The notion of weirdness points has never spoken to me, personally, because it seems to collapse a lot of social nuance into a singular dichotomy of weird/not weird, and furthermore that weirdness is in some sense measurable and fungible. Neither, I think, is true, and the framework ought to be dissolved. So what’s goes into a “weirdness point”?
How familiar is the idea? - Vegetarians/vegans are a little weird, but most people probably know a handful and most have a notion that those people care about animal welfare and maybe some even know about nutritional ideas or the effect of meat on the climate. Cryonicists are extremely uncommon and their philosophy is not widely spread so people need to do a bigger intellectual lift to understand them.
How appropriate is the sharing? - A vegan has an understandable reason to mention their diet almost any time a meal is shared, but if they never stop talking about it at parties, people will be annoyed and less sympathetic. The appropriate time to bring up cryonics is… During discussions about philosophy of death? Futurism? Maybe you can get away with it if someone just asks you what you’re reading lately.
How demanding is the idea? - People tend to not be huge fans of being asked to do things they wouldn’t normally want to do. This is of course a fundamental obstacle to anyone looking to change the world for the better, but it still bears consideration. More demanding ideas require more compelling evidence and more time to allow people to come around to them, and will often require a lighter touch up front to not be dismissed entirely.
All of these factors and more besides will constitute the weirdness of an idea, but to me none of them suggests the best strategy is to hide your ideas. It seems to me that dissolving a weirdness point just tells us something we could probably have figured out in the first place— weirdness exists only in social contexts and can thus be moderated by just developing better social skills. I can be honest about the vast majority of beliefs I hold by just picking the right moments to share them and choosing the way I frame them based on my understanding of the points above. That’s not propaganda papering over a forgettable version of myself, it’s just correct gameplay.
That’s not propaganda papering over a forgettable version of myself, it’s just correct gameplay.
I very much think I understand this perspective but yet I also sometimes find that a specific “gameplay” to be, e.g. restrictive, ‘degenerate’ (in a gameplay sense), or some degree of un-fun/bad.
Just considering the ‘gameplay mechanic’ ‘smalltalk’ – I can and often do enjoy it, but it can also be a thankless chore (or worse).
The phrase “correct gameplay” makes me think of consequentialism and ‘shutting-up-and-multiplying’. But beyond understanding that there is a best ‘move’, I can’t perfectly escape thoughts about the possibility of playing different games.
There’s also not just one ‘game’, as you and others have pointed out, but there’s also not just one level of games either and an aspect of ‘meta-gaming’ is deciding whether or not to play specific games at all. In the expansive myriads-of-games-at-criss-crossing-levels-of-meta-gaming perspective, there isn’t even any obvious “correct gameplay” at all, which is part of what I think this post was gesturing at.
The notion of weirdness points has never spoken to me, personally, because it seems to collapse a lot of social nuance into a singular dichotomy of weird/not weird, and furthermore that weirdness is in some sense measurable and fungible. Neither, I think, is true, and the framework ought to be dissolved. So what’s goes into a “weirdness point”?
How familiar is the idea? - Vegetarians/vegans are a little weird, but most people probably know a handful and most have a notion that those people care about animal welfare and maybe some even know about nutritional ideas or the effect of meat on the climate. Cryonicists are extremely uncommon and their philosophy is not widely spread so people need to do a bigger intellectual lift to understand them.
How appropriate is the sharing? - A vegan has an understandable reason to mention their diet almost any time a meal is shared, but if they never stop talking about it at parties, people will be annoyed and less sympathetic. The appropriate time to bring up cryonics is… During discussions about philosophy of death? Futurism? Maybe you can get away with it if someone just asks you what you’re reading lately.
How demanding is the idea? - People tend to not be huge fans of being asked to do things they wouldn’t normally want to do. This is of course a fundamental obstacle to anyone looking to change the world for the better, but it still bears consideration. More demanding ideas require more compelling evidence and more time to allow people to come around to them, and will often require a lighter touch up front to not be dismissed entirely.
All of these factors and more besides will constitute the weirdness of an idea, but to me none of them suggests the best strategy is to hide your ideas. It seems to me that dissolving a weirdness point just tells us something we could probably have figured out in the first place— weirdness exists only in social contexts and can thus be moderated by just developing better social skills. I can be honest about the vast majority of beliefs I hold by just picking the right moments to share them and choosing the way I frame them based on my understanding of the points above. That’s not propaganda papering over a forgettable version of myself, it’s just correct gameplay.
I very much think I understand this perspective but yet I also sometimes find that a specific “gameplay” to be, e.g. restrictive, ‘degenerate’ (in a gameplay sense), or some degree of un-fun/bad.
Just considering the ‘gameplay mechanic’ ‘smalltalk’ – I can and often do enjoy it, but it can also be a thankless chore (or worse).
The phrase “correct gameplay” makes me think of consequentialism and ‘shutting-up-and-multiplying’. But beyond understanding that there is a best ‘move’, I can’t perfectly escape thoughts about the possibility of playing different games.
There’s also not just one ‘game’, as you and others have pointed out, but there’s also not just one level of games either and an aspect of ‘meta-gaming’ is deciding whether or not to play specific games at all. In the expansive myriads-of-games-at-criss-crossing-levels-of-meta-gaming perspective, there isn’t even any obvious “correct gameplay” at all, which is part of what I think this post was gesturing at.