No, this is not a mere worldview phenomenon. Apparently the NYC LW group has successfully proved, contrary to all stereotypes, that rationality done right makes you a more attractive mate.
Contrast:
1) “How could you say that! You terrible mean person who wants to hurt my feelings!”
2) “You need to understand that when you say something like that, it makes me feel as though you’re trying to hurt my feelings, whether or not you do.”
3) “I’m sorry about how I reacted; even though I know on the level of rational probabilities that it’s extremely unlikely you meant to hurt my feelings, I’m still working on getting my brain to alieve that and not just believe it.”
Let’s say you’ve got a mate at level 1. Then you join a group in which you find (a) single people at level 3 and (b) a widespread understanding of the concept of the “sunk cost fallacy” and the importance of saying oops and changing your policies occasionally.
What do you think happens next?
And yes, NYC LW is demonstrating that this also works with women realizing that they can no longer stand to be around non-rationalist guys.
A relationship between two rationalists can be much happier and freer of drama. If Eliezer’s example isn’t clear enough, here’s another one.
“I’m worried about X.”
Non-rationalist: “I’ve told you a million times, that’s not gonna happen! Why can’t you trust me?”
Rationalist: “Ok, let’s go to Wikipedia, get some stats, and do the expected value calculation. Let me show you how unlikely this is.”
Which conversation ends in a fight? Which conversation ends in both people actually feeling more at ease?
There are female memes to the effect “Men are endearing fools,” and male memes to the effect “Women are beautiful fools.” But a fool eventually gets frustrating. It is an incredible relief to meet someone who isn’t foolish. “Whoa… you mean you can embrace an idea without being an uncritical fanatic? You mean you can actually make allowances for overconfidence bias, instead of taking reckless gambles? You can listen to the content of what I’m saying instead of the applause lights?” Having a rationalist partner means never having to say “Oh, you wouldn’t understand.”
Also, on cultishness: I saw an ad the other day for a new book on how to start a green activist organization. How to attract members, get speaking engagements, raise money, build momentum, etc. My first reaction was “Oh, that’s nice; I’m sure that book would be handy for environmentalists.” Then I thought “If we did half the stuff that tree-hugging college kids do, we’d call it Dark Arts and we’d be terrified of turning into a cult.”
World-destroying black hole caused by LHC. Autism through vaccination. Cancer from low intensity radio waves (i.e. a cell phone rather than a radar station). A meteorite hitting your house. A plane crashing into your house if you don’t live in a landing vector of an airport. Terrorists capturing the plane you are on if you fly rarely.
How much we should have been worried about a world destroying black hole as an effect of the LHC sounds hard to determine from wikipedia stats. Would you just look at “how often do people say that scientists are going destroy the world, and how often are they right”?
Only the other day, a friend called because she was worried about a possible bad consequence of a mistake she’d made. I immediately agreed that the bad consequence could follow from the mistake. But I went on to point out that it could only happen if three conditions are met, and all three are unlikely, so the probability of the bad consequence is very low.
The result was that she was genuinely reassured. If I had just tried to say “Oh, don’t worry, I’m sure it will be fine”, or tried to argue that it was impossible that it would go wrong, she would have seen that it was not impossible and rejected my reassurance.
I’m trying to turn her onto this site; at the moment she’s pretty explicitly saying she isn’t sure she wouldn’t prefer to hang on to her illusions.
Which conversation ends in a fight? Which conversation ends in both people actually feeling more at ease?
They don’t sound meaningfully different to me; you’re saying the same thing, just less emotively and more casually.
I saw someone recently suggest saying (in a sympathetic tone) “What are you planning to do?”. (Possibly preceded by something like “Yeah, I can understand why you would be”.) I wouldn’t expect good results from it in real life, but I like it anyway (and it might be better than some alternatives).
They’re not the same substance. The first way says “Trust me—I’m upset that you don’t take my word for an answer.” (And the reaction will be “You want me to just smile and nod to everything you say? What gives you the authority?”) The second way says “Ok, let’s see if your fears are justified by checking some objective source.” (And, ideally, the reaction will be “Oh, ok, I didn’t know that. Guess I shouldn’t have worried.” Of course, that depends on the worried partner being fairly rational too; a less rational person might just perceive a status grab and not notice the new information.)
The second way also takes advantage of psychological commitment and consistency. First, you commit to a procedure for determining whether to worry about X, like getting stats from Wikipedia and doing some arithmetic. Only then do you actually do this and find out what the answer is—and by then, no matter what the result, you’ve already made the decision to accept it!
If both participants are rational the second allows the worried party to get real data and execute an update, allowing a real emotional worry to go away. This allows people to have less anxiety about their relationships. This makes relationships with rationalists orders of magnitude better than relationships with people who are merely smart and reasonable.
I don’t think I could go back to dating a nonrationalist.
I’m not sure what you mean by rationality making you a more attractive mate. Bringing like-minded people together in a close-knit community will make them more likely to get together even if what the group has in common is halitosis: it doesn’t mean halitosis makes you a more attractive mate.
Perhaps the increase in confidence makes members more attractive, but that doesn’t mean rationality beats irrationality, just that a confident self-assured rationalist beats a shy uncertain one, which is hardly breaking news. Or am I missing something?
I also think that if anyone feels like they can’t stand to be around non-rationalists then they’ve handicapped themselves to an excessive degree. And also made the cult accusation more justified. If you mean can’t stand to be ‘with’ a non-rationalist, that’s more common, though still quite a strong, quasi-religious separation from the rest of the world.
Apparently I erred too much on the side of short and punchy. The scenario you outline seems like a special case of the point I was trying to make: namely, that changing minds in any way changes the basis of a relationship, and sometimes the relationship in its changed state will end up unstable. Even aside from your (entirely reasonable) scenario, there’s unfortunately no shortage of people who seem to respond poorly to rationality as implemented by LW in its current state (as opposed to idealized always-wins rationality), which presumably shares a number of characteristics with the flavor the New York guys are teaching.
Heck, a competent instrumental rationalist in an unhappy relationship is if nothing else probably more likely to hack off the bloody stump of the partnership than a non-rationalist (being undeterred by sunk costs and unwarranted feelings of obligation), and I’d expect that alone to generate a correlation between new membership in rationality-oriented communities and the termination of existing relationships.
And yeah, the cult accusations are annoying, which was the other point I apparently failed to convey. I’ve seen firsthand what real cult psychology looks like. It’s not at all pretty, and it’s not what we’ve got going on here.
3) “I’m sorry about how I reacted; even though I know on the level of rational probabilities that it’s extremely unlikely you meant to hurt my feelings, I’m still working on getting my brain to alieve that and not just believe it.”
Even as a rationalist, this line is a bit of a turnoff. If both spouses like this kind of phrasing, that’s great, but that’s an issue of shared culture, not inherent superiority of rationality. I preferred option 2.
Edit: more accurately, I think real rationalism promotes good relationships, but the Less Wrong lexicon is not inherently helpful.
Try this approximately-equivalent rephrasing: “I’m sorry about how I reacted; even though I know in my head that it’s extremely unlikely you meant to hurt my feelings, I’m still working on getting my gut reaction to match up with that.”
My version is still a bit stiff-sounding, and it attributes anatomically implausible acts to your digestive organs, but it keeps the message intact without sounding too far removed from normal diction.
I regularly say things like this to the people closest to me. The phrasing is only awkward the first time, when I have to do a bit of backstory and explanation. Thereafter, a short phrase suffices to indicate that this sort of phenomenon is occuring.
I consider it a good intermediate rationality tactic. I’m not yet to the point where noticing that a feeling (anger, sadness) is irrational lets me eliminate it. But explicitly noting what is going on to my converational partner helps keep both of us from letting the situation worsen.
3) “I’m sorry about how I reacted; even though I know on the level of rational probabilities that it’s extremely unlikely you meant to hurt my feelings, I’m still working on getting my brain to alieve that and not just believe it.”
Is lack of malice always enough?
What’s a rationalist way of handling repeated inattention?
If there are no signs of improvement despite communicating dissatisfaction with this, update your beliefs on how important you really are to them (also the chances that they will leave you when someone more exciting comes along), reflect on how much this matters to your own satisfaction with the relationship & then take a continue or quit decision?
It’s actually surprising how quickly applying rationality can make one more attractive. Winning at nutrition, fashion, fitness take very little time if you’re body is at all typical, especially if you’re in a community where resources can be pooled. Posture and confidence are harder, but not much. The fact that there are virtuous cycles there also help.
I’ve seen real gains in attractiveness over the past several years, with noticeable progress on the scale of months. I’ve achieved gains of 3-4 points on a 10 point scale.
I’d expect that to happen in any group that has an effect on its members’ worldview. That’s a necessary but not a sufficient condition for culthood.
No, this is not a mere worldview phenomenon. Apparently the NYC LW group has successfully proved, contrary to all stereotypes, that rationality done right makes you a more attractive mate.
Contrast:
1) “How could you say that! You terrible mean person who wants to hurt my feelings!”
2) “You need to understand that when you say something like that, it makes me feel as though you’re trying to hurt my feelings, whether or not you do.”
3) “I’m sorry about how I reacted; even though I know on the level of rational probabilities that it’s extremely unlikely you meant to hurt my feelings, I’m still working on getting my brain to alieve that and not just believe it.”
Let’s say you’ve got a mate at level 1. Then you join a group in which you find (a) single people at level 3 and (b) a widespread understanding of the concept of the “sunk cost fallacy” and the importance of saying oops and changing your policies occasionally.
What do you think happens next?
And yes, NYC LW is demonstrating that this also works with women realizing that they can no longer stand to be around non-rationalist guys.
PS: Cultish countercultishness. I’m actually pretty sick of hearing someone yell “Cult!” every time rationalists try to coordinate as well as a model railroad club. Why Our Kind Can’t Cooperate.
A relationship between two rationalists can be much happier and freer of drama. If Eliezer’s example isn’t clear enough, here’s another one.
“I’m worried about X.”
Non-rationalist: “I’ve told you a million times, that’s not gonna happen! Why can’t you trust me?”
Rationalist: “Ok, let’s go to Wikipedia, get some stats, and do the expected value calculation. Let me show you how unlikely this is.”
Which conversation ends in a fight? Which conversation ends in both people actually feeling more at ease?
There are female memes to the effect “Men are endearing fools,” and male memes to the effect “Women are beautiful fools.” But a fool eventually gets frustrating. It is an incredible relief to meet someone who isn’t foolish. “Whoa… you mean you can embrace an idea without being an uncritical fanatic? You mean you can actually make allowances for overconfidence bias, instead of taking reckless gambles? You can listen to the content of what I’m saying instead of the applause lights?” Having a rationalist partner means never having to say “Oh, you wouldn’t understand.”
Also, on cultishness: I saw an ad the other day for a new book on how to start a green activist organization. How to attract members, get speaking engagements, raise money, build momentum, etc. My first reaction was “Oh, that’s nice; I’m sure that book would be handy for environmentalists.” Then I thought “If we did half the stuff that tree-hugging college kids do, we’d call it Dark Arts and we’d be terrified of turning into a cult.”
Just curious: what would be a concrete example of an X that would provide for a realistic exchange that fits this pattern?
World-destroying black hole caused by LHC. Autism through vaccination. Cancer from low intensity radio waves (i.e. a cell phone rather than a radar station). A meteorite hitting your house. A plane crashing into your house if you don’t live in a landing vector of an airport. Terrorists capturing the plane you are on if you fly rarely.
Which of these is a major stressor on romantic relationships?
Not that it’s happened to me, but I can easily see “autism through vaccination” fitting into the scenario.
How much we should have been worried about a world destroying black hole as an effect of the LHC sounds hard to determine from wikipedia stats. Would you just look at “how often do people say that scientists are going destroy the world, and how often are they right”?
Only the other day, a friend called because she was worried about a possible bad consequence of a mistake she’d made. I immediately agreed that the bad consequence could follow from the mistake. But I went on to point out that it could only happen if three conditions are met, and all three are unlikely, so the probability of the bad consequence is very low.
The result was that she was genuinely reassured. If I had just tried to say “Oh, don’t worry, I’m sure it will be fine”, or tried to argue that it was impossible that it would go wrong, she would have seen that it was not impossible and rejected my reassurance.
I’m trying to turn her onto this site; at the moment she’s pretty explicitly saying she isn’t sure she wouldn’t prefer to hang on to her illusions.
They don’t sound meaningfully different to me; you’re saying the same thing, just less emotively and more casually.
I saw someone recently suggest saying (in a sympathetic tone) “What are you planning to do?”. (Possibly preceded by something like “Yeah, I can understand why you would be”.) I wouldn’t expect good results from it in real life, but I like it anyway (and it might be better than some alternatives).
They’re not the same substance. The first way says “Trust me—I’m upset that you don’t take my word for an answer.” (And the reaction will be “You want me to just smile and nod to everything you say? What gives you the authority?”) The second way says “Ok, let’s see if your fears are justified by checking some objective source.” (And, ideally, the reaction will be “Oh, ok, I didn’t know that. Guess I shouldn’t have worried.” Of course, that depends on the worried partner being fairly rational too; a less rational person might just perceive a status grab and not notice the new information.)
The second way also takes advantage of psychological commitment and consistency. First, you commit to a procedure for determining whether to worry about X, like getting stats from Wikipedia and doing some arithmetic. Only then do you actually do this and find out what the answer is—and by then, no matter what the result, you’ve already made the decision to accept it!
Definitely a handy technique.
If both participants are rational the second allows the worried party to get real data and execute an update, allowing a real emotional worry to go away. This allows people to have less anxiety about their relationships. This makes relationships with rationalists orders of magnitude better than relationships with people who are merely smart and reasonable.
I don’t think I could go back to dating a nonrationalist.
I’m not sure what you mean by rationality making you a more attractive mate. Bringing like-minded people together in a close-knit community will make them more likely to get together even if what the group has in common is halitosis: it doesn’t mean halitosis makes you a more attractive mate.
Perhaps the increase in confidence makes members more attractive, but that doesn’t mean rationality beats irrationality, just that a confident self-assured rationalist beats a shy uncertain one, which is hardly breaking news. Or am I missing something?
I also think that if anyone feels like they can’t stand to be around non-rationalists then they’ve handicapped themselves to an excessive degree. And also made the cult accusation more justified. If you mean can’t stand to be ‘with’ a non-rationalist, that’s more common, though still quite a strong, quasi-religious separation from the rest of the world.
Apparently I erred too much on the side of short and punchy. The scenario you outline seems like a special case of the point I was trying to make: namely, that changing minds in any way changes the basis of a relationship, and sometimes the relationship in its changed state will end up unstable. Even aside from your (entirely reasonable) scenario, there’s unfortunately no shortage of people who seem to respond poorly to rationality as implemented by LW in its current state (as opposed to idealized always-wins rationality), which presumably shares a number of characteristics with the flavor the New York guys are teaching.
Heck, a competent instrumental rationalist in an unhappy relationship is if nothing else probably more likely to hack off the bloody stump of the partnership than a non-rationalist (being undeterred by sunk costs and unwarranted feelings of obligation), and I’d expect that alone to generate a correlation between new membership in rationality-oriented communities and the termination of existing relationships.
And yeah, the cult accusations are annoying, which was the other point I apparently failed to convey. I’ve seen firsthand what real cult psychology looks like. It’s not at all pretty, and it’s not what we’ve got going on here.
For the record, saying “cult alert” might not constitute an accusation, but rather “you need to watch your PR”.
Even as a rationalist, this line is a bit of a turnoff. If both spouses like this kind of phrasing, that’s great, but that’s an issue of shared culture, not inherent superiority of rationality. I preferred option 2.
Edit: more accurately, I think real rationalism promotes good relationships, but the Less Wrong lexicon is not inherently helpful.
Try this approximately-equivalent rephrasing: “I’m sorry about how I reacted; even though I know in my head that it’s extremely unlikely you meant to hurt my feelings, I’m still working on getting my gut reaction to match up with that.”
My version is still a bit stiff-sounding, and it attributes anatomically implausible acts to your digestive organs, but it keeps the message intact without sounding too far removed from normal diction.
I regularly say things like this to the people closest to me. The phrasing is only awkward the first time, when I have to do a bit of backstory and explanation. Thereafter, a short phrase suffices to indicate that this sort of phenomenon is occuring.
I consider it a good intermediate rationality tactic. I’m not yet to the point where noticing that a feeling (anger, sadness) is irrational lets me eliminate it. But explicitly noting what is going on to my converational partner helps keep both of us from letting the situation worsen.
Yeah, that’s a little better.
Is lack of malice always enough?
What’s a rationalist way of handling repeated inattention?
The rationalist way of handling X is whatever produces the best outcome overall.
If there are no signs of improvement despite communicating dissatisfaction with this, update your beliefs on how important you really are to them (also the chances that they will leave you when someone more exciting comes along), reflect on how much this matters to your own satisfaction with the relationship & then take a continue or quit decision?
It’s actually surprising how quickly applying rationality can make one more attractive. Winning at nutrition, fashion, fitness take very little time if you’re body is at all typical, especially if you’re in a community where resources can be pooled. Posture and confidence are harder, but not much. The fact that there are virtuous cycles there also help.
I’ve seen real gains in attractiveness over the past several years, with noticeable progress on the scale of months. I’ve achieved gains of 3-4 points on a 10 point scale.