I admit that I honestly do consider many people insane; and I always did.
I don’t think you do, I think you consider most people to be (in some sense rightly) wrong or ignorant. Just the fact that you hold people to some standard (which you must do, if you say that they fail) means you don’t think of them as insane. If you’ve ever known someone with depression or who is bi-polar disorder, you know that you can’t tell them t snap out of it, or learn this or that, or just think it through. Even calling people insane, as an expression of contempt, is a way of holding them to a standard. But we don’t hold actually insane people to standards, and we don’t (unless we’re jerks) hold them in contempt. You don’t communicate the inconvenient truth to the insane. You don’t disagree or agree with the insane. The wrong, the ignorant, the evil, yes. But not the insane.
No one here (and I mean no one) actually thinks the world is full of insane people. That’s a bit of metaphor and hyperbole. If anyone seriously thought that, their behavior would be so radically strange (think ‘I am Legend’ or something), you’d probably find them locked up somewhere.
Is there a way to disagree with the majority, be open to new members, and not seem dangerous?
The claim that everyone else is insane doesn’t sound dangerous, it sounds resentful. Dangerous is not a problem. I don’t think we need to implement any of your ideas, because the issue is purely one of rhetoric. None of the ideas themselves are a problem, because there’s no problem with saying everyone else is wrong so long as you have either 1) results, or 2) good, persuasive, arguments. And if all you’ve got is (2), tone matters, because you can only persuade people who listen to you. There’s no reason at all to hide anything, or lie, or pretend or anything like that.
Speaking about typical indviduals, ignorant is a good word, insane is not. As you say, it makes sense trying to explain things to an ignorant person, not to an insane person. Individuals can be explained things with some degree of success. I agree with you on this.
The difference becomes less clear when dealing with groups of people, societies. Explaining things to a group of people, that is more often (as an anthropomorphism) like dealing with an insane person. Literally, the kind of person that hears you and understands your words, but then also hears “voices in their head” telling them it’s bad to think that way, that they should keep doing the stupid stuff they were doing regardless of the problems it brought them, etc. Except that these “voices” are the other people. -- But this probably just proves that societies are not individuals.
there’s no problem with saying everyone else is wrong so long as you have either 1) results, or 2) good, persuasive, arguments
Yeah, having results would be good. The Friendly AI would be the best, but until then, we need some other kind of results.
So, an interesting task would be to make a list of results of the LW community that would impress outsiders. Put that into a flyer, and we have a nice PR tool.
The difference becomes less clear when dealing with groups of people, societies. Explaining things to a group of people, that is more often (as an anthropomorphism) like dealing with an insane person.
That’s fair enough. I’d stay away from groups of people. Back in the day, they used to write without vowels, so that you could only really read something if you were either exceptionally literate or were being told what it said by a teacher. I say never communicate with more than a handful of people at once, but I suppose that’s not possible a lot of the time.
The difference becomes less clear when dealing with groups of people, societies. Explaining things to a group of people, that is more often (as an anthropomorphism) like dealing with an insane person.
Perhaps it would be less confusing to treat a society as if it were a single organism, of which the people within it are analogous to cells rather than agents with minds of their own. I’m not sure how far such an approach would get but it might be interesting.
until then, we need some other kind of results.
CFAR might be able to demonstrate such after a few more years of their workshops. I’m not sure how they’re measuring results, but I would be surprised if they were not doing so.
CFAR planned to do some statistics about how the minicamp attendees’ lives have changed after a year, using a control group of people who applied to minicamps but were not admitted. Not perfect, but pretty good. And the year from the first minicamps is approximately now (for me it will be in one month). But the samples are very small.
With regards to PR, I am not sure if this will work. I mean, even if the results are good, only the people who care about statistical results will be impressed by them. It’s a circular problem: you need to already have some rationality to be able to be impressed by rational arguments. -- Because you may also say: yeah, those guys are trying so hard, and I will just pray or think positively and the same results will come to me, too. And if they don’t, that just means I have to pray or think positively more. Or even: statistics doesn’t prove anything, I feel it in my heart that rationality is cold and can’t make anyone happy.
I agree. But optimizing for good storytelling is different from optimizing for good science. A good scientific result would be like: “minicamp attendees are 12% more efficient in their lives, plus or minus 3.5%”. A good story would be “this awesome thing happened to an minicamp attendee” (ignoring the fact that equivalent thing happened to a person in the control group).
Maybe the best would be to publish both, and let readers pick their favourite part.
I don’t think you do, I think you consider most people to be (in some sense rightly) wrong or ignorant. Just the fact that you hold people to some standard (which you must do, if you say that they fail) means you don’t think of them as insane. If you’ve ever known someone with depression or who is bi-polar disorder, you know that you can’t tell them t snap out of it, or learn this or that, or just think it through. Even calling people insane, as an expression of contempt, is a way of holding them to a standard. But we don’t hold actually insane people to standards, and we don’t (unless we’re jerks) hold them in contempt. You don’t communicate the inconvenient truth to the insane. You don’t disagree or agree with the insane. The wrong, the ignorant, the evil, yes. But not the insane.
No one here (and I mean no one) actually thinks the world is full of insane people. That’s a bit of metaphor and hyperbole. If anyone seriously thought that, their behavior would be so radically strange (think ‘I am Legend’ or something), you’d probably find them locked up somewhere.
The claim that everyone else is insane doesn’t sound dangerous, it sounds resentful. Dangerous is not a problem. I don’t think we need to implement any of your ideas, because the issue is purely one of rhetoric. None of the ideas themselves are a problem, because there’s no problem with saying everyone else is wrong so long as you have either 1) results, or 2) good, persuasive, arguments. And if all you’ve got is (2), tone matters, because you can only persuade people who listen to you. There’s no reason at all to hide anything, or lie, or pretend or anything like that.
Speaking about typical indviduals, ignorant is a good word, insane is not. As you say, it makes sense trying to explain things to an ignorant person, not to an insane person. Individuals can be explained things with some degree of success. I agree with you on this.
The difference becomes less clear when dealing with groups of people, societies. Explaining things to a group of people, that is more often (as an anthropomorphism) like dealing with an insane person. Literally, the kind of person that hears you and understands your words, but then also hears “voices in their head” telling them it’s bad to think that way, that they should keep doing the stupid stuff they were doing regardless of the problems it brought them, etc. Except that these “voices” are the other people. -- But this probably just proves that societies are not individuals.
Yeah, having results would be good. The Friendly AI would be the best, but until then, we need some other kind of results.
So, an interesting task would be to make a list of results of the LW community that would impress outsiders. Put that into a flyer, and we have a nice PR tool.
That’s fair enough. I’d stay away from groups of people. Back in the day, they used to write without vowels, so that you could only really read something if you were either exceptionally literate or were being told what it said by a teacher. I say never communicate with more than a handful of people at once, but I suppose that’s not possible a lot of the time.
Perhaps it would be less confusing to treat a society as if it were a single organism, of which the people within it are analogous to cells rather than agents with minds of their own. I’m not sure how far such an approach would get but it might be interesting.
CFAR might be able to demonstrate such after a few more years of their workshops. I’m not sure how they’re measuring results, but I would be surprised if they were not doing so.
CFAR planned to do some statistics about how the minicamp attendees’ lives have changed after a year, using a control group of people who applied to minicamps but were not admitted. Not perfect, but pretty good. And the year from the first minicamps is approximately now (for me it will be in one month). But the samples are very small.
With regards to PR, I am not sure if this will work. I mean, even if the results are good, only the people who care about statistical results will be impressed by them. It’s a circular problem: you need to already have some rationality to be able to be impressed by rational arguments. -- Because you may also say: yeah, those guys are trying so hard, and I will just pray or think positively and the same results will come to me, too. And if they don’t, that just means I have to pray or think positively more. Or even: statistics doesn’t prove anything, I feel it in my heart that rationality is cold and can’t make anyone happy.
I think that people who don’t care about statistics are still likely to be impressed by vivid stories, not that I have any numbers to prove this.
I agree. But optimizing for good storytelling is different from optimizing for good science. A good scientific result would be like: “minicamp attendees are 12% more efficient in their lives, plus or minus 3.5%”. A good story would be “this awesome thing happened to an minicamp attendee” (ignoring the fact that equivalent thing happened to a person in the control group).
Maybe the best would be to publish both, and let readers pick their favourite part.
I’m sure they’ll be publishing both stories and statistics.