Ah, yes. Sorry. The motivation for writing this comment was less ”Qiaochu is wrong about something and here is why” and more “I feel something was slightly off with the framing in that two comment exchange, and here is how the trade off looks to me internally”. I should have made that clearer (writing on my phone seems to have some drawbacks I haven’t properly considered).
I basically agree with you that the dismissive framing seems pretty bad, and not super productive for the discussion, but emotionally seems like a fine attitude to have (I just think it starts having externalities when that attitude shapes the discourse significantly, e.g. by labeling things as low-status).
Thanks for sharing the social anxiety thing. I do actually think that that’s pretty good evidence, and I am interested in hearing more about your models of what drove that change.
Ah, yes. Sorry. The motivation for writing this comment was less ”Qiaochu is wrong about something and here is why” and more “I feel something was slightly off with the framing in that two comment exchange, and here is how the trade off looks to me internally”. I should have made that clearer (writing on my phone seems to have some drawbacks I haven’t properly considered).
I basically agree with you that the dismissive framing seems pretty bad, and not super productive for the discussion, but emotionally seems like a fine attitude to have (I just think it starts having externalities when that attitude shapes the discourse significantly, e.g. by labeling things as low-status).
Thanks for sharing the social anxiety thing. I do actually think that that’s pretty good evidence, and I am interested in hearing more about your models of what drove that change.