Though it’s possible the reporter has twisted your words more than I manage to suspect, I’ll say:
Wow, some of the people involved really suck at thinking (or caring to think) about how they make the scene look. I think I’m able to pretty well correct for the discrepancy between what’s reported and what’s the reality behind it, but even after the correction, this window into what the scene has become has further lowered my interest in flying over there to the States to hang out with you, since it seems I might end up banging my head against the wall in frustration for all the silliness that’s required for this sort of reporting to get it’s source material.
(Though I do also think that it’s inevitable that once the scene has grown to be large and successful enough, typical members will be sufficiently ordinary human beings that I’d find their company very frustrating. Sorry, I’m a dick that way, and in a sense my negative reaction is only a sign of success, though I didn’t expect quite this level of success to be reached yet.)
(By the previous I however do not mean to imply that things would have been saner 10 years ago (I certainly had significant shortcomings of my own), but back when nobody had figured much anything out yet or written Sequences about stuff, the expected level of insanity would have been partly higher for such reasons.)
This was a private party announced via a semi-public list. A reporter showed up and she talked to people without telling them she was a reporter. This is not a report, it is a tabloid piece. Intentional gossip.
My experience with the NY Less Wrong group, of which I had been a part, is that we are, indeed, a bunch of silly people who like to do things that are silly, such as cuddle-piling, because they’re fun to do and we don’t care that much about appearing dignified in front of each other. If silliness bothers you, then you might very well be right in concluding that you wouldn’t enjoy hanging out with them in person.
Though it’s possible the reporter has twisted your words more than I manage to suspect
D’you think? You’ll understand better after being reported-on yourself; and then you’ll look back and laugh about how very, very naive that comment was. It’s the average person’s incomprehension of reporter-distorting that gives reporters their power. If you read something and ask, “Hm, I wonder what the truth was that generated this piece?” without having personal, direct experience of how very bad it is, they win.
I think the winning move is to read blogs by smart people, who usually don’t lie, rather than anything in newspapers.
Actually, I feel that I have sufficient experience of being reported on (including in an unpleasant way), and it is precisely that which (along with my independent knowledge of many of the people getting reported on here) gave me the confidence to suspect that I would have managed to separate from the distortions an amount of information that described reality.
That said, there is a bit of fail with regard to whether I managed to communicate what precisely impacted me. Much of it is subtle, necessarily, since it had to be picked up through the distortion field, and I do allow for the possibility that I misread, but I continue to think that I’m much better at correcting for the distortion field than most people.
One thing I didn’t realize, however, is that you folks apparently didn’t think the gal might be a reporter. That’s of course a fail in itself, but certainly a lesser fail than behaving similarly in the presence of a person one does manage to suspect to be a reporter.
Just for fun, here’s my villification at the hands of the tabloid press. Naturally the majority of it is rubbish. It’s striking how they write as if they hadn’t spoken to us, when we actually spoke to them at length. For one thing they could have asked us if we were students—we weren’t...
Today I went to show this to a friend. I remembered reading a more detailed version
of the story somewhere and after some searching I found the copy hosted by the
good folks at archive.org, which I’m posting here for reference: “How To Be
Notorious or Attack of the
Tripehounds”
My personal experience is that I have been reported on in a personal capacity zero times. I’ve had family members in small human-interest stories twice that I recall off hand. I’ve read stories about companies I worked for and had detailed knowledge of the material being reported on several times; I don’t have an exact number.
My experience with those things does not line up with yours. I conclude from this that the normal variance of reporting quality is higher than either of us has personal experience with.
Data point: I was reported-on three times, by a serious newspaper. Most information was wrong or completely made up. Luckily, once they forgot to write my name, and once they wrote it wrong, so it was easier for me to pretend that those two articles were not about me.
(I’m assuming that your complaint is about the interview quality on LW topics, rather than the physical intimacy, which we can assume is present but was amplified in the writing process. Honestly there are several things I think your comment could be about, so fortunately my problems with it are general)
I think this comment is uncharitable. Which you kind of knew already. And which, by itself, isn’t so bad.
But unfortunately, you fall into the fundamental attribution error here, and explain other peoples’ failings as if they were inherent properties of those people—and not only do you mentally assign people qualities like “sucks at explaining,” you generalize this to judge them as whole people. Not only is this a hasty conclusion, but you’re going to make other people feel bad, because people generally don’t like being judged.
I can understand the impulse “I would have done much better,” but I would much rather you kept things constructive.
The starting point for my attitude was people doing things like intervening in front of a reporter to stop discussion of a topic that looks scandalous, or talking about Singularity/AI topics in a way that doesn’t communicate much wisdom at all.
Being silly with regard to physical intimacy and in general having a wild party is all well and good by itself, if you’re into that sort of thing, but I react negatively when that silliness seems to spill over into affecting the way serious things are handled.
(I’ll partly excuse being light on the constructiveness by having seen some copy-pastes that seem to indicate that what I’m concerned about is already being tackled in a constructive way on the NYC mailing list. The folks over there are much better positioned to do the contructive things that should be done, and I wasn’t into trying to duplicate their efforts.)
Though it’s possible the reporter has twisted your words more than I manage to suspect, I’ll say:
Wow, some of the people involved really suck at thinking (or caring to think) about how they make the scene look. I think I’m able to pretty well correct for the discrepancy between what’s reported and what’s the reality behind it, but even after the correction, this window into what the scene has become has further lowered my interest in flying over there to the States to hang out with you, since it seems I might end up banging my head against the wall in frustration for all the silliness that’s required for this sort of reporting to get it’s source material.
(Though I do also think that it’s inevitable that once the scene has grown to be large and successful enough, typical members will be sufficiently ordinary human beings that I’d find their company very frustrating. Sorry, I’m a dick that way, and in a sense my negative reaction is only a sign of success, though I didn’t expect quite this level of success to be reached yet.)
(By the previous I however do not mean to imply that things would have been saner 10 years ago (I certainly had significant shortcomings of my own), but back when nobody had figured much anything out yet or written Sequences about stuff, the expected level of insanity would have been partly higher for such reasons.)
This was a private party announced via a semi-public list. A reporter showed up and she talked to people without telling them she was a reporter. This is not a report, it is a tabloid piece. Intentional gossip.
Or, contrariwise, scandal-sheet reporters are good at making people look scandalous?
(Don’t think of a beautiful blue beetle.)
My experience with the NY Less Wrong group, of which I had been a part, is that we are, indeed, a bunch of silly people who like to do things that are silly, such as cuddle-piling, because they’re fun to do and we don’t care that much about appearing dignified in front of each other. If silliness bothers you, then you might very well be right in concluding that you wouldn’t enjoy hanging out with them in person.
D’you think? You’ll understand better after being reported-on yourself; and then you’ll look back and laugh about how very, very naive that comment was. It’s the average person’s incomprehension of reporter-distorting that gives reporters their power. If you read something and ask, “Hm, I wonder what the truth was that generated this piece?” without having personal, direct experience of how very bad it is, they win.
I think the winning move is to read blogs by smart people, who usually don’t lie, rather than anything in newspapers.
Actually, I feel that I have sufficient experience of being reported on (including in an unpleasant way), and it is precisely that which (along with my independent knowledge of many of the people getting reported on here) gave me the confidence to suspect that I would have managed to separate from the distortions an amount of information that described reality.
That said, there is a bit of fail with regard to whether I managed to communicate what precisely impacted me. Much of it is subtle, necessarily, since it had to be picked up through the distortion field, and I do allow for the possibility that I misread, but I continue to think that I’m much better at correcting for the distortion field than most people.
One thing I didn’t realize, however, is that you folks apparently didn’t think the gal might be a reporter. That’s of course a fail in itself, but certainly a lesser fail than behaving similarly in the presence of a person one does manage to suspect to be a reporter.
Just for fun, here’s my villification at the hands of the tabloid press. Naturally the majority of it is rubbish. It’s striking how they write as if they hadn’t spoken to us, when we actually spoke to them at length. For one thing they could have asked us if we were students—we weren’t...
That is just blatant. It’s like a parody of bad journalism.
Today I went to show this to a friend. I remembered reading a more detailed version of the story somewhere and after some searching I found the copy hosted by the good folks at archive.org, which I’m posting here for reference: “How To Be Notorious or Attack of the Tripehounds”
Oh that’s great! Thank you arundelo, thank you Wayback Machine!
What sample size are you generalizing from?
My personal experience is that I have been reported on in a personal capacity zero times. I’ve had family members in small human-interest stories twice that I recall off hand. I’ve read stories about companies I worked for and had detailed knowledge of the material being reported on several times; I don’t have an exact number.
My experience with those things does not line up with yours. I conclude from this that the normal variance of reporting quality is higher than either of us has personal experience with.
Data point: I was reported-on three times, by a serious newspaper. Most information was wrong or completely made up. Luckily, once they forgot to write my name, and once they wrote it wrong, so it was easier for me to pretend that those two articles were not about me.
(I’m assuming that your complaint is about the interview quality on LW topics, rather than the physical intimacy, which we can assume is present but was amplified in the writing process. Honestly there are several things I think your comment could be about, so fortunately my problems with it are general)
I think this comment is uncharitable. Which you kind of knew already. And which, by itself, isn’t so bad.
But unfortunately, you fall into the fundamental attribution error here, and explain other peoples’ failings as if they were inherent properties of those people—and not only do you mentally assign people qualities like “sucks at explaining,” you generalize this to judge them as whole people. Not only is this a hasty conclusion, but you’re going to make other people feel bad, because people generally don’t like being judged.
I can understand the impulse “I would have done much better,” but I would much rather you kept things constructive.
The starting point for my attitude was people doing things like intervening in front of a reporter to stop discussion of a topic that looks scandalous, or talking about Singularity/AI topics in a way that doesn’t communicate much wisdom at all.
Being silly with regard to physical intimacy and in general having a wild party is all well and good by itself, if you’re into that sort of thing, but I react negatively when that silliness seems to spill over into affecting the way serious things are handled.
(I’ll partly excuse being light on the constructiveness by having seen some copy-pastes that seem to indicate that what I’m concerned about is already being tackled in a constructive way on the NYC mailing list. The folks over there are much better positioned to do the contructive things that should be done, and I wasn’t into trying to duplicate their efforts.)