Thanks for pointing that out! I agree that folks who want to become more like Eliezer might benefit from developing their sense of narrative. Any ideas how they could train that skill?
Take the koan that Eliezer wrote. To be explicit, l reading the koan forces the reading into accepting the frame that a koan is a valid teaching tool.
The koan is about how a master gives his student a funny hat. Master Eliezer gives his reader a koan. The novice rationalist thinks Eliezer is wise so he accepts being taught through a koan.
He personally didn’t get it in the first read but took a short time to process it to be fair I generally don’t expect people on LW to make points on that level so I’m not focusing on reading on that level.
Moving in environments where people do take care to communicate on that level is useful for training to sense the narrative in that discussion.
Let’s go back to Brienne”s examples of Tell Culture communication I labeled Vulcan:
“”I just realized this interaction will be far more productive if my brain has food. I think we should head toward the kitchen.”
I”m heavily underweight, if I hear that sentence speaker by someone with my own weight my brain would go:
“I understand why you are underweight if you have that little relationship to what your body is doing that you don’t recognize hunger and need some stimulus such as your brain getting foggy to be motivated to get food. There a good chance that I would confront the person about it.
If I hear a fat person saying that I might think: “Okay, this person obviously feels very bad about gives his body the foot it desires so he gives himself a silly excuse about how his brain needs food instead of being honest about his hunger.”
I might laugh but depending on my relationship to the person and how confrontative I want to be I might or might not call the person on it.
The thing about the food is a fairly simple story. Humans generally eat because they are hungry. If you are in social discussion with other people you might want to start to listen on that level.
The interesting thing about stories is that you don’t need to be consciously aware of a story to process it and show reactions to it. On a NLP seminar it can be hard to follow what’s said because 3-4 story strings can be active at the same time. Once quite remarkable experience was a dozen people in the audience bursting out in tears but not really knowing why because a part of the story just revolved that they weren’t paying conscious attention to.
A more practical exercise would be to look at your day and asking yourself what story it tells. The hero came home from work and then spend 2 hours watching TV and three hours browsing reddit is no good story.
As a heuristic if your day provides for a good story it’s usually a good day even from a more utility maximizing strategy.
If you always do the thing that the story asks for than you aren’t procrastinating. That doesn’t mean that you always have to do the thing the story asks for but being aware helps.
If you can see the role you play out in story you can manage some fairly challenging social situations because you have perspective.
If the role you play it leads to being angry at the role I play but that doesn’t hurt me on a fundamental level when I see the roles and how the narrative of the situation calls for it. If my role has to serve as target towards another person has to challenge their anger to grow in their own development, so what if the story progresses into the right direction?
To close the koan loop, maybe the story would normally call you to get angry back at the other person for being angry at you. If you are completely aware of the story that becomes silly, Buddhist enlightenment is about moving beyond the story and losing your entanglement. Last week I had a situation where someone was angry with me because of their prejudices and I was just laughing and had very much fun with the situation and at the end of the interaction the person recognized the silliness of their own behavior and thanked me.
Thanks for pointing that out! I agree that folks who want to become more like Eliezer might benefit from developing their sense of narrative. Any ideas how they could train that skill?
Take the koan that Eliezer wrote. To be explicit, l reading the koan forces the reading into accepting the frame that a koan is a valid teaching tool.
The koan is about how a master gives his student a funny hat. Master Eliezer gives his reader a koan. The novice rationalist thinks Eliezer is wise so he accepts being taught through a koan.
He personally didn’t get it in the first read but took a short time to process it to be fair I generally don’t expect people on LW to make points on that level so I’m not focusing on reading on that level.
Moving in environments where people do take care to communicate on that level is useful for training to sense the narrative in that discussion.
Let’s go back to Brienne”s examples of Tell Culture communication I labeled Vulcan: “”I just realized this interaction will be far more productive if my brain has food. I think we should head toward the kitchen.”
I”m heavily underweight, if I hear that sentence speaker by someone with my own weight my brain would go: “I understand why you are underweight if you have that little relationship to what your body is doing that you don’t recognize hunger and need some stimulus such as your brain getting foggy to be motivated to get food. There a good chance that I would confront the person about it.
If I hear a fat person saying that I might think: “Okay, this person obviously feels very bad about gives his body the foot it desires so he gives himself a silly excuse about how his brain needs food instead of being honest about his hunger.” I might laugh but depending on my relationship to the person and how confrontative I want to be I might or might not call the person on it.
The thing about the food is a fairly simple story. Humans generally eat because they are hungry. If you are in social discussion with other people you might want to start to listen on that level.
The interesting thing about stories is that you don’t need to be consciously aware of a story to process it and show reactions to it. On a NLP seminar it can be hard to follow what’s said because 3-4 story strings can be active at the same time. Once quite remarkable experience was a dozen people in the audience bursting out in tears but not really knowing why because a part of the story just revolved that they weren’t paying conscious attention to.
A more practical exercise would be to look at your day and asking yourself what story it tells. The hero came home from work and then spend 2 hours watching TV and three hours browsing reddit is no good story. As a heuristic if your day provides for a good story it’s usually a good day even from a more utility maximizing strategy.
If you always do the thing that the story asks for than you aren’t procrastinating. That doesn’t mean that you always have to do the thing the story asks for but being aware helps.
If you can see the role you play out in story you can manage some fairly challenging social situations because you have perspective. If the role you play it leads to being angry at the role I play but that doesn’t hurt me on a fundamental level when I see the roles and how the narrative of the situation calls for it. If my role has to serve as target towards another person has to challenge their anger to grow in their own development, so what if the story progresses into the right direction?
To close the koan loop, maybe the story would normally call you to get angry back at the other person for being angry at you. If you are completely aware of the story that becomes silly, Buddhist enlightenment is about moving beyond the story and losing your entanglement. Last week I had a situation where someone was angry with me because of their prejudices and I was just laughing and had very much fun with the situation and at the end of the interaction the person recognized the silliness of their own behavior and thanked me.