I second this! The mental state of being offended is not useful.
However, I want to point out that I believe there’s some typical mind fallacy popping up this post? I think it’s geared at the particular group of people whose knee-jerk impulse is to perform offendedness once they are in the offended mental state because the post doesn’t clearly precisely distinguish between the two. But that’s not the knee-jerk reaction of everyone. For example, I am very conflict-avoidant (to the point of doormat-ness), so I actually had to teach myself to perform offendedness for the social benefit of enforcing boundaries, which is pretty important but is only briefly touched upon in the post. My natural impulse was to tolerate (sometimes deliberately) offensive behavior and do nothing, so because I didn’t get defensive or angry, I would just get hurt and sad and … take it. Until I eventually realized this was a bad strategy. Therefore! I think it would be useful to clean up that distinction and make sure that it’s the offendedness mental state that is a bad habit.
Were you commenting on an earlier version of the post, or something? ISTM that the “not everyone is the same” point is addressed by the fourth paragraph and the “behaving as though you were offended is not always useless” is covered by the fifth paragraph.
(Because I asked for edits, so that increased the chances of there being a later version because that’s what edits are. Which then implies that there was an earlier version because you can’t have an later version without an earlier version … yeah.)
Thanks for the feedback! I have a followup post on the way that I think will clarify some of the issues that you are referring to. I definitely agree that the mental state is what’s really important here. Overall one thing that I think is not discussed enough on LessWrong is how all the thought processes trained by the typical LW canon can be derailed under certain circumstances. You might be the most rational person in the world, but if you’re too angry/sad/joyful to think straight, you may not be as effective as you would hope.
Thank you for your reply! I’m really glad you’re planning to cover this topic more, and I definitely agree that extremely emotional mental states are derailing for rationality.
Unfortunately, I don’t think your reply quite addressed my concern, and I’m starting to see a lot of comments from other people who are also reading this post as “don’t get angry” rather than “detect your offended/victimized mental state, don’t make any decisions and speedily think yourself out of it” because of the conflated language throughout the post. I would really super-appreciate it if you could edit it to be precise, because it seems to use “getting offended”, and “acting angry” and “acting defensive” interchangeably in a lot of places.
Not all offended people act angry. Some people have really peaceful-looking offended states where they’re secretly making mental notes to hold a grudge forever! They might read this post and think it doesn’t apply to them. Some of us don’t get offended at all and need to teach ourselves to socially demonstrate that something is wrong. Some people unfortunately don’t even think they’re allowed to get offended because they think they deserve every bad thing :(, but aren’t in the scope of this post. They might read this and think there isn’t anything to learn here.
I would really super-appreciate it if you could edit it to be precise, because it seems to use “getting offended”, and “acting angry” and “acting defensive” interchangeably in a lot of places.
My concern with your assertions is that there is a serious risk that it with be used as a complete counter-argument to certain disliked social movements (proto-example here).
I’m not saying that all of my putative allies are rational, or have terminal values that can be reasonably implemented. Clearly, that is not the case. But a great deal of that problem is caused by the general low sanity line across the political spectrum.
In short, I’m concerned that your message will be interpreted as narrowly focusing that criticism to only one part of the spectrum.
I second this! The mental state of being offended is not useful.
However, I want to point out that I believe there’s some typical mind fallacy popping up this post? I think it’s geared at the particular group of people whose knee-jerk impulse is to perform offendedness once they are in the offended mental state because the post doesn’t clearly precisely distinguish between the two. But that’s not the knee-jerk reaction of everyone. For example, I am very conflict-avoidant (to the point of doormat-ness), so I actually had to teach myself to perform offendedness for the social benefit of enforcing boundaries, which is pretty important but is only briefly touched upon in the post. My natural impulse was to tolerate (sometimes deliberately) offensive behavior and do nothing, so because I didn’t get defensive or angry, I would just get hurt and sad and … take it. Until I eventually realized this was a bad strategy. Therefore! I think it would be useful to clean up that distinction and make sure that it’s the offendedness mental state that is a bad habit.
Were you commenting on an earlier version of the post, or something? ISTM that the “not everyone is the same” point is addressed by the fourth paragraph and the “behaving as though you were offended is not always useless” is covered by the fifth paragraph.
I made there be an earlier version. 8)
(Because I asked for edits, so that increased the chances of there being a later version because that’s what edits are. Which then implies that there was an earlier version because you can’t have an later version without an earlier version … yeah.)
katydee has been editing in response to suggestions.
Thanks for the feedback! I have a followup post on the way that I think will clarify some of the issues that you are referring to. I definitely agree that the mental state is what’s really important here. Overall one thing that I think is not discussed enough on LessWrong is how all the thought processes trained by the typical LW canon can be derailed under certain circumstances. You might be the most rational person in the world, but if you’re too angry/sad/joyful to think straight, you may not be as effective as you would hope.
Thank you for your reply! I’m really glad you’re planning to cover this topic more, and I definitely agree that extremely emotional mental states are derailing for rationality.
Unfortunately, I don’t think your reply quite addressed my concern, and I’m starting to see a lot of comments from other people who are also reading this post as “don’t get angry” rather than “detect your offended/victimized mental state, don’t make any decisions and speedily think yourself out of it” because of the conflated language throughout the post. I would really super-appreciate it if you could edit it to be precise, because it seems to use “getting offended”, and “acting angry” and “acting defensive” interchangeably in a lot of places.
Not all offended people act angry. Some people have really peaceful-looking offended states where they’re secretly making mental notes to hold a grudge forever! They might read this post and think it doesn’t apply to them. Some of us don’t get offended at all and need to teach ourselves to socially demonstrate that something is wrong. Some people unfortunately don’t even think they’re allowed to get offended because they think they deserve every bad thing :(, but aren’t in the scope of this post. They might read this and think there isn’t anything to learn here.
Done.
Awesomeness! Thank you.
My concern with your assertions is that there is a serious risk that it with be used as a complete counter-argument to certain disliked social movements (proto-example here).
I’m not saying that all of my putative allies are rational, or have terminal values that can be reasonably implemented. Clearly, that is not the case. But a great deal of that problem is caused by the general low sanity line across the political spectrum.
In short, I’m concerned that your message will be interpreted as narrowly focusing that criticism to only one part of the spectrum.
EDIT: Fubarobfusco said it better