I just dropped in to agree with this: “it expressed a strong opinion not already established as a group-defining belief—something which is generally frowned upon in most human groups, but especially goes against the self-image of folks here as calm, reflective, “rational” people.”
I care about lots of things that are not themes of LW. I get a pretty negative reaction whenever I express such feelings—even when I don’t think I’m being particularly fanatical. I don’t believe it makes you foolish to have strong opinions or preferences about a variety of things.
It was on IRC, when I got a bit political and ranty. I was very mild, by my standards, but I do tend to slide into vendetta-mode, which this crowd doesn’t like.
(There is a useful place in the psyche for hate; it makes you feel like you matter.)
Ah, that would explain why I was having trouble thinking of times I’d noticed that happening :)
There is a useful place in the psyche for hate; it makes you feel like you matter
Disagree. My hatred of Scientology and dumb conspiracy theorists and really annoying coworkers doesn’t feel very useful to me, and makes me less able to react in a way consistent with my overall values.
If cultivating a hatred of Scientology and dumb conspiracy theorists makes you less likely to become a Scientologist or dumb conspiracy theorist, wouldn’t it be a rational self-modification to make to ensure that those undesirable self-modifications don’t come to pass?
I can strongly disagree or disapprove of a position or person without bringing hate into it.
eg. back when I was pseudo-religious and kept kosher, I was fine with seeing and smelling pork products and listening to my friends go on about how tasty pork products are, because I was completely confident in my choice not to eat them. No emotional bolstering required. In the case of Scientology et al. it’s even easier to be confident, because I would have to undergo brain damage or some kind of severe personality modification before their beliefs would look plausible.
Also on a more pragmatic note, humans aren’t good at separating people from their opinions. If you cultivate a hatred of Scientology and then meet someone who used to be a Scientologist but left, there’s a very real chance that I would feel dislike for them purely based on their past affiliation, and that’s not a behaviour I want to endorse.
In the case of Scientology et al. it’s even easier to be confident, because I would have to undergo brain damage or some kind of severe personality modification before their beliefs would look plausible.
Personality modification is exactly how cults and affective death spirals work. ;)
Right, but why would I want to undergo that kind of modification to join in something that I already find completely stupid and implausible? It would be like trying to convince myself that I’ve always wanted to be a circus clown. My prior for becoming a Scientologist is just so low that I can’t see how trying to cultivate an emotional response could decrease it any further.
As a rule I don’t think hatred is very often a useful emotion to cultivate. Even if I decide before hand that a position is so bad that it deserves hatred, calculating calmly and rationally, after I have hatred towards a group it clouds any rational evaluation of them. It’s possible I was missing important evidence when I first came to that conclusion, but having hatred makes me less likely to re-examine the evidence and decide they’re not hate worthy. Maybe they change how they act subsequently, once again I will struggle to re-evaluate my position.
Further, even if I knew for sure that neither of the above situations could happen, hatred is generally not a useful emotion because it:
Clouds insights on myself I could gain from these groups. Perhaps particular decisions or beliefs they made or acquired led to their current status. I could learn a valuable lesson of what to avoid from that, but hatred makes it more likely that I will view them as other to me, and not want to acknowledge that I could make similar mistakes, and so should be wary of them.
Is generally not very pleasant. Hating people can increase stress, especially if I come into contact with them or mention of them often.
Diminishes the power of any warnings you may try to deliver to people regarding them. Trying to dissuade someone from joining them, or trying to warn people about some heinous action the hated group is undertaking is a lot harder if people are going to dismiss you because of your hatred.
When you can do something for the better, being rational helps. When you can’t—when somebody can or has hurt somebody you care about, and there’s not a damn thing you can do—there’s no point trying to get the details right or consider the situation fairly. You may as well hate, because it at least gives you a sense of loyalty when more impressive actions are impossible.
I never wind up hating anybody I know personally. Not permanently. They always seem to do something to remind me of their humanity. I actually wish I were more adversarial. It seems to give people a terrific glory buzz.
When you can do something for the better, being rational helps. When you can’t—when somebody can or has hurt somebody you care about, and there’s not a damn thing you can do—there’s no point trying to get the details right or consider the situation fairly. You may as well hate, because it at least gives you a sense of loyalty when more impressive actions are impossible.
There is nothing intrinsically irrational about hate. Indeed being rational can both make your act on your hate more effectively and actually encourage you to hate when doing so furthers your goals. But that’s an entirely different matter to “not point trying to get the details right or consider the situation fairly”.
If you aren’t trying to get the details right or act fairly while making political rants why on earth would you expect LW to be particularly accommodating?
(I am willing to believe that LW is not accommodating of expression of strong feeling even when not acting as you advocate here. It is a perfectly plausible bias for LW to have and I can see downsides to it. Another bias (or the same one generalised) is regarding not acting as though you have strong feelings about an issue that there is a social consensus about. People turn their brains off when it comes to cryonics avocation and utilitarian existential risk prevention, for example. ie. Not proselytising is labelled ‘murder’.)
Ok, fair enough. By local standards I was engaging in bad behavior.
(It still puzzles me why it’s important to try to be right about everything. Surely it’s not necessary for everyone to be correct about waterbirds in Antarctica or something. Why do we care so much about being right here?)
It still puzzles me why it’s important to try to be right about everything.
Hypothesis: Take a group of 30 12 year olds, randomly divided them into two groups and give one group the name “Less Wrong” and the other arbitrary and unrelated name then observed the group interaction over a period of a week, both free form interaction and while performing some suitable tasks. The “Less Wrong” group will forge an identity in which they rigorously hold themselves to high intellectual standards while the others may be belligerently irrational or contemptuous of all things intellectual. (Consequences may be long lasting. I don’t expect ethics approval! ;) )
Surely it’s not necessary for everyone to be correct about waterbirds in Antarctica or something. Why do we care so much about being right here?
If someone makes unfair and inaccurate political diatribes against water-birds in Antarctica then I will likely choose to correct the inaccuracies and defend the honour of the poor maligned water-birds even though I am otherwise neutral on the subject.. That is a natural egalitarian response against grabs for political power in my tribe (by a group of which I am not a part). Yet if another person with a hate filled passionate bias against water-birds in Antarctica were to come along they will just see people apparently advocating said birds without knowing the context. They may assume that LessWrong is a group of chauvanistic Antartican water-bird lovers and feel unwelcome or maligned.
Part of living in a system that’s a bit democratic is that it’s good if you promote accurate political beliefs among the population.
Even if you don’t change your behavior based on your beliefs politicians do change their behavior based on public polling. Politicians don’t always react to public opinion but it’s certainly incorrect to say that they don’t care about the results of polls.
Democracy works really well when people get outraged over the right things. It doesn’t work when people are outraged over made up drama.
Holding accurate political beliefs is a bit similar to voting. If one individual refuses, it’s no problem. Promoting social standards that prevent people from voting is a problem.
I just dropped in to agree with this: “it expressed a strong opinion not already established as a group-defining belief—something which is generally frowned upon in most human groups, but especially goes against the self-image of folks here as calm, reflective, “rational” people.”
I care about lots of things that are not themes of LW. I get a pretty negative reaction whenever I express such feelings—even when I don’t think I’m being particularly fanatical. I don’t believe it makes you foolish to have strong opinions or preferences about a variety of things.
May I ask for an example or two of times when you’ve expressed feelings about non-LW themes and been met with negativity?
It was on IRC, when I got a bit political and ranty. I was very mild, by my standards, but I do tend to slide into vendetta-mode, which this crowd doesn’t like.
(There is a useful place in the psyche for hate; it makes you feel like you matter.)
Ah, that would explain why I was having trouble thinking of times I’d noticed that happening :)
Disagree. My hatred of Scientology and dumb conspiracy theorists and really annoying coworkers doesn’t feel very useful to me, and makes me less able to react in a way consistent with my overall values.
If cultivating a hatred of Scientology and dumb conspiracy theorists makes you less likely to become a Scientologist or dumb conspiracy theorist, wouldn’t it be a rational self-modification to make to ensure that those undesirable self-modifications don’t come to pass?
I can strongly disagree or disapprove of a position or person without bringing hate into it. eg. back when I was pseudo-religious and kept kosher, I was fine with seeing and smelling pork products and listening to my friends go on about how tasty pork products are, because I was completely confident in my choice not to eat them. No emotional bolstering required. In the case of Scientology et al. it’s even easier to be confident, because I would have to undergo brain damage or some kind of severe personality modification before their beliefs would look plausible.
Also on a more pragmatic note, humans aren’t good at separating people from their opinions. If you cultivate a hatred of Scientology and then meet someone who used to be a Scientologist but left, there’s a very real chance that I would feel dislike for them purely based on their past affiliation, and that’s not a behaviour I want to endorse.
Personality modification is exactly how cults and affective death spirals work. ;)
Right, but why would I want to undergo that kind of modification to join in something that I already find completely stupid and implausible? It would be like trying to convince myself that I’ve always wanted to be a circus clown. My prior for becoming a Scientologist is just so low that I can’t see how trying to cultivate an emotional response could decrease it any further.
Maybe, but if you were less informed about their methods, you might be surprised how easily they might be able to suck you in.
As a rule I don’t think hatred is very often a useful emotion to cultivate. Even if I decide before hand that a position is so bad that it deserves hatred, calculating calmly and rationally, after I have hatred towards a group it clouds any rational evaluation of them. It’s possible I was missing important evidence when I first came to that conclusion, but having hatred makes me less likely to re-examine the evidence and decide they’re not hate worthy. Maybe they change how they act subsequently, once again I will struggle to re-evaluate my position.
Further, even if I knew for sure that neither of the above situations could happen, hatred is generally not a useful emotion because it:
Clouds insights on myself I could gain from these groups. Perhaps particular decisions or beliefs they made or acquired led to their current status. I could learn a valuable lesson of what to avoid from that, but hatred makes it more likely that I will view them as other to me, and not want to acknowledge that I could make similar mistakes, and so should be wary of them.
Is generally not very pleasant. Hating people can increase stress, especially if I come into contact with them or mention of them often.
Diminishes the power of any warnings you may try to deliver to people regarding them. Trying to dissuade someone from joining them, or trying to warn people about some heinous action the hated group is undertaking is a lot harder if people are going to dismiss you because of your hatred.
nah, I stand by this.
When you can do something for the better, being rational helps. When you can’t—when somebody can or has hurt somebody you care about, and there’s not a damn thing you can do—there’s no point trying to get the details right or consider the situation fairly. You may as well hate, because it at least gives you a sense of loyalty when more impressive actions are impossible.
I never wind up hating anybody I know personally. Not permanently. They always seem to do something to remind me of their humanity. I actually wish I were more adversarial. It seems to give people a terrific glory buzz.
There is nothing intrinsically irrational about hate. Indeed being rational can both make your act on your hate more effectively and actually encourage you to hate when doing so furthers your goals. But that’s an entirely different matter to “not point trying to get the details right or consider the situation fairly”.
If you aren’t trying to get the details right or act fairly while making political rants why on earth would you expect LW to be particularly accommodating?
(I am willing to believe that LW is not accommodating of expression of strong feeling even when not acting as you advocate here. It is a perfectly plausible bias for LW to have and I can see downsides to it. Another bias (or the same one generalised) is regarding not acting as though you have strong feelings about an issue that there is a social consensus about. People turn their brains off when it comes to cryonics avocation and utilitarian existential risk prevention, for example. ie. Not proselytising is labelled ‘murder’.)
Ok, fair enough. By local standards I was engaging in bad behavior.
(It still puzzles me why it’s important to try to be right about everything. Surely it’s not necessary for everyone to be correct about waterbirds in Antarctica or something. Why do we care so much about being right here?)
Hypothesis: Take a group of 30 12 year olds, randomly divided them into two groups and give one group the name “Less Wrong” and the other arbitrary and unrelated name then observed the group interaction over a period of a week, both free form interaction and while performing some suitable tasks. The “Less Wrong” group will forge an identity in which they rigorously hold themselves to high intellectual standards while the others may be belligerently irrational or contemptuous of all things intellectual. (Consequences may be long lasting. I don’t expect ethics approval! ;) )
If someone makes unfair and inaccurate political diatribes against water-birds in Antarctica then I will likely choose to correct the inaccuracies and defend the honour of the poor maligned water-birds even though I am otherwise neutral on the subject.. That is a natural egalitarian response against grabs for political power in my tribe (by a group of which I am not a part). Yet if another person with a hate filled passionate bias against water-birds in Antarctica were to come along they will just see people apparently advocating said birds without knowing the context. They may assume that LessWrong is a group of chauvanistic Antartican water-bird lovers and feel unwelcome or maligned.
Part of living in a system that’s a bit democratic is that it’s good if you promote accurate political beliefs among the population.
Even if you don’t change your behavior based on your beliefs politicians do change their behavior based on public polling. Politicians don’t always react to public opinion but it’s certainly incorrect to say that they don’t care about the results of polls.
Democracy works really well when people get outraged over the right things. It doesn’t work when people are outraged over made up drama.
Holding accurate political beliefs is a bit similar to voting. If one individual refuses, it’s no problem. Promoting social standards that prevent people from voting is a problem.