I would consider “acting confident” to be a variation of lying, as I’ve said many times, and as a rule utilitarian, I think lying is almost always bad. It may not be tremendously disutilitious, but I think the overall effect is so.
Whenever I feel unconfident or uncomfortable, I attempt to analyze the source of my discomfort. Why am I uncomfortable? Suppose I am apprehensive about giving a presentation that I haven’t adequately prepared for. It would be most beneficial to me and my audience if, instead of faking confidence, I had the modesty to admit my error (or even explain the situation, perhaps I have an excuse) and address what is the best course of action given the situation I’m in.
In Luke’s situation, I would proceed as follows: Why am I apprehensive about speaking to that girl? Is it because I fear rejection? Why should I fear her rejection? This doesn’t make much sense, as, assuming she rejects me, I will likely never speak to her again. And if she doesn’t reject me, the point is moot. If my emotions are based in reason, then it must not be because I fear her rejection. What other reasons could there be? Do I fear bothering her, or creeping her out, or in someway bringing her disutility? Perhaps. But as long as I am polite and respectful in my approach, she has no reason to feel disutility at all. Perhaps I am uncomfortable with the social conventions that require men to approach women and wish not to perpetuate such a system. Perhaps I’m gay. Have I considered trying men?
I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point. By analyzing why you feel a certain way, you (or at least I) gain the confidence that I would be otherwise faking. Introspection allows you to dismiss irrational feelings as irrational—as you should.
Edit: To quote Rand, “An emotion that clashes with your reason, an emotion that you cannot explain or control, is only the carcass of that stale thinking which you forbade your mind to revise.”
In the case of the presentation, say you are confident in the truth-value of your material, but you aren’t sure that you’ve prepared adequately to explain it. The consequences you fear are that you will fail to impress upon your audience the importance of the ideas you’re presenting.
What specific things would you say or behaviors would you execute to your audience due to the lack of confidence you feel?
Is it lying to stand up straight, keep your feet properly planted, and avoid adjusting your glasses or engaging it other nervous behaviors?
Is it lying to not begin your presentation with “I didn’t adequately prepare for this?”
I’m not sure what else you’re talking about, but if honest people didn’t do either of those things, they would be so grossly outpeformed by dishonest people that any good they had to offer the world would become practically worthless.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t introspect, and if it was enough for you, power to you, but I don’t think relying entirely on it is good advice for most people.
Well once you’re standing in front of them, you’ve committed to giving the presentation, and should, of course, try your best to convey what information you can. At that point, you’ve committed the hour to that.
I was more envisioning a scenario where, the morning of said presentation, you mention to your boss that for whatever reason you didn’t have the time to prepare, and ask if you could postpone the presentation until the next day. I think in that scenario, everyone benefits.
I’m not sure what else you’re talking about, but if honest people didn’t do either of those things, they would be so grossly outpeformed by dishonest people that any good they had to offer the world would become practically worthless.
I think it applies just as much outside the business world. If you ARE the boss (or rather, the head of a nonprofit organization dedicated to X good thing) and must continuously tell people that you need to postpone things because you need more time to better prepare… you are going to have a hard time maintaining people’s interest, people are going to be less willing to invest in your cause.
Am I understanding correctly that you do consider it dishonest to stand up straight, keep feet properly planted and avoid nervous behaviors?
If that’s the only thing you needed to be able to improve at doing, why does it matter whether you practiced for hours until you had drilled out the possibility of ever doing it wrong, or just went and DID it?
[Edit: I agree that the Business world will have ADDITIONAL things that you’d have to compromise on and good for you to avoid something that’d make you unhappy. There are many places where I probably share your idealism. But I think you are setting a standard for yourself that would actively make the world a worse place if it were widely adopted]
Well the key phrase is “continuously”. I’m not saying you make a habit of repeatedly requesting extensions. But if you need one, I think you should ask for it, and I think it’s better for everyone if you do. But if you need an extension on every project you have, you should be fired.
Am I understanding correctly that you do consider it dishonest to stand up straight, keep feet properly planted and avoid nervous behaviors?
Dishonest would be a stretch. But you are not presenting your true mental state. Which could be the right thing to do—if presenting in such a manner helped your audience’s ability to understand, then you should. But I would say that the better thing to do is to recognize the situation you’re in and analyze where is best to go from there. That may be presenting to the best of your ability. But it might also be humbly asking to present the next day and apologize for not preparing enough. I think most people would understand if it were an isolated incident.
If I think someone’s idea is stupid, I don’t think I’m making the world a better place by representing my true mental state. Every day at work, there’s a colleague who grates on me slightly. Accurately representing my mental state to him every time would be disastrous. There are dozens of instances every day where accurately representing myself would make the world a worse place for myself and the people around me.
I only think this is a problem if “accurately presenting your mental state” is something relevant to whatever it is you’re doing. Which mostly amounts to friendships and relationships—establishing close emotional bonds with people.
The people didn’t come to the presentation to form a close bond with you or get an accurate map of your personality—they came to see a presentation.
When you are first meeting a girl, you’re not immediately establishing a deep, personal connection (not usually anyway). The initial few minutes are about establishing that you two are both interesting people and it’s worth the two of your time to get to know each other. Trust and personal connection comes later (possibly soon afterwards, but it’s not part of the first few minutes).
Don’t put a false version of yourself forward. But do put the best version of yourself forward.
I didn’t downvote but am tempted to now given that the quote of Rand is nonsense and you are doing the ‘Hivemind’ defense of it. I still haven’t. I must be in a good mood normally; normally I’d go all downvote Roman on you.
Looking at your post now:
I would consider “acting confident” to be a variation of lying, as I’ve said many times, and as a rule utilitarian, I think lying is almost always bad.
NO! BAD! SILLY THINKING! NAIVE! GROW UP! DON’T ENCOURAGE OTHERS TO USE MODELS OF THE WORLD WHICH ARE SELF SABOTAGING. (These are examples of reasons why I would downvote the grandparent. I can’t speak for the reasoning of the actual downvoters.)
Would you care to support any of those assertions? Why is that quote nonsense? Why is that model self sabotaging?
I disagree on both counts. Although I don’t find myself in line with Rand on much, I do find her views on emotion being a product of rational thought, and not an opposing force to be quite agreeable.
As for that being a self sabotaging strategy, I think it is far more damaging to pretend that we don’t feel a certain way than to analyze why we feel that way, so that we can correct our emotions. (You have also failed to define what you mean by self sabotaging—there are ways that, depending on your utility functions for things like “intrinsic truth” that would change.)
Would you care to support any of those assertions? Why is that quote nonsense? Why is that model self sabotaging?
No. You (feigned that you were) interested in why you were downvoted and I gave some guesses based on why I would have downvoted were it the case that I was such a downvoter. “Convince RobertLumley that the downvoters are justified” is a different task, which I haven’t taken up.
With respect to the philosophy behind “acting” confident I have a similar postition to that of HughRistik who discusses the topic from time to time. (Searching ‘HughRistik acting confident social’ would probably find it.)
That’s quite a leap to assume I was feigning interest. And frankly, it seems quite rude for you to do so when I’m following common LessWrong practice.
However, it can feel really irritating to get downvoted, especially if one doesn’t know why. It happens to all of us sometimes, and it’s perfectly acceptable to ask for an explanation. (Sometimes it’s the unwritten LW etiquette; we have different norms than other forums.)
I was, am, and will continue to be (since no one has responded) very interested in why people thought that post was of poor quality. In fact, in my request, I considered leaving out the part about Rand, but did not, because it was what I was thinking—it would be quite hypocritical for me not to be honest about it, given the context.
This is exactly the sort of unhelpful advice I was given for years, which eventually I ignored.
And it’s exactly the sort of helpful advice I gave myself, which eventually I accepted.
In the end, we can both spout anecdotal evidence, but it has no bearing on the ethics of the situation.
I don’t consider “acting confident” to be remotely unethical.
That said, I am curious how exactly you implemented the “learn to be confident” technique that you advocate.
If you aren’t confident, how exactly should you act?
I would consider “acting confident” to be a variation of lying, as I’ve said many times, and as a rule utilitarian, I think lying is almost always bad. It may not be tremendously disutilitious, but I think the overall effect is so.
Whenever I feel unconfident or uncomfortable, I attempt to analyze the source of my discomfort. Why am I uncomfortable? Suppose I am apprehensive about giving a presentation that I haven’t adequately prepared for. It would be most beneficial to me and my audience if, instead of faking confidence, I had the modesty to admit my error (or even explain the situation, perhaps I have an excuse) and address what is the best course of action given the situation I’m in.
In Luke’s situation, I would proceed as follows: Why am I apprehensive about speaking to that girl? Is it because I fear rejection? Why should I fear her rejection? This doesn’t make much sense, as, assuming she rejects me, I will likely never speak to her again. And if she doesn’t reject me, the point is moot. If my emotions are based in reason, then it must not be because I fear her rejection. What other reasons could there be? Do I fear bothering her, or creeping her out, or in someway bringing her disutility? Perhaps. But as long as I am polite and respectful in my approach, she has no reason to feel disutility at all. Perhaps I am uncomfortable with the social conventions that require men to approach women and wish not to perpetuate such a system. Perhaps I’m gay. Have I considered trying men?
I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point. By analyzing why you feel a certain way, you (or at least I) gain the confidence that I would be otherwise faking. Introspection allows you to dismiss irrational feelings as irrational—as you should.
Edit: To quote Rand, “An emotion that clashes with your reason, an emotion that you cannot explain or control, is only the carcass of that stale thinking which you forbade your mind to revise.”
In the case of the presentation, say you are confident in the truth-value of your material, but you aren’t sure that you’ve prepared adequately to explain it. The consequences you fear are that you will fail to impress upon your audience the importance of the ideas you’re presenting.
What specific things would you say or behaviors would you execute to your audience due to the lack of confidence you feel?
Is it lying to stand up straight, keep your feet properly planted, and avoid adjusting your glasses or engaging it other nervous behaviors?
Is it lying to not begin your presentation with “I didn’t adequately prepare for this?”
I’m not sure what else you’re talking about, but if honest people didn’t do either of those things, they would be so grossly outpeformed by dishonest people that any good they had to offer the world would become practically worthless.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t introspect, and if it was enough for you, power to you, but I don’t think relying entirely on it is good advice for most people.
Well once you’re standing in front of them, you’ve committed to giving the presentation, and should, of course, try your best to convey what information you can. At that point, you’ve committed the hour to that.
I was more envisioning a scenario where, the morning of said presentation, you mention to your boss that for whatever reason you didn’t have the time to prepare, and ask if you could postpone the presentation until the next day. I think in that scenario, everyone benefits.
I think it applies just as much outside the business world. If you ARE the boss (or rather, the head of a nonprofit organization dedicated to X good thing) and must continuously tell people that you need to postpone things because you need more time to better prepare… you are going to have a hard time maintaining people’s interest, people are going to be less willing to invest in your cause.
Am I understanding correctly that you do consider it dishonest to stand up straight, keep feet properly planted and avoid nervous behaviors?
If that’s the only thing you needed to be able to improve at doing, why does it matter whether you practiced for hours until you had drilled out the possibility of ever doing it wrong, or just went and DID it?
[Edit: I agree that the Business world will have ADDITIONAL things that you’d have to compromise on and good for you to avoid something that’d make you unhappy. There are many places where I probably share your idealism. But I think you are setting a standard for yourself that would actively make the world a worse place if it were widely adopted]
Well the key phrase is “continuously”. I’m not saying you make a habit of repeatedly requesting extensions. But if you need one, I think you should ask for it, and I think it’s better for everyone if you do. But if you need an extension on every project you have, you should be fired.
Dishonest would be a stretch. But you are not presenting your true mental state. Which could be the right thing to do—if presenting in such a manner helped your audience’s ability to understand, then you should. But I would say that the better thing to do is to recognize the situation you’re in and analyze where is best to go from there. That may be presenting to the best of your ability. But it might also be humbly asking to present the next day and apologize for not preparing enough. I think most people would understand if it were an isolated incident.
If I think someone’s idea is stupid, I don’t think I’m making the world a better place by representing my true mental state. Every day at work, there’s a colleague who grates on me slightly. Accurately representing my mental state to him every time would be disastrous. There are dozens of instances every day where accurately representing myself would make the world a worse place for myself and the people around me.
I only think this is a problem if “accurately presenting your mental state” is something relevant to whatever it is you’re doing. Which mostly amounts to friendships and relationships—establishing close emotional bonds with people.
The people didn’t come to the presentation to form a close bond with you or get an accurate map of your personality—they came to see a presentation.
When you are first meeting a girl, you’re not immediately establishing a deep, personal connection (not usually anyway). The initial few minutes are about establishing that you two are both interesting people and it’s worth the two of your time to get to know each other. Trust and personal connection comes later (possibly soon afterwards, but it’s not part of the first few minutes).
Don’t put a false version of yourself forward. But do put the best version of yourself forward.
Any chance people could explain their downvotes? I felt, and still do, this was one of my better posts.
I can’t help but wonder if it wasn’t a reaction of the hive mind against Rand...
I didn’t downvote but am tempted to now given that the quote of Rand is nonsense and you are doing the ‘Hivemind’ defense of it. I still haven’t. I must be in a good mood normally; normally I’d go all downvote Roman on you.
Looking at your post now:
NO! BAD! SILLY THINKING! NAIVE! GROW UP! DON’T ENCOURAGE OTHERS TO USE MODELS OF THE WORLD WHICH ARE SELF SABOTAGING. (These are examples of reasons why I would downvote the grandparent. I can’t speak for the reasoning of the actual downvoters.)
Would you care to support any of those assertions? Why is that quote nonsense? Why is that model self sabotaging?
I disagree on both counts. Although I don’t find myself in line with Rand on much, I do find her views on emotion being a product of rational thought, and not an opposing force to be quite agreeable.
As for that being a self sabotaging strategy, I think it is far more damaging to pretend that we don’t feel a certain way than to analyze why we feel that way, so that we can correct our emotions. (You have also failed to define what you mean by self sabotaging—there are ways that, depending on your utility functions for things like “intrinsic truth” that would change.)
No. You (feigned that you were) interested in why you were downvoted and I gave some guesses based on why I would have downvoted were it the case that I was such a downvoter. “Convince RobertLumley that the downvoters are justified” is a different task, which I haven’t taken up.
With respect to the philosophy behind “acting” confident I have a similar postition to that of HughRistik who discusses the topic from time to time. (Searching ‘HughRistik acting confident social’ would probably find it.)
That’s quite a leap to assume I was feigning interest. And frankly, it seems quite rude for you to do so when I’m following common LessWrong practice.
I was, am, and will continue to be (since no one has responded) very interested in why people thought that post was of poor quality. In fact, in my request, I considered leaving out the part about Rand, but did not, because it was what I was thinking—it would be quite hypocritical for me not to be honest about it, given the context.