A sort of fun game that I’ve noticed myself playing lately is to try and predict the types of objections that people will give to these posts, because I think once you sort of understand the ordinary paranoid / socially modest mindset, they become much easier to predict.
For example, if I didn’t write this already, I would predict a slight possibility that someone would object to your implication that requiring special characters in passwords is unnecessary, and that all you need is high entropy. I think these types of objections could even contain some pretty good arguments (I have no idea if there are actually good arguments for it, I just think that it’s possible there are). But even if there are, it doesn’t matter, because objecting to that particular part of the dialogue is irrelevant to the core point, which is to illustrate a certain mode of thinking.
The reason this kind of objection is likely, in my view, is because it is focused on a specific object-level detail, and to a socially modest person, these kinds of errors are very likely to be observed, and to sort-of trigger an allergic reaction. In the modest mindset, it seems to be that making errors in specific details is evidence against whatever core argument you’re making that deviates from the currently mainstream viewpoint. A modest person sees these errors and thinks “If they are going to argue that they know better than the high status people, they at least better be right about pretty much everything else”.
I observed similar objections to some of your chapters in Inadequate Equilibria. For example, some people were opposed to your decision to leave out a lot of object-level details of some of the dialogues you had with people, such as the startup founders. I thought to myself “those object-level details are basically irrelevant, because these examples are just to illustrate a certain type of reasoning that doesn’t depend on the details”, but I also thought to myself “I can imagine certain people thinking I was insane for thinking those details don’t matter!” To a socially modest person, you have to make sure you’ve completely ironed-out the details before you challenge the basic assumptions.
I think a similar pattern to the one you describe above is at work here, and I suspect the point of this work is to show how the two might be connected. I think an ordinary paranoid person is making similar mistakes to a socially under-confident person. Neither will try to question their basic assumptions, because as the assumptions underlie almost all of their conclusions, to judge them as possibly incorrect is equivalent to saying that the foundational ideas the experts said in textbooks or lectures might be incorrect, which is to make yourself higher-status relative to the experts. Instead, a socially modest / ordinary paranoid person will turn that around on themselves and think “I’m just not applying principle A strongly enough” which doesn’t challenge the majority-accepted stance on principle A. To be ordinarily paranoid is to obsess over the details and execution. Social modesty is to not directly challenge the fundamental assumptions which are presided over by the high-status. The result of that is when a failure is encountered, the assumptions can’t be wrong, so it must have been a flaw in the details and execution.
The point is not to show that ordinary paranoia is wrong, or that challenging fundamental assumptions is necessarily good. Rather it’s to show that the former is basically easy and the latter is basically difficult.
A sort of fun game that I’ve noticed myself playing lately is to try and predict the types of objections that people will give to these posts, because I think once you sort of understand the ordinary paranoid / socially modest mindset, they become much easier to predict.
For example, if I didn’t write this already, I would predict a slight possibility that someone would object to your implication that requiring special characters in passwords is unnecessary, and that all you need is high entropy. I think these types of objections could even contain some pretty good arguments (I have no idea if there are actually good arguments for it, I just think that it’s possible there are). But even if there are, it doesn’t matter, because objecting to that particular part of the dialogue is irrelevant to the core point, which is to illustrate a certain mode of thinking.
The reason this kind of objection is likely, in my view, is because it is focused on a specific object-level detail, and to a socially modest person, these kinds of errors are very likely to be observed, and to sort-of trigger an allergic reaction. In the modest mindset, it seems to be that making errors in specific details is evidence against whatever core argument you’re making that deviates from the currently mainstream viewpoint. A modest person sees these errors and thinks “If they are going to argue that they know better than the high status people, they at least better be right about pretty much everything else”.
I observed similar objections to some of your chapters in Inadequate Equilibria. For example, some people were opposed to your decision to leave out a lot of object-level details of some of the dialogues you had with people, such as the startup founders. I thought to myself “those object-level details are basically irrelevant, because these examples are just to illustrate a certain type of reasoning that doesn’t depend on the details”, but I also thought to myself “I can imagine certain people thinking I was insane for thinking those details don’t matter!” To a socially modest person, you have to make sure you’ve completely ironed-out the details before you challenge the basic assumptions.
I think a similar pattern to the one you describe above is at work here, and I suspect the point of this work is to show how the two might be connected. I think an ordinary paranoid person is making similar mistakes to a socially under-confident person. Neither will try to question their basic assumptions, because as the assumptions underlie almost all of their conclusions, to judge them as possibly incorrect is equivalent to saying that the foundational ideas the experts said in textbooks or lectures might be incorrect, which is to make yourself higher-status relative to the experts. Instead, a socially modest / ordinary paranoid person will turn that around on themselves and think “I’m just not applying principle A strongly enough” which doesn’t challenge the majority-accepted stance on principle A. To be ordinarily paranoid is to obsess over the details and execution. Social modesty is to not directly challenge the fundamental assumptions which are presided over by the high-status. The result of that is when a failure is encountered, the assumptions can’t be wrong, so it must have been a flaw in the details and execution.
The point is not to show that ordinary paranoia is wrong, or that challenging fundamental assumptions is necessarily good. Rather it’s to show that the former is basically easy and the latter is basically difficult.
Haha, it is also predictable that the very same people will read your comment and not get it. Salute