This is an important distinction, otherwise you risk getting into unproductive discussions about someone's intent instead of focusing on whether a person's patterns are compatible with your or your group/community's needs.

It doesn't matter if someone was negligent or malicious: if they are bad at reading your nonverbal cues and you are bad at explicitly saying no to boundary crossing behaviors, you are incompatible and that is reason enough to end the relationship. It doesn't matter if someone is trying their best: if their best is still disruptive to your... (read more)

I liked this for the idea that fear of scarcity can drive "unreasonable" behaviors. This helps me better understand why others may behave in "undesirable" ways and provides a more productive way of addressing the problem than blaming them for being e.g. selfish. This also provides a more enjoyable way of changing my behaviors. Instead of being annoyed with myself for e.g. being too scared to talk to people, I look out for tiny accomplishments (e.g. speaking up when someone got my order wrong) and the benefits it brings (e.g. getting what I wanted to order), to show myself that I am capable. The more capable I feel, the less afraid I am of the world.

This essay had a significant influence on my growth in the past two years. I shifted from perceiving discomfort as something I am subject to, to considering my relationship with discomfort as an object that can be managed. There are many other writings and experiences that contributed to this growth, but this was the first piece I encountered that talked about managing our relationship with hazards as a thing we can manipulate and improve at. It made me wonder why all human activity may be considered running in the meadow and why contracting may be bad, it... (read more)

I used to deal with disappointment by minimizing it (e.g. it's not that important) or consoling myself (e.g. we'll do better next time). After reading this piece, I think to myself "disappointment is baby grief". 

Loss is a part of life, whether that is loss of something concrete/"real" or something that we imagined or hoped for. Disappointment is an opportunity to practice dealing with loss, so that I will be ready for the inevitable major losses in the future. I am sad because I did not get what I'd wanted or hoped for, and that is okay.

Hmm interesting. I agree that there is a difference between a claim about an individual's experience, and a claim about reality. The former is about a perception of reality, whereas the latter is about reality itself. In that case, I see why you would object to the paraphrasing—it changes the original statement into a weaker claim. 

I also agree that it is important to be able to make claims about reality, including other people's statements. After all, people's statements are also part of our reality, so we need to be able to discuss and reason about ... (read more)

I'm curious, what do you think of these options?

Original: "I find your stated reason bizarre to the point where I can’t form any coherent model of your thinking here."

New version 1: "I can't form any coherent model of your thinking here." 

New version 2: "I don't understand your stated reason at all." 

New version 3: Omit that sentence. 

These shift the sentence from a judgment on Duncan's reasoning to a sharing of Said's own experience, which (for me, at least) removes the unnecessary/escalatory part of the insult.

I'm very confused, how do you tell if someone is genuinely misunderstanding or deliberately misunderstanding a post?

The author can say that a reader's post is an inaccurate representation of the author's ideas, but how can the author possibly read the reader's mind and conclude that the reader is doing it on purpose? Isn't that a claim that requires exceptional evidence?

Accusing someone of strawmanning is hurtful if false, and it shuts down conversations because it pre-emptively casts the reader in an adverserial role. Judging people based on their intent ... (read more)

Still trying to figure out/articulate the differences between the two frames, because it feels like people are talking past each other. Not confident and imprecise, but this is what I have so far:

Said-like frame (truth seeking as a primarily individual endeavor)

• Each individual is trying to figure out their own beliefs. Society reaches truer beliefs through each individual reaching truer beliefs.
• Each individual decides how much respect to accord someone, (based on the individual's experiences). The status assigned by society (e.g. titles) are just a data po

It feels like an argument between a couple where person A says "You don't love me, you never tell me 'I love you' when I say it to you." and the person B responds "What do you mean I don't love you? I make you breakfast every morning even though I hate waking up early!". If both parties insist that their love language is the only valid way of showing love, there is no way for this conflict to be addressed. 

Maybe the person B believes actions speak louder than words and that saying "I love you" is pointless because people can say that even when they do... (read more)

Right now it feels like it's an either/or choice between criticism and construction, which puts them in direct opposition, but I don't think they're necessarily in conflict with each other.

After all, criticism that acknowledges the constraints and nuances of the context is more meaningful than criticism that is shallow and superficial, and criticism that highlights a new perspective or suggests a better alternative is more useful than criticism that only points out flaws. In a sense, it's not that there's too much criticism and not enough of contributions,... (read more)

Noted, and I appreciate the response.

Copy-paste doesn't seem to work in general, I had to retype the markdown formatting for my comment.

...I don't think the issue here is nuance. My attempt at a non-nuanced non-unfriendly version would be more like "It feels like CYA because those nuances are obvious to you, but they aren't actually obvious to some other people." or maybe "It feels like CYA because you are not the target audience."

As someone who is perhaps overly optimistic about people's intentions in general, I don't really like it when people make assumptions about character/values (e.g. don't care about truth) or read intent into other people's actions (e.g. you're trying to CYA, or yo... (read more)

I appreciate this essay because I have experienced a (much milder) version of this "not existing". It helps me feel seen in certain ways. I also like that it helps me understand a different kind of perspective, and that it helps me make sense of Duncan's behavior in some of the comment threads. However, I must admit that while I understand intellectually that this is how Duncan experiences things, I myself can't really imagine it; I don't understand it on the gut level. The below response is influenced by this essay and also recent discussions on other pos... (read more)

I like this for the idea of distinguishing between what is real (how we behave) vs what is perceived (other people's judgment of how we are behaving). It helped me see that rather than focusing on making other people happy or seeking their approval, I should instead focus on what I believe I should do (e.g. what kinds of behaviour create value in the world) and measure myself accordingly. My beliefs may be wrong, but feedback from reality is far more objective and consistent than things like social approval, so it's a much saner goal. And more importantly,... (read more)

I like this because it reminds me:

• before complaining about someone not making the obvious choice, first ask if that option actually exists (e.g. are they capable of doing it?)
• before complaining about a bad decision, to ask if the better alternatives actually exist (people aren't choosing a bad option because they think it's better than a good option; they're choosing it because all other options are worse)

However, since I use it for my own thinking, I think of it more as an imaginary/mirage option instead of a fabricated option. It is indeed an option... (read more)

I agree in some sense that for the purpose of my learning/interest, I would rather people err on the side of engaging with less effort than not engaging at all. However, I think community norms need to be more opinionated/shaped because it influences the direction of growth.

The culture I've enjoyed the most is one where high standards is considered desirable by the community as a whole, especially core members, but it is acceptable if members do not commit to living up to those standards (you gain respect for working like a professional, but it is accepta... (read more)

This was interesting! Here's my attempt to make sense of the essay & the comments:

TL;DR We can think of the parts of reality that we have influence over as our surface area of contact with reality. One way of expanding this is increasing our scale of impact (e.g. self -> friends & family -> communities -> world). Since reality is fractal though, you can also expand by engaging more deeply with reality and developing expertise in an area (e.g. beginner -> able to cook good food for yourself). Increasing scale of impact tends to seem more... (read more)

It's been an absolute delight using excalidraw, thanks for the rec! Everything just works and it looks pretty:)

For perfectionism, I think never being satisfied with where you're at now doesn't mean you can't take pride in how far you've come?

"Don't feel complacent" feels different from "striving for perfection" to me. The former feels more like making sure your standards don't drop too much (maintaining a good lower bound), whereas the latter feels more like pushing the upper limit. When I think about complacency, I think about being careful and making sure that I am not e.g. taking the easy way out because of laziness. When I think about perfectionism (in the 12 v... (read more)

No problem:) Hope it helps & all the best!

I find Feldenkrais generally useful for releasing tension. There are exercises which are targeted at jaw/facial tension like this (tried this once, worked for me), but I find that exercises which release tension in my hips tend to also release tension in my jaws, so looking at exercises for hips may work as well. I've enjoyed working through the exercises in this channel.

Hmm didn't really find anything similar, but here are some examples of rating systems I found that looked interesting (though not necessarily relevant):

2-factor rating systems

SaidIt: (1) Insightful & (2) Fun

SaidIt is a Reddit alternative which seeks to "create an environment that encourages thought-provoking discussion". SaidIt has two types of upvotes to choose from: 1) insightful, and 2) fun.^[1]

Goodfilms: (1) quality & (2) rewatchability

Goodfilms is a movie site for users to rate, review, share films and find movies to watch. Users rate movies on... (read more)

In a two-factor voting system, what happens if I'm not sure if I agree or disagree, e.g. because I am still thinking about it?

If agree means "I endorse the claims or reasoning and think that more people should believe them to be true", I would probably default to no (I would endorse only if I'm pretty sure about something, and not endorsing doesn't mean I think it's wrong), so it's more like +1/0 voting. But if agree means "I think this is true", disagree would then mean saying "I think this is false", i.e. more like +1/-1 voting, so I would probably abstain?

Claim 2: Agree/disagree buttons are confusing or even harmful for comments that are making multiple claims. This is significant enough that there should not be an agree/disagree button for comments where agree/disagree buttons are not suitable.

• Agree: The negative consequences are significant enough that there should not be agree/disagree buttons for certain types of comments. For example, authors may be able to decide if they will allow agree/disagree votes on their comment.
• Disagree: It is acceptable to have agree/disagree votes even for posts/comments whe

Claim 1C: See claim 1A.

• Agree: I may or may not think that I/other users have this experience, but I think the effects are negative and significant enough, or have the potential to be significant enough that we should see if there are ways to address this when designing a new voting system.
• Disagree: I may or may not think that I/other users have this experience, but I think that the effects are not negative or are negligible enough that we do not need to factor this into the design of a new voting system.
   

Claim 1B: See claim 1A.

• Agree: This may or may not match my experience, but I believe that for majority (>50%) of users on LW, they are less likely to write replies expressing agreement/disagreement because they can now vote agree/disagree.
• Disagree: This may or may not match my experience, but I believe that majority (>50%) of users on LW, would still write a reply even if they can just vote agree/disagree.

Claim 1A:  Agree/disagree buttons disincentivizes productive conversations because clicking the disagree button satisfies the need for expressing disagreement (or agreement) with lower cost (less effort & no reputational cost since votes are anonymous) than writing out a reply. This is a significant enough concern that we should consider its effects when deciding whether or not to go with the new voting system.

• Agree: This matches my experience: I am less likely to write replies expressing agreement/disagreement because I am now able to vote agree/

This comment is an experiment. I'm trying out a variant of the proposed idea of voting by headings/block quotes: this comment contains my comment, and the replies below contain claims extracted from my comment for agree/disagree voting. 

Agree/disagree buttons incentivizes knee-jerk, low-effort reactions rather than deliberate, high-effort responses 

Something I like about LW's system of upvotes meaning "things you want to see more of" and having no agree/disagree button is that there's no simple way of expressing agreement or disagreement. This me... (read more)

MSRayne is saying "no, not in my experience," but afaict MSRayne has also self-identified as being in the set of [people whose personal boundaries already lie outside of the social boundary, such that even things which do not violate the social boundary are already violating their personal boundary].

Yes I'd read about this in the other comment but I think it didn't really register until I saw MSRayne's reply above.

The reply was enough for something to click in my head, possibly because it was a more concrete explanation, but your explanation made the misunderstanding more explicit to me, so thanks!

Oh I think I see what you mean. If there's always a cost to saying no, then all boundary violations are basically threats and hence aggressive.

And I think you always lose something if you say no to someone - always. It is always coercive. It just may not be visible on the surface - but they will resent you a little bit for it, and the more you do it the more resentment will build up.

I recognize this, or at least something like it - it's like when people ask for your opinions. People say that there is no wrong answer and that you should say what you rea... (read more)

If you fail to respond adequately you decrease the respect of your comrades (because you can't take it like a man or whatever) and thus by proxy decrease intimacy.

Hmm if you lose respect for responding wrongly then it doesn't really seem like a benign boundary violation anymore? The way I see it, a boundary violation can be considered benign only if you are capable of saying no, and the other person is genuinely capable of accepting and respecting a no. Otherwise, it's more like coercion. (And the violation shouldn't have very negative consequences for ... (read more)

We have dangerous knowledge like nuclear weapons or bioweapons, yet we are still surviving. It seems like people with the right knowledge and resources are disinclined to be destructive. Or maybe there are mechanisms that ensure such people don't succeed. What makes AI different? Won't the people with the knowledge and resources to build GAI also be more cautious when doing the work, because they are more aware of the dangers of powerful technology?

In AI software, we have to define an output type, e.g. a chatbot can generate text but not videos. Doesn't this limit the danger of AIs? For example, if we build a classifier that estimates the probability of a given X-ray being abnormal, we know it can only provide numbers for doctors to take into consideration; it still doesn't have the authority to decide the patient's treatment. This means we can continue working on such software safely?

it was explained to me why my concerns were wrong

Not sure if what I have in mind is the same, but I can think of scenarios where an explanation of how I'm wrong makes it feel like my concerns are being dismissed instead of being addressed. I'm guessing it's because a child's reasoning can seem illogical to an adult even though they actually make sense from the child's perspective, and it's upsetting when adults fail to acknowledge this.

Notice that jefftk is responding to the child from the child's perspective. The child thinks that there's not enough pasta... (read more)

Not really a response, just something I thought of while reading this comment:

The obvious solution to people having different and unclear boundaries is to make those boundaries clearer, such as by asking for explicit consent, or by having a No-Prank List mentioned in johnswentworth's comment. Stating boundaries too clearly may lead to misuse though, but I suppose it does also make bad actors more obvious, because they can no longer hide behind the excuse of ignorance.

Nonetheless, even if we do somehow manage to convey most of our boundaries (e.g. via AR gl... (read more)

I find the terminology confusing because asking for more "benign boundary violations" sounds like wanting strangers to do things that breach social boundaries that are not personal boundaries, yet the examples refer to friends and partners, not strangers. It doesn't make sense to say these are examples of "benign boundary violations" for close relationships though. Boundaries for friends are different for boundaries for strangers, so such behavior wouldn't be considered boundary violations.

I think of it differently: within any relationship, there is a spac... (read more)

A similar example: when you don't understand what someone is saying, it can be helpful to say "I don't understand. Do you mean X or Y?" instead of just saying "I don't understand". This way, even if X and Y are completely wrong, they now have a better sense of where you are and can thus adjust their explanations accordingly.

Just some thoughts I had while reading:

rule out everything you didn't mean

This reminds me of something I've heard -- that a data visualization is badly designed if different people end up with different interpretations of what the data visualization is saying. Similarly, we want to minimise the possible misinterpretations of what we write or say.

Each time I add another layer of detail to the description, I am narrowing the range of things-I-might-possibly-mean, taking huge swaths of options off the table.

Nice point, I've never really thought about ... (read more)

They don’t laugh nervously, don’t give tiny signals that they are malleable and interested in conforming to your opinion or worldview.

This sounds not-quite-right as pointed out by others, but I feel like I kind of recognize it. It's natural for people to adapt to others or be influenced by others, like shifting their accents, adjusting to others' preferred communication styles, or taking an interest in something because your friend is enthusiastic about it. It can be odd to meet people who don't do that. And if someone you interact with regularly shows ... (read more)

Potentially related examples:

Group identity statements (pressure not to disagree)

1. A team believes themselves to be the best at what they do and that their training methods etc. are all the best/correct approach. If you suggest a new training method that seems to be yielding good results for other teams, they wouldn't treat it seriously because it's a threat to their identity. However, if the team also takes pride in their ability to continuously refine their training methods, they would be happy to discuss the new method.
2. If a group considers themselves t

I guess I'd say frustrated, worried, confused. I was somewhat surprised/alarmed by the conclusion that Alec was actually trying to request information on how to be considered part of the group.

It seems to me like a rather uncharitable interpretation of Alec's response, to assume that he just wants to figure out how to belong, rather than genuinely desiring to find out how best to contribute.

We try to have a culture around here where there is no vetted-by-the-group answer to this; we instead try to encourage forming your own inside-view model of how AI ri

From my perspective, Berry is helping cooperation with Alec by just making straightforward statements from Berry's own perspective; then Alec can compare what Berry says with what other people say and with what seems to Alec to match reality and be logically coherent, and then Alec can distinguish who does and doesn't have informed, logically coherent opinions refined through reason.

Ah yes agreed. Alec doesn't know that this is what's happening though (judging from his response to answer 1). Personally I'd default to assuming that Berry will play the ro... (read more)

Hmm if CFAR organizes a workshop, then I would think it is reasonable to assume that the CFAR staff (assuming they are introduced as such) are there as experienced members of the AI risk community who are there to offer guidance to people who are new to the area.

Thus, if I ask them about career paths, I'm not asking for their opinions as individuals, I'm asking for their opinions as people with more expertise than I have.

Two possible motivations I can think of for consulting someone with expertise would be:

1. In school, I ask the teacher when I have a ques

I don't really understand... Suppose I am a computer scientist who has just learned about AI risks and am eager to contribute, but I'm not sure where to start. Then the natural step would be to ask someone who does have experience in this area for their advice (e.g. what careers should I go into), so I can take advantage of what's already known rather than starting from scratch.

My surface question is about careers, but my true/implicit question is actually asking for help on getting started contributing to AI risk. It's not about wanting to know how to be ... (read more)

Oooh, reminds me of a passage:

Warning: also contains spoilers for

Hmm, "slipperiness" sounds like a concept that's more useful for observing my thoughts, rather than a way to think about my interactions with others.

I can tell when my mind is trying to gloss over something (e.g. when I don't feel like specifying my entire chain of thought, then when I do try writing out a proper explanation, I start seeing loopholes and finding counter examples. Or when I dismiss something too quickly or for no reason.).

However, if I sense that someone's not fully engaging with my points, how do I know if that's because I've misunderstood... (read more)

This sounds like an interesting idea, it would be nice to have a tool that reminds us to be our better selves. However, it seems like it'd be quite problematic to let GPT mediate our communications. Besides the issues discussed in the other comments, I also think letting GPT handle the translation encourages a more superficial form of NVC. I think the main reason NVC works is not that the framework itself lets people communicate using non-violent language. Rather, it works because using the framework encourages people to be more emotionally aware and empat... (read more)

I shared a similar experience reading this essay and wanted to figure out why, so I've tried writing out some of my observations/experiences, hopefully they'll help in some way?

Before I start, I'd just like to add that I enjoyed this essay. It raises a lot of interesting points that provide food for thought e.g. uncertainty about location of hazards is what causes contraction, people can also be posts, how fear and eagerness are trying to protect the same thing. And the illustrations are pretty and helpful!

Below are my observations from reading the essay. ... (read more)