For years, I’ve been aware of myself “activating my specificity powers” multiple times per day, but it’s kind of a lonely power to have. “I’m going to swivel my brain around and ride it in the general→specific direction. Care to join me?” is not something you can say in most group settings. It’s hard to explain to people that I’m not just asking them to be specific right now, in this one context. I wish I could make them see that specificity is just this massively under-appreciated cross-domain power. That’s why I wanted this sequence to exist.
I gratuitously violated a bunch of important LW norms
As Kaj insightfully observed last year, choosing Uber as the original post’s object-level subject made it a political mind-killer.
On top of that, the original post’s only role model of a specificity-empowered rationalist was this repulsive “Liron” character who visibly got off on raising his own status by demolishing people’s claims.
Many commenters took me to task on the two issues above, as well as raising other valid issues, like whether the post implies that specificity is always the right power to activate in every situation.
The voting for this post was probably a rare combination: many upvotes, many downvotes, and presumably many conflicted non-voters who liked the core lesson but didn’t want to upvote the norm violations. I’d love to go back in time and launch this again without the double norm violation self-own.
I’m revising it
Today I rewrote a big chunk of my dialogue with Steve, with the goal of making my character a better role model of a LessWrong-style rationalist, and just being overall more clearly explained. For example, in the revised version I talk about how asking Steve to clarify his specific point isn’t my sneaky fully-general argument trick to prove that Steve’s wrong and I’m right, but rather, it’s taking the first step on the road to Double Crux.
I also changed Steve’s claim to be about a fictional company called Acme, instead of talking about the politically-charged Uber.
I think it’s worth sharing
Since writing this last year, I’ve received a dozen or so messages from people thanking me and remarking that they think about it surprisingly often in their daily lives. I’m proud to help teach the world about specificity on behalf of the LW community that taught it to me, and I’m happy to revise this further to make it something we’re proud of.
I <3 Specificity
For years, I’ve been aware of myself “activating my specificity powers” multiple times per day, but it’s kind of a lonely power to have. “I’m going to swivel my brain around and ride it in the general→specific direction. Care to join me?” is not something you can say in most group settings. It’s hard to explain to people that I’m not just asking them to be specific right now, in this one context. I wish I could make them see that specificity is just this massively under-appreciated cross-domain power. That’s why I wanted this sequence to exist.
I gratuitously violated a bunch of important LW norms
As Kaj insightfully observed last year, choosing Uber as the original post’s object-level subject made it a political mind-killer.
On top of that, the original post’s only role model of a specificity-empowered rationalist was this repulsive “Liron” character who visibly got off on raising his own status by demolishing people’s claims.
Many commenters took me to task on the two issues above, as well as raising other valid issues, like whether the post implies that specificity is always the right power to activate in every situation.
The voting for this post was probably a rare combination: many upvotes, many downvotes, and presumably many conflicted non-voters who liked the core lesson but didn’t want to upvote the norm violations. I’d love to go back in time and launch this again without the double norm violation self-own.
I’m revising it
Today I rewrote a big chunk of my dialogue with Steve, with the goal of making my character a better role model of a LessWrong-style rationalist, and just being overall more clearly explained. For example, in the revised version I talk about how asking Steve to clarify his specific point isn’t my sneaky fully-general argument trick to prove that Steve’s wrong and I’m right, but rather, it’s taking the first step on the road to Double Crux.
I also changed Steve’s claim to be about a fictional company called Acme, instead of talking about the politically-charged Uber.
I think it’s worth sharing
Since writing this last year, I’ve received a dozen or so messages from people thanking me and remarking that they think about it surprisingly often in their daily lives. I’m proud to help teach the world about specificity on behalf of the LW community that taught it to me, and I’m happy to revise this further to make it something we’re proud of.