My guess, after several years of very similar conversations with you, is that there’s a cluster of things (I’d vaguely call “fuzzy emotional group stuff”) that just… aren’t relevant to you as much, for one reason or another. It may be that different people get value from different things, and you don’t get value from this class of thing. It may be that you have some kind of conceptual blocker and if you successfully understood the the thing, you’d suddenly get a lot of value out of it. I don’t know.
Again, Scott Alexander’s “Concept Shaped Holes” thing seems relevant. I, Qiaochu and I think others have attempted to explain a variety of things in this cluster, but we keep saying “these sorts of things are really hard to communciate via text-based media—you really need to just try it.” Ultimately you either believe that (and are willing to think about reasons why this may all make sense without asking others to explain it in exhaustive detail, and/or just try stuff for yourself and lean hard into it to actually have a chance of gaining benefit), or you don’t.
And I certainly understand that being frustrating, but if you aren’t convinced enough that there’s something real here worth putting effort into figuring out for yourself, I’m not currently convinced it’s worth (either of our) time to continue to discuss this class of thing.
(“I’ve tried this and it doesn’t seem useful” seems totally fine here, just… if that’s the case, this conversation doesn’t seem very useful. I personally am finding it a bit exhausting)
FYI, although this isn’t super optimized for helping with the current conversation, this post is essentially my previous attempt to summarize a lot of “why fuzzy, social, emotional stuff is important to understand and take seriously”, relying as much as possible on System-2 explanations (instead of trying to ask analytic-oriented thinkers to take any leaps of faith).
My guess, after several years of very similar conversations with you, is that there’s a cluster of things (I’d vaguely call “fuzzy emotional group stuff”) that just… aren’t relevant to you as much, for one reason or another. It may be that different people get value from different things, and you don’t get value from this class of thing. It may be that you have some kind of conceptual blocker and if you successfully understood the the thing, you’d suddenly get a lot of value out of it. I don’t know.
Again, Scott Alexander’s “Concept Shaped Holes” thing seems relevant. I, Qiaochu and I think others have attempted to explain a variety of things in this cluster, but we keep saying “these sorts of things are really hard to communciate via text-based media—you really need to just try it.” Ultimately you either believe that (and are willing to think about reasons why this may all make sense without asking others to explain it in exhaustive detail, and/or just try stuff for yourself and lean hard into it to actually have a chance of gaining benefit), or you don’t.
And I certainly understand that being frustrating, but if you aren’t convinced enough that there’s something real here worth putting effort into figuring out for yourself, I’m not currently convinced it’s worth (either of our) time to continue to discuss this class of thing.
(“I’ve tried this and it doesn’t seem useful” seems totally fine here, just… if that’s the case, this conversation doesn’t seem very useful. I personally am finding it a bit exhausting)
FYI, although this isn’t super optimized for helping with the current conversation, this post is essentially my previous attempt to summarize a lot of “why fuzzy, social, emotional stuff is important to understand and take seriously”, relying as much as possible on System-2 explanations (instead of trying to ask analytic-oriented thinkers to take any leaps of faith).
The Real Hufflepuff Sequence Was the Posts We Made Along the Way
You know, this sounds like that Clicking thing that Logic Nation guy talked about.