I’m still not sure where you’re getting your impression. I will not just look for corroborating information, and I don’t think I said anything that sounded like that, but the voting indicates that people agree with you, and I don’t understand at all. (Or maybe my downvotes are just because I have again failed to come up with a civil-sounding way to express discomfort with an interlocutor’s tone? Is there any way to do that at all, or are my choices radio silence v. painstakingly refraining from reacting to the tone for an entire conversation? Someone please tell me.)
What would be the point of looking for corroborating information? What would I do with it? I’m interested in contradictions and elaborations, especially where it seems like the differences derive from people having variety that I didn’t account for the first time around. I’ll give up if it’s too hard (I’m not getting paid, this isn’t my life’s work, etc.) but I’m not going to give up if the Second Edition has to be very different in content from the first (why in the world would I want to bother writing a Second Edition that had no material differences from its predecessor?)
I think the first edition of the Luminosity Sequence is actually pretty bad. It embarrasses me. I want something better to direct people to!
(Or maybe my downvotes are just because I have again failed to come up with a civil-sounding way to express discomfort with an interlocutor’s tone? Is there any way to do that at all, or are my choices radio silence v. painstakingly refraining from reacting to the tone for an entire conversation? Someone please tell me.)
I think it might be more specific than lack of civility alone. I’m not sure that lack of civility is always a problem. Sometimes the interlocutor has it coming. But this:
I have quashed the impulse to downvote and then ignore you, [...]
sounds… haughty? Condescending? Something along those lines.
You could try being more like “I’m annoyed at you in a thoroughly egalitarian manner” rather than “Your comment indicates that you are an insect beneath my notice” (that is my gut reaction to your comment, not a claim about intended meaning).
Can you come up with a sample script of what you’re talking about? It sounds like a plausibly right explanation and my brain generates words that it thinks conform to the theory appropriately, but I appear to be really bad at being annoyed at people on LW without getting downvoted so I am trying to err on the side of asking for more help.
Sample script? Ok. I tried to imagine myself writing your post and reacting to paper-machine’s comment and that’s what I’ve come up with:
Justify what after the fact? Exercise in confirmation bias while confirming what?
Literature review is pretty much what I’m planning to do. Maybe it won’t be very systematic but then I’m not trying to write a review paper but to pick some interesting looking things and test them. If you stumble upon something real then it will stay real regardless of how much other material on the topic you read.
Arriving at silly conclusions because of biases is always a possibility and you can’t have enough warnings, that’s true, but those warnings don’t have to take the form of “you’re dooomed. Give Up!”
And I tried introspecting (ha!) and noting the thoughts that flitted through my head when I was trying to differentiate that reply from your not-very-well-received one (not all of them got applied to the hypothetical reply above):
Don’t mention your voting (to me, it always comes off as overdramatic).
If you explicitly talk about your annoyance, don’t emphasize the restraint you’ve shown in expressing it (and maybe try be a little apologetic about it—not towards the specific person you’re addressing but in a general “I’m annoyed because I’m an imperfect human being, woe is me” manner).
The fact that you got annoyed probably means that the comment contains some presupposition that casts you in a bad light. Figure out what that is and deny it.
Somehow acknowledge the possibility that the annoying comment was written in good faith—that paper-machine really wanted to warn you against biases and overdid it. That way even if the other party was really trying to score cheap rationalist-points by taking a potshot at you, they can insist on that more friendly interpretation, thus retracting their attack while still saving face. And so peace is restored thorough the Realms.
Also, this is all based on intuition and explicit cynical cognition, no experience of actually expressing my annoyance at people on LessWrong (so I have no idea if I wouldn’t be downvoted to hell too) and not that much experience in getting graciously annoyed at people in real-life. Approach with extreme distrust.
I appear to be really bad at being annoyed at people on LW without getting downvoted
Don’t take it too hard: everyone, everywhere, is really bad at being annoyed at people in general without getting some sort of status hit. This has a lot more to do with the person’s reaction to “being annoyed at” and a lot less to do with anyone’s skill at “being annoyed at” people.
Well, that wasn’t clear at all. There is no safe, good way to be annoyed at people, because people mostly don’t like it when someone’s annoyed at them. Most of these people will then retaliate in some manner that’s supposed to be unpleasant. This is the case online and off.
Sounds profound, but none of that helps you deal with these people when you’re annoyed, does it?
I think the answer lies in examining why you want to be annoyed at them: for example, if it’s to change their behaviour, then you only need look for more effective ways to change their behaviour than being annoyed. I don’t claim that changing their behaviour is your goal in being annoyed; but you should subject whatever reason you do have to some scrutiny and figure out another, potentially more effective way of achieving that goal or goals.
I’m still not sure where you’re getting your impression. I will not just look for corroborating information, and I don’t think I said anything that sounded like that, but the voting indicates that people agree with you, and I don’t understand at all.
1) Total votes don’t work that way. (That is an example of me being derisive, but not toward you. Also, contrary to my own policy, I did not downvote your previous comment, if only because I don’t want to inflame you further.)
2) As far as I can tell, intending to avoid falling into a bias or committing a fallacy doesn’t always cause the bias to go away. This is one of the main points of Kahneman’s research—some biases are so pernicious that even people who know about them fall flat into them. That’s why I recommended doing a systematic literature review. If you know that you’ve sampled a sufficiently large fragment of the underlying literature, then you’ll know that if dissenting literature exists, you made every attempt to find it.
(Or maybe my downvotes are just because I have again failed to come up with a civil-sounding way to express discomfort with an interlocutor’s tone? Is there any way to do that at all, or are my choices radio silence v. painstakingly refraining from reacting to the tone for an entire conversation? Someone please tell me.)
If you don’t want to respond to me because of tonal issues, I won’t take it personally. In the future I will attempt to be as toneless as possible when responding to you.
I’m interested in contradictions and elaborations, especially where it seems like the differences derive from people having variety that I didn’t account for the first time around. I’ll give up if it’s too hard (I’m not getting paid, this isn’t my life’s work, etc.) but I’m not going to give up if the Second Edition has to be very different in content from the first (why in the world would I want to bother writing a Second Edition that had no material differences from its predecessor?)
This is genuinely new information. Compare this with
This could result in me eventually giving up, or in a Luminosity Sequence: Second Edition (Now With Literature, Part Of This Complete Breakfast!), or (optimism!) me being able to sort ~90% of people into some number of categories such that their category membership tells me how to help them develop luminosity superpowers in N simple steps with exercises/therapy-ish stuff/etc.
which does not seem to imply anything about largely modifying or revising the basic theory of luminosity.
As far as I can tell, intending to avoid falling into a bias or committing a fallacy doesn’t always cause the bias to go away.
Don’t I know it! However, I don’t actually have much of an underlying theory to confirm. The luminosity sequence was about me and stuff that works for me, mostly, and I admitted that from the get-go:
In this sequence, I hope to share some of the techniques for improving luminosity that I’ve used. I’m optimistic that at least some of them will be useful to at least some people. However, I may be a walking, talking “results not typical”.
This is why your assertion confused me. I’m not sure what I’d be confirming by reading books and articles and stuff. I know some things work for me, but I’m very hesitant to generalize too much (this is why I’m especially interested in the heterogeneity of minds).
At any rate, I apologize for my part in this miscommunication and I hope I’ve managed to clarify.
I’m still not sure where you’re getting your impression. I will not just look for corroborating information, and I don’t think I said anything that sounded like that, but the voting indicates that people agree with you, and I don’t understand at all. (Or maybe my downvotes are just because I have again failed to come up with a civil-sounding way to express discomfort with an interlocutor’s tone? Is there any way to do that at all, or are my choices radio silence v. painstakingly refraining from reacting to the tone for an entire conversation? Someone please tell me.)
What would be the point of looking for corroborating information? What would I do with it? I’m interested in contradictions and elaborations, especially where it seems like the differences derive from people having variety that I didn’t account for the first time around. I’ll give up if it’s too hard (I’m not getting paid, this isn’t my life’s work, etc.) but I’m not going to give up if the Second Edition has to be very different in content from the first (why in the world would I want to bother writing a Second Edition that had no material differences from its predecessor?)
I think the first edition of the Luminosity Sequence is actually pretty bad. It embarrasses me. I want something better to direct people to!
I think it might be more specific than lack of civility alone. I’m not sure that lack of civility is always a problem. Sometimes the interlocutor has it coming. But this:
sounds… haughty? Condescending? Something along those lines.
You could try being more like “I’m annoyed at you in a thoroughly egalitarian manner” rather than “Your comment indicates that you are an insect beneath my notice” (that is my gut reaction to your comment, not a claim about intended meaning).
Can you come up with a sample script of what you’re talking about? It sounds like a plausibly right explanation and my brain generates words that it thinks conform to the theory appropriately, but I appear to be really bad at being annoyed at people on LW without getting downvoted so I am trying to err on the side of asking for more help.
Sample script? Ok. I tried to imagine myself writing your post and reacting to paper-machine’s comment and that’s what I’ve come up with:
And I tried introspecting (ha!) and noting the thoughts that flitted through my head when I was trying to differentiate that reply from your not-very-well-received one (not all of them got applied to the hypothetical reply above):
Don’t mention your voting (to me, it always comes off as overdramatic).
If you explicitly talk about your annoyance, don’t emphasize the restraint you’ve shown in expressing it (and maybe try be a little apologetic about it—not towards the specific person you’re addressing but in a general “I’m annoyed because I’m an imperfect human being, woe is me” manner).
The fact that you got annoyed probably means that the comment contains some presupposition that casts you in a bad light. Figure out what that is and deny it.
Somehow acknowledge the possibility that the annoying comment was written in good faith—that paper-machine really wanted to warn you against biases and overdid it. That way even if the other party was really trying to score cheap rationalist-points by taking a potshot at you, they can insist on that more friendly interpretation, thus retracting their attack while still saving face. And so peace is restored thorough the Realms.
Also, this is all based on intuition and explicit cynical cognition, no experience of actually expressing my annoyance at people on LessWrong (so I have no idea if I wouldn’t be downvoted to hell too) and not that much experience in getting graciously annoyed at people in real-life. Approach with extreme distrust.
Very well put.
Don’t take it too hard: everyone, everywhere, is really bad at being annoyed at people in general without getting some sort of status hit. This has a lot more to do with the person’s reaction to “being annoyed at” and a lot less to do with anyone’s skill at “being annoyed at” people.
Well, that wasn’t clear at all. There is no safe, good way to be annoyed at people, because people mostly don’t like it when someone’s annoyed at them. Most of these people will then retaliate in some manner that’s supposed to be unpleasant. This is the case online and off.
Sounds profound, but none of that helps you deal with these people when you’re annoyed, does it?
I think the answer lies in examining why you want to be annoyed at them: for example, if it’s to change their behaviour, then you only need look for more effective ways to change their behaviour than being annoyed. I don’t claim that changing their behaviour is your goal in being annoyed; but you should subject whatever reason you do have to some scrutiny and figure out another, potentially more effective way of achieving that goal or goals.
1) Total votes don’t work that way. (That is an example of me being derisive, but not toward you. Also, contrary to my own policy, I did not downvote your previous comment, if only because I don’t want to inflame you further.)
2) As far as I can tell, intending to avoid falling into a bias or committing a fallacy doesn’t always cause the bias to go away. This is one of the main points of Kahneman’s research—some biases are so pernicious that even people who know about them fall flat into them. That’s why I recommended doing a systematic literature review. If you know that you’ve sampled a sufficiently large fragment of the underlying literature, then you’ll know that if dissenting literature exists, you made every attempt to find it.
If you don’t want to respond to me because of tonal issues, I won’t take it personally. In the future I will attempt to be as toneless as possible when responding to you.
This is genuinely new information. Compare this with
which does not seem to imply anything about largely modifying or revising the basic theory of luminosity.
Don’t I know it! However, I don’t actually have much of an underlying theory to confirm. The luminosity sequence was about me and stuff that works for me, mostly, and I admitted that from the get-go:
This is why your assertion confused me. I’m not sure what I’d be confirming by reading books and articles and stuff. I know some things work for me, but I’m very hesitant to generalize too much (this is why I’m especially interested in the heterogeneity of minds).
At any rate, I apologize for my part in this miscommunication and I hope I’ve managed to clarify.
The part about therapy concerned me. I overestimated your optimism. Very well; I pray for your success.