even when you try to point people at the thing to look at they keep turning to look at something else (something easier, less scary, more approachable, but useless).
I understand why someone might be frustrated in his position, and it’s fine to feel however. However, I want to push back on any implicit advancement of sentiments like “his intense feelings justify the behavior.”[1] The existing discussion has focused a lot on the social consequences of e.g. aggressive and mean behavior. I’ll now take a more pragmatic view.
If you want to convince people of something, you should not severely punish them for talking to you. For example, I’d be more open to hearing Nate’s perspective if he had conducted himself in an even somewhat reasonable manner. As I wrote in my original comment:
[Nate’s behavior] killed my excitement for engaging with the MIRI-sphere.
Even from a pragmatic “world-saving” perspective, and given Nate’s apparent views, Nate’s behavior still doesn’t make sense to me. It doesn’t seem like he’s making some clever but uncooperative trade whereby he effectively persuades people of true stuff, albeit at (sometimes) large emotional cost to others. It seems more like “relative lack of persuasion, and other people sometimes get hurt (without agreeing to it), and people sometimes become significantly less interested in considering his views.”
I sometimes get frustrated that people stillseem to be missing key shard theory insights, even after several conversations. I get frustrated that Nate in particular possibly still doesn’t understand what I was trying to explain in our July 2022 chat. I still do not rant at people or leave them feeling intensely drained. Even if my emotions were more intense, I would still think it pragmatically unwise to have strong negative effects on my employees and colleagues.
I understand why someone might be frustrated in his position, and it’s fine to feel however. However, I want to push back on any implicit advancement of sentiments like “his intense feelings justify the behavior.”[1] The existing discussion has focused a lot on the social consequences of e.g. aggressive and mean behavior. I’ll now take a more pragmatic view.
If you want to convince people of something, you should not severely punish them for talking to you. For example, I’d be more open to hearing Nate’s perspective if he had conducted himself in an even somewhat reasonable manner. As I wrote in my original comment:
Even from a pragmatic “world-saving” perspective, and given Nate’s apparent views, Nate’s behavior still doesn’t make sense to me. It doesn’t seem like he’s making some clever but uncooperative trade whereby he effectively persuades people of true stuff, albeit at (sometimes) large emotional cost to others. It seems more like “relative lack of persuasion, and other people sometimes get hurt (without agreeing to it), and people sometimes become significantly less interested in considering his views.”
I sometimes get frustrated that people still seem to be missing key shard theory insights, even after several conversations. I get frustrated that Nate in particular possibly still doesn’t understand what I was trying to explain in our July 2022 chat. I still do not rant at people or leave them feeling intensely drained. Even if my emotions were more intense, I would still think it pragmatically unwise to have strong negative effects on my employees and colleagues.
Probably you (Peter) did not mean to imply this, in which case my comment will just make the general point.