have a gut instinct that the claims are being made in bad faith or through motivated reasoning? 4. If I accept these claims as true, would I need to dramatically reevaluate my worldview? 5. If everyone accepted these claims as true, would the world change in a way that I find threatening or troubling? None of these will refute the claims, but they may help you understand your defensiveness. I find it helpful to remind myself that I don't need to have a strongly held opinion on everything. In fact, it's good to be able to say "I don't really know" about all the things you're not an expert in.

Do they make you angry and defensive when you contemplate them on your own? When you read a book making those claims? When discussing them privately with someone else? Only when you discuss them in company? If the answer isn't "all of those" then maybe it would be helpful to try to evaluate those claims in a context that doesn't stir up anger and defensiveness.

Not sure if this question will help - can you explain why you care so much?