The secret lore of the Rationalist movement is that some specific kinds of criticism make Rationalists hate you, such as criticizing someone for being too friendly to racists. The secret truth of rationality is that all “criticism” is at least neutral and possibly good for a perfectly rational agent, including criticizing the agent for being too friendly to racists.
My thoughts
- Reputation is real, but less real than you think or hope. And reputation is asymmetrically fact-favored—just speak the truth and keep being you, and your reputation will follow. - Slander may cause dumb or mean people to turn against you, but wise people will get it and kind people will forgive you, and those people are who really matters. - Bad press is good press. It helps you win at the attention economy. - The Rationalists are better at accepting criticism, broadly construed, than average. - The Rationalists are better at handling culture-war stuff than average, but mostly because they are more autistic and more based than average. - The average sucks. Seek perfection. - I understand on an emotional level being afraid of cancel culture. I used to be. For me it’s tied up with fear of social isolation, loneliness, rejection. I overreacted to this and decided to “not care what other people think” (while still actually caring that people saw me as clever, contrarian, feminine, etc; I just mean I decided to be egotistical.) This led to the opposite failure of not listening enough to others. but it was a lot of fun. I think the right identity-stance is in between.
On a personal level, crockers rule made me happier and believe more true things. Even activating, unfair, or false criticism as a gift of feedback. The last time someone said something super triggering to me, it caused me to open up my feelings and love people more. The time before that, I became more accepting of embarrassing kinks I had—and this time was from some quite off-base trolly criticism. It’s related to “staring into the void” or considering the worst possible scenarios—literally as in “what if I lose my job” but also spiritually like “what if people stop loving me.” Kinda like how you’re supposed to think of death five times a day to be happy. Or like being a dnd monk I imagine. Either they’re right and you deserve it or they’re wrong and it doesn’t matter.
My literal interpretation of Zack:
The secret lore of the Rationalist movement is that some specific kinds of criticism make Rationalists hate you, such as criticizing someone for being too friendly to racists.
The secret truth of rationality is that all “criticism” is at least neutral and possibly good for a perfectly rational agent, including criticizing the agent for being too friendly to racists.
My thoughts
- Reputation is real, but less real than you think or hope. And reputation is asymmetrically fact-favored—just speak the truth and keep being you, and your reputation will follow.
- Slander may cause dumb or mean people to turn against you, but wise people will get it and kind people will forgive you, and those people are who really matters.
- Bad press is good press. It helps you win at the attention economy.
- The Rationalists are better at accepting criticism, broadly construed, than average.
- The Rationalists are better at handling culture-war stuff than average, but mostly because they are more autistic and more based than average.
- The average sucks. Seek perfection.
- I understand on an emotional level being afraid of cancel culture. I used to be. For me it’s tied up with fear of social isolation, loneliness, rejection. I overreacted to this and decided to “not care what other people think” (while still actually caring that people saw me as clever, contrarian, feminine, etc; I just mean I decided to be egotistical.) This led to the opposite failure of not listening enough to others. but it was a lot of fun. I think the right identity-stance is in between.
On a personal level, crockers rule made me happier and believe more true things. Even activating, unfair, or false criticism as a gift of feedback. The last time someone said something super triggering to me, it caused me to open up my feelings and love people more. The time before that, I became more accepting of embarrassing kinks I had—and this time was from some quite off-base trolly criticism.
It’s related to “staring into the void” or considering the worst possible scenarios—literally as in “what if I lose my job” but also spiritually like “what if people stop loving me.” Kinda like how you’re supposed to think of death five times a day to be happy. Or like being a dnd monk I imagine. Either they’re right and you deserve it or they’re wrong and it doesn’t matter.