On Aug 14, 2020, at 0:41 AM, Max Kaye <m...@xk.io> wrote:
> DD said this in a video he published ~recently (December 2019). In it,
> Lulie is asking him about the 'Fun Criterion'.
> She does a bit of interviewing through the rest of the video, but it's
> mostly DD talking.
>
> The part I want to focus on is ~15s to 21s. The quoted dialog starts
> at 9s. There's a quick 1s cut to Lulie after DD
> says that sentence. I'm not sure what her facial expression is but the
> cut and the expression both seemed odd to me.
Ya I don't see the point of a cut to what seems like a
non-reaction/neutral face, unless you just assume that Lulie wants to
get her face in their as much as possible.
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idvGlr0aT3c&t=9
>
>> Lulie: It seems like you're saying something epistemological instead
>> of just like "this is David's life advice".
>> David: Yes, well, uhhhm, far be it from me to give life advice; that
>> would be terrifying.
>
> I think it would be fine if he expressed that he wasn't aiming to give
> life advice (after all, what you do with an idea
> is up to you), but if he wanted to do that he should have done so
> directly.
>
> But instead he said it would be **terrifying**. I think that's a
> socially acceptable way to react but it's false b/c it
> isn't terrifying to think about DD giving life advice. In fact, of all
> the people on the planet he's probably a **very
> good choice** on the whole. Like there are not many people to choose
> who are better.
He also actually gave what many would reasonably view as life advice
regarding stuff like parenting ideas for quite a while. See e.g.
https://curi.us/tcs/Articles/index.html
I guess he doesn't want to admit that now though and instead prefers to
feign humility?
> He's implying his life advice would be *bad*,
Well, he's saying stuff that will be taken by many people in that way -
as meaning his advice would actually be bad/terrifying. This implication
was intentional IMHO.
But you could also read it as him saying that people would *find* his
advice to be terrifying, or even as the results of him giving life
advice being terrifying for *him* (due to people's negative reaction).
He omitted *why* it'd be terrifying and *for whom*, which really leaves
the interpretative playing field wide open...Him being vague about those
details doesn't seem like an accident to me.
> and he's doing that even though he doesn't believe it, and Lulie
> presumably doesn't believe it either. I don't believe it (at least
> generally, maybe his life advice on social dynamics
> I'd take with more salt). What is that statement doing there? It is
> jarring and out of place to me - though most of
> what I know of DD is via BoI, so maybe lack of experience on my part
> is a factor.
>
> it's also condescending to his audience; an audience (some of whom)
> he's attracted by having *good ideas*! What else is
> life advice meant to be made of?
Most of DD's fans are gonna be easily turned off by lots of stuff he
could say if he stated his full opinion, and that is particularly true
of stuff that implies that they're living their lives wrong.
-JM