One thing that annoys me with “normal” people is their inability to easily talk about the meta level of a particular topic. I feel like if I start talking about something meta some people get internally confused a bit, and instead of asking for clarification they will interpret some parts of what I said at the object level, discard the rest, and continue the conversation as if nothing happened.
Sure, you can talk about meta topics with most people with enough effort, you can try carefully prompting them (like “so what I am going to say may sound strange, I am not talking about X things by themselves, but I am saying something about all Xs in general, disregarding this particular example of X we have just been talking about, does that make sense?”), or if they have previously been exposed to meta-level discussion on this topic that also makes things much easier.
I feel like most rationalists can jump between object and meta level with ease, and I particularly enjoy conversing with people who can do this.
🤔 I think it’s a good one. I do however wonder how much it is just the g factor of general cognitive ability, as well as how well people can self-evaluate it.
I think it would be nice to have informant-reports for these sorts of things, where one gets evaluated by some other rationalist one has had discussions with. However I don’t know if I can convince random people on LessWrong to collect such informant-reports.
One thing that annoys me with “normal” people is their inability to easily talk about the meta level of a particular topic. I feel like if I start talking about something meta some people get internally confused a bit, and instead of asking for clarification they will interpret some parts of what I said at the object level, discard the rest, and continue the conversation as if nothing happened.
Sure, you can talk about meta topics with most people with enough effort, you can try carefully prompting them (like “so what I am going to say may sound strange, I am not talking about X things by themselves, but I am saying something about all Xs in general, disregarding this particular example of X we have just been talking about, does that make sense?”), or if they have previously been exposed to meta-level discussion on this topic that also makes things much easier.
I feel like most rationalists can jump between object and meta level with ease, and I particularly enjoy conversing with people who can do this.
Using the meta level or being comfortable with it sounds like a good idea. Somewhat related: Ability and willingness to reflect and introspect.
🤔 I think it’s a good one. I do however wonder how much it is just the g factor of general cognitive ability, as well as how well people can self-evaluate it.
I think it would be nice to have informant-reports for these sorts of things, where one gets evaluated by some other rationalist one has had discussions with. However I don’t know if I can convince random people on LessWrong to collect such informant-reports.