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Punoxysm10y50

After talking with a friend, I realized that the unambitious, conformist approach I'd embraced at work was really pretty poisonous. I'd become cynical, and realized I was silencing myself at times and not trying to be creative, but I really didn't feel like doing otherwise.

My friend was much more ambitious, and had some success pushing through barriers that tried to keep her in her place, doing just the job in her job description. It wasn't all that hard for her; I'd just gotten too lazy and cynical to do this myself after mild setbacks.

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10 Have you changed your mind recently?

by [anonymous]

6th Feb 2015

1 min read

10

Our beliefs aren't just cargo that we carry around. They become part of our personal identity, so much so that we feel hurt if we see someone attacking our beliefs, even if the attacker isn't speaking to us individually. These "beliefs" are not necessarily grand things like moral frameworks and political doctrines, but can also be as inconsequential as an opinion about a song.

This post is for discussing times when you actually changed your mind about something, detaching from the belief that had wrapped itself around you.

Relevant reading: The Importance of Saying "Oops", Making Beliefs Pay Rent

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[-][anonymous]10y420

In the late 1990s I began taking classes to be a sign language interpreter. Part of why I chose the profession was I believed it was safe from automation and thus secure as a career. In the 2000s the rise of interpreting over Internet video made me realize it could be outsourced to people who would work far cheaper than me. In the past 3-5 years, with the advances of machine interpreting and especially with the advent of the Motion Savvy tablet, I accepted I was wrong in thinking that ASL / English interpreting was automation-proof. As of December 2014 I have resigned from interpreting before the entire field vanishes (which I predict will happen in the USA by 2018). Now I do something else for my job.

[-]afeller0810y220

I have been recently questioning how worthwhile it is to be perceived as smart. Since I have always wanted to be intelligent, having people affirm my intelligence has always made me feel validated, much more so than receiving other forms of compliments. Either in response to that form of approval or else in anticipation of receiving it, I have gone out of my way to present myself primarily as an intelligent person and to consider any other perceptions others may have of me as secondary to that one.

As I've begun to question whether this is a good image to promote, one of the things I've begun to think is that I was mistaken to seek to promote a single uniformed image of myself at all. Instead, I should try to tailor more to my specific context. When I've tried to think of how I should want to project myself in general, the best idea I have been able to come up with is that I would want people to find me interesting. But when I think about what would be a beneficial way to be perceived in various contexts, I quickly realized that there are context-specific labels that direct me towards how I should want other people to view me at various times. In the office, I should seek to be viewed as being "professional." When I'm looking for dates, I want people to think I'm "sexy." When I comment on LW, I should probably seek to be perceived as "rational." This all feels very obvious in retrospect, but while I was still focused on trying to appear "smart," I was unable to even ask the right questions that would help me present myself to the world in a more desirable way.

Complicating this decision is the realization that I have to transition away from feeling successful about my self image to feeling far less successful. A few months ago, I felt good about myself when my boss identified my intelligence as the greatest asset I brought to the company and also identified increasing my professionalism as the area where I needed to grow the most. Today, if I were to truly internalize the change that I have been making cognitively, I think I should regard the phrase "highly professional nitwit" as slightly more flattering than "unprofessional genius," in which case I need to change my view of the feedback I received. At the time, I felt like those two comments summed to feedback that was mostly positive. Emotionally, I still feel that way. But since this discussion was in a business context, and since what we were talking about had far less to do with what is actually true than it did with what my boss perceived to be true, I think I should view the feedback I received as indicating that I should make substantial adjustments to my behavior. E.g. I need to adjust my email response policy away from asking myself "Do I have anything worth saying to add to this conversations?" and more towards "Given that I don't have anything noteworthy to add to this conversation, is it more professional to acknowledge receipt of this particular email or to simply move on?" (I need to make dozens of small changes similar to that one, wherever I notice that some particular aspect of my behavior is based on my desire to appear intelligent.) Again, this feels very obvious now that I've begun to think about things in these terms, but I previously failed to even ask the necessary questions.

[-]ShardPhoenix10y190

I find for me at least that most big changes of opinion happen slowly over time, so any recent changes are probably still ongoing and not clearly identifiable.

[-]WalterL10y170

I used to be a dedicated Hand cannon/Shotgun user in Destiny, but I noticed that I never placed as highly as I thought I was capable of. I was aware that most of the stronger folks used Assault Rifle/Fusion Rifle, but I'd persuaded myself that I didn't enjoy that playstyle.

I decide to give the Assault Rifle/Fusion Rifle playstyle another chance, resolutely not thinking about bragging rights. I used the conventionally "best" weapons and lo and behold I did better. Moreover, it was just as fun as it usually was. The whole "playstyle" excuse I used to give for using the wrong ones was just a cover for trying to be a special snowflake.

Nowadays I go Assault Rifle/Fusion Rifle, and if Bungie changes the weapon balance to favor another setup I'll try it out too.

[-]ShardPhoenix10y40

I've had similar experiences in games myself. I would rationalize that a certain suboptimal playstyle was more fun or more suited to me or whatever, then eventually realize I was wrong. I don't think it's always better to play optimally though.

I think in some cases it might not just be rationalization, but rather an actual change in what's optimal between the learning phase and the more experienced phase of playing a game.

[-]cleonid10y150

Opinion changes about grand things like a political doctrine may be difficult precisely because the opinions themselves are inconsequential. If I mistakenly vote for the party A instead of the party B, there are no personal consequences (my vote won’t change the outcome). By contrast, if I change my mind there are at least two negative consequences:

1) My ego will be hurt (I’ll have to admit that I was wrong before)

2) My friends and colleagues will be annoyed with me (statistically, friends and colleagues are likely to vote for the same party)

[-]emr10y50

Political beliefs can cluster with more consequential behaviors than voting. For example, consider the relationship between views on economic policy and the appeal of different careers (or fields of academic study). Or political views and religious behaviors. Or the subjective appeal of living in Texas vs San Francisco. Knowing humans, there probably isn't a clear direction of cause-and-effect.

Anecdotally, I've changed my political views recently, and I'm surprised by the breadth of the associated cluster of beliefs (some of which are non-socially consequential) that shifted at the same time.

[-]cleonid10y40

I suspect that the causal connection is usually from the consequential behaviors to the political beliefs. Some move to Texas or SF because of their political views, but more often people simply adopt political views that are considered mainstream among their neighbors. The same is probably true with the choice of occupation.

[-]is4junk10y40

I would think most people change their minds on these topics but would simply lie about 1 & 2. There are several threads about religious people turning atheist using this strategy.

I think the grand thing difficulty is that a change would require a large personal commitment if they wanted to be self-consistent. The difficulty is laziness - 'I'd have to rethink everything' or even worse 'I'd be evil to think that'.

[-]cleonid10y10

Some people indeed lie about their political beliefs (I personally knew a history professor who concealed his true opinions for career reasons). Most though find it psychologically very uncomfortable.

[-]Furcas10y80

Not about anything important, and that scares me.

[-]deschutron10y00

Is there anything important you think you should change your mind about?

[-]michael_b10y60

After initial success but then several bouts of plantar fascitis, new mystery leg pain and a heaping helping of denial I've finally given on up the minimal shoes thing.

I agree walking around in super comfortable shoes all the time probably makes us puny and weak, but I doubt paleolithic man walked and ran on hard city-grade pavement 50+ miles a week.

[-]Gunnar_Zarncke10y60

Not recently but over a longer time-span I changed my view on violence. As a youth I despised violence - both individual and collective - and in fact additionally any kind of emotional outburst. This was partly formed by a painful experience of violence. I believed that all conflict should be solvable peacefully by rational actors.

I was wrong.

The first inkling were arguments with my fiance that couldn't be solved factually. I realized that the strength of shown emotions is a measure of the subjective importance of a topic. What is the right thing to do when one preferrs X and the other not-X? Weigh X by the subjective importance. How do you know the subjective importance? Often you don't. You might try to attach numerical values but not everybody is so inclined and if - what does 0.5 mean anyway subjectively. How do you gauge that between persons? Answer: Via expressed emotions.

Other nails were the emotions and aggressions of my children. I could see first hand the successes and failures of aggression and sometime notable violence. I could try as I might rational arguments often just don't cut through - even if they are understood. And they don't work if the other party doesn't cooperate.

And then I got into a situation where I used violence in an affect. I who had commited to never use it. I mocked 'saint' had failed my own standards. How could that be? I was in state of humilty and it took some time to get back to terms with my imperfections. It also told me something about being human.

Today I still don't like violence and aggression and search ways to avoid and minimize it. But I'm no longer surprised by it and not only see its effectiveness but also the cases where it is the most rational choice. Compare this with Gains from trade: Slug versus Galaxy. Violence is just one way to realize the 'cooperation' of a much weaker opponent. 'Fair' isn't always in the middle if both parties are unequal. And if a stronger party force the other party to give in that party can only hope that the stronger party has friendly values. We have seen enough unfriendly natural intelligence.

[-][anonymous]10y60

Yeah, I decided to leave LW. I'll post from time to time if I find something interesting (I logged in just to comment here) I'll come back with an update in about half a year and we'll see how much of a distance there will be between me and the downvoters. Haters gonna hate!

But on topic I don't particularly care if someone attacks my beliefs. I don't strongly identify with them anyway. You eventually just realize that you're better off working on yourself than trying to influence others. Your only option (at least the only one that isn't completely useless) is to basically be competent yourself and have other people look up to you and maybe then you'll influence them. Sad, happy, or whatever, that's the truth. Also remember to encourage competency, VERY IMPORTANT.

On topic #2: I had three things here but the bottom one summarised it pretty well: I decided I'm going to be the person I want to be. I'm dropping behind all fears. All anxiety. All whatever. There's work that needs to be done and it's definitely going to be fun. I have a smile on my face as I type this.

And, hell, I'm out of things to say. Good luck to everyone who's going to better himself and fuck what everyone else thinks. At least as long as you know what you're doing and.. sanity waterline and the such.

[-]Metus10y30

Yeah, I decided to leave LW.

Why?

[-][anonymous]10y10

If you look at my profile you'd notice I have enough karma to look like a bible salesman. It seems like for whatever reason my comments are not appreciated if not depreciated. The annoying thing is that I'm repeatedly judged (downvoted) but am not given any explanation. Whatever's supposedly wrong with my comments isn't even being explained and it keeps happening enopugh for me to realize I'm not getting anything positive from commenting.

[-]Metus10y-20

Skimming your comment history it seems like the majority of your downvotes comes from expressing views inconsistent with the progressivist narrative on gender. LW now is overloaded with that.

[-]gjm10y240

My impression is that the problem isn't disagreement with, or disapproval of, his views so much as it's a feeling that (1) some topics he wants to talk about (his success or lack of it with women) don't really belong here and (2) the manner in which he talks about them is inappropriate. A few examples:

I often feel poly folks are basically epicifiying what I think is "I just wanna fuck".

(This was in a comment that's currently at +1-3; there were other not-terribly-impressive things in it, but my guess is that the quoted sentence is what got the downvotes.) So: gratuitous rudeness about poly people (of whom there are a fair number here), expressed in needlessly coarse terms. It doesn't seem terribly surprising that it got some downvotes. Nothing to do with the progressivist narrative on gender here.

Fucking hell man that's what I wanted to say to the girl. FUCK THAT BUS.

(This was in a comment that's at +1-4.) Dumping his own personal frustrations into a discussion about something else. Unnecessary fucking. Again, no progressive narrative required.

Actually, the most-downvoted comments I saw in my quick trawl through UH's history had nothing to do with gender. For instance: on +1-6 there was a reply to RichardKennaway's observation that LW has advice on how to start liking things but nothing on how to stop liking things, which I frankly found almost incomprehensible; on +0-4, a complaint about LW having karma-based limits on what you can do; a couple of heavily downvoted comments in a thread that is about gender, but where the downvotes are clearly for UH being pointlessly and contentlessly rude to other people.

My overall impression is that UH's comments are usually poorly written, frequently dismissive to others without cause, often more concerned with his own personal life than is appropriate in context, sometimes downright incomprehensible, and with a surfeit of "fucking"s that frequently makes him sound like an overwrought teenager. (Sorry, UH, but that's how it is.) His attitude to women probably doesn't help (seriously, did you see what he wrote to Alicorn?) but I'd be surprised if even the most generous intepretation of "views inconsistent with the progressivist narrative on gender" had those views accounting for more than 5% of his downvotes.

[EDITED to fix a minor grammatical screwup.]

[-][anonymous]10y-40

My views are simply what I judge to be the best way to solve a problem in the most efficient manner that generates the most results.

If people disagree with them, that's fine; but they ought to try and prove me incorrect instead of just giving me a minus one.

Gender is no different and people ought to try and solve problems instead of typical minding or whatever other nonsense they spew rather than solve the fucking problem at hand.

[-]taryneast10y70

they ought to try and prove me incorrect

it's up to you to find the truth, not up to other people to pound it into your head for you.

Your views aren't really what's at issue here, but how you are saying what you are saying. A number of times you have resorted to pure ad hominem (and sometimes it's downright rude). I know you must understand that this is going to be frowned upon on a site like this.

gjm has given a very excellent description of the kinds of things that have been downvoted and why that is likely. It's well worth a read... it will help you on other sites than this one. From my experience,, LW is a very forgiving group compared to others - where here you get a gentle nudge through a downvote - others will simply spew vitriol your way. I think you shouldn't interpret our downvotes as "we don't like your views" - but "hey, that could have been kinder/more rational/more to the point - why don't you think about it"

If you respond in a more considered, more rational way (not your views, but your tone), then you will likely see an improvement in your karma.

[-]mako yass10y20

others will simply spew vitriol your way

I'm going to have to disagree here, that's much more helpful to a person than wordless shunning. Like, regardless of how unhelpful it can be, it is a factor of infinity more helpful and more humane than just downvoting. As Eliezer puts it, apathy is sometimes worse than hate. At least someone who hates you cares enough to do something.

I actually think the setup we've got here where you hemorrhage karma every time you engage a downvoted thread is a really obscenely terrible choice for a community of analyticals. A norm of rejecting arguments without feeling any need to explain yourself is much worse for us than a relatively weak time-sync(next to the average mobile game, comment trolls are nothing). In the least, the threshold (-5 karma) is too low.

[-]taryneast10y00

I agree that actual words explaining why you gave a downvote is far more beneficial than simple silent shunning. I strongly endorse giving useful feedback whenever you downvote on a post here.

However I disagree that the usual kind of youtube-comment vitirol is useful data. Profanity-filled ad-hominem does not give you useful information to update upon. I'd rather five silent downvotes from a community whose opinions I trust than five unhelpful youtube comments. YMMV

[-]NoahTheDuke10y50

I've dropped out of college twice, and had considered that I would never go back (financial reasons, motivation reasons, doing "work" things with my life now). I decided with the new year that I would try to break into a new field, one which historically hasn't required a college degree but one definite helps (software development), and have found that businesses in my area look for one.

In talking with a friend in the field and one of the employers who turned me down, I went to the local community college and found that their course-work, their prices, and their availability are far more manageable than I had realized. I'm now taking steps to apply for the summer semester.

I told at least three people I wouldn't ever go back to school two weeks ago, and I had no interest in it. Here I am, moving towards it. Feels weird, but like the right step.

[-]Punoxysm10y50

[-]philh10y50

I discovered that one person is (or at least can be) less annoying than I thought, and another is less full of shit.

[-]Thomas10y50

I used to be sorry, that no Neanderthal survived to this day.

But then, I have realized, that it would be only more bloody and complicated as it already is.

[-]Richard_Kennaway10y30

What would you say about the range of variety of our species that has survived? Would things be less "bloody and complicated" if it were narrower?

[-]Thomas10y10

We are quite diverse. Sometimes at least, this causes additional bloodshed. (Sometimes we don't need this kind of cause, we invent some other pretext.)

But, yes. A greater biological diversity generally means more reasons for a conflict.

[-]is4junk10y40

I used to think this Karma Score stuff would be helpful to filter low quality posts. But I see many people get downvoted for tribal reasons and I also see many upvotes on posts that I have trouble deciphering (sockpuppets?). So usually, when I see a post downvoted to oblivion I end up clicking on it anyways which defeats the whole purpose of using the Karma Score to help me filter out bad posts. I also waste a bunch of cycles wondering about the votes (who are these people).

TL;DR I have decided to try using firefox to view lesswrong with the anti-kibitzing option turned on (see preferences).

[-]Nornagest10y40

Depends whether you're talking intended purpose or actual function. The intended purpose of the karma system is to make low-quality comments less visible. It doesn't do a very good job of that here; it does a better job in Reddit where there's a larger userbase and threads are sorted by karma by default, since most people don't read all the way to the bottom of a thread, but collapsing threads doesn't do much.

The actual function of karma is to gently incentivize posting things interesting to the community, to somewhat less gently disincentivize content-free posts, and to not-at-all-gently dissuade persistent cranks and trolls and short-circuit discussions of things that're really strongly disapproved of (the so-called troll toll, though most of its victims are not trolls). I don't think this is a bad thing on balance -- community can be undervalued in nerdy circles, so it's handy to have a semi-mechanical way of encouraging it without everything degenerating into cat pictures -- but one shouldn't mistake it for something it's not.

I haven't seen much evidence of widespread use of sockpuppets.

[-]is4junk10y00

The actual function of Karma as you describe doesn't bother me. I'll continue voting as usual. The anti-kibitzing option just hides the votes so I don't see them. For me I hope out of sight out of mind actually works for this problem.

[-]Alsadius10y40

Not on anything big, but on a couple small issues I spoke without double-checking and freely admitted my error when the person I was arguing with called me on it. Not sure if it really counts, but it better than 90% of internet debaters...

[-][anonymous]10y30

I used to think that responsible citizens should not fear violence to themselves if other people are being hurt for political beliefs, and go help. I was okay with it, and my husband was okay with it, and we knew and respected this about each other.

Yet when a situation arose when we could go help, with risk of death and injury was orders of magnitude higher than usual workday levels, I asked him to let me go, and he said, if one of us should go, it is not you. (The other would have to stay to babysit.) And so neither of us went.

I think I changed my belief about the relative value of beliefs then. Before, I would have sincerely said that what an (adult) person thinks about themselves should have more weight in determining their actions than what others think about the person. Now, I don't seem to have a sincere answer.

[-]Adam Zerner10y20

I realized that the singularity might happen a lot sooner than my System I previously thought, and so I'm changing the way I do things a bit. My System II knew, but I never really thought hard enough about it.

[-]ShardPhoenix10y60

so I'm changing the way I do things a bit

How?

[-]Adam Zerner10y70

I'm really trying to minimize the chance that I die in the next 40 years or so.
I have/had long term entrepreneurial and philanthropic plans, but I'm realizing that they may take too long and that by the time I can start to implement things, the singularity may have occurred. So it may be a better idea for me to alter my plans towards contributing to safe AI in the short/intermediate term.
I knew that I would study math and AI one day, but now I'm planning on doing so sooner rather than later.

[-][anonymous]10y40

Out of curiosity, what changed your mind to make you think it would occur sooner?

I'm having incredibly confused thoughts after reading that article you posted recently on the subject. A surprising number of experts seem to think that GAI is near... but there hasn't seem to have been many advances in actually creating a GAI.

[-]Adam Zerner10y00

Out of curiosity, what changed your mind to make you think it would occur sooner?

The article :)

I'm having incredibly confused thoughts after reading that article you posted recently on the subject. A surprising number of experts seem to think that GAI is near... but there hasn't seem to have been many advances in actually creating a GAI.

I'm not the best person to address this, but there's constant development in ANI, processing speed and memory, neuroscience, math etc. and I think that all of this is implicitly progress towards AGI.

[-]is4junk10y00

Why not try to exploit the singularity for fun and profit? Its like you have an opportunity to buy Apple stock dirt cheap.

Investment: own data center stocks initially. I am not sure what you would transition to when the AI learns to make CPUs.
Regulatory: make the singularity pay you rent by being a gatekeeper. This will be a large industry worldwide. Probably the best bet.

At the very least you should be able to rule out bad investments (time or money).

Energy
Land
Jobs that will be automated

[-]Adam Zerner10y00

Hm. Well once/if the singularity does happen, I would think that it'd be beyond my ability to manipulate. But I think that your points are valid in reference to the time leading up to it.

Regulatory: make the singularity pay you rent by being a gatekeeper. This will be a large industry worldwide. Probably the best bet.

Could you explain this a bit more? I don't understand how anyone could be a gatekeeper.

[-]is4junk10y00

I mean it in this non-flattering sense rent-seeking.

I envision all sorts of arbitrary legal limits imposed on AIs. These limits will need people to dream them up, evangelize the needs for even more limits, and enforce the limits (likely involving creation of other 'enforcer' AIs). Some of the limits (early on) will be good ideas but as time goes on they will be more arbitrary and exploitable. If you want examples just think of what laws they will try to stop unfriendly AI and stop individuals from using AI to do evil (say with an advanced makerbot).

Once you have a role in the regulatory field then converting it to fun and profit is a straight forward exercise in politics. How many people are in this role is determined by how successful it is at limiting AIs.

[-]Adam Zerner10y00

Ah ok. I was assuming that if a singularity occurred it'd be beyond our control, and that our fate would be determined by how the AI was originally programmed. But my reason for assuming this is based on much limited information, so I don't really know. If it were the case that people with political power control AI, then I think that you are very right.

But if you're right and we live in a society where there is ASI level power that is controlled by people with political power... that really really scares me. My intuition is that it'd be just a matter of time before someone screws up. I'm not sure what to think of this...

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