I am way on the end of the Harmony spectrum. I like lively discussion, but I hate conflict. I don’t know if you’ve read Eliezer’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, but at one point the main character has to learn how to ‘lose’ and admit that other characters are right. I read that part and thought ‘that’s my default already.’ This probably makes it harder for me to be a rationalist.
at one point the main character has to learn how to ‘lose’ and admit that other characters are right.
Really? That’s not at all the lesson I took away, admitting that the other characters were ‘right’. Snape was quite wrong; the bullies were even more wrong. Nothing in the narrative tells us that they were ‘right’.
The lesson I took away was that one shouldn’t try to win in every situation, that doing so is very short-sighted, that some victories are Pyrrhic or Cadmean, that sometimes one has to let wrong people/characters go on their wrong way because the cost of correcting them is too high.
Harry, in those chapters, refuses to lose and is willing to escalate all the way to his nuclear option even when the issue doesn’t merit taking such a risk. One wants to accomplish things, not destroy oneself over principles. Thinking is for doing, as the saying goes.
I guess I phrased that badly. When I’m in conflict with someone else, I don’t necessarily think they’re right, but I almost invariably back down. And usually I TELL them ‘maybe you’re right’ because that pacifies people really well. I don’t think this is a good strategy.
This probably makes it harder for me to be a rationalist.
I suspect less so than being on the opposite end of said spectrum. Of course being towards the middle and being able to play both sides is almost all the way to be. :)
I am way on the end of the Harmony spectrum. I like lively discussion, but I hate conflict. I don’t know if you’ve read Eliezer’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, but at one point the main character has to learn how to ‘lose’ and admit that other characters are right. I read that part and thought ‘that’s my default already.’ This probably makes it harder for me to be a rationalist.
Really? That’s not at all the lesson I took away, admitting that the other characters were ‘right’. Snape was quite wrong; the bullies were even more wrong. Nothing in the narrative tells us that they were ‘right’.
The lesson I took away was that one shouldn’t try to win in every situation, that doing so is very short-sighted, that some victories are Pyrrhic or Cadmean, that sometimes one has to let wrong people/characters go on their wrong way because the cost of correcting them is too high.
Harry, in those chapters, refuses to lose and is willing to escalate all the way to his nuclear option even when the issue doesn’t merit taking such a risk. One wants to accomplish things, not destroy oneself over principles. Thinking is for doing, as the saying goes.
I guess I phrased that badly. When I’m in conflict with someone else, I don’t necessarily think they’re right, but I almost invariably back down. And usually I TELL them ‘maybe you’re right’ because that pacifies people really well. I don’t think this is a good strategy.
I suspect less so than being on the opposite end of said spectrum. Of course being towards the middle and being able to play both sides is almost all the way to be. :)