I assume by “very differently,” you mean “would not have included outright falsehoods.”
The first of many differences, yes. I also would have emphasized the part where I thought the evidence something was wrong was obvious and you didn’t (in ways that were visible to me), not the part where you proactively coordinated evidence sharing when it was personally costly to you, which was a social good.
I did not think you were claiming perfection, but I think “It’s like being a native French speaker and dropping in on a high school French class in a South Carolina public school” is a very strong claim of superiority, far beyond “I notice stuff in this domain a lot more often than most people”. Native speakers can be wrong, but in a disagreement with a disengaged high schooler you will basically always take the word of the native speaker. I additionally think the problems in iteration I outlined in a sister thread really put a ceiling on your insights, although admittedly that affects analysis and improvements much more than noticing.
Also, re: evidence that something was wrong was obvious
I dunno. This sounds like an excuse, and an excuse is all that many people will hear, but:
My current model is that Brent, whether consciously or unconsciously/instinctively, did in fact do something resembling cultivating me as a shield, by never egregiously misbehaving in my sight. And many of the other people around me, seeing egregious misbehavior somewhat often, assumed (reasonably) that I must be seeing it, too, and not minding.
But after it all started to come out, there were something like a dozen fully dealbreaking anecdotes handed to me by not-necessarily-specifically-but-people-in-the-reference-class-of Rob, Oli, Nate, Logan, Nick, Val, etc., any one of which would have caused me to spring into action, except they just never mentioned it and I was never in the room to see it.
FWIW: I believe you that Brent cultivated you, and I think you talking about that has been really useful in educating people (including me) about how toxic people do that. I do think it had to be some damn strong cultivation to overcome the baseline expectations set by his FB posts, and I’d be interested in hearing you talk about what he did to overcome that baseline- not because I think you were especially susceptible, but because whatever he did worked on a lot of people, and that makes it useful to understand.
Well, for starters, I had unfollowed him on FB by about 2016 as a result of being just continually frustrated by his relentless pessimism. So I probably missed a whole lot of what others saw as red flags.
I think “It’s like being a native French speaker and dropping in on a high school French class in a South Carolina public school” is a very strong claim of superiority, far beyond “I notice stuff in this domain a lot more often than most people”.
I find this helpful, and I think it’s a fair and reasonable reading that I should have ruled out.
What I meant by choosing that example in particular was that French contains a lot of sounds which English speakers literally can’t perceive at first, until they practice and build up some other background knowledge. That’s … not entirely different from a claim of superiority, but I tried to defuse the sense of superiority by noting that a lot of it comes from just relentlessly attending to the domain—”it’s not that I’m doing anything magic here, many of the people I’m hanging out with are smarter or conscientiouser, it’s just that I happen to have put in more reps is all.”
Ah, this makes sense and is helpful, and now that you’ve spelled it out I can see how it connects to other things in the post in ways I didn’t before. It also makes cases of failure much less relevant, since no one has all phenomes.
Worth noting that I noticed the kerning example seemed very different than the native speaker example, but the “native speaker in a room full of bored teenagers” claim felt so strong I resolved in that direction.
The first of many differences, yes. I also would have emphasized the part where I thought the evidence something was wrong was obvious and you didn’t (in ways that were visible to me), not the part where you proactively coordinated evidence sharing when it was personally costly to you, which was a social good.
I did not think you were claiming perfection, but I think “It’s like being a native French speaker and dropping in on a high school French class in a South Carolina public school” is a very strong claim of superiority, far beyond “I notice stuff in this domain a lot more often than most people”. Native speakers can be wrong, but in a disagreement with a disengaged high schooler you will basically always take the word of the native speaker. I additionally think the problems in iteration I outlined in a sister thread really put a ceiling on your insights, although admittedly that affects analysis and improvements much more than noticing.
Also, re: evidence that something was wrong was obvious
I dunno. This sounds like an excuse, and an excuse is all that many people will hear, but:
My current model is that Brent, whether consciously or unconsciously/instinctively, did in fact do something resembling cultivating me as a shield, by never egregiously misbehaving in my sight. And many of the other people around me, seeing egregious misbehavior somewhat often, assumed (reasonably) that I must be seeing it, too, and not minding.
But after it all started to come out, there were something like a dozen fully dealbreaking anecdotes handed to me by not-necessarily-specifically-but-people-in-the-reference-class-of Rob, Oli, Nate, Logan, Nick, Val, etc., any one of which would have caused me to spring into action, except they just never mentioned it and I was never in the room to see it.
FWIW: I believe you that Brent cultivated you, and I think you talking about that has been really useful in educating people (including me) about how toxic people do that. I do think it had to be some damn strong cultivation to overcome the baseline expectations set by his FB posts, and I’d be interested in hearing you talk about what he did to overcome that baseline- not because I think you were especially susceptible, but because whatever he did worked on a lot of people, and that makes it useful to understand.
Well, for starters, I had unfollowed him on FB by about 2016 as a result of being just continually frustrated by his relentless pessimism. So I probably missed a whole lot of what others saw as red flags.
This indeed changes my opinion a fair bit, and I should have had it as a more active hypothesis.
I find this helpful, and I think it’s a fair and reasonable reading that I should have ruled out.
What I meant by choosing that example in particular was that French contains a lot of sounds which English speakers literally can’t perceive at first, until they practice and build up some other background knowledge. That’s … not entirely different from a claim of superiority, but I tried to defuse the sense of superiority by noting that a lot of it comes from just relentlessly attending to the domain—”it’s not that I’m doing anything magic here, many of the people I’m hanging out with are smarter or conscientiouser, it’s just that I happen to have put in more reps is all.”
It didn’t work.
Ah, this makes sense and is helpful, and now that you’ve spelled it out I can see how it connects to other things in the post in ways I didn’t before. It also makes cases of failure much less relevant, since no one has all phenomes.
Worth noting that I noticed the kerning example seemed very different than the native speaker example, but the “native speaker in a room full of bored teenagers” claim felt so strong I resolved in that direction.