This comes off as purely bragging and applause lights. And several of the applause lights aren’t relevant. (that chapter of HPMoR and the 12th virtue of rationality)
Additionally, I disagree with one of the premises, which is that CDT is meaningful and useful but can only be well-understood by people who have reached a certain level in its hierarchy. I feel competent to make this judgment, because by its own description, I uncomfortably sit in level 4 (and have a very poor model of what it means to be level 3; I suspect some unpleasant circumstances and mild neuroatypicality made me leapfrog 3). And the theory does not seem to have explanatory power,
Or in short: Scrap this post and come back when you can explain it better, and don’t use excuses like ‘this needs higher-order thinking’ ; I’ll believe you have an insight but you’re not conveying it now, and those excuses are just excuses.
I should also reply more directly to your comments.
I think you are right to criticize my presentation. I’m by no means an expert writer, and despite the significant effort I put into producing this article I’m not satisfied myself with the quality of the explanations, so it hardly surprises me that others feel the same way. You can view my limitations as “just” excuses if you like, but I mostly look at them as tradeoffs: I can either publish this kind of confusing thing or spend months becoming a better writer. Unfortunately for my dear readers I’ve chosen to leave my writing confusing rather than devote more time now to writing better, and I suffer the consequences for it as much as they do.
I’m not sure that I’m seeking applause lights. That section only got included after Ethan pointed out to me that he saw a similarity between what I was talking about and what recalled from HPMOR and CFAR. Having those, I thought it appropriate to see if Eli had written something in the sequences that was relevant, but since he mostly seems to gloss over agency and takes it as given.
Your writing mistakes here make this worse than useless; they signal crackpottery and cultishness in such a way that not posting it would be superior to posting it in it’s current form. Especially since if it’s true, then by your own admission it’s only comprehensible to people who don’t need it, and only useful to people who can’t comprehend it.
I think you think I have way more influence than I do and are probably overly concerned with the image of Less Wrong I present. I guess I have little to say to that because I don’t much care at the moment: I’m more interested in exploring these ideas and bettering myself and hopefully others than I am in presenting a particular image of Less Wrong.
I think the main people this article is useful for are two groups: those on the margin just about the do enough level 4 thinking that this inspires them on, and those who will understand it and by so doing better appreciate the value of constructive development theory. My main purpose in writing is to reach this latter group, because I hope that by sharing with them the explanatory power of constructive development theory for making sense of things that they may be trying to help others with, they may advance in the study of how to make people stronger, a al CFAR.
No, you aren’t affecting the image of LessWrong. You’re affecting the image of yourself and Construtcive Development Theory, which I am now increasingly convinced is pure crackpottery.
Seriously, listen to yourself. You sound like a Scientologist, here.
I mean no insult to you, but if you don’t understand level 3, you’re almost certainly then actually spending your time thinking at levels 2 and 3 but mistaking it for level 4. This seems to be rather strongly backed up by assessment data.
I understand that such people exist, but do not have a good model of what it is like to be one; I have decent models of specific people who approximately meet that description, but no general case. And the description of 3 and 5 are equally alien to me; I have difficulty imagining a version of myself which does not have as its driving fear “falling short of [my] own standards” (4) to a pathological degree. A large degree of my problems as a child were a consistent lack of ability to have my identity “tied to living in relationship with others in roles determined by one’s local culture” (3), be “influenced by what she or he believes others want to hear” (3), or to give respect to authority I perceived as inadequate by my own standards (luckily, I had a sufficient supply of smart teachers I did respect that I never did this enough to get thrown out of school, but it was a very near thing one year). I have been judging myself by my own personal standards since elementary school (and finding myself lacking, natch); I might be 4(2) but I’m very certainly not 3.
Also, I’ll believe the assessment data when I see it. Specifically, some assessments run by people who do not subscribe to this model of development; this overview page looks pretty strongly like it’s making excuses for the lack of dragon in advance, and additionally it indicates that their job depends upon believing it’s true, so I’m very suspicious that they will get trustworthy results.
I agree that constructive development theory has been unfortunately ignored more than it should have been and needs more evidence surrounding it to prove or disprove it. However an aspect of the assessment tools is that they can be run by someone of any constructive development level, so it should be relatively easy to gather additional data using assessors who even actively disagree with constructive development theory. Assuming future data matches the existing data, this would suggest that the constructive development levels are are useful measurement tool, although that certainly still leaves open debate on what they assess.
I’m also not really aware of any assessments being done outside the Anglosphere, so it’s also possible the whole thing will collapse under cultural differences. I don’t consider it likely, but it would certainly be interesting if that happened.
This comes off as purely bragging and applause lights. And several of the applause lights aren’t relevant. (that chapter of HPMoR and the 12th virtue of rationality)
Additionally, I disagree with one of the premises, which is that CDT is meaningful and useful but can only be well-understood by people who have reached a certain level in its hierarchy. I feel competent to make this judgment, because by its own description, I uncomfortably sit in level 4 (and have a very poor model of what it means to be level 3; I suspect some unpleasant circumstances and mild neuroatypicality made me leapfrog 3). And the theory does not seem to have explanatory power,
Or in short: Scrap this post and come back when you can explain it better, and don’t use excuses like ‘this needs higher-order thinking’ ; I’ll believe you have an insight but you’re not conveying it now, and those excuses are just excuses.
I should also reply more directly to your comments.
I think you are right to criticize my presentation. I’m by no means an expert writer, and despite the significant effort I put into producing this article I’m not satisfied myself with the quality of the explanations, so it hardly surprises me that others feel the same way. You can view my limitations as “just” excuses if you like, but I mostly look at them as tradeoffs: I can either publish this kind of confusing thing or spend months becoming a better writer. Unfortunately for my dear readers I’ve chosen to leave my writing confusing rather than devote more time now to writing better, and I suffer the consequences for it as much as they do.
I’m not sure that I’m seeking applause lights. That section only got included after Ethan pointed out to me that he saw a similarity between what I was talking about and what recalled from HPMOR and CFAR. Having those, I thought it appropriate to see if Eli had written something in the sequences that was relevant, but since he mostly seems to gloss over agency and takes it as given.
Your writing mistakes here make this worse than useless; they signal crackpottery and cultishness in such a way that not posting it would be superior to posting it in it’s current form. Especially since if it’s true, then by your own admission it’s only comprehensible to people who don’t need it, and only useful to people who can’t comprehend it.
I think you think I have way more influence than I do and are probably overly concerned with the image of Less Wrong I present. I guess I have little to say to that because I don’t much care at the moment: I’m more interested in exploring these ideas and bettering myself and hopefully others than I am in presenting a particular image of Less Wrong.
I think the main people this article is useful for are two groups: those on the margin just about the do enough level 4 thinking that this inspires them on, and those who will understand it and by so doing better appreciate the value of constructive development theory. My main purpose in writing is to reach this latter group, because I hope that by sharing with them the explanatory power of constructive development theory for making sense of things that they may be trying to help others with, they may advance in the study of how to make people stronger, a al CFAR.
No, you aren’t affecting the image of LessWrong. You’re affecting the image of yourself and Construtcive Development Theory, which I am now increasingly convinced is pure crackpottery.
Seriously, listen to yourself. You sound like a Scientologist, here.
I mean no insult to you, but if you don’t understand level 3, you’re almost certainly then actually spending your time thinking at levels 2 and 3 but mistaking it for level 4. This seems to be rather strongly backed up by assessment data.
I understand that such people exist, but do not have a good model of what it is like to be one; I have decent models of specific people who approximately meet that description, but no general case. And the description of 3 and 5 are equally alien to me; I have difficulty imagining a version of myself which does not have as its driving fear “falling short of [my] own standards” (4) to a pathological degree. A large degree of my problems as a child were a consistent lack of ability to have my identity “tied to living in relationship with others in roles determined by one’s local culture” (3), be “influenced by what she or he believes others want to hear” (3), or to give respect to authority I perceived as inadequate by my own standards (luckily, I had a sufficient supply of smart teachers I did respect that I never did this enough to get thrown out of school, but it was a very near thing one year). I have been judging myself by my own personal standards since elementary school (and finding myself lacking, natch); I might be 4(2) but I’m very certainly not 3.
Also, I’ll believe the assessment data when I see it. Specifically, some assessments run by people who do not subscribe to this model of development; this overview page looks pretty strongly like it’s making excuses for the lack of dragon in advance, and additionally it indicates that their job depends upon believing it’s true, so I’m very suspicious that they will get trustworthy results.
I agree that constructive development theory has been unfortunately ignored more than it should have been and needs more evidence surrounding it to prove or disprove it. However an aspect of the assessment tools is that they can be run by someone of any constructive development level, so it should be relatively easy to gather additional data using assessors who even actively disagree with constructive development theory. Assuming future data matches the existing data, this would suggest that the constructive development levels are are useful measurement tool, although that certainly still leaves open debate on what they assess.
I’m also not really aware of any assessments being done outside the Anglosphere, so it’s also possible the whole thing will collapse under cultural differences. I don’t consider it likely, but it would certainly be interesting if that happened.