Oh, you wrote that post on âtruthseekingâ too!! I forgot that!! Another helpful post.
âTruthseekingâ as a term drives me bananas because itâs so vague and ambiguous â I looked really hard and couldnât find any real attempts to define it clearly, if even to define it at all â and pretty much the only way I see the term get used is when someone wants to slam someone else they disagree with. And itâs definitely never clear to me that the person whoâs accused of ânot truthseekingâ is doing anything wrong, or making bad points, or that their views are wrong. It just seems like an argument got heated.
If people say ânot truthseekingâ and they just mean âbad evidence/âbad arguments/âill-informed pointsâ, they should just say that. Ditto for âbad faithâ if thatâs what itâs supposed to mean.
Thank you for seeing me clearly. Itâs a huge relief. I found it super confusing and hurtful when Toby said Iâm not engaging in good faith, that I was snarky when I was really being heartfelt and sincere, and that I was âmotivatedâ to find examples of uncivil behaviour on the EA Forum (?). These all feel like such foreign understandings of my intent. And the throughline between them feels like Toby is telling himself a story about me where Iâm out to cause trouble or something. I donât know. I really canât understand whatâs happening here.
I do feel like Iâm transparent. I donât know why someone would think Iâm sneaking around.
Do you think this is a LessWrong subculture thing? I notice in the LessWrong-o-sphere, thereâs all this emphasis on secrets, game theory, strategizing, signalling, counter-signalling, yada yada. Does that make people feel especially suspicious of each other? Or of âoutsidersâ?
This line from a post by a pseudonymous person involved in the LessWrong community always sticks out in my mind:
I donât really feel like many people in the rationalist community communicate very openly or honestly, even though non-deception is often thought to be one of their core tenets.
Somehow this rings true to me, although I donât know if I can put my finger on why. Maybe itâs because there is such a lack of psychological safety in the LessWrong community, people become cagey and withdraw into themselves in order to self-protect. Just a hunch.
I also wonder about the snarkiness thing. In the LessWrong community, my impression is that like 90%+ of the time (NB: not a rigorously obtained number) people are just faking being nice or polite, or just not even faking it. The âgameâ (as it were) is to say the rudest thing possible in the least polite phrasing you can get away with. Does this make people mistake â outside of that context â genuine niceness or politeness for secret snark?
Oh, you wrote that post on âtruthseekingâ too!! I forgot that!! Another helpful post.
âTruthseekingâ as a term drives me bananas because itâs so vague and ambiguous â I looked really hard and couldnât find any real attempts to define it clearly, if even to define it at all â and pretty much the only way I see the term get used is when someone wants to slam someone else they disagree with. And itâs definitely never clear to me that the person whoâs accused of ânot truthseekingâ is doing anything wrong, or making bad points, or that their views are wrong. It just seems like an argument got heated.
If people say ânot truthseekingâ and they just mean âbad evidence/âbad arguments/âill-informed pointsâ, they should just say that. Ditto for âbad faithâ if thatâs what itâs supposed to mean.
Thank you for seeing me clearly. Itâs a huge relief. I found it super confusing and hurtful when Toby said Iâm not engaging in good faith, that I was snarky when I was really being heartfelt and sincere, and that I was âmotivatedâ to find examples of uncivil behaviour on the EA Forum (?). These all feel like such foreign understandings of my intent. And the throughline between them feels like Toby is telling himself a story about me where Iâm out to cause trouble or something. I donât know. I really canât understand whatâs happening here.
I do feel like Iâm transparent. I donât know why someone would think Iâm sneaking around.
Do you think this is a LessWrong subculture thing? I notice in the LessWrong-o-sphere, thereâs all this emphasis on secrets, game theory, strategizing, signalling, counter-signalling, yada yada. Does that make people feel especially suspicious of each other? Or of âoutsidersâ?
This line from a post by a pseudonymous person involved in the LessWrong community always sticks out in my mind:
Somehow this rings true to me, although I donât know if I can put my finger on why. Maybe itâs because there is such a lack of psychological safety in the LessWrong community, people become cagey and withdraw into themselves in order to self-protect. Just a hunch.
I also wonder about the snarkiness thing. In the LessWrong community, my impression is that like 90%+ of the time (NB: not a rigorously obtained number) people are just faking being nice or polite, or just not even faking it. The âgameâ (as it were) is to say the rudest thing possible in the least polite phrasing you can get away with. Does this make people mistake â outside of that context â genuine niceness or politeness for secret snark?