I’m curious why you that I’m not part of your target audience – feel free to elaborate.
I’m not sure we understand each other here, but I’m assuming you want to know why I do not consider myself part of your target audience. I don’t have a concrete answer here, it’s just that I read this and thought it didn’t apply to me. I had some of the same difficulties as you, but not in a way that I feel your advice would have applied or still does apply. I can think of a friend for whom some of your advice would probably apply, though, and imagine you are targeting him and not me.
I might be oblivious, but I don’t see where I called myself smarter than the typical LW reader
This is what I take from: ” I almost never went to Less Wrong meetups, because I had already thought about most of what people discussed, so that it was more efficient for me to learn on my own.” and similar comments. I can see how you would take it as saying that you simply have already thought about that ahead of time and so you’re not claiming to be smarter. (I’ve tried to explain that circumstance to people before myself.) But most people will take that to mean that you think you’re too smart for them. Other comments suggest that this “most people” does not transfer to “most LW readers,” though, so maybe I’m misplaced. This is also something that I thought could have been left out entirely. If you had to include this I would have suggested mollifying it a bit: make the problem seem to be yourself rather than others. Something like, “I struggled to find common ground to talk about even during LW meetups.” This loses some specificity, but I’d play around with that kind of phrasing where you claim the fault is your own.
Another example would be something like describing yourself as “The guy who has deep insights but who doesn’t get anything done, because he he’s socially dysfunctional so nobody listens to him”. This is a pretty big humble brag. If I wanted to say that to a typical person I might have said, “The guy who doesn’t get anything done, no matter what insight he has, because he’s socially dysfunctional so nobody listens to him.” It’s more cautious and definitely doesn’t claim “deep insight” which is a phrase I’d reserve for describing someone else. You leave it up to the reader exactly how insightful you are implying yourself to be. It also changes the focus to your difficulty rather than the strength (which is demoted to an aside). I’m no writer though, so take this specific suggestion with a grain of salt.
Similarly for claims about deep insights from machine learning. Make the focus the difficulty you faced, not the deep insight you had. Maybe say, “I struggled even more after picking up machine learning jargon and modes of thought which I couldn’t well articulate, even to my close friends.”
Others have pointed out that you’re also very humble throughout. I agree with them, too, and admire your ability to spell out your own failings. But people read “humble brag” mixed statements as primarily bragging. To you, it might seem really really significant that you were struggling, but that’s not the focus people will read.
For the doctor analogy, I agree that that’s what you’re trying to say and I think you partly succeeded at that on one level. But on the other level, people will be turned off when you express expertise in areas where you do not have an obvious qualification. A doctor has a diploma to point to, and people are okay with that. A self-proclaimed student of medicine who had spent 15 years learning privately would be treated quite differently form the doctor. It’s not a fair world! Had you been more specific I also might not have taken it like that, instead it seemed to be a blanket statement, like how an adult might say that all conversation with a child is tedious since the child just hasn’t had any exposure to interesting ideas. Regardless of how factually true that is, the child could feel slighted.
This is all my take. Lumifer’s response seems reasonable, too.
What would I have eliminated to make it shorter? It’s a matter of taste, I suppose. I might have removed most of the part about how you grew up. I felt it could be summarized in a few sentences. But looking over this a second time, I think I may have clumped a lot of the things I thought came off as “arrogant” under the tag of “needs to be removed” and then interpreted that to mean that the article was too long. I’m sure it could be tightened up, but other than that growing up section there doesn’t seem to be anything major. So take that complaint of mine lightly.
Ugh, I need to take my own advice and not write so much. Easier said than done.
Ugh, I need to take my own advice and not write so much. Easier said than done.
:D.
I should clarify that I recently made a decision to be more explicit about the facts in order to better understand where people’s negative reactions are coming from. It’s not the case that I don’t know that people react negatively to connotations that I think that I’m knowledgable than them. Just using the vocabulary that I use by default can give an impression of the type “this guy is using fancy words in order to bamboozle us.” So your comments and Lumifer’s aren’t my first introduction to the phenomenon – I’ve been dealing with it since I was in preschool :D.
Over the course of my life, to a large degree, I dealt with people’s negative reactions to connotations that I was more knowledgable than them by giving up on communicating. My attitude was “I can’t be who I am around other people, so my only choice is isolation.” This is why I’ve never had a relationship at 29 years old, even though it was not uncommon for women to express interest in me.
So I’m experimenting with how much it’s possible or me to open up without social backlash, and how much it’s possible for me to clarify what my beliefs are with disclaimers and/or appropriate phrasing, as opposed to it not being possible to say what I think at all.
I haven’t stated this explicitly yet, but since you seem to have genuine interest in me, on a personal level:
I thought “finally I’ve met people who are like me and committed to optimizing for charitable readings and for the truth.” When I discovered that essentially no LWers were actually optimizing for epistemic rationality, I felt bitterly disappointed, and totally misunderstood the situation as “LWers are hypocritical borderline sociopaths.”
The actual situation was as I describe in my post: I was greatly underestimating the inferential distance, so that I didn’t understand that behavior that appeared to me to be appallingly hypocritical was only so within my frame of reference, and that it looked to other LWers like it wasn’t possible to do any better. See, e.g. my comment here.
I mistakenly thought that what was going on primarily reflected punishment for prosocial behavior. Now that I know that people didn’t know what I was talking about I can stop being an isolated dysfunctional Christ-like figure who’s crucified and dies without helping anyone, and start being a member of a community.
I’m not sure we understand each other here, but I’m assuming you want to know why I do not consider myself part of your target audience. I don’t have a concrete answer here, it’s just that I read this and thought it didn’t apply to me. I had some of the same difficulties as you, but not in a way that I feel your advice would have applied or still does apply. I can think of a friend for whom some of your advice would probably apply, though, and imagine you are targeting him and not me.
This is what I take from: ” I almost never went to Less Wrong meetups, because I had already thought about most of what people discussed, so that it was more efficient for me to learn on my own.” and similar comments. I can see how you would take it as saying that you simply have already thought about that ahead of time and so you’re not claiming to be smarter. (I’ve tried to explain that circumstance to people before myself.) But most people will take that to mean that you think you’re too smart for them. Other comments suggest that this “most people” does not transfer to “most LW readers,” though, so maybe I’m misplaced. This is also something that I thought could have been left out entirely. If you had to include this I would have suggested mollifying it a bit: make the problem seem to be yourself rather than others. Something like, “I struggled to find common ground to talk about even during LW meetups.” This loses some specificity, but I’d play around with that kind of phrasing where you claim the fault is your own.
Another example would be something like describing yourself as “The guy who has deep insights but who doesn’t get anything done, because he he’s socially dysfunctional so nobody listens to him”. This is a pretty big humble brag. If I wanted to say that to a typical person I might have said, “The guy who doesn’t get anything done, no matter what insight he has, because he’s socially dysfunctional so nobody listens to him.” It’s more cautious and definitely doesn’t claim “deep insight” which is a phrase I’d reserve for describing someone else. You leave it up to the reader exactly how insightful you are implying yourself to be. It also changes the focus to your difficulty rather than the strength (which is demoted to an aside). I’m no writer though, so take this specific suggestion with a grain of salt.
Similarly for claims about deep insights from machine learning. Make the focus the difficulty you faced, not the deep insight you had. Maybe say, “I struggled even more after picking up machine learning jargon and modes of thought which I couldn’t well articulate, even to my close friends.”
Others have pointed out that you’re also very humble throughout. I agree with them, too, and admire your ability to spell out your own failings. But people read “humble brag” mixed statements as primarily bragging. To you, it might seem really really significant that you were struggling, but that’s not the focus people will read.
For the doctor analogy, I agree that that’s what you’re trying to say and I think you partly succeeded at that on one level. But on the other level, people will be turned off when you express expertise in areas where you do not have an obvious qualification. A doctor has a diploma to point to, and people are okay with that. A self-proclaimed student of medicine who had spent 15 years learning privately would be treated quite differently form the doctor. It’s not a fair world! Had you been more specific I also might not have taken it like that, instead it seemed to be a blanket statement, like how an adult might say that all conversation with a child is tedious since the child just hasn’t had any exposure to interesting ideas. Regardless of how factually true that is, the child could feel slighted.
This is all my take. Lumifer’s response seems reasonable, too.
What would I have eliminated to make it shorter? It’s a matter of taste, I suppose. I might have removed most of the part about how you grew up. I felt it could be summarized in a few sentences. But looking over this a second time, I think I may have clumped a lot of the things I thought came off as “arrogant” under the tag of “needs to be removed” and then interpreted that to mean that the article was too long. I’m sure it could be tightened up, but other than that growing up section there doesn’t seem to be anything major. So take that complaint of mine lightly.
Ugh, I need to take my own advice and not write so much. Easier said than done.
:D.
I should clarify that I recently made a decision to be more explicit about the facts in order to better understand where people’s negative reactions are coming from. It’s not the case that I don’t know that people react negatively to connotations that I think that I’m knowledgable than them. Just using the vocabulary that I use by default can give an impression of the type “this guy is using fancy words in order to bamboozle us.” So your comments and Lumifer’s aren’t my first introduction to the phenomenon – I’ve been dealing with it since I was in preschool :D.
Over the course of my life, to a large degree, I dealt with people’s negative reactions to connotations that I was more knowledgable than them by giving up on communicating. My attitude was “I can’t be who I am around other people, so my only choice is isolation.” This is why I’ve never had a relationship at 29 years old, even though it was not uncommon for women to express interest in me.
So I’m experimenting with how much it’s possible or me to open up without social backlash, and how much it’s possible for me to clarify what my beliefs are with disclaimers and/or appropriate phrasing, as opposed to it not being possible to say what I think at all.
I haven’t stated this explicitly yet, but since you seem to have genuine interest in me, on a personal level:
My experience for Less Wrong (dating back to 2010 under a pseudonym) was traumatic for me.
I thought “finally I’ve met people who are like me and committed to optimizing for charitable readings and for the truth.” When I discovered that essentially no LWers were actually optimizing for epistemic rationality, I felt bitterly disappointed, and totally misunderstood the situation as “LWers are hypocritical borderline sociopaths.”
The actual situation was as I describe in my post: I was greatly underestimating the inferential distance, so that I didn’t understand that behavior that appeared to me to be appallingly hypocritical was only so within my frame of reference, and that it looked to other LWers like it wasn’t possible to do any better. See, e.g. my comment here.
I mistakenly thought that what was going on primarily reflected punishment for prosocial behavior. Now that I know that people didn’t know what I was talking about I can stop being an isolated dysfunctional Christ-like figure who’s crucified and dies without helping anyone, and start being a member of a community.