To take a prominent example, it’s impossible to discuss the inferences that can be made from a woman’s sexual history without getting into the problems described above. (Especially considering that statistically accurate criteria of this sort are, as a purely factual matter, highly asymmetrical across the sexes.) Or similarly, any sorts of inferences that can be made from looks and behavior, where it’s usually impossible to even get to a rational discussion of whether they are statistically accurate, since any such discussion will at the same time hit the ideological boo light of “prejudice” and personally aggravate those to whom these inferences apply personally (or who have important people in their lives in this category, or who will perhaps just react for signaling reasons).
On these topics, there really is no way to avoid either sounding crude and offensive or being misleading by omitting important elements of the truth.
Perhaps if you started by sharing your dataset first (with names changed to protect the guilty, etc.), then the conclusions you drew from it, and only afterwards the advice you would give to a younger version of yourself?
So basically which stereotypes are accurate? If you’re willing, I’d like to know what specific inferences can be made from sexual history, looks, or behavior: you can PM me. I assure you it won’t personally aggravate me. Are you thinking lots of partners/good looks correspond to intimacy issues, low self-esteem, or craziness?
Well, it’s a topic for a whole book, not a brief comment buried deep in a vast old thread. But for some concrete examples, see e.g. the comments I left in this subthread.
So basically, if a guy tries to have a long-term relationship with a girl who’s had a lot of partners, he better study Game or there’s a good chance she’ll get bored, because she’s used to very attractive guys? That makes sense; I wouldn’t think of that as very controversial. Of course, that ignores that some women actually do also make an effort to work on their long-term relationship skills and find ways to deal with periods where their partners seem less attractive.
I didn’t see anything about looks in that subthread; does something similar apply to dating someone very good-looking?
By “looks” I didn’t mean the level of attractiveness, but more generally, all clues available from people’s appearance. Clearly, this is going to lead to strife once people start recognizing themselves, or someone they care about, in the criteria under discussion. (This may in fact be due to understandable annoyance on part of someone who represents an actual statistical exception, but again, this makes it no less a barrier to rational discussion.)
Re: relationships with women who’ve had a lot of partners, the problem is that for a typical man, the extreme skew of the male attractiveness distribution and the asymmetry of the male-female mating strategies mean that even with some dedication to studying and practice of game, he’ll likely end up in an unfavorable position. But again, talking about this stuff in plainer and more concrete ways is hard to do without crossing the bounds that have repeatedly shown to be a trigger of discourse breakdown on LW.
The obvious question is, what about female partners, or group sex partners with the guy in question? Do they count against the girl?
I’m not seeing why the asymmetry means that the guy will end up in an unfavorable position even if he knows how to be attractive enough. Other than the girl finding the guy unattractive, I’m not sure what else you’re hinting at. Given that I like girls who have had large numbers of partners, is there anything else I need to know or do or be aware of?
Re: looks, are we talking the “blonde = ditzy, glasses = geeky” level of stereotype? Or are you talking about the way someone’s mood, shyness, introversion, and so forth can be read from body language? Or something as straightforward as someone wearing a lot of makeup spent a lot of time on her appearance, and thus probably wants attention/cares what people think of her a lot?
The only “discourse breakdown” I’ve seen is the crowd that thinks any attempt to improve dating skills is fake and evil, and I don’t really care about them. I think we’re past the reflexive “pickup = evil” by now. I’d really like to hear this stuff talked about in plainer and more concrete ways, or at least PM me with a few specifics!
One idea: we’ve had a thread on LW where people post their online dating profiles for feedback. I think it’d be an interesting game to post pictures of people, either ours or other random pictures, and see what kind of guesses we come up with about them based on clues from their appearance.
The obvious question is, what about female partners, or group sex partners with the guy in question? Do they count against the girl?
Why would it be “obvious”? Even completely ignoring these questions still leads to useful insight for the majority of cases in practice.
To answer your question, we’d need to get into a discussion of the motivational mechanisms of the behaviors you mention, but that is certain to lead to even more controversial questions, which I’d really prefer not to get into.
I’m not seeing why the asymmetry means that the guy will end up in an unfavorable position even if he knows how to be attractive enough. Other than the girl finding the guy unattractive, I’m not sure what else you’re hinting at. Given that I like girls who have had large numbers of partners, is there anything else I need to know or do or be aware of?
That depends on what exactly you’re aiming for. Saying “I like girls who [have the characteristic X]” sounds as if you like such girls for non-serious, shorter-term relationships in which you have the upper hand. Clearly, you shouldn’t worry too much if it’s really just a throwaway relationship that will soon end one way or another. (Still, you should watch for traits that indicate propensity for troublesome behaviors that can get you into unpleasant situations, or even serious problems, even in the context of such a relationship. What’s indicated by sheer partner count in this regard, independent of the mechanism I described earlier, is another can of worms I’d rather not open.)
On the other hand, if you’re aiming for a committed relationship, a woman’s high number of previous partners (which in fact doesn’t even have to be extremely high) definitely makes the deck stacked against you. This follows from the basic statistics of the situation, and “if he knows how to be attractive enough” is a can-opener assumption in this context.
The only “discourse breakdown” I’ve seen is the crowd that thinks any attempt to improve dating skills is fake and evil, and I don’t really care about them. I think we’re past the reflexive “pickup = evil” by now. I’d really like to hear this stuff talked about in plainer and more concrete ways, or at least PM me with a few specifics!
In fact, the situation has gotten significantly worse on LW in this regard since I started commenting here around two years ago. Back then, it seemed to me like discussions of these topics on LW might result in interesting insight whose worth would be greater than the trouble. However, ever since then, a string of ever worse and more cringe-worthy failures that occurred whenever these topics were opened has convinced me in the opposite.
As for the specifics and straight talk, there are plenty of blogs and forums where such things can be discussed ad infinitum. (Though admittedly these days none are anywhere as good as what could be found during the heyday of the contrarian blogosphere some years ago.) I really don’t see any point in trying to open them in a forum like this one, which has conclusively shown to be a bad place for them.
Why would it be “obvious”? Even completely ignoring these questions still leads to useful insight for the majority of cases in practice.
It was the first thought I had. The association in my mind went something like
girl with lots of partners ---> girl is sexually awesome ---> female partners and group sex ---> if someone thinks having multiple partners is bad, is that bad?
Saying “I like girls who [have the characteristic X]” sounds as if you like such girls for non-serious, shorter-term relationships in which you have the upper hand
No, I meant long term.
To answer your question, we’d need to get into a discussion of the motivational mechanisms of the behaviors you mention, but that is certain to lead to even more controversial questions, which I’d really prefer not to get into.
(Still, you should watch for traits that indicate propensity for troublesome behaviors that can get you into unpleasant situations, or even serious problems, even in the context of such a relationship. What’s indicated by sheer partner count in this regard, independent of the mechanism I described earlier, is another can of worms I’d rather not open.)
and “if he knows how to be attractive enough” is a can-opener assumption in this context.
I am incredibly curious about your thoughts in these matters. You hint lots of things but don’t spell them out. I disagree with your assertions that LW’s gotten worse and is a bad place for these discussions, and I get that you don’t want to post them publicly on LW, but can you PM me? I promise to keep them private if you’d like.
As for the specifics and straight talk, there are plenty of blogs and forums where such things can be discussed ad infinitum.
The ones I’ve seen either a) take weird conservative positions, b) are filled with bitterness and hatred towards women, c) deteriorate into madonna/whore complexes, slut-shaming, and name calling, without much intelligent discussion or reasoning, or d) seem sane to me, but agree with my viewpoint on things.
Besides, I want to know what you think. You’re sane, reasonable, intelligent, and have a viewpoint that’s very different from mine, but seems like it might have a lot to offer. Please PM me. You’re giving me half of thoughts that I haven’t seen anywhere else, and can’t find on fora elsewhere, and I want the other half!
On the other hand, if you’re aiming for a committed relationship, a woman’s high number of previous partners (which in fact doesn’t even have to be extremely high) definitely makes the deck stacked against you. This follows from the basic statistics of the situation,
The obvious question is, what about female partners, or group sex partners with the guy in question? Do they count against the girl?
Rather than counting things for or against the girl how about we frame it in terms of to what extent these new behaviors (female partners and group sex with you) also fit into the previously mentioned correlation cluster.
This is of course a more accurate and useful way of stating the problem in general terms.
The specific question still stands, though. Let’s say it’s true that a guy dating a girl who’s had many past partners will have certain problems, as VM suggests. Do those problems apply to the same extent if, say, half or more were female? Or if they were all during group sex with the guy?
Do those problems apply to the same extent if, say, half or more were female? Or if they were all during group sex with the guy?
I would be rather surprised if this has been studied in the same way that the “sexual partners—divorce rate” correlations have been. That said, the second question seems to be equivalent to “does having group sex cause or correlate to lower expected duration of the pair bond”. An answer of “Yes, but it’s worth it!” seems plausible.
As for correlations between bulk female-female liaisons in the history of the female partner of a heterosexual pair bond and pair bond duration and level of social game required by the male partner—the only direct evidence I have been exposed to is in the form of anecdotal evidence from my own experience and that of reports. My prediction must be based primarily on what I know about human psychology in general—things like conservativeness and the ‘openness’ personality trait. The prediction I would give is “makes less difference than if all those liaisons were with males but still makes a difference in the same direction”.
A better way to go about it would be slipping Vlad some drug that will overwhelm his barriers and make him blabber out the horrible truth. Look at his comment history and you’ll see that no-one ever got anything serious out of him after him dropping such hints with just talk.;)
(I might be joking now, but my jimmies are overall quite rustled with his entire soap opera; moreso when I consider how clear-headed and constructive he can be with simple and ideology-free comments.)
Based on the comments you’ve left so far in response to what I’ve been writing, I estimate a low probability that you are genuinely intrigued by what I might think about certain questions, and a much higher probability that you are baiting.
However, just in case the less probable hypothesis is true, I will for once respond to you. Namely, if you want me to talk about things that I’m reluctant to discuss because I’m not sure if it’s worth the controversy it will cause, then I’d first like to see that you’re making some effort to understand the arguments that I have already made on related topics. So far, I’ve seen zero indication of this, which makes it likely that you are indeed baiting.
Now, this may be a misunderstanding on my part, but honestly, I can hardly see how it might be so. Someone who is genuinely curious about my contrarian opinions would make some effort to respond intelligently to those comments where I have already discussed them, even if I’ve done it only in a cautious and indirect way. You, on the other hand, have shown absolutely no inclination to do so. Rather, you are behaving as if you are eager to get some juicy soundbites that would be a convenient target for attack. And you can’t possibly claim that my writings so far have been devoid of substance, since dozens of other people have evidently found enough substance in them to write well-thought-out responses.
Sorry, but I’m just stunned by such an interpretation. Okay, I’ll try to assess some of your more outstanding and upvoted comments as fairly as I can and respond to the best of my ability, if that’s what it takes to initiate a dialogue. I was, however, quite unaware that my remarks could’ve been taken to express any disrespect of your intelligence and epistemic virtue, or disregard for your viewpoints.
Indeed, if you take a look at the enormous thread that was LW’s response to my query in this fascinating direction, you’ll see that I’ve been striving to consider opinions carefully, avoid knee-jerk reactions and associate with “far out” viewpoints first before judging them (that last one is especially challenging for me—if anyone’s interested, I’ll try to outline why). I honestly don’t understand why my desire to learn new perspectives, to consider their implications—and, yes, argue about them, but without aiming for their suppression or vilification of their holders—has now been met with such derision.
If you feel that the above is just so much self-congratulation and platitude, go ahead and tell me so, but, now at least, I really believe that I tried my best and sparked off valuable, constructive discussion with that post.
I’ve been striving to consider opinions carefully, avoid knee-jerk reactions and associate with “far out” viewpoints first before judging them (that last one is especially challenging for me—if anyone’s interested, I’ll try to outline why).
I’m trying to abstain from posting, but, in brief, I suspect it’s the same thing that prompted e.g. my (over)reaction to reading Three Worlds Collide, the infanticide thread by Bakkot and some other stuff here. When encountering strong arguments against some element of ordinary, mainstream, liberal commonsense ethics (alongside with guilt for hardly living up to those in the first place), I tend to feel morally imperiled, disgusted by aspects of my own character, unsure of my worth as a person and easy to turn to “evil”. I know how wild and unhealthy this sounds, but such things always appear so personal and not-abstract to me, I just can’t help it.
Someone here once told me that this might be not unusual for people who perceive sociopathic tendencies within themselves and repress them; they view all such tricky problems through the prism of their own perceived moral deficiencies. Sigh, I wish I could explain in a less obtuse manner.
Hmm. I think I understand. I’m the opposite in some ways: I get a wild thrill of excitement and happiness at “taboo” thoughts or ideas, and I’m biased towards them. I remember first discovering Holocaust revisionists and being amazingly awed at the daring and conviction and wrongness of what they were saying.
I don’t know what this says about my personality.
That said, I get somewhat annoyed at overly cynical or oversimplified explanations of complex phenomena, such as when people say that the educational system or the legal system is all about status signaling, or the PUA theory that everything is a test and it’s all about dominance and social value.
What “evil” bothers you the most? And what was your reaction to TWC? You can probably guess what mine was.
Jokes aside, in a properly arranged duel this would probably work; when directly attempting to persuade his audience of something, Eliezer is among the most convincing writers I’ve ever read (I was similarly impressed by e.g. George Orwell and Hannah Arendt).
A better way to go about it would be slipping Vlad some drug that will overwhelm his barriers and make him blabber out the horrible truth. Look at his comment history and you’ll see that no-one ever got anything serious out of him after him dropping such hints with just talk.;)
You had me convinced that Vladimir really was all talk and bluff until other links in recent comments lead me to some rather detailed explanations by Vladimir of his position.
I have an even stronger dislike than normal for cheap rhetoric when I realize that I have been taken in by it. All future anti-Vladimir_M claims by yourself will now be treated with extreme skepticism.
You know what, I’m currently feeling impostor syndrome—or just plain old inadequacy, the point is the same—just by talking here. Maybe it’s all out of my league, and maybe I’m operating under a massive self-deception. I’ll take a couple days off LW at least and won’t think about the whole matter at all. Maybe I’ll have to take a longer break.
You know what, I’m currently feeling impostor syndrome—or just plain old inadequacy
Without trying to condescend too much—Something to keep in mind when managing your own sense of adequacy and inclusion is that personal challenges are much more controversial (and likely to be challenged and counterattacked) than more straightforward positions. While direct challenges are sometimes appropriate it is almost always always more practical to avoid them unless you are already feeling entirely secure in your position and not especially vulnerable to potential disagreement.
The above applies both here and elsewhere and even when you are being entirely reasonable.
To take a prominent example, it’s impossible to discuss the inferences that can be made from a woman’s sexual history without getting into the problems described above. (Especially considering that statistically accurate criteria of this sort are, as a purely factual matter, highly asymmetrical across the sexes.) Or similarly, any sorts of inferences that can be made from looks and behavior, where it’s usually impossible to even get to a rational discussion of whether they are statistically accurate, since any such discussion will at the same time hit the ideological boo light of “prejudice” and personally aggravate those to whom these inferences apply personally (or who have important people in their lives in this category, or who will perhaps just react for signaling reasons).
On these topics, there really is no way to avoid either sounding crude and offensive or being misleading by omitting important elements of the truth.
Perhaps if you started by sharing your dataset first (with names changed to protect the guilty, etc.), then the conclusions you drew from it, and only afterwards the advice you would give to a younger version of yourself?
So basically which stereotypes are accurate? If you’re willing, I’d like to know what specific inferences can be made from sexual history, looks, or behavior: you can PM me. I assure you it won’t personally aggravate me. Are you thinking lots of partners/good looks correspond to intimacy issues, low self-esteem, or craziness?
Well, it’s a topic for a whole book, not a brief comment buried deep in a vast old thread. But for some concrete examples, see e.g. the comments I left in this subthread.
So basically, if a guy tries to have a long-term relationship with a girl who’s had a lot of partners, he better study Game or there’s a good chance she’ll get bored, because she’s used to very attractive guys? That makes sense; I wouldn’t think of that as very controversial. Of course, that ignores that some women actually do also make an effort to work on their long-term relationship skills and find ways to deal with periods where their partners seem less attractive.
I didn’t see anything about looks in that subthread; does something similar apply to dating someone very good-looking?
By “looks” I didn’t mean the level of attractiveness, but more generally, all clues available from people’s appearance. Clearly, this is going to lead to strife once people start recognizing themselves, or someone they care about, in the criteria under discussion. (This may in fact be due to understandable annoyance on part of someone who represents an actual statistical exception, but again, this makes it no less a barrier to rational discussion.)
Re: relationships with women who’ve had a lot of partners, the problem is that for a typical man, the extreme skew of the male attractiveness distribution and the asymmetry of the male-female mating strategies mean that even with some dedication to studying and practice of game, he’ll likely end up in an unfavorable position. But again, talking about this stuff in plainer and more concrete ways is hard to do without crossing the bounds that have repeatedly shown to be a trigger of discourse breakdown on LW.
The obvious question is, what about female partners, or group sex partners with the guy in question? Do they count against the girl?
I’m not seeing why the asymmetry means that the guy will end up in an unfavorable position even if he knows how to be attractive enough. Other than the girl finding the guy unattractive, I’m not sure what else you’re hinting at. Given that I like girls who have had large numbers of partners, is there anything else I need to know or do or be aware of?
Re: looks, are we talking the “blonde = ditzy, glasses = geeky” level of stereotype? Or are you talking about the way someone’s mood, shyness, introversion, and so forth can be read from body language? Or something as straightforward as someone wearing a lot of makeup spent a lot of time on her appearance, and thus probably wants attention/cares what people think of her a lot?
The only “discourse breakdown” I’ve seen is the crowd that thinks any attempt to improve dating skills is fake and evil, and I don’t really care about them. I think we’re past the reflexive “pickup = evil” by now. I’d really like to hear this stuff talked about in plainer and more concrete ways, or at least PM me with a few specifics!
One idea: we’ve had a thread on LW where people post their online dating profiles for feedback. I think it’d be an interesting game to post pictures of people, either ours or other random pictures, and see what kind of guesses we come up with about them based on clues from their appearance.
Why would it be “obvious”? Even completely ignoring these questions still leads to useful insight for the majority of cases in practice.
To answer your question, we’d need to get into a discussion of the motivational mechanisms of the behaviors you mention, but that is certain to lead to even more controversial questions, which I’d really prefer not to get into.
That depends on what exactly you’re aiming for. Saying “I like girls who [have the characteristic X]” sounds as if you like such girls for non-serious, shorter-term relationships in which you have the upper hand. Clearly, you shouldn’t worry too much if it’s really just a throwaway relationship that will soon end one way or another. (Still, you should watch for traits that indicate propensity for troublesome behaviors that can get you into unpleasant situations, or even serious problems, even in the context of such a relationship. What’s indicated by sheer partner count in this regard, independent of the mechanism I described earlier, is another can of worms I’d rather not open.)
On the other hand, if you’re aiming for a committed relationship, a woman’s high number of previous partners (which in fact doesn’t even have to be extremely high) definitely makes the deck stacked against you. This follows from the basic statistics of the situation, and “if he knows how to be attractive enough” is a can-opener assumption in this context.
In fact, the situation has gotten significantly worse on LW in this regard since I started commenting here around two years ago. Back then, it seemed to me like discussions of these topics on LW might result in interesting insight whose worth would be greater than the trouble. However, ever since then, a string of ever worse and more cringe-worthy failures that occurred whenever these topics were opened has convinced me in the opposite.
As for the specifics and straight talk, there are plenty of blogs and forums where such things can be discussed ad infinitum. (Though admittedly these days none are anywhere as good as what could be found during the heyday of the contrarian blogosphere some years ago.) I really don’t see any point in trying to open them in a forum like this one, which has conclusively shown to be a bad place for them.
It was the first thought I had. The association in my mind went something like
girl with lots of partners ---> girl is sexually awesome ---> female partners and group sex ---> if someone thinks having multiple partners is bad, is that bad?
No, I meant long term.
I am incredibly curious about your thoughts in these matters. You hint lots of things but don’t spell them out. I disagree with your assertions that LW’s gotten worse and is a bad place for these discussions, and I get that you don’t want to post them publicly on LW, but can you PM me? I promise to keep them private if you’d like.
The ones I’ve seen either a) take weird conservative positions, b) are filled with bitterness and hatred towards women, c) deteriorate into madonna/whore complexes, slut-shaming, and name calling, without much intelligent discussion or reasoning, or d) seem sane to me, but agree with my viewpoint on things.
Besides, I want to know what you think. You’re sane, reasonable, intelligent, and have a viewpoint that’s very different from mine, but seems like it might have a lot to offer. Please PM me. You’re giving me half of thoughts that I haven’t seen anywhere else, and can’t find on fora elsewhere, and I want the other half!
I don’t see how this stacks the deck.
Rather than counting things for or against the girl how about we frame it in terms of to what extent these new behaviors (female partners and group sex with you) also fit into the previously mentioned correlation cluster.
This is of course a more accurate and useful way of stating the problem in general terms.
The specific question still stands, though. Let’s say it’s true that a guy dating a girl who’s had many past partners will have certain problems, as VM suggests. Do those problems apply to the same extent if, say, half or more were female? Or if they were all during group sex with the guy?
I would be rather surprised if this has been studied in the same way that the “sexual partners—divorce rate” correlations have been. That said, the second question seems to be equivalent to “does having group sex cause or correlate to lower expected duration of the pair bond”. An answer of “Yes, but it’s worth it!” seems plausible.
As for correlations between bulk female-female liaisons in the history of the female partner of a heterosexual pair bond and pair bond duration and level of social game required by the male partner—the only direct evidence I have been exposed to is in the form of anecdotal evidence from my own experience and that of reports. My prediction must be based primarily on what I know about human psychology in general—things like conservativeness and the ‘openness’ personality trait. The prediction I would give is “makes less difference than if all those liaisons were with males but still makes a difference in the same direction”.
A better way to go about it would be slipping Vlad some drug that will overwhelm his barriers and make him blabber out the horrible truth. Look at his comment history and you’ll see that no-one ever got anything serious out of him after him dropping such hints with just talk.;)
(I might be joking now, but my jimmies are overall quite rustled with his entire soap opera; moreso when I consider how clear-headed and constructive he can be with simple and ideology-free comments.)
Based on the comments you’ve left so far in response to what I’ve been writing, I estimate a low probability that you are genuinely intrigued by what I might think about certain questions, and a much higher probability that you are baiting.
However, just in case the less probable hypothesis is true, I will for once respond to you. Namely, if you want me to talk about things that I’m reluctant to discuss because I’m not sure if it’s worth the controversy it will cause, then I’d first like to see that you’re making some effort to understand the arguments that I have already made on related topics. So far, I’ve seen zero indication of this, which makes it likely that you are indeed baiting.
Now, this may be a misunderstanding on my part, but honestly, I can hardly see how it might be so. Someone who is genuinely curious about my contrarian opinions would make some effort to respond intelligently to those comments where I have already discussed them, even if I’ve done it only in a cautious and indirect way. You, on the other hand, have shown absolutely no inclination to do so. Rather, you are behaving as if you are eager to get some juicy soundbites that would be a convenient target for attack. And you can’t possibly claim that my writings so far have been devoid of substance, since dozens of other people have evidently found enough substance in them to write well-thought-out responses.
......
Sorry, but I’m just stunned by such an interpretation. Okay, I’ll try to assess some of your more outstanding and upvoted comments as fairly as I can and respond to the best of my ability, if that’s what it takes to initiate a dialogue. I was, however, quite unaware that my remarks could’ve been taken to express any disrespect of your intelligence and epistemic virtue, or disregard for your viewpoints.
Indeed, if you take a look at the enormous thread that was LW’s response to my query in this fascinating direction, you’ll see that I’ve been striving to consider opinions carefully, avoid knee-jerk reactions and associate with “far out” viewpoints first before judging them (that last one is especially challenging for me—if anyone’s interested, I’ll try to outline why). I honestly don’t understand why my desire to learn new perspectives, to consider their implications—and, yes, argue about them, but without aiming for their suppression or vilification of their holders—has now been met with such derision.
If you feel that the above is just so much self-congratulation and platitude, go ahead and tell me so, but, now at least, I really believe that I tried my best and sparked off valuable, constructive discussion with that post.
I’m interested. Why?
I’m trying to abstain from posting, but, in brief, I suspect it’s the same thing that prompted e.g. my (over)reaction to reading Three Worlds Collide, the infanticide thread by Bakkot and some other stuff here. When encountering strong arguments against some element of ordinary, mainstream, liberal commonsense ethics (alongside with guilt for hardly living up to those in the first place), I tend to feel morally imperiled, disgusted by aspects of my own character, unsure of my worth as a person and easy to turn to “evil”. I know how wild and unhealthy this sounds, but such things always appear so personal and not-abstract to me, I just can’t help it. Someone here once told me that this might be not unusual for people who perceive sociopathic tendencies within themselves and repress them; they view all such tricky problems through the prism of their own perceived moral deficiencies.
Sigh, I wish I could explain in a less obtuse manner.
Hmm. I think I understand. I’m the opposite in some ways: I get a wild thrill of excitement and happiness at “taboo” thoughts or ideas, and I’m biased towards them. I remember first discovering Holocaust revisionists and being amazingly awed at the daring and conviction and wrongness of what they were saying.
I don’t know what this says about my personality.
That said, I get somewhat annoyed at overly cynical or oversimplified explanations of complex phenomena, such as when people say that the educational system or the legal system is all about status signaling, or the PUA theory that everything is a test and it’s all about dominance and social value.
What “evil” bothers you the most? And what was your reaction to TWC? You can probably guess what mine was.
Naaaah, let’s just have Eliezer try to get Vlad’s ideas out of the box. :-)
Jokes aside, in a properly arranged duel this would probably work; when directly attempting to persuade his audience of something, Eliezer is among the most convincing writers I’ve ever read (I was similarly impressed by e.g. George Orwell and Hannah Arendt).
You had me convinced that Vladimir really was all talk and bluff until other links in recent comments lead me to some rather detailed explanations by Vladimir of his position.
I have an even stronger dislike than normal for cheap rhetoric when I realize that I have been taken in by it. All future anti-Vladimir_M claims by yourself will now be treated with extreme skepticism.
...maybe. Okay.
You know what, I’m currently feeling impostor syndrome—or just plain old inadequacy, the point is the same—just by talking here. Maybe it’s all out of my league, and maybe I’m operating under a massive self-deception. I’ll take a couple days off LW at least and won’t think about the whole matter at all. Maybe I’ll have to take a longer break.
Without trying to condescend too much—Something to keep in mind when managing your own sense of adequacy and inclusion is that personal challenges are much more controversial (and likely to be challenged and counterattacked) than more straightforward positions. While direct challenges are sometimes appropriate it is almost always always more practical to avoid them unless you are already feeling entirely secure in your position and not especially vulnerable to potential disagreement.
The above applies both here and elsewhere and even when you are being entirely reasonable.
Well, he has expressed the reluctance to go into further specifics a few times.
He did rather play up the “it’s taboo” angle.