There’s a lot I have to say in response to your comment.
I’ll start with some meta commentary:
From time to time, I think back to the part of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone where Harry, Hermione and Ron become loyal to one another—the point where they build the strength of relationship where they can face down Voldemort without worrying that one another may leave out of fear.
It is after Harry and Ron run in to save Hermione from a troll.
Harry and Ron never ran in to save Hermione from a troll, never became loyal to one another as a result, never built any strength of relationship, and never faced down Voldemort. None of these events ever happened; and Harry, Ron, and Hermione, in fact, never existed.
I know, I know: I’m being pedantic, nitpicking, of course you didn’t mean to suggest that these were actual events, you were only using them as an example, etc. I understand. But as Eliezer wrote:
What’s wrong with using movies or novels as starting points for the discussion? No one’s claiming that it’s true, after all. Where is the lie, where is the rationalist sin? …
Not every misstep in the precise dance of rationality consists of outright belief in a falsehood; there are subtler ways to go wrong.
Are the events depicted in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone—a children’s story about wizards (written by an inexperienced writer)—representative of how actual relationships work, between adults, in our actual reality, which does not contain magic, wizards, or having to face down trolls in between classes? If they are, then you should have no trouble calling to mind, and presenting, illustrative examples from real life. And if you find yourself hard-pressed to do this, well…
Let me speak more generally, and also more directly. As I have previously obliquely suggested, I think it is high time for a moratorium, on Less Wrong, on fictional examples used to illustrate claims about real people, real relationships, real interpersonal dynamics, real social situations, etc. If I had my way, this would be the rule: if you can’t say it without reference to examples from fiction, then don’t say it. (As for using Harry Potter as a source of examples—that should be considered extremely harmful, IMHO.)
That this sort of thing distorts your thinking is, I think, too obvious to belabor, and in any case Eliezer did an excellent job with the above-linked Sequence post. But another problem is that it also muddies communication, such as in the case of this line:
So it is not clear to me that you can get to the stage of true loyalty without facing some trolls together, and risking actually losing.
In the real world, there are no trolls. Clearly, you’re speaking metaphorically. But what is the literal interpretation? What are “trolls”, in this analogy? Precisely? Is it “literal life or death situations, where you risk actually, physically dying?” Surely not… but then—what? I really don’t know. (I have some thoughts on what is and what is not necessary to “get to the stage of true loyalty”, but I really have no desire to respond to a highly ambiguous claim; it seems likely to result in us wasting each other’s time and talking past one another.)
Ok, enough meta, now for some object-level commentary:
The second and more important question I want to ask is: do you think that having loyal friends is sufficient to achieve your goals without regularly feeling like your soul is being torn apart?
Having loyal friends is not sufficient to achieve your goals, period, without even tacking on any additional criteria. This seems very obvious to me, and it seems unlikely that you wouldn’t have noticed this, so I have to assume I have somehow misunderstood your question. Please clarify.
Here are some updates about the world I might still have to make:
Of the potential updates you list, it seems to me that some of them are not like the others. To wit:
My entire social circle gives me social gradients in directions I do not endorse, and I should leave and find a different community
In my case, I have great difficulty imagining what this would mean for me. I do not think it applies. I don’t know the details of your social situation, but I conjecture that the cure for this sort of possibility is to find your social belonging less in “communities” and more in personal friendships.
There is likely to be an existential catastrophe in the next 50 years and I should entirely re-orient my life around preventing it
Note that this combines a judgment of fact with… an estimate of effectiveness of a certain projected course of action, I suppose? My suggestion would be to disentangle these things. Once this is done, I don’t see why there should be any more “soul tearing apart” involved here than in any of a variety of other, much more mundane, scenarios.
The institution I’m rising up in is fundamentally broken, and for me to make real progress on problems I care about I should quit (e.g. academia, a bad startup).
Indeed, I have experience with this sort of thing. Knowing that, regardless of the outcome of the decision in question, I would have the unshakable support of friends and family, removed more or less all the “soul tearing apart” from the equation.
All the years of effort I’ve spent on a project or up-skilling in a certain domain has been either useless or actively counterproductive (e.g. working in politics, a startup that hasn’t found product-market fit) and I need to give up and start over.
Indeed, this can be soul-wrenching. My comment on the previous point applies, though, of course, in this case it does not go nearly as far toward full amelioration as in the previous case. But, of course, this is precisely the sort of situation one should strive to avoid (cf. the principle of least regret). Total avoidance is impossible, of course, and this sort of situation is the (hopefully) rare exception to the heuristic I noted.
Given the world I observe, it seems impossible for me to not pass through events and updates that cause me significant emotional pain and significant loss of local social status, whilst also optimising for my long term goals. So I want my close allies, the people loyal to me, the people I trust, to have the conversational tools (cf. my comment above) to help me keep my basic wits of rationality about me while I’m going through these difficult updates and making these hard decisions.
Meaning no offense, but: if you’re losing significant (and important) social status in any of the situations listed above, then you are, I claim, doing something wrong (specifically, organizing your social environment very sub-optimally).
And in those cases where great strain is unavoidable (such as in the last example you listed), it is precisely a cold, practical, and un-softened judgment, which I most desire and most greatly value, from my closest friends. In such cases—where the great difficulty of the situation is most likely to distort my own rationality—“nurturing” takes considerably less caring and investment, and is much, much less valuable, than true honesty, and a clear-eyed perspective on the situation.
There’s a lot I have to say in response to your comment.
I’ll start with some meta commentary:
Harry and Ron never ran in to save Hermione from a troll, never became loyal to one another as a result, never built any strength of relationship, and never faced down Voldemort. None of these events ever happened; and Harry, Ron, and Hermione, in fact, never existed.
I know, I know: I’m being pedantic, nitpicking, of course you didn’t mean to suggest that these were actual events, you were only using them as an example, etc. I understand. But as Eliezer wrote:
Are the events depicted in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone—a children’s story about wizards (written by an inexperienced writer)—representative of how actual relationships work, between adults, in our actual reality, which does not contain magic, wizards, or having to face down trolls in between classes? If they are, then you should have no trouble calling to mind, and presenting, illustrative examples from real life. And if you find yourself hard-pressed to do this, well…
Let me speak more generally, and also more directly. As I have previously obliquely suggested, I think it is high time for a moratorium, on Less Wrong, on fictional examples used to illustrate claims about real people, real relationships, real interpersonal dynamics, real social situations, etc. If I had my way, this would be the rule: if you can’t say it without reference to examples from fiction, then don’t say it. (As for using Harry Potter as a source of examples—that should be considered extremely harmful, IMHO.)
That this sort of thing distorts your thinking is, I think, too obvious to belabor, and in any case Eliezer did an excellent job with the above-linked Sequence post. But another problem is that it also muddies communication, such as in the case of this line:
In the real world, there are no trolls. Clearly, you’re speaking metaphorically. But what is the literal interpretation? What are “trolls”, in this analogy? Precisely? Is it “literal life or death situations, where you risk actually, physically dying?” Surely not… but then—what? I really don’t know. (I have some thoughts on what is and what is not necessary to “get to the stage of true loyalty”, but I really have no desire to respond to a highly ambiguous claim; it seems likely to result in us wasting each other’s time and talking past one another.)
Ok, enough meta, now for some object-level commentary:
Having loyal friends is not sufficient to achieve your goals, period, without even tacking on any additional criteria. This seems very obvious to me, and it seems unlikely that you wouldn’t have noticed this, so I have to assume I have somehow misunderstood your question. Please clarify.
Of the potential updates you list, it seems to me that some of them are not like the others. To wit:
In my case, I have great difficulty imagining what this would mean for me. I do not think it applies. I don’t know the details of your social situation, but I conjecture that the cure for this sort of possibility is to find your social belonging less in “communities” and more in personal friendships.
Note that this combines a judgment of fact with… an estimate of effectiveness of a certain projected course of action, I suppose? My suggestion would be to disentangle these things. Once this is done, I don’t see why there should be any more “soul tearing apart” involved here than in any of a variety of other, much more mundane, scenarios.
Indeed, I have experience with this sort of thing. Knowing that, regardless of the outcome of the decision in question, I would have the unshakable support of friends and family, removed more or less all the “soul tearing apart” from the equation.
Indeed, this can be soul-wrenching. My comment on the previous point applies, though, of course, in this case it does not go nearly as far toward full amelioration as in the previous case. But, of course, this is precisely the sort of situation one should strive to avoid (cf. the principle of least regret). Total avoidance is impossible, of course, and this sort of situation is the (hopefully) rare exception to the heuristic I noted.
Meaning no offense, but: if you’re losing significant (and important) social status in any of the situations listed above, then you are, I claim, doing something wrong (specifically, organizing your social environment very sub-optimally).
And in those cases where great strain is unavoidable (such as in the last example you listed), it is precisely a cold, practical, and un-softened judgment, which I most desire and most greatly value, from my closest friends. In such cases—where the great difficulty of the situation is most likely to distort my own rationality—“nurturing” takes considerably less caring and investment, and is much, much less valuable, than true honesty, and a clear-eyed perspective on the situation.