Here’s an example situation. One day, Alex, Bob and me were all having a negotiation, trying to figure out what to do about Dave. We all agreed Dave had done something wrong. Alex and Bob both thought Dave was… something like “overwhelmingly in the wrong, and had defected first.” I thought that we’d all been kinda complicit in an escalation spiral, and I cut Dave more slack.
At a point when Alex, Bob and I were all in a room talking about Dave, and I was pointing out a way that Bob had escalated things with Dave.
Alex said, forcefully, with a bit of edge in his voice, “Ray is only saying that because he has a pathological need to listen to Dave and [I can’t remember the exact phrasing here].
And...
...I think Alex was at least moderately right. There is some way in which I feel compelled to take people’s stories at face value, and be kind of a bleeding heart for them, and put in extra work trying to cater to them. Often at my own expense and the expense of other important stuff I care about. I think this has in fact been the wrong call, and I’ve made significant updates over the years about being more stone-hearted about it.
But, also, in this case, I’m pretty sure this was at most 25% of what was going on (at least in this conversation). I remember some specific ways I updated about Dave that week, and I trust my deliberate introspection about it (even if I don’t trust all of my background-process-introspection).
This was all during a pretty tense time period, when we were all kinda exhausted.
A few things that stick out here:
Alex spoke really confidently. I think in general this triggers some kind of “I should listen to what this person is saying” behavior. I also do respect their opinions a lot (often more than my own), so part of me was thinking “I dunno am I the crazy one here? Am I wrong about why I’m thinking this? I’m pretty sure I’m not wrong.” I felt like my own sense-of-self was under siege.
I expected Bob also to be listening to what Alex said, which meant my ability to speak and be-heard within this group also felt under siege.
A thing about Alex was that he was often willing to escalate in ways that I wouldn’t have. Like, we were having this conversation because he wanted to escalate conflict with Dave in ways that seemed excessive to me. This meant I wasn’t sure what would happen if I ended up in direct conflict with Alex. I think Alex had a model of exactly when-and-how he’d escalate that seemed clear and fair to him, but I didn’t understand it. So I felt “an unknown amount of threat” that was anxiety inducing.
I think Alex was, in part, protecting Bob from me. I also speak more forcefully/confidently than average. I think it seemed to Alex like I was making it harder for Bob to think through and stand by their own opinions.
Relatedly: later on when I accused Alex of speaking with edge-in-his voice that conveyed a willingness to escalate in scary ways, he noted that I also speak with edge in my voice a fair amount, probably more than Alex. This does seem true on reflection.
I am fairly uncertain how to think about all of this. It’s noteworthy that I think Alex was wrong about my *overall* motivations here, but wasn’t wrong about at least part of my motivations. This makes for an annoying situation where he has a reasonably justified story of why my account-of-myself is untrustworthy (which makes it hard to correct), but, is still wrong in some ways.
The thing that feels most confusing here to me is how to spell out “why exactly this feels so bad.” I felt like my epistemics and sense-of-self-direction were under assault. Was that “real”, or was it just a feeling, and the problem is located inside my feelings rather than inside Alex’s speech-actions?
Digging into this feels like “the hard part”. I’ll leave this here for now again.
I guess another thing to note is that “people telling you that you are wrong about how you think” can also be an important part of breaking out of wrong, sticky narratives you have about yourself.
Perhaps annoyingly: many of the people who I have found very helpful for learning to “see the water I was swimming in, and take it as object” seem also actively destabilizing for some people around them. (i.e. I’ve gotten a lot of value from Brent, Ziz, Vassar and Geoff Anders. In each of those cases I didn’t actually get too close for long, but I know other people who did and had various flavors of bad experience).
Habryka’s gloss on all this is “telling people they are wrong about what they think is high variance and should be treated as risky, but also has important upside.” I feel like “high variance” is too positive a spin on it, but there’s something important there.
Okay, now shifting to give more details about #3:
“Forcefully telling people how they think”
Here’s an example situation. One day, Alex, Bob and me were all having a negotiation, trying to figure out what to do about Dave. We all agreed Dave had done something wrong. Alex and Bob both thought Dave was… something like “overwhelmingly in the wrong, and had defected first.” I thought that we’d all been kinda complicit in an escalation spiral, and I cut Dave more slack.
At a point when Alex, Bob and I were all in a room talking about Dave, and I was pointing out a way that Bob had escalated things with Dave.
Alex said, forcefully, with a bit of edge in his voice, “Ray is only saying that because he has a pathological need to listen to Dave and [I can’t remember the exact phrasing here].
And...
...I think Alex was at least moderately right. There is some way in which I feel compelled to take people’s stories at face value, and be kind of a bleeding heart for them, and put in extra work trying to cater to them. Often at my own expense and the expense of other important stuff I care about. I think this has in fact been the wrong call, and I’ve made significant updates over the years about being more stone-hearted about it.
But, also, in this case, I’m pretty sure this was at most 25% of what was going on (at least in this conversation). I remember some specific ways I updated about Dave that week, and I trust my deliberate introspection about it (even if I don’t trust all of my background-process-introspection).
This was all during a pretty tense time period, when we were all kinda exhausted.
A few things that stick out here:
Alex spoke really confidently. I think in general this triggers some kind of “I should listen to what this person is saying” behavior. I also do respect their opinions a lot (often more than my own), so part of me was thinking “I dunno am I the crazy one here? Am I wrong about why I’m thinking this? I’m pretty sure I’m not wrong.” I felt like my own sense-of-self was under siege.
I expected Bob also to be listening to what Alex said, which meant my ability to speak and be-heard within this group also felt under siege.
A thing about Alex was that he was often willing to escalate in ways that I wouldn’t have. Like, we were having this conversation because he wanted to escalate conflict with Dave in ways that seemed excessive to me. This meant I wasn’t sure what would happen if I ended up in direct conflict with Alex. I think Alex had a model of exactly when-and-how he’d escalate that seemed clear and fair to him, but I didn’t understand it. So I felt “an unknown amount of threat” that was anxiety inducing.
I think Alex was, in part, protecting Bob from me. I also speak more forcefully/confidently than average. I think it seemed to Alex like I was making it harder for Bob to think through and stand by their own opinions.
Relatedly: later on when I accused Alex of speaking with edge-in-his voice that conveyed a willingness to escalate in scary ways, he noted that I also speak with edge in my voice a fair amount, probably more than Alex. This does seem true on reflection.
I am fairly uncertain how to think about all of this. It’s noteworthy that I think Alex was wrong about my *overall* motivations here, but wasn’t wrong about at least part of my motivations. This makes for an annoying situation where he has a reasonably justified story of why my account-of-myself is untrustworthy (which makes it hard to correct), but, is still wrong in some ways.
The thing that feels most confusing here to me is how to spell out “why exactly this feels so bad.” I felt like my epistemics and sense-of-self-direction were under assault. Was that “real”, or was it just a feeling, and the problem is located inside my feelings rather than inside Alex’s speech-actions?
Digging into this feels like “the hard part”. I’ll leave this here for now again.
I guess another thing to note is that “people telling you that you are wrong about how you think” can also be an important part of breaking out of wrong, sticky narratives you have about yourself.
Perhaps annoyingly: many of the people who I have found very helpful for learning to “see the water I was swimming in, and take it as object” seem also actively destabilizing for some people around them. (i.e. I’ve gotten a lot of value from Brent, Ziz, Vassar and Geoff Anders. In each of those cases I didn’t actually get too close for long, but I know other people who did and had various flavors of bad experience).
Habryka’s gloss on all this is “telling people they are wrong about what they think is high variance and should be treated as risky, but also has important upside.” I feel like “high variance” is too positive a spin on it, but there’s something important there.