Have you ever heard someone say “Don’t you trust me?” And maybe you think “What’s that supposed to mean? I basically trust you to act like you’ve acted in the past; in your case, that means I expect you to display behaviors X and Y with great consistency, and behavior Z with moderate consistency...”
I’ve done that a lot. “I trust you to do XYZ,” I would say. But...even at the time, I had a nagging feeling that this wasn’t really what they meant. This is what I (and other nerds) mean by trust, not what they mean.
What they mean by “trust,” is roughly, an expectation that someone will model their own interests with pretty good accuracy and generally work to fulfill them. They will act as an agent seeking their fully general benefit.
So, “don’t you trust me?” is basically asking “don’t you think I more or less know what you want and will avoid hurting you, and also will help you as it is convenient, or sometimes even inconvenient for me to do so?”
They think of trust differently, and in their sense of the word, they can be perfectly trustworthy even while displaying the political behaviors that would make them, for example, poor scientists.
Now, you’ve probably always felt as I did that this question is never asked except the expected answer by “yes.” I have a sense that there is some significance here, probably revolving around the idea that any answer other than “yes” is an insult, for which you will be in their debt, while getting that “yes” is a way of getting your commitment, and thus, your complicance...but I have a definite sense that I don’t quite understand this completely yet.
At the same time, I think I see why my old “Well, I trust you to do XYZ” actually worked pretty well for me, even if it was by accident, out of obliviousness. It’s not insulting at all, but it does get me out of committing to follow their lead generally, and thus, in the specific instance that they’re probably trying to get me to help them out with.
What they mean by “trust,” is roughly, an expectation that someone will model their own interests with pretty good accuracy and generally work to fulfill them. They will act as an agent seeking their fully general benefit.
That’s what I was referring to. Not “do I trust you to do X?” but “are you my ally?”
In this model, if the set of things I need to get right is not the same as the set of things a given normal needs to get right, they may give me dangerously bad advice and have no notion that there’s anything wrong with this. Someone who will happily mislead me is not a good ally.
Someone who will happily mislead me is not a good ally.
They don’t see it as “misleading”. They are teaching you the socially approved reaction to a stimulus (but they obviously wouldn’t use these words), which is exactly what a good ally in their world is supposed to do. Unfortunately, such precious gifts are wasted on nerds, who try to translate them into maps of territory instead of memorizing and repeating them as a part of social performance. From their point of view, they are cooperating with you… it’s just that they play a completely different game.
I have a few friends among normies, but I usually don’t go to them asking for advice about the real world (unless they happen to be domain experts at something). Normies can be a wonderful source of warm emotions; that’s what their world is mostly about. Any factual statement needs to be triple checked (without telling them about it), though.
Note that I am not dismissing friendship with normies here. Warm emotions are important. And so is domain expertise, because I can’t always go and ask a fellow rationalist about some obscure detail (also, nerds are prone to overconfidence at domains they lack expertise in; no, you can’t replace tons of data with mere high IQ). But trying to bring normies on your travel at exploring the real world is an exercise in frustration.
Have you ever heard someone say “Don’t you trust me?” And maybe you think “What’s that supposed to mean? I basically trust you to act like you’ve acted in the past; in your case, that means I expect you to display behaviors X and Y with great consistency, and behavior Z with moderate consistency...”
I’ve done that a lot. “I trust you to do XYZ,” I would say. But...even at the time, I had a nagging feeling that this wasn’t really what they meant. This is what I (and other nerds) mean by trust, not what they mean.
What they mean by “trust,” is roughly, an expectation that someone will model their own interests with pretty good accuracy and generally work to fulfill them. They will act as an agent seeking their fully general benefit.
So, “don’t you trust me?” is basically asking “don’t you think I more or less know what you want and will avoid hurting you, and also will help you as it is convenient, or sometimes even inconvenient for me to do so?”
They think of trust differently, and in their sense of the word, they can be perfectly trustworthy even while displaying the political behaviors that would make them, for example, poor scientists.
Now, you’ve probably always felt as I did that this question is never asked except the expected answer by “yes.” I have a sense that there is some significance here, probably revolving around the idea that any answer other than “yes” is an insult, for which you will be in their debt, while getting that “yes” is a way of getting your commitment, and thus, your complicance...but I have a definite sense that I don’t quite understand this completely yet.
At the same time, I think I see why my old “Well, I trust you to do XYZ” actually worked pretty well for me, even if it was by accident, out of obliviousness. It’s not insulting at all, but it does get me out of committing to follow their lead generally, and thus, in the specific instance that they’re probably trying to get me to help them out with.
That’s what I was referring to. Not “do I trust you to do X?” but “are you my ally?”
In this model, if the set of things I need to get right is not the same as the set of things a given normal needs to get right, they may give me dangerously bad advice and have no notion that there’s anything wrong with this. Someone who will happily mislead me is not a good ally.
They don’t see it as “misleading”. They are teaching you the socially approved reaction to a stimulus (but they obviously wouldn’t use these words), which is exactly what a good ally in their world is supposed to do. Unfortunately, such precious gifts are wasted on nerds, who try to translate them into maps of territory instead of memorizing and repeating them as a part of social performance. From their point of view, they are cooperating with you… it’s just that they play a completely different game.
I have a few friends among normies, but I usually don’t go to them asking for advice about the real world (unless they happen to be domain experts at something). Normies can be a wonderful source of warm emotions; that’s what their world is mostly about. Any factual statement needs to be triple checked (without telling them about it), though.
Note that I am not dismissing friendship with normies here. Warm emotions are important. And so is domain expertise, because I can’t always go and ask a fellow rationalist about some obscure detail (also, nerds are prone to overconfidence at domains they lack expertise in; no, you can’t replace tons of data with mere high IQ). But trying to bring normies on your travel at exploring the real world is an exercise in frustration.