if humans naturally put x% extra weight on negative feedback by default, then if i want a human to get an accurate idea of what i’m trying to communicate, i need to counteract their innate negativity bias by de-emphasizing the negative or over-emphasizing the positive. if i just communicate the literal truth directly to someone who still has the negativity bias, that’s BAD COMMUNICATION because i am knowingly giving that person a set of inputs that will cause them to draw an inaccurate conclusion.
in my model of the world, a major justification of social grace is that it corrects for listeners’ natural tendency to assume the worst of whatever they hear.
this follows in the feynman/bohr example because bohr had fixed his own negativity biases but the “yes-men” continued to correct for them. but feynman was just not doing that correction by default, and was therefore capable of better communication with bohr.
needn’t clutter up the comments on https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/h2Hk2c2Gp5sY4abQh/lack-of-social-grace-is-an-epistemic-virtue, as it’s old and a contender for bestof, but....
what about the negativity bias??!!
if humans naturally put x% extra weight on negative feedback by default, then if i want a human to get an accurate idea of what i’m trying to communicate, i need to counteract their innate negativity bias by de-emphasizing the negative or over-emphasizing the positive. if i just communicate the literal truth directly to someone who still has the negativity bias, that’s BAD COMMUNICATION because i am knowingly giving that person a set of inputs that will cause them to draw an inaccurate conclusion.
in my model of the world, a major justification of social grace is that it corrects for listeners’ natural tendency to assume the worst of whatever they hear.
this follows in the feynman/bohr example because bohr had fixed his own negativity biases but the “yes-men” continued to correct for them. but feynman was just not doing that correction by default, and was therefore capable of better communication with bohr.