When I said “we irrationally expect everyone else to be rational”, I was thinking of, for example, our fundraising situation.
In the post regarding fundraising (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5n2ZQcbc7r4R8mvqc), habryka seems to feel frustrated that Moskovitz is cutting off funds despite habryka’s extremely rational explanations to Moskovitz and related organizations.
Yet the emotions (evolutionary fight, flee, freeze responses) of Moskovitz et al overwhelm their rationality, so it doesn’t matter how rational habryka attempts to be with them.
For ideal fundraising success, we might want to keep the limits of rationality in mind.
The very best rationalists and people with the most goodwill for humanity might sometimes overestimate the rest of humanity. That’s because they have so much goodwill for humanity. It’s not “a bad thing” at all. It’s just something we all (myself very much included) need to be aware of in ourselves.
(I’ll paste this in my above post as a clearly-marked edit, in case any of the replies ever get deleted.)
Good point! Moskovitz is probably acting with a mix of rationality and self-protection emotions. After addressing the emotions, maybe we can appeal to his rationality in explaining how we intend to shield the reputational costs (a second nonprofit org that’s independent, but very charitable to LW, or something along those lines).
(Again, I’ll paste this in the above post, clearly marked in the edit section.)
When I said “we irrationally expect everyone else to be rational”, I was thinking of, for example, our fundraising situation.
In the post regarding fundraising (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5n2ZQcbc7r4R8mvqc), habryka seems to feel frustrated that Moskovitz is cutting off funds despite habryka’s extremely rational explanations to Moskovitz and related organizations.
Yet the emotions (evolutionary fight, flee, freeze responses) of Moskovitz et al overwhelm their rationality, so it doesn’t matter how rational habryka attempts to be with them.
For ideal fundraising success, we might want to keep the limits of rationality in mind.
The very best rationalists and people with the most goodwill for humanity might sometimes overestimate the rest of humanity. That’s because they have so much goodwill for humanity. It’s not “a bad thing” at all. It’s just something we all (myself very much included) need to be aware of in ourselves.
(I’ll paste this in my above post as a clearly-marked edit, in case any of the replies ever get deleted.)
fwiw I think this is missing the point about what Habryka is frustrated about.
Is it Moskovitz’s “irrational” responses that got him or a set of rather legible needs like “avoiding funding anything that might have unacceptable reputational costs for Dustin Moskovitz”?
Good point! Moskovitz is probably acting with a mix of rationality and self-protection emotions. After addressing the emotions, maybe we can appeal to his rationality in explaining how we intend to shield the reputational costs (a second nonprofit org that’s independent, but very charitable to LW, or something along those lines).
(Again, I’ll paste this in the above post, clearly marked in the edit section.)