guy comes to blog comments, has a bad time

[Elliot Temple]

http://curi.us/1585-critical-preferences#c10037

the comment i linked is the first one in the thread after a year of silence.

that guy did not get what he wanted. had a bad time, could easily just give up and never come back already.

what would have gotten a better outcome? what did he want? what replies would he have liked? is there any way he would have had a critical conversation? any way he would have addressed any meta discussion instead of hating it? any way he would have learned much or shared any good ideas? (i’m pretty confident he doesn’t have any straightforwardly valuable ideas to offer.) any way this could have been the beginning of a journey of infinite progress? was he just looking for a short-term self-esteem boost, or entertainment. is he never imagining himself as someone who could ever contribute much to human knowledge, and just not even thinking to aim for that?

thoughts?

when writing this, the last comment in the discussion was:

http://curi.us/1585-critical-preferences#c10046

but before i sent it the anon posted again, not especially hostile but also no more clear than before, and not addressing the questions asked (including the non-meta questions). he seems to have no clue what clarifying is or how to do it, and is having trouble conceiving of things like “maybe he doesn’t know what i mean by ‘determine’”. but at the same time he’s equivocating with his use of words!

Elliot Temple
www.fallibleideas.com

[anonymous FI]

He's such a hypocrite. When he wrote:

> Your hostility is breathtaking.

That was a very hostile comment. But he's only concerned with my alleged
hostility, and not his own open hostility. It was an accusation. It was
aggressive, personal, and nasty. And even if I had been hostile, and I
started it, calling my hostility "breathtaking" would be an openly,
directly hostile reply that was totally unnecessary.

Now he acts like he never said it, rather than do any kind of
clarifying, retracting, or problem solving. He clearly didn't like
something I said. But he refuses to tell me what it was. He refuses to
make a request that I change something. He refuses to discover if it was
a misunderstanding on his part. He's sabotaging like hell.

and he doesn't want to hear a word of personal criticism but he's
dishonestly equivocating and *creating the confusions* in the
discussion. that's not really ignorable. how are we ever going to
clarify stuff without going through: in message X he used word Y to mean
Z. but then in message A he used word Y to mean W. and then in message B
it mean Z again. and if we make that clear enough, he will feel
criticized and attacked – because in fact he fucked up, and he doesn't
want it exposed. but if we don't make that clear, the conversation won't
become clear. i suppose in theory he could stop equivocating going
forward and restate things, but he's hostile to that – he's taking
the position he was already clear, i'm screwing up the discussion, i
should better engage with what he already said, etc...


PS there's a standard pattern where people are hostile (and often blame
you for the hostility) and then they deny it and keep talking a bit and
then they disappear after their next break from the discussion. cuz they
don't like it, and their faking of non-hostility is short-lived. i
suspect this may happen. he might reply a couple more times today but i
doubt that, tomorrow, he'll want to return to something he had negative
feelings about. he won't want to relive the negative experience after it
stops, which is different than continuing it right now.

[GISTE]

On Jul 11, 2018, at 6:50 PM, anonymous FI

i’m not sure what happened with the poster you’re talking about but
i have a theory explains an aspect of it.

he’s discussing as if it is an IRL discussion where you can’t pause
to review and quote older parts of the discussion. he’s in
IRL-discussion-mode.

i’ve made this mistake (of treating email and chat discussions like
IRL discussions) a lot. i think i don’t do it much anymore.

i’ve noticed that i’ve been more likely to make this mistake if
i’m emotional (negative and positive emotions included, like being
agitated or excited/happy). like even if i was doing ok in an email
discussion (doing plenty of pausing to review and quote older parts of
the discussion), and then i get emotional, i’d switch to IRL mode
without realizing it. as if i forgot everything about how to have
asynchronous discussion.

at the moment the poster came to the conclusion that Anon was being
hostile, he was emotional. (i don’t know if he was or wasn’t in
IRL-discussion-mode prior to being emotional.)

maybe it would have helped the poster if he was told about this super
common mistake people make.

maybe it would help now too.

-- GISTE

[Elliot Temple]

On Jul 11, 2018, at 5:15 PM, 'GISTE' via Fallible Ideas <fallibl...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> On Jul 11, 2018, at 6:50 PM, anonymous FI <anonymousfa...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Jul 11, 2018, at 4:33 PM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:
>>
>>> http://curi.us/1585-critical-preferences#c10037
>>>
>>> the comment i linked is the first one in the thread after a year of silence.
>>>
>>> that guy did not get what he wanted. had a bad time, could easily just give up and never come back already.
>>>
>>> what would have gotten a better outcome? what did he want? what replies would he have liked? is there any way he would have had a critical conversation? any way he would have addressed any meta discussion instead of hating it? any way he would have learned much or shared any good ideas? (i’m pretty confident he doesn’t have any straightforwardly valuable ideas to offer.) any way this could have been the beginning of a journey of infinite progress? was he just looking for a short-term self-esteem boost, or entertainment. is he never imagining himself as someone who could ever contribute much to human knowledge, and just not even thinking to aim for that?
>>>
>>> thoughts?
>>>
>>> when writing this, the last comment in the discussion was:
>>>
>>> http://curi.us/1585-critical-preferences#c10046
>>>
>>> but before i sent it the anon posted again, not especially hostile but also no more clear than before, and not addressing the questions asked (including the non-meta questions). he seems to have no clue what clarifying is or how to do it, and is having trouble conceiving of things like “maybe he doesn’t know what i mean by ‘determine’”. but at the same time he’s equivocating with his use of words!
>>
>> He's such a hypocrite. When he wrote:
>>
>>> Your hostility is breathtaking.
>>
>> That was a very hostile comment. But he's only concerned with my alleged hostility, and not his own open hostility. It was an accusation. It was aggressive, personal, and nasty. And even if I had been hostile, and I started it, calling my hostility "breathtaking" would be an openly, directly hostile reply that was totally unnecessary.
>>
>> Now he acts like he never said it, rather than do any kind of clarifying, retracting, or problem solving. He clearly didn't like something I said. But he refuses to tell me what it was. He refuses to make a request that I change something. He refuses to discover if it was a misunderstanding on his part. He's sabotaging like hell.
>>
>> and he doesn't want to hear a word of personal criticism but he's dishonestly equivocating and *creating the confusions* in the discussion. that's not really ignorable. how are we ever going to clarify stuff without going through: in message X he used word Y to mean Z. but then in message A he used word Y to mean W. and then in message B it mean Z again. and if we make that clear enough, he will feel criticized and attacked – because in fact he fucked up, and he doesn't want it exposed. but if we don't make that clear, the conversation won't become clear. i suppose in theory he could stop equivocating going forward and restate things, but he's hostile to that – he's taking the position he was already clear, i'm screwing up the discussion, i should better engage with what he already said, etc...
>>
>>
>> PS there's a standard pattern where people are hostile (and often blame you for the hostility) and then they deny it and keep talking a bit and then they disappear after their next break from the discussion. cuz they don't like it, and their faking of non-hostility is short-lived. i suspect this may happen. he might reply a couple more times today but i doubt that, tomorrow, he'll want to return to something he had negative feelings about. he won't want to relive the negative experience after it stops, which is different than continuing it right now.
>
> i’m not sure what happened with the poster you’re talking about but i have a theory explains an aspect of it.
>
> he’s discussing as if it is an IRL discussion where you can’t pause to review and quote older parts of the discussion. he’s in IRL-discussion-mode.
>
> i’ve made this mistake (of treating email and chat discussions like IRL discussions) a lot. i think i don’t do it much anymore.

IRL-discussion-mode is a good concept.

I noticed he was slipping after he got emotional. You can see signs of it like more typos. And his quoting reverted from markdown style > to “”.

The quotes reverting from FI style to standard fits with getting into IRL-discussion-mode, being further from FI discussion mode.

> i’ve noticed that i’ve been more likely to make this mistake if i’m emotional (negative and positive emotions included, like being agitated or excited/happy). like even if i was doing ok in an email discussion (doing plenty of pausing to review and quote older parts of the discussion), and then i get emotional, i’d switch to IRL mode without realizing it. as if i forgot everything about how to have asynchronous discussion.

I have experience suggesting asyncronous discussion to people who are having problems. When I say “you don’t need to reply now; anytime in the next week would be fine” then they feel legitimized to leave the discussion now ... and never come back. They don’t know how to follow up later and/or don’t want to. Async discussion is not a skill they have. They are able to quit the discussion for the rest of today – that’s a thing they can do once given social permission (or mad enough) – but continuing over time isn’t a thing they know how to do.

> at the moment the poster came to the conclusion that Anon was being hostile, he was emotional.

yeah. and note that happened after only one post from Dagny. what a rush to judgment.

i suspect he felt lie he couldn’t have messed up as much as Dagny thought since he hadn’t said much yet. i think that was a factor – it was so early for Dagny to be recognizing and commenting on lots of errors. but actually his avg error rate is like 3/sentence so he was already past a dozen errors and Dagny didn’t even comment on the majority of them.

> (i don’t know if he was or wasn’t in IRL-discussion-mode prior to being emotional.)
>
> maybe it would have helped the poster if he was told about this super common mistake people make.
>
> maybe it would help now too.

I’m pretty confident it wouldn’t help – actually would hurt. He’d interpret critical meta discussion (like about discussion methodologies) as hostile personal attacks. Most people hate that stuff, and this guy in particular already repeatedly communicated that he hates that kinda stuff.


I posted to the discussion asking if he’d like to pick one topic to focus on.

Maybe if he accepts my frame, and follows my lead, discussion will be possible. Initially it had already gone wrong before Dagny’s first post. E.g. he brought up too many things at once with too little explanation of each (never mind him being wrong about some of the issues, you can’t really even get to that when the discussion is such a mess in methodological ways).

So for progress to happen he needed, from the very start, to change his approach to discussion. And I think he would have been hostile to saying that right away. But now that he and Dagny failed to make progress, maybe he’ll be willing to consider a change of approach. It’s hard though. People don’t want to do things your way...

Elliot Temple
www.elliottemple.com

[anonymous FI]

On Jul 11, 2018, at 5:30 PM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:

> I posted to the discussion asking if he’d like to pick one topic to
> focus on.
>
> Maybe if he accepts my frame, and follows my lead, discussion will be
> possible. Initially it had already gone wrong before Dagny’s first
> post. E.g. he brought up too many things at once with too little
> explanation of each (never mind him being wrong about some of the
> issues, you can’t really even get to that when the discussion is
> such a mess in methodological ways).
>
> So for progress to happen he needed, from the very start, to change
> his approach to discussion. And I think he would have been hostile to
> saying that right away. But now that he and Dagny failed to make
> progress, maybe he’ll be willing to consider a change of approach.
> It’s hard though. People don’t want to do things your way...

Yeah that didn't work. I tried to help. I asked him:

http://curi.us/1585-critical-preferences#c10057

> also, why are you ignoring ET for me? it's his blog, you seem to
> dislike me, and i thought his suggestion to pick one thing was
> productive. (on a related note, i'm not going to try to answer
> everything you said all at once. we need to slow down. if we address
> some things then we can get to others after. so this message
> intentionally tries to focus on one issue.)

But he ignored that in addition to ignoring you.

I think I'm about done. He can't even say what he means by one word, and
he doesn't want to let me lead the discussion, and he keeps introducing
new complexity or hostility. His replies aren't even in the ballpark. My
concluding summary:

http://curi.us/1585-critical-preferences#c10061

> You aren't explaining what you think "determine" means. You aren't
> even giving an answer in the right category. You haven't given
> something that even could be an answer, let alone one that addresses
> key issues like what knowledge is and whether fallible knowledge
> counts.
>
> My conclusions:
>
> - you are not a fluent English speaker
>
> - your internal thinking is confused in whatever language it's in.
> there are translation difficulties but they aren't the core issue
>
> - you're making tons of errors
>
> - you're blaming others for your errors
>
> - you think others are mistaken, when actually you're mistaken
>
> - you are hostile to criticism
>
> - you are hostile to discussion methodology discussion
>
> - you won't talk about your goals, skills, plans, what you want, what
> you're offering, how long you will stay (in any scenarios, i know it
> could vary), etc
>
> - you are hostile to meta discussion
>
> - you get emotional about criticism, meta discussion, mistakes, etc,
> and the emotions affect your discussion quality. and you externalize
> them and start accusing others of being emotional, hostile, etc. and
> you're quite eager to do that, you have a thin skin and don't put much
> effort into giving people the benefit of the doubt (you initially got
> upset after the very first reply, and it's been a recurring issue, but
> you don't want to do problem solving regarding it either. you wouldn't
> say which thing(s) upset you initially, or why, or any request for me
> to change anything. there was no problem solving possible, by your
> choice.)
>
> - you don't care much about your mistakes
>
> - you won't go slow and careful and try to get things right
>
> - you usually won't even try to answer questions
>
> - there's no one important philosophical topic you care about and want
> to discuss or focus on, and think you have anything good to say about
> (a solution to a problem)
>
> I think this is an impasse and you are blocking any paths forward.
> (Whether you even know what Paths Forward are is an example of the
> kind of question you've refused to answer, so I'm unable to know if
> you'll understand what I'm saying or not. I can't calibrate what I say
> to what you know and don't know because you refuse to help me do
> that.)

[anonymous FI]

On Jul 12, 2018, at 12:41 PM, anonymous FI

I kept arguing with him at length after this.

The main problems are he isn't fluent at English or logic *and* he's
massively overreaching in those areas. He makes an English or logic
error, he's actually right and I'm wrong, and starts attacking. Repeat.

I think I made a mistake in the discussion by talking about more than
one thing at once. I'm going to stop doing that. If he replies I plan to
do only one thing at a time from now on.

The problem with saying multiple things is he kept picking some to
ignore, even when I asked him repeatedly to address them. See:

http://curi.us/1585-critical-preferences#c10111

and several posts near it, prior, where I keep asking him to address the
same issue. but he wouldn't without the ultimatum that i stop replying.
maybe he still won't.

if i never said more than one thing at once, it wouldn't get out of hand
like this in the first place. i think.

[anonymous FI]

On Jul 12, 2018, at 3:59 PM, anonymous FI

<anonymousfa...@gmail.com> wrote:

> The main problems are he isn't fluent at English or logic *and* he's
> massively overreaching in those areas. He makes an English or logic

> error, THINKS he's actually right and I'm wrong, and starts
> attacking. Repeat.

I left out a word and it's confusing. I added THINKS back in above.

[Elliot Temple]

On Jul 12, 2018, at 3:59 PM, anonymous FI <anonymousfa...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I think I made a mistake in the discussion by talking about more than one thing at once. I'm going to stop doing that. If he replies I plan to do only one thing at a time from now on.
>
> The problem with saying multiple things is he kept picking some to ignore, even when I asked him repeatedly to address them. See:
>
> http://curi.us/1585-critical-preferences#c10111
>
> and several posts near it, prior, where I keep asking him to address the same issue. but he wouldn't without the ultimatum that i stop replying. maybe he still won't.
>
> if i never said more than one thing at once, it wouldn't get out of hand like this in the first place. i think.

I think the structure of conversations is a bigger contributor to the outcome than the content quality is. Maybe a LOT bigger.

In other words, improving the conversation structure would have helped with the outcome more than improving the quality of the points you made, explanations you gave, questions you asked, etc. Improving your writing quality or having better arguments doesn't matter all that much compared to structural issues like what your goals are, what his goals are, whether you mutually try to engage in cooperative problem solving as issues come up, who follows whose lead or is there a struggle for control, what methodological rules determine which things are ignorable and which are replied to, and what are the rules for introducing new topics, dropping topics, modifying topics?


Elliot Temple
www.fallibleideas.com

[anonymous FI]

it's really hard to control discussion structure. people don't wanna
talk about it and don't want you to be in control. they don't wanna just
answer your questions, follow your lead, let you control discussion
flow. they fight over that. they connect control over the discussion
structure with being the authority – like teachers control
discussions and students don't.

people often get really hostile, really fast, when it comes to structure
stuff. they say you're dodging the issue. and they never have a
thought-out discussion methodology to talk about, they have nothing to
say. when it comes to the primary topic, they at least have fake or dumb
stuff to say, they have some sorta plan or strategy or ideas (or they
wouldn't be talking about). but with stuff about how to discuss, they
*can't* discuss it, and don't want to – it leads so much more quickly
and effectively to outing them as intellectual frauds. (doesn't matter
if that's your intent. they are outed because you're discussing
rationality more directly and they have nothing to say and won't do any
of the good ideas and don't know how to do the good ideas and can't
oppose them either).

sometimes people are OK with discussion methodology stuff like Paths
Forward when it's just sounds-good vague general stuff, but the moment
you apply it to them they feel controlled. they feel like you are
telling them what to do. they feel pressured, like they have to discuss
the rational way. so they rebel. even just direct questions are too
controlling and higher social status, and people rebel.

[Elliot Temple]

some types of discussion structure. these aren’t about controlling the discussion, they are just different ways it can be organized. some are compatible with each other and some aren’t (you can have multiple from the list, but some exclude each other):

- asking and answering direct questions
- addressing unstated, generic questions like “thoughts on what i just said?”
- one person questioning the other who answers vs. both people asking and answering questions vs. some ppl ignoring questions
- arguing points back and forth
- saying further thoughts related to what last person said (relevance levels vary, can be like really talking past each other and staying positive, or can be actual discussion)
- pursuing a goal stated by one person
- pursuing a goal stated by two people and mutually agreed on
- pursuing different and unstated goals
- 3+ person discussion
- using quotes of the other discussion participants or not
- using cites/links to stuff outside the discussion or not
- long messages, short messages, or major variance in message length
- talking about one thing at a time
- trying to resolve issues before moving on vs. just rushing ahead into new territory while there are lots of outstanding unresolved points
- step by step vs. chaotic
- people keeping track of the outline or just running down rabbit holes

Elliot Temple
www.elliottemple.com

[Elliot Temple]

i’ve been noticing structure problems in discussions more in the last maybe 5 years. Paths Forward and Overreaching address them. lots of my discussions are very short b/c we get an impasse immediately b/c i try to structure the discussion and they resist.

like i ask them how they will be corrected if they’re wrong (what structural mechanisms of discussion do they use to allow error correction) and that ends the discussion.

or i ask like “if i persuade you of X, will you appreciate it and thank me?” before i argue X. i try to establish the meaning X will have in advance. why bother winning point X if they will just deny it means anything once you get there? a better way to structure discussion is to establish some stakes around X in advance, before it’s determined who is right about X.

i ask things like if they want to discuss to a conclusion, or what their goal is, and they won’t answer and it ends things fast

i ask why they’re here. or i ask if they think they know a lot or if they are trying to learn.

ppl hate all those questions so much. it really triggers the fuck out of them

they just wanna argue the topic – abortion or induction or whatever

asking if they are willing to answer questions or go step by step also pisses ppl off

asking if they will use quotes or bottom post. asking if they will switch forums. ppl very rarely venue switch. it’s really rare they will move from twitter to email, or from email to blog comments, or from blog comments to FI, etc

even asking if they want to lead the discussion and have a plan doesn’t work. it’s not just about me controlling the discussion. if i offer them control – with the caveat that they answer some basic questions about how they will use it and present some kinda halfway reasonable plan – they hate that too. cuz they don’t know how to manage the discussion and don’t want the responsibility or to be questioned about their skill or knowledge of how to do it.

structure/rules/organization for discussion suppresses ppl’s bullshit. it gives them less leeway to evade or rationalize. it makes discussion outcomes clearer. that’s why it’s so important, and so resisted.

Elliot Temple
www.curi.us

[GISTE]

can you give examples specific to parent and child discussions?

there are cases where one person (say the parent) wants to discuss X now
(instead of, or while, doing Y) and the other person (say the child)
doesn’t want to discuss X now.

that’s an example of discussion structure, right?

it’s a bad structure. a better structure would be if parent only talks
to child about things he wants to talk about at the time he wants to
talk about it.

-- GISTE

[anonymous FI]

On Jul 13, 2018, at 8:01 AM, 'GISTE' via Fallible Ideas

look at what types of questions are asked and answered by each party.
parents and children question each other in asymmetric ways. children's
questions are controlled, limited, and topical. there's pressure against
"why". parents often ask questions about the child personally (why
didn't you do X?) but children don't get to ask parents questions like
that, children ask about the topic like "how big were dinosaurs?".

you can find similar dynamics anywhere with a large power imbalance.
e.g. student/teacher or CEO/secretary.

> there are cases where one person (say the parent) wants to discuss X
> now (instead of, or while, doing Y) and the other person (say the
> child) doesn’t want to discuss X now.

that is common with two adults. it's not specific to parent and child.

> that’s an example of discussion structure, right?
>
> it’s a bad structure. a better structure would be if parent only
> talks to child about things he wants to talk about at
> the time he wants to talk about it.

you didn't say what happens next. maybe child walks away and they don't
discuss. if that doesn't happen, what prevents it?

maybe parent *wants* to discuss, but doesn't, cuz his child doesn't want
to – all you stated was the parent's initial preference.

if they do discuss something now, you haven't said *what* they discuss.
they could discuss X against child's wishes. but they could discuss
whether or not to discuss X, which is not against child's wishes as you
presented them.

it's incomplete and also did you have some sort of question about it?

[anonymous FI]

the structure or organization of a discussion includes the rules of the
game, like whether people should reply more *tomorrow* or whether it's
just a single day affair. the rules for what people consider reasonable
ways of *ending* a discussion are a big deal. is "i went to sleep and
then chose not to think about it the next day, or the next, or the
next..." a reasonable ending? should people actually make an effort to
avoid that ending, e.g. by using software reminders?

should people take notes on the discussion so they remember earlier
parts better? should they quote from old parts? should they
review/reread old parts?

a common view of discussion is: we debate issue X. i'm on side Y, you're
on side Z. and ppl only say stuff for their side. they only try to think
about things in a one-sided, biased way. they fudge and round everything
in their favor. e.g. if the number is 15, they will say "like 10ish" or
"barely over a dozen" if a smaller number helps their side. and the
other guy will call it "around 20" or "nearly 18".

a big part of structure is: do sub-plots resolve? say there's 3 things.
and you are trying to do one at a time, so you pick one of the 3 and
talk about that. can you expect to finish it and get back to the other 2
things, or not? is the discussion branching to new topics faster than
topics are being resolved? are topics being resolved at a rate that's
significantly different from zero, or is approximately nothing being
resolved?

another part of structure is how references/cites/links are used. are
ideas repeated or are pointers to ideas used? and do people try to make
stuff that is suitable for reuse later (good enough quality, general
purpose enough) or not? (a term similar to suitable for reuse is
"canonical").

[Elliot Temple]

I already knew that structural knowledge is the majority of knowledge. Like a large software project typically has much more knowledge in the organization than the “payload” (aka denotation aka direct purpose). “refactoring" refers to changing only the structure while keeping the function/content/payload/purpose/denotation the same. refactoring is common and widely known to be important. it’s an easy way for people familiar with the field to see that significant effort goes into software knowledge structure cuz that is effort that’s pretty much *only* going toward structure. software design ideas like DRY and YAGNI are more about structure than content. how changeable software is is a matter of structure ... and most big software projects have a lot more effort put into changes (like bug fixes, maintenance and new features) than into initial development. so initial development should focus more effort on a good structure (to make changes easier) than on the direct content.

it does vary by software type. games are a big exception. most games they have most of their sales near release. most games aren’t updated or changed much after release. games still need pretty good structure though or it’d be too hard to fix enough the bugs during initial development to get it shippable. and they never plan the whole game from the start, they make lots of changes during development (like they try playing it and think it’s not fun enough, or find a particular part works badly, and change stuff to make it better), so structure matters. wherever you have change (including *error correction*), structure is a big deal. (and there’s plenty of error correction needed in all types of software dev that make substantial stuff. you can get away with very little when you write one line of low-risk code directly into a test-environment console and aren’t even going to reuse it.)

it makes sense that structure related knowledge is the majority of the issue for discussion. i figured that was true in general but hadn’t applied it enough. knowledge structure is hard to talk about b/c i don’t really have people who are competent to discuss it with me. it’s less developed and talked through than some other stuff like Paths Forward or Overreaching. and it’s less clear in my mind than YESNO.

so to make this clearer:

*structure is what determines changeability. various types of change are high value in general, including especially error correction. wherever you see change, especially error correction, it will fail without structural knowledge. if it’s working ok, there’s lots of structural knowledge.*

it’s like how the capacity to make progress – like being good at learning – is more important than how much you know how or how good something is now. like how a government that can correct mistakes without violence is better than one with fewer mistakes today. (in other words, the structure mistake of needing violence to correct some categories of mistake is a worse mistake than the non-structure mistake of taxing cigarettes and gas. the gas tax doesn’t make it harder to make changes and correct errors, so it’s less bad of a mistake in the long run.)


Elliot Temple
www.curi.us

[Anne B]

On Wed, Jul 11, 2018 at 7:50 PM anonymous FI
<anonymousfa...@gmail.com> wrote:

> He's such a hypocrite. When he wrote:
>
> > Your hostility is breathtaking.
>
> That was a very hostile comment. But he's only concerned with my alleged
> hostility, and not his own open hostility. It was an accusation. It was
> aggressive, personal, and nasty. And even if I had been hostile, and I
> started it, calling my hostility "breathtaking" would be an openly,
> directly hostile reply that was totally unnecessary.

I've been trying to figure out what hostility is in the context of FI.
So I want to look at the paragraph that seems to have inspired the
"Your hostility is breathtaking" comment:

http://curi.us/1585-critical-preferences#c10041

> you can create knowledge about it. dunno why you're denying this. i guess because you don't see the role of criticism and CR in reaching positive answers to anything. well, why come here and assert that ET, KP, DD are wrong, indirectly, without addressing their published explanations? did you not realize people would disagree with you? you thought the response would be agreement that we just can't figure things out like in the quote you're arguing against? (it's weird to quote something, argue with it, then act like you except agreement)

I am not surprised that the Anonymous Visitor read this paragraph as
hostile. I am also not surprised that the Anonymous Regular who wrote
it didn't think it was hostile. I'm trying to figure out and
articulate why.

Some of my guesses why Anonymous Visitor thought the paragraph was hostile:

- It criticized some things he had done rather than what he had
explicitly written. That is, it criticized things he wasn't asking to
be criticized about and may not even have been aware of. In the non-FI
world this is considered hostile. It's not polite.

- The "dunno why you're denying this" part seems to be saying not only
that Anonymous Visitor was wrong to deny something but that it was so
strange for him to deny it that in doing so he mystified the wise
Anonymous Regular. Same with the "it's weird" comment.

My guess why Anonymous Regular didn't think the paragraph was hostile:
Criticism is always helpful, not hostile. People should want
criticism.

Or maybe Anonymous Regular did think the paragraph was a little bit
hostile/harsh, but thought that was necessary in order to nudge
Anonymous Visitor to see that he really had done some things wrong?

Or something else? I don't think I understand this very well.

[anonymous FI]

in what way does it indicate a *hostile mindset* to *find someone
confusingly strange* (or even dumb)? evaluating something as bad or dumb
*is not hostility*.

> My guess why Anonymous Regular didn't think the paragraph was hostile:
> Criticism is always helpful, not hostile. People should want
> criticism.

that is not a primary issue. the primary issue is: hostility is a *state
of mind*. people can write criticism while unemotional. they can also
write criticism while happy or hostile. criticizing is compatible with
being hostile or not.

criticism isn't hostility in any kind of literal sense because writing a
criticism is not an emotion, feeling, mindset ... it's not even the same
category of thing.

> Or maybe Anonymous Regular did think the paragraph was a little bit
> hostile/harsh, but thought that was necessary in order to nudge
> Anonymous Visitor to see that he really had done some things wrong?

you write "hostile/harsh" as if they are the same thing when they are
different things. they aren't the same kind of thing. saying the
paragraph was hostile means you think the author was hostile – the
*author* has the "hostile" attribute. people have hostility, not
paragraphs. paragraphs communicate hostility. saying the paragraph was
harsh means the paragraph itself has the "harsh" attribute.

you can have all kinds of motivations for writing a harsh comment, from
hostility to thinking it's the best way to help.

> Or something else? I don't think I understand this very well.

look up "hostile" and "harsh" in a dictionary. you don't seem to have a
clear concept of the meanings of the words you're talking about (just
the standard meanings, i'm not talking about advanced philosophy)

---

the reason Anonymous Visitor thought the paragraph was hostile is that
Anonymous Visitor felt hostility (his own hostility) when he read it. he
*reacted emotionally* and *blamed others* and *didn't read in a careful
or literal way, just assumed that if he felt bad then the paragraph was
attacking him which indicates a hostile author*.

it's like how angry ppl think that *the fact that they feel angry* is
evidence they have a reason to be angry – someone actually did wrong
them, slight them, insult them, mistreat them, whatever.

[Anne B]

Okay, I accept that hostility is a state of mind. A person can be
hostile but a paragraph can't.

I agree that the paragraph in question did not say that its author was
hostile. It did not say that its author felt enmity or antagonism
towards Anonymous Visitor.

However, Anonymous Visitor interpreted the paragraph using social
rules that he is used to from outside the FI world. These social rules
say something like: If someone offers criticism outside of certain
limited situations, that means they are hostile. If someone states or
implies that someone else is dumb, that means they are hostile. The
social rules tell us to only do these things if we want others to
think we are being hostile.

FI rejects these social rules. It rejects them because criticism is so
important that we don't want to limit it. It rejects them because
truth is so important that we don't want to hide it. Is this accurate?

[anonymous FI]

Sounds about right.

The proper way to interpret hostility (or not) is by critically thinking
about explanations about why the author wrote stuff, rather than just
assuming that only a hostile person would provide or investigate
negative information.

Lots of people try to hide their problems instead of learning, but even
conventional people don't do that *consistently* and do appreciate some
criticism sometimes.

- Dagny

[anonymous FI]

On Jul 14, 2018, at 1:44 PM, anonymous FI

Just saw this which makes a great follow-up comment:

https://twitter.com/StefanMolyneux/status/1017984286740434945

> Humanity, it seems, is divided into two categories: those who embrace
> criticism, and those who attack it. All progress comes from the former
> – who all too often have the dubious distinction of being hated by
> the latter.

the full article is paywalled

[Kate Sams]

I’m trying to reconcile the following two explanations for *why* Anon Visitor thought the paragraph in question was hostile:

1. Above Anon FI says it’s because Anon Visitor felt his own hostility when he read the paragraph.

2. Above Anne B says it’s because Anon Visitor was following social rules when he read the paragraph.

How do you reconcile these explanations?


My vague, groping speculation:

Social rules give some guidance on when someone might have a hostile mindset. So, let’s suppose that Anon Visitor was uncritically relying on social rules when he felt the hostility.

But is something else required for him to feel the hostility in this particular situation? Does the person (Anon Visitor, in this case) *also* need to have a part of himself that has the capacity to be in a hostile mindset in situations like these?

Let’s also suppose that Anon Visitor has this hostility aspect of his own personality. It's this hostility aspect of himself that was triggered when reading the paragraph in question.

Why? Maybe it’s utterly foreign to him to write a paragraph with a critical, status-disregarding tone *without having his own hostility aspect involved*. So, he felt the hostility because his mind recognized the situation as one where his *own* hostility aspect would be involved.

Help plz.

[Elliot Temple]

On Jul 13, 2018, at 6:49 PM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:

> so to make this clearer:
>
> *structure is what determines changeability. various types of change are high value in general, including especially error correction. wherever you see change, especially error correction, it will fail without structural knowledge. if it’s working ok, there’s lots of structural knowledge.*
>
> it’s like how the capacity to make progress – like being good at learning – is more important than how much you know how or how good something is now. like how a government that can correct mistakes without violence is better than one with fewer mistakes today. (in other words, the structure mistake of needing violence to correct some categories of mistake is a worse mistake than the non-structure mistake of taxing cigarettes and gas. the gas tax doesn’t make it harder to make changes and correct errors, so it’s less bad of a mistake in the long run.)

Intro to knowledge structure (2010):

http://fallibleideas.com/knowledge-structure

Original posts after DD told me about it (2003)

http://curi.us/988-structural-epistemology-introduction-part-1
http://curi.us/991-structural-epistemology-introduction-part-2

The core idea of knowledge structure is that you can do the same task/function/content in different ways. You may think it doesn’t matter as long as the result is (approximately) the same, but the structure matters hugely if you try to change it so it can do something else.

“It” can be software, an object like a hammer, ideas, or processes (like the processes factory workers use). Different software designs are easier to add features to than others. You can imagine some hammer designs being easier to convert into a shovel than others. Some ideas are easier to change than others. Or imagine two essays arguing equally effectively for the same claim, and your task is to edit them to argue for a different conclusion – the ease of that depends on the internal design of the essays. And for processes, for example the more the factory workers have each memorized a single task, and don’t understand anything, the more difficult a lot of changes will be (but not all – you could convert the factory to build something else if you came up with a way to build it with simple, memorizable steps). Also note the ease of change often depends on what you want to change to. Each design makes some sets of potential changes harder or easier.



Back to the ongoing discussion (which FYI is exploratory rather than having a clear conclusion):

“structure” is the word DD used. Is is the right word to use all the time?

Candidate words:

- structure (DD’s word)
- design
- organization
- internal design
- internal organization
- form
- layout
- style
- plan
- outline

I think “design” and “organization” are good words. “Form” can be good contextually.

What about words for the non-structure part?

- denotation (DD’s word)
- content
- function
- payload
- direct purpose
- level one purpose
- task
- main point
- subject matter

The lists help clarify the meaning – all the words together are clearer than any particular one.

---

What does a good design offer besides being easier to change?

- Flexibility: solves a wider range of relevant problems (without needing to change it, or with a smaller/easier change). E.g. a car that can drive in the snow or on dry roads, rather than just one or the other.

- Easier to understand. Like computer code that’s easier to read due to being organized well.

- Made up of *somewhat independent* parts (components) which you can separate and use individually (or in smaller groups than the original total thing). The parts being smaller and more independent has advantages but also often involves some downsides (like you need more connecting “glue” parts and the attachment of components is less solid).

- Easier to reuse for another purpose. (This is related to changeability and to components. Some components can be reused without reusing others.)

- Internal reuse (references, pointers, links) rather than new copies. (This is usually but not always better. In general, it means the knowledge is present that two instances are actually the same thing instead of separate. It means there’s knowledge of internal groupings.)


Good structures are set up to do work (in a certain somewhat generic way), and can be told what type of work, what details. Bad structures fail to differentiate what is parochial details and what is general purpose.


The more you treat something as a black box (never take it apart, never worry about the details of how it works, never repair it, just use it for its intended purpose), the less structure matters.


In general, the line between function and design is approximate. What about the time it takes to work, or the energy use, or the amount of waste heat? What are those? You can do the same task (same function) in different ways, which is the core idea of different structures, and get different results for time, energy and heat use. They could be considered to be related to design efficiency. But they could also be seen as part of the task: having to wait too long, or use too much energy, could defeat the purpose of the task. There are functionality requirements in these areas or else it would be considered not to work. People don’t want a car that overheats – that would fail to address the primary problem of getting them from place to place. It affects whether they arrive at their destination at all, not just how the car is organized.

(This reminds me of computer security. Sometimes you can beat security mechanisms by looking at timing. Like imagine a password checking function that checks each letter of the password one by one and stops and rejects the password if a letter is wrong. That will run more slowly based on getting more letters correct at the start. So you can guess the password one letter at a time and find out when you have it right, rather than needing to guess the whole thing at once. This makes it much easier to figure out the password. Measuring power usage or waste heat could work too if you measured precisely enough or the difference in what the computer does varied a large enough amount internally. And note it’s actually really hard to make the computer take exactly the same amount of time, and use exactly the same amount of power, in different cases that have the same output like “bad password”.)

Form and function are related. Sometimes it’s useful to mentally separate them but sometimes it’s not helpful. When you refactor computer code, that’s about as close to purely changing the form as it gets. The point of refactoring is to reorganize things while making sure it still does the same thing as before. But refactoring sometimes makes code run faster, and sometimes that’s a big deal to functionality – e.g. it could increase the frame rate of a game from non-playable to playable.

Some designs *actively resist change*. E.g. imagine something with an internal robot that goes around repairing any damage (and its programmed to see any deviation or difference as damage – it tries to reverse *all* change). The human body is kind of like this. It has white blood cells and many other internal repair/defense mechanisms that (imperfectly) prevent various kinds of changes and repair various damage. And a metal hammer resists being changed into a screwdriver; you’d need some powerful tools to reshape it.

Elliot Temple
www.elliottemple.com

[Kate Sams]

On Jul 14, 2018, at 2:24 AM, 'anonymous FI' anonymousfa...@gmail.com [fallible-ideas] <fallibl...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

> the reason Anonymous Visitor thought the paragraph was hostile is that
> Anonymous Visitor felt hostility (his own hostility) when he read it. he
> *reacted emotionally* and *blamed others* and *didn't read in a careful
> or literal way, just assumed that if he felt bad then the paragraph was
> attacking him which indicates a hostile author*.
>
> it's like how angry ppl think that *the fact that they feel angry* is
> evidence they have a reason to be angry – someone actually did wrong
> them, slight them, insult them, mistreat them, whatever.

What do you mean when you say that Anon Visitor felt “his own hostility”?

My guess is that this involves Anon Visitor having a hostile mindset and feeling hostility towards something (e.g. another person or something vague and inexplicit in his mind).

This isn’t the same situation as someone interpreting that there’s hostility behind something that they see someone else do. Interpreting hostility in others (e.g. by using social rules to interpret situations) doesn’t require being in a hostile mindset. These people don’t necessarily feel their *own* hostility.

Although, I’m guessing it’s common for both situations to be happening simultaneously. Ppl interpret hostility in others, and they become hostile themselves. Maybe that’s what happened with Anon Visitor.

———

Btw, never mind my earlier speculation on this topic. It was too vague and confused.

[Anne B]

Yes, many people react with hostility when they think that someone
else is hostile towards them. This is often an automatic reaction,
without conscious thought as to whether it's a good idea.

Also, many people react with hostility when confronted with ideas they
don't like. Again, there may not be conscious thought as to whether
hostility is a good idea in that situation.

I can think of times when I did both of these things. The next time I
feel hostility I will try to notice it and think about why and think
about whether I want to be hostile.

[Anne B]

Would another type of discussion structure be talking about meta
issues or not? Talking about the discussion structure itself would be
meta discussion.

[Elliot Temple]

Yes. And you can have discussion about the discussion about the discussion.

Or discussion about the discussion about the discussion about the discussion.

There are infinite meta levels. But only the first one seems to make that much difference. It's useful to consider if you're talking about meta issues or not. But my impression is it doesn't seem to matter that much whether it's level 4 meta or level 5 meta – both have the major characteristics, advantages and disadvantages of meta.

Elliot Temple
www.curi.us

[Anne B]

I'm thinking about some reasons why people resist talking about
structure/rules/organization for discussion.

1) They don't think it's necessary to talk about. They think it's
obvious what the best way to have a discussion is and there's no point
in trying to think of other ways.

2) They think the low-level topic is the most important thing and that
it's a distraction to talk about discussion structure. They may think
the other person is being difficult and uncooperative by trying to
distract them from the issue at hand.

3) They haven't thought consciously about discussion structure before.
They are taken aback by someone mentioning it. They haven't figured
out what they think or what they could say about how to structure a
discussion and they react by not wanting to talk about it.

4) They think that a person who raises structure issues is trying to
impose particular structures on them.

[Elliot Temple]

I haven't run into people who have this as a serious opinion they will actually say. I don't think they thought about it much, but they often do seem to act like they see it this way.

> 2) They think the low-level topic is the most important thing and that
> it's a distraction to talk about discussion structure. They may think
> the other person is being difficult and uncooperative by trying to
> distract them from the issue at hand.

Commonly I bring up discussion structure *after* there is already some significant problem screwing up the discussion – after meta progress directly on the object-level topic is *stuck*.

Like I'll direct discussion one chance and then when there's a major problem I'll want to address that instead of unsuccessfully try to ig