Thank you for explaining. I’ve explained a bit in some of the other comments. It is true that the things I am attempting to communicate are very foreign to this crowd, and I haven’t spoken to rationalists at large in quite awhile, especially on a heated topic like this one and am out of practice.
I’m going to do my best to do a more thorough summary in the morning after sleeping on it. Although I am a native Californian and English speaker, I am culturally very different than Less Wrong at this point, and thus forgot quite how thorough I need to be in clear speech for Less Wrongers to get what I’m trying to say.
When you speak to people who are more or less on the same page with you, its very different than speaking with a different group with a different belief set. You need to take the messages down to a much more basic level to define terms and whatnot. I had actually thought I had done that, but still clearly missed many steps.
I’m also very positive reinforcement and appreciation oriented, so its pretty jarring to run into so much hating and so little appreciation. Not that I can’t handle it, but its certainly a lot less pleasant to have all of the imperfections picked apart than to have the effort and signal appreciated. There are a lot of different ways to say the same things and reach the same (or better) results. But that is a different post, which I will probably write elsewhere.
A lot of what I teach people how to do is be nicer to themselves, and thus, as they learn this and their lives get better, they are also very nice to me and change their basic assumptions to friendlier kinder ones that are pleasant to work with.
Its not an either/or. You can give the same feedback that people give here with appreciation. The “ripping apart” style of giving feedback is entirely cultural, and does not add value in and of itself IMHO.
Showing kindness and appreciation does add value, as this is the sort of thing we desire as human beings, and it calms and relaxes people, and thus makes it far easier for people to assimilate the feedback given.
Sometimes getting the feedback that is paired with having things ripped apart on this site is useful. My writing skills have improved greatly from writing on LW, and I did indeed get useful feedback from this, for which I am grateful.
Well, that’s how you have framed it :-/ As to “entirely cultural”, so is the “kindergarten” style of giving feedback. Gold stars for participation to everyone!
thus makes it far easier for people to assimilate the feedback given.
It also makes it far easier for people to ignore the (negative) feedback, focus on the positive, and decide that everything is fine and nothing needs to be changed.
I’m also very positive reinforcement and appreciation oriented, so its pretty jarring to run into so much hating and so little appreciation. Not that I can’t handle it, but its certainly a lot less pleasant to have all of the imperfections picked apart than to have the effort and signal appreciated. There are a lot of different ways to say the same things and reach the same (or better) results.But that is a different post, which I will probably write elsewhere.
I do this professionally and know that my systems are far more effective at achieving desired results as well as having the nice side effect of positive affect. I do not feel like taking the time and energy to explain my work right now, as it is not on topic for this discussion. You can have a look at the testimonials page on my site if you want to see a lot of people talking about the results they have gotten.
I can’t help but feel that this exchange is an example of your earlier point, Lumifer, that if one doesn’t use blunt negative feedback the audience can more easily choose to ignore it. It looks like you’re optimizing your criticisms to score points rather than to change Shannon’s behavior, and this seems to me to be a principal failure mode of the ‘rip apart’ style of feedback.
looks like you’re optimizing your criticisms to score points rather than to change Shannon’s behavior
Hard to evaluate such things from the inside, of course, but… First, I have no interest in changing Shannon’s behavior and I think having such a goal would be both strange and inappropriate. Second, I didn’t understand the point of her post and my usual approach to such situations is to get a few sharp sticks and start poking :-) I know that not everyone is a fan of such methods but I find that they work sufficiently well.
All in all, my weakly held opinion at the moment is that the post wasn’t all that interesting—it was just a failed attempt to promote a psychotherapy practice.
Of course. For the statistics I used all clients and did not cherry pick, but you only have my word for that. And of course there is selection bias for who gives me a testimonial.
That said, those testimonials and statistics are the best that I have to make my point.
If you want me to provide you a perfect, infallible argument to persuade you to change your life, you are going to be waiting a very long time, because I am neither interested nor possessing the time and energy to do it.
If you want evidence that has signal, then that is what I have given you. You can ignore it and/or pick it apart, and get nothing from it, as you seem to have chosen to do.
Someone else might get quite a lot of value from it, if they use the strategy of looking at signal rather than assuming that they are right until proven wrong.
Thank you for explaining. I’ve explained a bit in some of the other comments. It is true that the things I am attempting to communicate are very foreign to this crowd, and I haven’t spoken to rationalists at large in quite awhile, especially on a heated topic like this one and am out of practice.
I’m going to do my best to do a more thorough summary in the morning after sleeping on it. Although I am a native Californian and English speaker, I am culturally very different than Less Wrong at this point, and thus forgot quite how thorough I need to be in clear speech for Less Wrongers to get what I’m trying to say.
When you speak to people who are more or less on the same page with you, its very different than speaking with a different group with a different belief set. You need to take the messages down to a much more basic level to define terms and whatnot. I had actually thought I had done that, but still clearly missed many steps.
I’m also very positive reinforcement and appreciation oriented, so its pretty jarring to run into so much hating and so little appreciation. Not that I can’t handle it, but its certainly a lot less pleasant to have all of the imperfections picked apart than to have the effort and signal appreciated. There are a lot of different ways to say the same things and reach the same (or better) results. But that is a different post, which I will probably write elsewhere.
A lot of what I teach people how to do is be nicer to themselves, and thus, as they learn this and their lives get better, they are also very nice to me and change their basic assumptions to friendlier kinder ones that are pleasant to work with.
A lot less pleasant and a lot more useful.
Depends on the goal.
Its not an either/or. You can give the same feedback that people give here with appreciation. The “ripping apart” style of giving feedback is entirely cultural, and does not add value in and of itself IMHO.
Showing kindness and appreciation does add value, as this is the sort of thing we desire as human beings, and it calms and relaxes people, and thus makes it far easier for people to assimilate the feedback given.
Sometimes getting the feedback that is paired with having things ripped apart on this site is useful. My writing skills have improved greatly from writing on LW, and I did indeed get useful feedback from this, for which I am grateful.
Well, that’s how you have framed it :-/ As to “entirely cultural”, so is the “kindergarten” style of giving feedback. Gold stars for participation to everyone!
It also makes it far easier for people to ignore the (negative) feedback, focus on the positive, and decide that everything is fine and nothing needs to be changed.
Here is what I actually said:
I do this professionally and know that my systems are far more effective at achieving desired results as well as having the nice side effect of positive affect. I do not feel like taking the time and energy to explain my work right now, as it is not on topic for this discussion. You can have a look at the testimonials page on my site if you want to see a lot of people talking about the results they have gotten.
You don’t think there might be a wee bit of a selection bias there..? :-)
I can’t help but feel that this exchange is an example of your earlier point, Lumifer, that if one doesn’t use blunt negative feedback the audience can more easily choose to ignore it. It looks like you’re optimizing your criticisms to score points rather than to change Shannon’s behavior, and this seems to me to be a principal failure mode of the ‘rip apart’ style of feedback.
Hard to evaluate such things from the inside, of course, but… First, I have no interest in changing Shannon’s behavior and I think having such a goal would be both strange and inappropriate. Second, I didn’t understand the point of her post and my usual approach to such situations is to get a few sharp sticks and start poking :-) I know that not everyone is a fan of such methods but I find that they work sufficiently well.
All in all, my weakly held opinion at the moment is that the post wasn’t all that interesting—it was just a failed attempt to promote a psychotherapy practice.
Of course. For the statistics I used all clients and did not cherry pick, but you only have my word for that. And of course there is selection bias for who gives me a testimonial.
That said, those testimonials and statistics are the best that I have to make my point.
If you want me to provide you a perfect, infallible argument to persuade you to change your life, you are going to be waiting a very long time, because I am neither interested nor possessing the time and energy to do it.
If you want evidence that has signal, then that is what I have given you. You can ignore it and/or pick it apart, and get nothing from it, as you seem to have chosen to do.
Someone else might get quite a lot of value from it, if they use the strategy of looking at signal rather than assuming that they are right until proven wrong.
Oh, dear. No, I certainly do not want that.
I mostly want a coherent description of the point, if there is a point other than “come to me and I’ll fix you”.