I’ve actually come to the impression that the extensive use of contempt in the Sequences is one of the worst aspects of the whole piece of writing, because it encourages people to disown their own actual experience where it’s (near) the target of such contempt, and to adopt a contemptuous stance when faced with perspectives they in fact don’t get.
Contempt usually doesn’t help people change their minds, and when it does it does so via undermining people’s internal epistemic processes with social manipulation. If the argument in “section 2 above” turns out to have flaws or mistaken assumptions, then an attitude of contempt (particularly from a position of high status) about how it’s embarrassing to not understand that will not help people understand it better. It might get them to spend more time with the argument in order to de-embarrass themselves, but it won’t encourage them to take the arguments on its merits. Either the argument is good and addresses relevant concerns people have (factual and political) and if so you’ll be able to tell because it will work! Shaming people for not getting it is at best a distraction, and at worst an attack on people’s sensemaking. And generally a symmetric weapon.
Meanwhile, contempt as a stance in the holder it tend to block curiosity and ability to notice confusion. Even if some argument is clearly wrong, it somehow actually made sense to the person arguing it—at least as a thing to say, if not a way to actually view the world. What sense did it make? Why did they say this bizarre thing and not that bizarre thing? Just because energy-healing obviously doesn’t work via [violating this particular law of physics], that doesn’t mean it can’t work via some other mechanism—after all, the body heals itself non-magically under many ordinary circumstances! And if interventions can make it harder for that to work, then they can probably make it easier. So how might it work? And what incentivized the energy healer to make up a bad model in the first place?
Contempt may be common among rationalists but from my perspective the main reason Rob didn’t include it is probably because it’s not actually very functional for good discourse.
I’ve actually come to the impression that the extensive use of contempt in the Sequences is one of the worst aspects of the whole piece of writing, because it encourages people to disown their own actual experience where it’s (near) the target of such contempt, and to adopt a contemptuous stance when faced with perspectives they in fact don’t get.
Contempt usually doesn’t help people change their minds, and when it does it does so via undermining people’s internal epistemic processes with social manipulation. If the argument in “section 2 above” turns out to have flaws or mistaken assumptions, then an attitude of contempt (particularly from a position of high status) about how it’s embarrassing to not understand that will not help people understand it better. It might get them to spend more time with the argument in order to de-embarrass themselves, but it won’t encourage them to take the arguments on its merits. Either the argument is good and addresses relevant concerns people have (factual and political) and if so you’ll be able to tell because it will work! Shaming people for not getting it is at best a distraction, and at worst an attack on people’s sensemaking. And generally a symmetric weapon.
Meanwhile, contempt as a stance in the holder it tend to block curiosity and ability to notice confusion. Even if some argument is clearly wrong, it somehow actually made sense to the person arguing it—at least as a thing to say, if not a way to actually view the world. What sense did it make? Why did they say this bizarre thing and not that bizarre thing? Just because energy-healing obviously doesn’t work via [violating this particular law of physics], that doesn’t mean it can’t work via some other mechanism—after all, the body heals itself non-magically under many ordinary circumstances! And if interventions can make it harder for that to work, then they can probably make it easier. So how might it work? And what incentivized the energy healer to make up a bad model in the first place?
Contempt may be common among rationalists but from my perspective the main reason Rob didn’t include it is probably because it’s not actually very functional for good discourse.