I think my approach, to my own personal version of this, is: anytime someone acts like someone like me couldn’t exist, that proves they’re stupid (and, in some cases, rude), and I get to feel smug and contemptuous of them. (Whether I show this is a different question.) That helps. It’s overall somewhat depressing that a lot of people are in fact stupid, but that’s something one has to get used to anyway.
Meanwhile, I do have to be in charge of making sure my own needs are met, since I can’t trust others to handle that. (As one example: my tolerance for spiciness is zero, as in “I find black pepper unpleasant” and “sometimes people tell me they can’t detect spiciness in food that I find painfully spicy” and “on a few occasions at a restaurant, I’ve asked to confirm that a dish has zero spiciness, and found they were wrong about it”. For that reason and others, I carry Meal Squares with me approximately everywhere, so I’m prepared.) On the plus side, I do consider it admirable / a virtue to have this kind of independence, so my brain rewards cultivating and exercising it.
Just tagging I’ve intuitively used a similar approach for a long time, but adding the warning that there definitely are corrosive aspects to it, where everyone else loses value and get disrespected. Your subcomment delved into finer details valuably so I think you’re aware of this. Overall my favorite solution has been something like “I expect others to be mostly wrong, so I’m not surprised or hurt when they are, but I try to avoid mentally categorizing them in a degrading fashion” for most people. Everything is bad to an extent, everyone is bad to an extent, I can deal with it and try to make the world better. I don’t think there’s anyone who I admire/respect enough that I don’t expect them to make mistakes of the kind Duncan’s pointing at, so I’m not bothered even if it come from people I like or I think are competent on some other things.
anytime someone acts like someone like me couldn’t exist, that proves they’re stupid (and, in some cases, rude), and I get to feel smug and contemptuous of them. (Whether I show this is a different question.) That helps.
Works much less well with people I know are not stupid, or am personally loath to dismiss or belittle.
Being smart doesn’t make it impossible to also be a fucking idiot at times. This is a general fact. (And just because someone was a fucking idiot in some situation doesn’t mean they’re not also smart.)
I think it’s important to be able to recognize screw-ups for what they are, even/especially in oneself or one’s heroes or friends, and therefore I encourage myself to do this—internally, at least. Again, doesn’t necessarily mean I call someone out on it. For minor screw-ups, often the best thing is just to notice the data point and move on. If the data points become a pattern, or if individual cases are sufficiently bad, then it may be worth doing something.
If a friend is repeatedly screwing up in a way that hurts you (which I take it may have been happening for you), then it’s probably worth talking to them about it. If you can expect them to have noticed this, then probably they should have apologized about it already; if it’s likely that they didn’t notice the screwup, or that they didn’t know it hurt you, then you’ll have to explain it to them. Then there are various ways for them to respond; I’ll write out some of the tree:
“Oh, whoops, sorry. I’ll stop doing that.” Obviously the best outcome.
If they fail to stop doing it, then update about your friend’s competence and about their calibration about their competence. (If they said they’d “try to stop doing that”, a different update is involved.)
“Hmm. It would take a lot of effort to stop doing that”, or perhaps “It’s a deeply ingrained habit, and I’m not even sure I know how to train myself out of it.” Then there’s some negotiation: does the (expected-value) benefit to you exceed the cost to them?
If so, in a good relationship, probably what should happen is they make the effort, and you do something comparably good for them, and ultimately you both win. In a less-close relationship (e.g. a new relationship of uncertain duration), maybe that doesn’t happen yet, but at some point it may become appropriate.
If the benefit does not exceed the cost (or if it’s truly impossible for them to stop), then they apologize but don’t change, you thank them for their honesty, and you incorporate this into your expectations of them. Then you ask yourself things like, can you live with this? Any ways you can mitigate it? The answers will inform how, and whether, you continue your relationship.
“You’re not serious. That couldn’t possibly hurt you in the way you’re claiming it does.” (I gather you may have run into this.) If they persist after you say you are serious, then ultimately this means they’re either calling you a liar, or incompetent at basic self-reporting. Then… I mean, if you’d shown yourself to habitually lie or exaggerate, or to screw up at self-reporting, that would be one thing. But if you haven’t—and I, for one, have a practically holy commitment to stating the truth (both as “not lying” and as “tagging my confidence level in statements I’m not sure of”), partly for just this reason, and I think this isn’t rare among Less Wrongers—then this is extremely disrespectful to you at a fundamental level. I probably would write them off at this point (barring some extreme mitigating factors).
I think my approach, to my own personal version of this, is: anytime someone acts like someone like me couldn’t exist, that proves they’re stupid (and, in some cases, rude), and I get to feel smug and contemptuous of them. (Whether I show this is a different question.) That helps. It’s overall somewhat depressing that a lot of people are in fact stupid, but that’s something one has to get used to anyway.
Meanwhile, I do have to be in charge of making sure my own needs are met, since I can’t trust others to handle that. (As one example: my tolerance for spiciness is zero, as in “I find black pepper unpleasant” and “sometimes people tell me they can’t detect spiciness in food that I find painfully spicy” and “on a few occasions at a restaurant, I’ve asked to confirm that a dish has zero spiciness, and found they were wrong about it”. For that reason and others, I carry Meal Squares with me approximately everywhere, so I’m prepared.) On the plus side, I do consider it admirable / a virtue to have this kind of independence, so my brain rewards cultivating and exercising it.
Just tagging I’ve intuitively used a similar approach for a long time, but adding the warning that there definitely are corrosive aspects to it, where everyone else loses value and get disrespected. Your subcomment delved into finer details valuably so I think you’re aware of this.
Overall my favorite solution has been something like “I expect others to be mostly wrong, so I’m not surprised or hurt when they are, but I try to avoid mentally categorizing them in a degrading fashion” for most people. Everything is bad to an extent, everyone is bad to an extent, I can deal with it and try to make the world better.
I don’t think there’s anyone who I admire/respect enough that I don’t expect them to make mistakes of the kind Duncan’s pointing at, so I’m not bothered even if it come from people I like or I think are competent on some other things.
Works much less well with people I know are not stupid, or am personally loath to dismiss or belittle.
Being smart doesn’t make it impossible to also be a fucking idiot at times. This is a general fact. (And just because someone was a fucking idiot in some situation doesn’t mean they’re not also smart.)
I think it’s important to be able to recognize screw-ups for what they are, even/especially in oneself or one’s heroes or friends, and therefore I encourage myself to do this—internally, at least. Again, doesn’t necessarily mean I call someone out on it. For minor screw-ups, often the best thing is just to notice the data point and move on. If the data points become a pattern, or if individual cases are sufficiently bad, then it may be worth doing something.
If a friend is repeatedly screwing up in a way that hurts you (which I take it may have been happening for you), then it’s probably worth talking to them about it. If you can expect them to have noticed this, then probably they should have apologized about it already; if it’s likely that they didn’t notice the screwup, or that they didn’t know it hurt you, then you’ll have to explain it to them. Then there are various ways for them to respond; I’ll write out some of the tree:
“Oh, whoops, sorry. I’ll stop doing that.” Obviously the best outcome.
If they fail to stop doing it, then update about your friend’s competence and about their calibration about their competence. (If they said they’d “try to stop doing that”, a different update is involved.)
“Hmm. It would take a lot of effort to stop doing that”, or perhaps “It’s a deeply ingrained habit, and I’m not even sure I know how to train myself out of it.” Then there’s some negotiation: does the (expected-value) benefit to you exceed the cost to them?
If so, in a good relationship, probably what should happen is they make the effort, and you do something comparably good for them, and ultimately you both win. In a less-close relationship (e.g. a new relationship of uncertain duration), maybe that doesn’t happen yet, but at some point it may become appropriate.
If the benefit does not exceed the cost (or if it’s truly impossible for them to stop), then they apologize but don’t change, you thank them for their honesty, and you incorporate this into your expectations of them. Then you ask yourself things like, can you live with this? Any ways you can mitigate it? The answers will inform how, and whether, you continue your relationship.
“You’re not serious. That couldn’t possibly hurt you in the way you’re claiming it does.” (I gather you may have run into this.) If they persist after you say you are serious, then ultimately this means they’re either calling you a liar, or incompetent at basic self-reporting. Then… I mean, if you’d shown yourself to habitually lie or exaggerate, or to screw up at self-reporting, that would be one thing. But if you haven’t—and I, for one, have a practically holy commitment to stating the truth (both as “not lying” and as “tagging my confidence level in statements I’m not sure of”), partly for just this reason, and I think this isn’t rare among Less Wrongers—then this is extremely disrespectful to you at a fundamental level. I probably would write them off at this point (barring some extreme mitigating factors).
Everyone is stupid; it’s just a question of degree. (That includes you and me.)
Also, people are often simply not paying attention.