Similar caveats as Ray’s re: this is more fraught, since here I am trying to describe my observations of the context culture, as opposed to things I’m relatively sure about because they live inside my head. These are not normative statements/shoulds, they’re just “in my experience”s.
it’s necessary for some kind of social move in the space of “I think you’re more confused or blind-spotted than you realize”, at least some times.
Strong agree. It seems to me that the additional bit that makes this prosocial instead of a weapon is something like:
I notice that I’ve got a hypothesis forming, that you’re more confused or blind-spotted than you realize. I started to form this hypothesis when I saw X, Y, and Z, which I interpreted to mean A, B, and C. This hypothesis causes me to predict that, if I hadn’t said anything, you would’ve responded to M with N, which would’ve been miscalibrated for reasons 1 and 2. If I saw you doing G, I would definitely update away from this hypothesis, and certainly G is not the only thing that would shift me. I want to now be open to hearing your response or counterargument; this is not a mic drop.
… where the two key pieces of the above are:
1) distinguishing between a hypothesis and a fact, or between a claim and an assertion. It seems non-rude and at least possibly non-aggressive/non-invalidating/non-weaponized to say “I’m considering [your blindness/biased-ness] among many possibilities,” whereas it seems pretty much guaranteed to be taken-as-rude or taken-as-an-attempt-to-delegitimize to just flatly state “Yeah, you’re [blind/biased].”
2) creating surface area/showing the gears of your hypothesis/sticking your neck out and making what you’ve said falsifiable. There are hints of cruxes not only in G, but also in X, Y, and Z, which someone may convincingly argue you misunderstood or misinterpreted or misremembered.
In the swath of the EA/rationalist community that I have the most exposure to (i.e. among the hundred or so Berkelanders that I’ve interacted with in the past year) the social move of having a hypothesis is one that is acceptable when used with clear care and respect, and the social move of claiming to know is one that is frowned upon. In other words, I’ve seen people band together in rejection of the latter, and I’ve heard many different people on many different occasions say things like my fake quote paragraph above.
This also seems to me to be correct, and is part of what I came here for (where “here” is the rationalist community). I notice that my expectation of such (in swathes of the community where that is not the norm) has gotten me into fights, in the past.
This makes sense to me.
Similar caveats as Ray’s re: this is more fraught, since here I am trying to describe my observations of the context culture, as opposed to things I’m relatively sure about because they live inside my head. These are not normative statements/shoulds, they’re just “in my experience”s.
Strong agree. It seems to me that the additional bit that makes this prosocial instead of a weapon is something like:
… where the two key pieces of the above are:
1) distinguishing between a hypothesis and a fact, or between a claim and an assertion. It seems non-rude and at least possibly non-aggressive/non-invalidating/non-weaponized to say “I’m considering [your blindness/biased-ness] among many possibilities,” whereas it seems pretty much guaranteed to be taken-as-rude or taken-as-an-attempt-to-delegitimize to just flatly state “Yeah, you’re [blind/biased].”
2) creating surface area/showing the gears of your hypothesis/sticking your neck out and making what you’ve said falsifiable. There are hints of cruxes not only in G, but also in X, Y, and Z, which someone may convincingly argue you misunderstood or misinterpreted or misremembered.
In the swath of the EA/rationalist community that I have the most exposure to (i.e. among the hundred or so Berkelanders that I’ve interacted with in the past year) the social move of having a hypothesis is one that is acceptable when used with clear care and respect, and the social move of claiming to know is one that is frowned upon. In other words, I’ve seen people band together in rejection of the latter, and I’ve heard many different people on many different occasions say things like my fake quote paragraph above.
This also seems to me to be correct, and is part of what I came here for (where “here” is the rationalist community). I notice that my expectation of such (in swathes of the community where that is not the norm) has gotten me into fights, in the past.