I’m not at all confident I’m carving reality at its joints here, but this has been my path, so there’s got to be something of reality mixed up in it somewhere.
Rationality, general learning ability
Social mechanics, tactics
Political dynamics, strategy
First, I learned to think clearly. While that gave me the potential to be good at anything, since it is a general learning multiplier, I was naturally, not immediately good at everything. On the contrary, learning rationality overwrote a lot of of my old instincts. While some of those instincts were completely valueless, others were a mix of good and bad. Overwriting them granted me many advantages, but also undid some good, particularly in social areas.
Second, I turned my fany new general learning ability on social mechanics, in time returning to my old social ability, and then surpassing it. Additionally, I’m doing so on purpose and by design, rather than accidentally. It’s been said that a gentleman is one who never offends on accident, and now, I am one who (less often, anyway) doesn’t commit faux pas by accident. Where once I was exasperatingly clueless, now I am a mixture of charm and purposeful offense. It’s great!
Third, and this is really only just beginning, because I’m really only about halfway done with the second step, by my estimation, I’m beginning to perceive how all the individual social rules and possible maneuvers combine. I begin to see how whole groups are influenced, what governs them, how to squeeze power out of them. This has helped me appreciate that there are efforts to make people into useful contributors to groups, like cogs in a machine, in order to empower those groups, in order to create a store of political capital to be taken advantage of by those who know how to make withdrawals.
And that led me to realize that the teaching of rationality directly undoes these efforts. It is much harder to manipulate rationalists on the sly. Direct threats and rewards and so on are still available, of course, but you can’t, to use one trick as an example, change the definition of a word and think that a proper rationalist will act any differently as a result. A rationlist would see through the illusory web of words to the essence beyond, to the concepts at play and how they relate to each other, with no import placed on which word-labels are used to refer to those concepts.
This particular trick makes for a great example of something else. When I learned to see with the clear sight of conceptual vision, to taboo words, to think in terms of hyperdimensional concept space, a great many, perhaps a solid half, of arguments of all kinds, including political ones, became child’s play to me. If you don’t know the trick of seeing the substance rather than the symbol, this may sound quite arrogant, to think one so completely above and beyond half of all arguments, but if you do know the trick, you’re probably pretty familiar with how easily this trick can accomplish just that. Those of us who have learned this have no particular cleverness; we’re not doing anything impressive when we use this insight, it’s just that once someone learns it (and almost anyone could), it really does undo a great edifice of contemporary argument.
But this trick’s benefit was only defensive at first; you couldn’t control me just by getting people to change their word choice, true...On the other hand, I had trouble relating to others. I found I couldn’t teach them what they needed to know in the course of a single discussion, and even those whom I saw with frequency were generally uninterested in learning at my hand (for status reasons, if I had to guess; accepting another as a teacher is to debase one’s self). I couldn’t use this trick to dissolve arguments for others, only for myself. My offensive power to influence was actually decreased, as, to my mind, there was only one response to give to definitional disputes, but that one response was no good for influencing others.
So, I had this dearth of power that needed resolving. I had to go back and learn how to deal with definition disputes without dissolving them. I had to focus on making others hear the truth, not just on speaking truth that they could not hear. I had to meet them where they were, and try to move them a single step in the right direction, rather than insisting on an all-or-nothing attempt to complete the journey in a fell swoop.
It feels awkward trying to alter people’s concepts while acting like words have “true” meanings, like I’ve added an extra layer of interface, or am trying to manipulate knitting needles through a sheet (and I know we all know what that’s like), but I do the best I can. And so, learning rationality undid some of my ability to influence people socially, but then returned that power to me twofold. From rationality to social maneuvering. And then came the next transition, from social understanding to political understanding, an understanding of how groups are made and moved.
To understand how this trick applies to politics (by which I mean the actual process of politicking (manipulating coalitions of people) and don’t mean anything about any specific parties or political issues), it helps to ask a question. Why do political movements care about redefining words? The naive rationalist will say “it doesn’t change anything about how things actually work to just use different labels for them or to attach old labels to new concepts; what’s the point?” Near as I can tell the answer is as follows, and is one of the tools of power wielded by politicians who know what they’re doing, the weapons of demagogues and statesmen:
If you take word “x” and say what it “really” refers to is concept y, then you distort people’s perception to make them feel like concept y has some of the feeling of concept x. You’ve removed concept x from the equation, but you’ve given concept y the associations that concept x earned for itself. (the use of quotation marks in this paragraph is significant; with marks = word, without = concept or referent).
For example, if people associate marriage itself with ideas of respectability, then you can give an air of respectability to something by getting people to call it “marriage.” This is why some people protested redefining marriage to include gay couples, and also why it wasn’t satisfactory to just use a different word for gay couples and grant them the same governmental treatment that marriage had. That would accomplish all the overt intentions of the gay marriage movement, but not the covert ones which included warping people’s perceptions to give gay marriage that unofficial respectability that can’t be mandated by law.
This is also why people insist on saying “baby” or “fetus” depending on which side of that debate they’re on. Possibly also why the correct word to use for racial or handicapped groups seems to change over time...
Now, to be precise, the reason most people insist on these word choices is not to warp perceptions by swapping associations between concepts via changing vocabulary, but simply to signal their fealty to their tribe, to recite the ingroup’s talking points. But where do the talking points come from? People who understand this key of power (and others) purposefully design such talking points in an attempt to turn the people who do whatever their ingroup says into machines that eat up reality and spit it out with funhouse mirrors attached to war people’s perceptions.
Of course, the process has been going on long enough that it’s really about getting people to eat up one kind of warped reality and spit out another.
Rationalists see through the warping, because they don’t think words have “real” meanings, so word choice doesn’t warp their vision of the concepts behind the words. In theory, anyway. No doubt there are some lingering instincts, but anyway, it’s a step in the right direction. (It seems reasonable to suppose that since rationalizing people ruins their value as political pawns, there might be some effort to keep people from learning those things which do so, but I don’t know of any examples of that, so I really couldn’t say).
As I said before, I’m really only halfway through step 2, and just starting to see glimpses of step 3, but this seems to be the natural progression. Once I learned to see clearly enough, I could learn social chess, and putting those social rules together until I start to see the points of leverage and power over groups has slowly started to reveal political gaming to me.
From Rationality to Power in 3 Steps
I’m not at all confident I’m carving reality at its joints here, but this has been my path, so there’s got to be something of reality mixed up in it somewhere.
Rationality, general learning ability
Social mechanics, tactics
Political dynamics, strategy
First, I learned to think clearly. While that gave me the potential to be good at anything, since it is a general learning multiplier, I was naturally, not immediately good at everything. On the contrary, learning rationality overwrote a lot of of my old instincts. While some of those instincts were completely valueless, others were a mix of good and bad. Overwriting them granted me many advantages, but also undid some good, particularly in social areas.
Second, I turned my fany new general learning ability on social mechanics, in time returning to my old social ability, and then surpassing it. Additionally, I’m doing so on purpose and by design, rather than accidentally. It’s been said that a gentleman is one who never offends on accident, and now, I am one who (less often, anyway) doesn’t commit faux pas by accident. Where once I was exasperatingly clueless, now I am a mixture of charm and purposeful offense. It’s great!
Third, and this is really only just beginning, because I’m really only about halfway done with the second step, by my estimation, I’m beginning to perceive how all the individual social rules and possible maneuvers combine. I begin to see how whole groups are influenced, what governs them, how to squeeze power out of them. This has helped me appreciate that there are efforts to make people into useful contributors to groups, like cogs in a machine, in order to empower those groups, in order to create a store of political capital to be taken advantage of by those who know how to make withdrawals.
And that led me to realize that the teaching of rationality directly undoes these efforts. It is much harder to manipulate rationalists on the sly. Direct threats and rewards and so on are still available, of course, but you can’t, to use one trick as an example, change the definition of a word and think that a proper rationalist will act any differently as a result. A rationlist would see through the illusory web of words to the essence beyond, to the concepts at play and how they relate to each other, with no import placed on which word-labels are used to refer to those concepts.
This particular trick makes for a great example of something else. When I learned to see with the clear sight of conceptual vision, to taboo words, to think in terms of hyperdimensional concept space, a great many, perhaps a solid half, of arguments of all kinds, including political ones, became child’s play to me. If you don’t know the trick of seeing the substance rather than the symbol, this may sound quite arrogant, to think one so completely above and beyond half of all arguments, but if you do know the trick, you’re probably pretty familiar with how easily this trick can accomplish just that. Those of us who have learned this have no particular cleverness; we’re not doing anything impressive when we use this insight, it’s just that once someone learns it (and almost anyone could), it really does undo a great edifice of contemporary argument.
But this trick’s benefit was only defensive at first; you couldn’t control me just by getting people to change their word choice, true...On the other hand, I had trouble relating to others. I found I couldn’t teach them what they needed to know in the course of a single discussion, and even those whom I saw with frequency were generally uninterested in learning at my hand (for status reasons, if I had to guess; accepting another as a teacher is to debase one’s self). I couldn’t use this trick to dissolve arguments for others, only for myself. My offensive power to influence was actually decreased, as, to my mind, there was only one response to give to definitional disputes, but that one response was no good for influencing others.
So, I had this dearth of power that needed resolving. I had to go back and learn how to deal with definition disputes without dissolving them. I had to focus on making others hear the truth, not just on speaking truth that they could not hear. I had to meet them where they were, and try to move them a single step in the right direction, rather than insisting on an all-or-nothing attempt to complete the journey in a fell swoop.
It feels awkward trying to alter people’s concepts while acting like words have “true” meanings, like I’ve added an extra layer of interface, or am trying to manipulate knitting needles through a sheet (and I know we all know what that’s like), but I do the best I can. And so, learning rationality undid some of my ability to influence people socially, but then returned that power to me twofold. From rationality to social maneuvering. And then came the next transition, from social understanding to political understanding, an understanding of how groups are made and moved.
To understand how this trick applies to politics (by which I mean the actual process of politicking (manipulating coalitions of people) and don’t mean anything about any specific parties or political issues), it helps to ask a question. Why do political movements care about redefining words? The naive rationalist will say “it doesn’t change anything about how things actually work to just use different labels for them or to attach old labels to new concepts; what’s the point?” Near as I can tell the answer is as follows, and is one of the tools of power wielded by politicians who know what they’re doing, the weapons of demagogues and statesmen:
If you take word “x” and say what it “really” refers to is concept y, then you distort people’s perception to make them feel like concept y has some of the feeling of concept x. You’ve removed concept x from the equation, but you’ve given concept y the associations that concept x earned for itself. (the use of quotation marks in this paragraph is significant; with marks = word, without = concept or referent).
For example, if people associate marriage itself with ideas of respectability, then you can give an air of respectability to something by getting people to call it “marriage.” This is why some people protested redefining marriage to include gay couples, and also why it wasn’t satisfactory to just use a different word for gay couples and grant them the same governmental treatment that marriage had. That would accomplish all the overt intentions of the gay marriage movement, but not the covert ones which included warping people’s perceptions to give gay marriage that unofficial respectability that can’t be mandated by law.
This is also why people insist on saying “baby” or “fetus” depending on which side of that debate they’re on. Possibly also why the correct word to use for racial or handicapped groups seems to change over time...
Now, to be precise, the reason most people insist on these word choices is not to warp perceptions by swapping associations between concepts via changing vocabulary, but simply to signal their fealty to their tribe, to recite the ingroup’s talking points. But where do the talking points come from? People who understand this key of power (and others) purposefully design such talking points in an attempt to turn the people who do whatever their ingroup says into machines that eat up reality and spit it out with funhouse mirrors attached to war people’s perceptions.
Of course, the process has been going on long enough that it’s really about getting people to eat up one kind of warped reality and spit out another.
Rationalists see through the warping, because they don’t think words have “real” meanings, so word choice doesn’t warp their vision of the concepts behind the words. In theory, anyway. No doubt there are some lingering instincts, but anyway, it’s a step in the right direction. (It seems reasonable to suppose that since rationalizing people ruins their value as political pawns, there might be some effort to keep people from learning those things which do so, but I don’t know of any examples of that, so I really couldn’t say).
As I said before, I’m really only halfway through step 2, and just starting to see glimpses of step 3, but this seems to be the natural progression. Once I learned to see clearly enough, I could learn social chess, and putting those social rules together until I start to see the points of leverage and power over groups has slowly started to reveal political gaming to me.