Maybe that’s just my personal quirk (is it?) but my pride is a good motivator for me to become stronger. If I think I am more able in some area than I actually am, then when evidence for the contrary comes knocking, I try as much as I can to defend the ‘truth’ I believe in by actually training myself in that area until I match that belief. And since I can’t keep my mouth shut and thus I tell and demonstrate everyone how awesome I am when I am not actually that good, there is really no way out but to make myself match what other people think of me. Maybe that’s not a very good rationality habit, but I am fully mindful of the process, and if I ever need to know my actual level at expense of that motivational factor, it is no trouble to sit down with a pencil and figure out the truth. It can hurt (because my real level almost always is way less than my expectations of it most of the time), but is probably worth it.
Manipulating people just out of pride and sense of domination was actually the factor that developed my social skills more than anything else. I became more polite, started to watch my appearance, posture and facial expressions (because it’s easier to trick those who like me), became better at detecting lies and other people’s attempts to manipulate me. Also, I believe, it helped me to avoid conformity (when you see people making dumb mistakes on a regular basis just because you told them something, the belief in their sanity vanishes quickly). And I am safe from losing friends’ trust, because I strive to never trick or decieve close people (in a very broad sense) and maintain something close to (but not quite) Radical Honesty policy wtih those whom I value.
Eh, probably not. Heuristically, I shy away from modes of thought that involve intentional self-deception, but that’s because I haven’t been mindful of myself long enough to know ways I can do this systematically without breaking down. I would also caution against letting small-scale pride translate into larger domains where there is less available evidence for how good you really are. “I am successful” has a much higher chance of becoming a cached self than “I am good at math.” The latter is testable with fewer bits of evidence, and the former might cause you to think you don’t need to keep trying.
As for other-manipulation, it seems the confidence terminology can apply to social dominance as well. I don’t think desiring superior charisma necessitates an actual belief in your awesomeness compared to others, just the belief that you are awesome. The latter to me is more what it feels like to be good at being social, and has the benefit of not entrenching a distance from others or the cached belief that others are useful manipulation targets rather than useful collaborators.
People vary on how they can use internal representations to produce results. It’s really hard to use probabilistic distributions on outcomes as sole motivator for behavior, so we do need to cache beliefs in the language of conventional social advice sometimes. The good news is that good people who are non-rationalists are a treasure trove for this sort of insight.
Maybe that’s just my personal quirk (is it?) but my pride is a good motivator for me to become stronger. If I think I am more able in some area than I actually am, then when evidence for the contrary comes knocking, I try as much as I can to defend the ‘truth’ I believe in by actually training myself in that area until I match that belief. And since I can’t keep my mouth shut and thus I tell and demonstrate everyone how awesome I am when I am not actually that good, there is really no way out but to make myself match what other people think of me. Maybe that’s not a very good rationality habit, but I am fully mindful of the process, and if I ever need to know my actual level at expense of that motivational factor, it is no trouble to sit down with a pencil and figure out the truth. It can hurt (because my real level almost always is way less than my expectations of it most of the time), but is probably worth it.
Manipulating people just out of pride and sense of domination was actually the factor that developed my social skills more than anything else. I became more polite, started to watch my appearance, posture and facial expressions (because it’s easier to trick those who like me), became better at detecting lies and other people’s attempts to manipulate me. Also, I believe, it helped me to avoid conformity (when you see people making dumb mistakes on a regular basis just because you told them something, the belief in their sanity vanishes quickly). And I am safe from losing friends’ trust, because I strive to never trick or decieve close people (in a very broad sense) and maintain something close to (but not quite) Radical Honesty policy wtih those whom I value.
Am I walking the wrong path?
Eh, probably not. Heuristically, I shy away from modes of thought that involve intentional self-deception, but that’s because I haven’t been mindful of myself long enough to know ways I can do this systematically without breaking down. I would also caution against letting small-scale pride translate into larger domains where there is less available evidence for how good you really are. “I am successful” has a much higher chance of becoming a cached self than “I am good at math.” The latter is testable with fewer bits of evidence, and the former might cause you to think you don’t need to keep trying.
As for other-manipulation, it seems the confidence terminology can apply to social dominance as well. I don’t think desiring superior charisma necessitates an actual belief in your awesomeness compared to others, just the belief that you are awesome. The latter to me is more what it feels like to be good at being social, and has the benefit of not entrenching a distance from others or the cached belief that others are useful manipulation targets rather than useful collaborators.
People vary on how they can use internal representations to produce results. It’s really hard to use probabilistic distributions on outcomes as sole motivator for behavior, so we do need to cache beliefs in the language of conventional social advice sometimes. The good news is that good people who are non-rationalists are a treasure trove for this sort of insight.