I read some of these Chuck Norris-style facts and thought they were hilarious, but was also really carefully trying to check myself to make sure I didn’t … believe one? Accidentally buy a t-shirt?
What I was mainly wondering is what to do about non-rationality-focused communities whose central people do encourage fan behavior in limited but non-thoughtful, non-zero ways. You can’t really … criticize them, because existing fans will jump to defend them. I was thinking of maybe starting an unbiased phyg-ishness index computed in a published way?
How about acting like an adoring fan in but in a tongue-in-cheek self-mocking way? Seems to be what’s going on with the Eliezer Yudkowky facts. It may be misinterpreted (see Poe’s law ), but could make the fandom a bit more level-headed.
(edit: I also find it pretty plausible that the tongue-in-cheek adoration could make things worse, both through havinf some people take it too seriously anyway, and through evaporative cooling of people who don’t find it funny / don’t like that kind of humor)
I think admiration for a person is mostly a problem when it’s admiration for only one person; our Lord-Savior-God-Combatmaid Eliezer is a fine chap, but so are Richard Feynman, Terry Pratchett, Arthur C Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Robin Hanson, and many others. At least, on a personal level, I find that the response to Marks Of Awesomeness is not being deliberately critical to avoid looking like an adoring fan, but rather to be exposed to more different forms of Awesomeness to to have a better-calibrated sense of Awesomeness. So in a community with a worship problem, it could also help if admiration and respect for other people was also widespread and well accepted.
How about acting like an adoring fan in but in a tongue-in-cheek self-mocking way? Seems to be what’s going on with the Eliezer Yudkowky facts. It may be misinterpreted (see Poe’s law ), but could make the fandom a bit more level-headed.
Seems risky. I’m not sure how much of the psychology of fandom respects the sincere/tongue-in-cheek distinction, whether from the inside or the outside, and that’s a question I’d really want answered before we start leveraging it for social engineering purposes.
I’m mostly sure that the facts are mostly harmless; I think they concern me more from a perspective of cached thoughts and maybe a very slow-moving game of Broken Telephone. (You know the way recessive genes hang around at low levels in a population? Probably not at all like that mathematically but similar in sinister-ness!)
I think I mostly agree! But maybe admiring other people isn’t quite enough? Because we come here to admire the writings of mostly one central person and during that time, we’re not really thinking of anyone else. So I sort of do my admiring in single-person-focused discrete chunks until someone asks me where I hang out on the internet, which occurs more rarely than I hang out on the internet. Which makes me think you need to go through an intentional and somewhat unnatural exercise of calibrating your Awesomeness exposure.
This made me think of something else! I’ve also come to realize that most of the people I admire and/or fangirl are people I want to meet and get to know. I realized it isn’t really worth much to shake someone’s hand or have my something signed by the person. All of these cool people have something cool about them and I want in on what makes them cool rather than … proof of their physical existence?
Oh sorry. I mostly meant diseases caused by recessive genes? But also the way you can chug along and then it pops up a few generations later after you forgot it was there.
I read some of these Chuck Norris-style facts and thought they were hilarious, but was also really carefully trying to check myself to make sure I didn’t … believe one? Accidentally buy a t-shirt?
What I was mainly wondering is what to do about non-rationality-focused communities whose central people do encourage fan behavior in limited but non-thoughtful, non-zero ways. You can’t really … criticize them, because existing fans will jump to defend them. I was thinking of maybe starting an unbiased phyg-ishness index computed in a published way?
How about acting like an adoring fan in but in a tongue-in-cheek self-mocking way? Seems to be what’s going on with the Eliezer Yudkowky facts. It may be misinterpreted (see Poe’s law ), but could make the fandom a bit more level-headed.
(edit: I also find it pretty plausible that the tongue-in-cheek adoration could make things worse, both through havinf some people take it too seriously anyway, and through evaporative cooling of people who don’t find it funny / don’t like that kind of humor)
I think admiration for a person is mostly a problem when it’s admiration for only one person; our Lord-Savior-God-Combatmaid Eliezer is a fine chap, but so are Richard Feynman, Terry Pratchett, Arthur C Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Robin Hanson, and many others. At least, on a personal level, I find that the response to Marks Of Awesomeness is not being deliberately critical to avoid looking like an adoring fan, but rather to be exposed to more different forms of Awesomeness to to have a better-calibrated sense of Awesomeness. So in a community with a worship problem, it could also help if admiration and respect for other people was also widespread and well accepted.
Seems risky. I’m not sure how much of the psychology of fandom respects the sincere/tongue-in-cheek distinction, whether from the inside or the outside, and that’s a question I’d really want answered before we start leveraging it for social engineering purposes.
I’m mostly sure that the facts are mostly harmless; I think they concern me more from a perspective of cached thoughts and maybe a very slow-moving game of Broken Telephone. (You know the way recessive genes hang around at low levels in a population? Probably not at all like that mathematically but similar in sinister-ness!)
I think I mostly agree! But maybe admiring other people isn’t quite enough? Because we come here to admire the writings of mostly one central person and during that time, we’re not really thinking of anyone else. So I sort of do my admiring in single-person-focused discrete chunks until someone asks me where I hang out on the internet, which occurs more rarely than I hang out on the internet. Which makes me think you need to go through an intentional and somewhat unnatural exercise of calibrating your Awesomeness exposure.
This made me think of something else! I’ve also come to realize that most of the people I admire and/or fangirl are people I want to meet and get to know. I realized it isn’t really worth much to shake someone’s hand or have my something signed by the person. All of these cool people have something cool about them and I want in on what makes them cool rather than … proof of their physical existence?
What exactly is sinister about recessive genes? Sure, cystic fibrosis, but also blue eyes and certain forms of malaria resistance, yes?
Oh sorry. I mostly meant diseases caused by recessive genes? But also the way you can chug along and then it pops up a few generations later after you forgot it was there.
Suddenly, bam! A blue-eyed baby.