this was always a confusion between metaphorical and literal language or something
I think that does not quite make the problem go away?
Like, it’s not a direct confusion between metaphorical and literal language, exactly.
If someone says “everyone loves Monty Python,” it generally is clear that they don’t literally mean literally everyone. There are some areas where people really are confused about the ground truth, and really are typical minding pretty hard, but there are lots of places where, if challenged, they’d immediately concede “oh, yeah, I was just talking about, like, plus-minus three sigma on the bell curve.”
But that doesn’t make the problem disappear, because that’s sort of the point—it’s not that they literally actually think I don’t exist, it’s that their revealed preference is to spare zero time or attention for the fact that I exist. They know it, but it’s not worth the effort to carve out the exception. I literally don’t matter enough to them to convince them to swap out the word “all” for the word “most.” Their metaphor, or their simplified sentence, or the power they get from emphatic confidence—whatever it is, there’s some property they are loath to relinquish that is more important to them than making room for my existence.
I could copy and paste your comment and not be lying and yet I feel epistemic learned helplessness about whether I have any idea what you mean or if I’m in a hall of mirrors. This is incredibly frustrating. I feel like I can’t do anything but repeat my previous comment. my thoughts are still going in the same circle and I still don’t know how to put it into words in a way that could be trusted to differentiate our experiences. I still feel like you’re doing it to me in the process of explaining me doing it to you. I still feel like I have no idea if I could recognize anyone doing it. I have no idea what it is. I’m exactly confident what it is, how dare you claim I don’t know, it’s so obvious. but of course I don’t know.
I feel … nerdsniped isn’t the right word, I’m not sure one exists. you didn’t just break my model, you broke my ability to know whether you broke my model. I’m… pretty sure I understand? you’ve been left out of people’s phrasings in ways that demonstrate they think they have mutual information with you, but in fact they do not. maybe?
is this what NaN feels like to a biological brain? I’m emphatically confident in several directions that don’t go together and attempts to resolve it seem to make it worse.
I want to reassure, to show I understand, agree with your comment, yes of course you don’t love Monty Python, but I can’t help but overcorrect into invalidating any branch that agrees. You say they probably know about your part of the distribution but truncate too tightly, so you’re consistently the outlier treated as the outsider. is there another way to feel? but of course there is. but what is it, exactly? I don’t know.
I’ll get back to you on this tomorrow, maybe I’ll be slightly saner then. I definitely don’t have a high sanity score.
I’m confused—do you and Duncan know each other and you know that some of the examples involve you? The essay—reaction transcription—memory—thing doesn’t say “everyone does this to [Duncan]”, just that it happens over and over to Duncan. Or does the use of “you” make you feel like it’s written definitely to [the gears to ascension] among other people, as opposed to being written to quite a lot of people but not necessarily [the gears to ascension]?
I have had several arguments with him on lesswrong.com and generally I’m the type to get into unfortunate arguments and regret them. But my point here is, I have a weirdly intense reaction to this post. I want to say “same!” but I have no idea if it’s the same. Sleeping on it hasn’t clarified my thoughts. Sorry my comment doesn’t make a ton of sense—my thinking is consistently high temperature and crashy in some domains.
I think that does not quite make the problem go away?
Like, it’s not a direct confusion between metaphorical and literal language, exactly.
If someone says “everyone loves Monty Python,” it generally is clear that they don’t literally mean literally everyone. There are some areas where people really are confused about the ground truth, and really are typical minding pretty hard, but there are lots of places where, if challenged, they’d immediately concede “oh, yeah, I was just talking about, like, plus-minus three sigma on the bell curve.”
But that doesn’t make the problem disappear, because that’s sort of the point—it’s not that they literally actually think I don’t exist, it’s that their revealed preference is to spare zero time or attention for the fact that I exist. They know it, but it’s not worth the effort to carve out the exception. I literally don’t matter enough to them to convince them to swap out the word “all” for the word “most.” Their metaphor, or their simplified sentence, or the power they get from emphatic confidence—whatever it is, there’s some property they are loath to relinquish that is more important to them than making room for my existence.
I could copy and paste your comment and not be lying and yet I feel epistemic learned helplessness about whether I have any idea what you mean or if I’m in a hall of mirrors. This is incredibly frustrating. I feel like I can’t do anything but repeat my previous comment. my thoughts are still going in the same circle and I still don’t know how to put it into words in a way that could be trusted to differentiate our experiences. I still feel like you’re doing it to me in the process of explaining me doing it to you. I still feel like I have no idea if I could recognize anyone doing it. I have no idea what it is. I’m exactly confident what it is, how dare you claim I don’t know, it’s so obvious. but of course I don’t know.
I feel … nerdsniped isn’t the right word, I’m not sure one exists. you didn’t just break my model, you broke my ability to know whether you broke my model. I’m… pretty sure I understand? you’ve been left out of people’s phrasings in ways that demonstrate they think they have mutual information with you, but in fact they do not. maybe?
is this what NaN feels like to a biological brain? I’m emphatically confident in several directions that don’t go together and attempts to resolve it seem to make it worse.
I want to reassure, to show I understand, agree with your comment, yes of course you don’t love Monty Python, but I can’t help but overcorrect into invalidating any branch that agrees. You say they probably know about your part of the distribution but truncate too tightly, so you’re consistently the outlier treated as the outsider. is there another way to feel? but of course there is. but what is it, exactly? I don’t know.
I’ll get back to you on this tomorrow, maybe I’ll be slightly saner then. I definitely don’t have a high sanity score.
I’m confused—do you and Duncan know each other and you know that some of the examples involve you? The essay—reaction transcription—memory—thing doesn’t say “everyone does this to [Duncan]”, just that it happens over and over to Duncan. Or does the use of “you” make you feel like it’s written definitely to [the gears to ascension] among other people, as opposed to being written to quite a lot of people but not necessarily [the gears to ascension]?
I have had several arguments with him on lesswrong.com and generally I’m the type to get into unfortunate arguments and regret them. But my point here is, I have a weirdly intense reaction to this post. I want to say “same!” but I have no idea if it’s the same. Sleeping on it hasn’t clarified my thoughts. Sorry my comment doesn’t make a ton of sense—my thinking is consistently high temperature and crashy in some domains.