I mean no insult, but it makes me chuckle that the average denizen of LessWrong is so non-neurotypical that what most would consider profoundly obvious advice not worth even mentioning comes as a great surprise or even a revelation of sorts.
(This really isn’t intended to be a dig, I’m aware the community here skews towards autism, it’s just a mildly funny observation)
Maybe to elaborate: I had a lot of neurotypical friends, and a lot of autistic friends, and barely any of them have ever called me up years later to talk if we didn’t have some kind of social context. It seems like this is not a thing people do very often.
I’ve had two people do this to me. It didn’t register to me what they were doing at the time. But I also have a kind of different friend group than most rationalists.
Hmm, I would actually expect neurotypicals to find this advice more useful, since they’re more likely to have thoughts like “I can’t do that, that’d be weird” while the stereotypical autist would be blissfully unaware of there being anything weird about it.
I think it falls into the category of ‘advice which is of course profoundly obvious but might not always occur to you’, in the same vein as ‘if you have a problem, you can try to solve it’.
When you’re looking for something you’ve lost, it’s genuinely helpful when somebody says ‘where did you last have it?’, and not just for people with some sort of looking-for-stuff-atypicality.
I will regard with utter confusion someone who doesn’t immediately think of the last place they saw something when they’ve lost it.
It’s fine to state the obvious on occasion, it’s not always obvious to everyone, and like I said in the parent comment, this post seems to be liked/held useful by a significant number of LW users. I contend that’s more of a property of said users. This does not make the post a bad thing or constitute a moral judgement!
You seem to be operating on a model that says “either something is obvious to a person, or it’s useful to remind them of it, but not both”, whereas I personally find it useful to be reminded of things that I consider obvious, and I think many others do too. Perhaps you don’t, but could it be the case that you’re underestimating the extent to which it applies to you too?
I think one way to understand it is to disambiguate ‘obvious’ a bit and distinguish what someone knows from what’s salient to them.
If someone reminds me that sleep is important and I thank them for it, you could say “I’m surprised you didn’t know that already,” but of course I did know it already—it just hadn’t been salient enough to me to have as much impact on my decision-making as I’d like it to.
I think this post is basically saying: hey, here’s a thing that might not be as salient to you as it should be.
Maybe everything is always about the right amount of salient to you already! If so you are fortunate.
I mean no insult, but it makes me chuckle that the average denizen of LessWrong is so non-neurotypical that what most would consider profoundly obvious advice not worth even mentioning comes as a great surprise or even a revelation of sorts.
(This really isn’t intended to be a dig, I’m aware the community here skews towards autism, it’s just a mildly funny observation)
I think it’s not just an autism thing but something of an atomic modernity thing.
Maybe to elaborate: I had a lot of neurotypical friends, and a lot of autistic friends, and barely any of them have ever called me up years later to talk if we didn’t have some kind of social context. It seems like this is not a thing people do very often.
I’ve had two people do this to me. It didn’t register to me what they were doing at the time. But I also have a kind of different friend group than most rationalists.
Hmm, I would actually expect neurotypicals to find this advice more useful, since they’re more likely to have thoughts like “I can’t do that, that’d be weird” while the stereotypical autist would be blissfully unaware of there being anything weird about it.
this part is difficult for autists
this part is difficult for normies
I think it falls into the category of ‘advice which is of course profoundly obvious but might not always occur to you’, in the same vein as ‘if you have a problem, you can try to solve it’.
When you’re looking for something you’ve lost, it’s genuinely helpful when somebody says ‘where did you last have it?’, and not just for people with some sort of looking-for-stuff-atypicality.
I will regard with utter confusion someone who doesn’t immediately think of the last place they saw something when they’ve lost it.
It’s fine to state the obvious on occasion, it’s not always obvious to everyone, and like I said in the parent comment, this post seems to be liked/held useful by a significant number of LW users. I contend that’s more of a property of said users. This does not make the post a bad thing or constitute a moral judgement!
You seem to be operating on a model that says “either something is obvious to a person, or it’s useful to remind them of it, but not both”, whereas I personally find it useful to be reminded of things that I consider obvious, and I think many others do too. Perhaps you don’t, but could it be the case that you’re underestimating the extent to which it applies to you too?
I think one way to understand it is to disambiguate ‘obvious’ a bit and distinguish what someone knows from what’s salient to them.
If someone reminds me that sleep is important and I thank them for it, you could say “I’m surprised you didn’t know that already,” but of course I did know it already—it just hadn’t been salient enough to me to have as much impact on my decision-making as I’d like it to.
I think this post is basically saying: hey, here’s a thing that might not be as salient to you as it should be.
Maybe everything is always about the right amount of salient to you already! If so you are fortunate.