I wonder, though, if you could say more about this aspect:
I think a lot of the disconnect in this thread (and some similar threads in the past) has to do with some people being noticing how crucially important it is to take the kinds of leaps that involve real emotional risk are, and other people noticing how badly hurt you can get if you aren’t careful.
… specifically, the former half of it.
To me, for instance, it’s clear enough that there’s a lot of damage potential in such “vulnerability-inducing” activities; but it would be inaccurate of me to say that this is my primary problem with them. Rather, I simply can’t see what meaningful benefit they have! You say that it’s “crucially important” to undertake such steps, and that you think (or thought) that “being vulnerable was basically how you got anything worthwhile”. I’m interested to hear more about this, because these, to me, seem like very dubious propositions, and I am wondering what part of the inferential chain I’m missing, here.
The closest bonds I have in my life, are bonds that have been tested. One of my closest friends is someone with whom I decided to make a 450-person conference happen, given us having zero experience running conferences, and we eventually had some really big names coming, and things could have gone badly wrong and reflected terribly on us. But we worked hard and it succeeded, and now I know that when that friend tells me that we are going to do ambitious project X, then we are going to do ambitious project X, and they will not leave me behind to fail.
I trust that person in a way that I couldn’t have if we hadn’t opened ourselves to massive failure.
Something else I want in life, is the ability to talk with people about what thought processes I’m having, what’s stressing me out, and what I’m worried about. Maybe I’m angry at my partner. Maybe I’m feeling depressed. However, many people have very different internal lives, and if you don’t quite have the same internal life I have, something I say could come across wrong—as petty, or as selfish, or as nasty for example—when I’m trying to deal with the thought processes and reason about whether they make sense. So, for me to tell someone, is to take a risk, the risk of not being understood and being rejected. Yet only if I try this, and test whether myself and a friend really understand each other, will we be able to get the value of communication about difficult and important things.
(Here’s Scott with the closely related point that Friendship is Countersignalling: building trust requires putting things on the line.)
I’ve tried this, and sometimes I’ve been burned. And sometimes I’ve built stronger relationships by it. And I couldn’t have gotten the latter without risking the former.
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).
a) People are part of the territory. Not only that, they contain relevant map bits, such that I alone could never collect all the map bits without them.
b) My System 2 alone is not sufficient for epistemic rationality. System 1 not only has to be involved, but it is in fact the main determinant of my epistemics. As most “beliefs” are actually aliefs (nonverbal beliefs below the level of consciousness).
c) As such, it is ideal for my System 1 and 2 to work together to form correct beliefs. And, it is ideal for me to be able to fully engage with other people and their epistemics / beliefs. Where ‘fully engage’ means engaging with both System 1 and 2. (Do not mistake me as saying, “It’s good to fully open up to people and expose myself.” That’s not what I mean. I mean that I want to be able to skillfully navigate human interaction—like I have a dashboard where I can see all the incoming streams of data. And I want to notice where I’m inclined to block/parry vs allow/receive, among other possible moves.)
The emotional involvement that occurs (the SNS activation) is a System 1 response, which to me indicates that I’m about to receive some pretty important data, and whatever happens next could be an important update for me.
I think I have way more to say on this, but I’m out of time for now. AMA.
Rather, I simply can’t see what meaningful benefit they have!
This is related to a lot of the other disagreements we’ve been having lately. Many of the things I think I’ve learned about embodiment, human values, my own blind spots, etc. over the past year have come from circling.
This is an excellent comment.
I wonder, though, if you could say more about this aspect:
… specifically, the former half of it.
To me, for instance, it’s clear enough that there’s a lot of damage potential in such “vulnerability-inducing” activities; but it would be inaccurate of me to say that this is my primary problem with them. Rather, I simply can’t see what meaningful benefit they have! You say that it’s “crucially important” to undertake such steps, and that you think (or thought) that “being vulnerable was basically how you got anything worthwhile”. I’m interested to hear more about this, because these, to me, seem like very dubious propositions, and I am wondering what part of the inferential chain I’m missing, here.
The closest bonds I have in my life, are bonds that have been tested. One of my closest friends is someone with whom I decided to make a 450-person conference happen, given us having zero experience running conferences, and we eventually had some really big names coming, and things could have gone badly wrong and reflected terribly on us. But we worked hard and it succeeded, and now I know that when that friend tells me that we are going to do ambitious project X, then we are going to do ambitious project X, and they will not leave me behind to fail.
I trust that person in a way that I couldn’t have if we hadn’t opened ourselves to massive failure.
Something else I want in life, is the ability to talk with people about what thought processes I’m having, what’s stressing me out, and what I’m worried about. Maybe I’m angry at my partner. Maybe I’m feeling depressed. However, many people have very different internal lives, and if you don’t quite have the same internal life I have, something I say could come across wrong—as petty, or as selfish, or as nasty for example—when I’m trying to deal with the thought processes and reason about whether they make sense. So, for me to tell someone, is to take a risk, the risk of not being understood and being rejected. Yet only if I try this, and test whether myself and a friend really understand each other, will we be able to get the value of communication about difficult and important things.
(Here’s Scott with the closely related point that Friendship is Countersignalling: building trust requires putting things on the line.)
I’ve tried this, and sometimes I’ve been burned. And sometimes I’ve built stronger relationships by it. And I couldn’t have gotten the latter without risking the former.
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.
a) People are part of the territory. Not only that, they contain relevant map bits, such that I alone could never collect all the map bits without them.
b) My System 2 alone is not sufficient for epistemic rationality. System 1 not only has to be involved, but it is in fact the main determinant of my epistemics. As most “beliefs” are actually aliefs (nonverbal beliefs below the level of consciousness).
c) As such, it is ideal for my System 1 and 2 to work together to form correct beliefs. And, it is ideal for me to be able to fully engage with other people and their epistemics / beliefs. Where ‘fully engage’ means engaging with both System 1 and 2. (Do not mistake me as saying, “It’s good to fully open up to people and expose myself.” That’s not what I mean. I mean that I want to be able to skillfully navigate human interaction—like I have a dashboard where I can see all the incoming streams of data. And I want to notice where I’m inclined to block/parry vs allow/receive, among other possible moves.)
The emotional involvement that occurs (the SNS activation) is a System 1 response, which to me indicates that I’m about to receive some pretty important data, and whatever happens next could be an important update for me.
I think I have way more to say on this, but I’m out of time for now. AMA.
This is related to a lot of the other disagreements we’ve been having lately. Many of the things I think I’ve learned about embodiment, human values, my own blind spots, etc. over the past year have come from circling.