TurnTrout, if you’re comfortable sharing, I’d be curious to hear more about the nature of your interaction with Nate in July 2022.
Separately, my current read of this thread is something like “I wish it was easier for Nate to communicate with people, but it seems (at least to me) like the community is broadly aware that Nate can be difficult to communicate with & I think his reputation (at least in the AIS circles I’m in) already matches this. Also, it seems like he (at least sometimes) tries to be pretty clear/explicit in warning people about his communication/mentoring style.”
I do think the “giving up” vibe you mention in the original comment is tracking something real. I think the AIS field would benefit if Nate woke up one day and found ways to communicate with people that made them feel more heard/respected/validated and less dismissed/misunderstood/pained. I’m guessing Nate would agree with this, though, and I’m guessing he’s probably tried a lot of things and simply hasn’t found strategies that are effective (and that don’t trade off against other desireada, like honesty or Nate energy/motivation). I’m not sure though—I mostly believe this because other people have told it to me & because it seems like he put in a fair amount of effort/reflection in his communication guide.
I guess my TLDR is something like “I think you’re pointing at a real problem, and it would indeed be great if Nate were better at communicating, but I also feel like there’s something important about Nate’s perspective that feels missing here.”
it seems (at least to me) like the community is broadly aware that Nate can be difficult to communicate with & I think his reputation (at least in the AIS circles I’m in) already matches this. Also, it seems like he (at least sometimes) tries to be pretty clear/explicit in warning people about his communication/mentoring style.
I disagree on both points. I wasn’t aware before talking with him, and I’d been in alignment and around the Bay for years. Some of my MATS mentees had been totally unaware and were considering engaging with him about something. Peter wasn’t informed before starting a work relationship, and Nate didn’t tell Peter (and maybe Thomas either) before working with them.
I second this—I skimmed part of nate’s comms doc, but it’s unclear to me what turntrout is talking about unless he’s talking about “being blunt”—it sounds that overall there’s something other than bluntness going on, cuz I feel like we already know about bluntness / we’ve thought a lot about upsides and downsides of bluntness people before.
So, I don’t know what actually happened here. But I at least want to convey support for:
“There are ways of communicating other than being blunt that can… unsettlingly affect you [or, at least, some people], which are hard to explain, and their being hard to explain makes it psychologically harder to deal with because when you try to explain it or complain about it people are kinda dismissive.”
(I’m not expressing a strong opinion here about whether Nate should have done something different in this case, or what the best way for Turntrout, Vivek’s team, or others should relate to it. I’m just trying to hold space for “I think there’s a real thing people should be taking seriously as a possibility and not just rounding off to ‘Turntrout should have thicker skin’ or something)
I have some guesses about the details but they’re mostly informed by my interactions with people other than Nate, which give me sort of an existence proof, and I’m wary of speculating myself here without having actually had this sort of conversation with Nate.
There are ways of communicating other than being blunt that can… unsettlingly affect you
I really wish it were possible for this conversation to address what the affected people are coming in with. I suspect (from priors and the comments here) that there are social effects that are at core not located in either Nate or TurnTrout that result in this.
I might reply later, but I want to note that Nate’s comms doc doesn’t really track my (limited) experience of what it feels like to talk with Nate, and so (IMO) doesn’t make great sense as a baseline of “what happened?”.
Ah yeah. I’m a bit of a believer in “introspection preys upon those smart enough to think they can do it well but not smart enough to know they’ll be bad at it”[1], at least to a partial degree. So it wouldn’t shock me if a long document wouldn’t capture what matters.
TurnTrout, if you’re comfortable sharing, I’d be curious to hear more about the nature of your interaction with Nate in July 2022.
Separately, my current read of this thread is something like “I wish it was easier for Nate to communicate with people, but it seems (at least to me) like the community is broadly aware that Nate can be difficult to communicate with & I think his reputation (at least in the AIS circles I’m in) already matches this. Also, it seems like he (at least sometimes) tries to be pretty clear/explicit in warning people about his communication/mentoring style.”
I do think the “giving up” vibe you mention in the original comment is tracking something real. I think the AIS field would benefit if Nate woke up one day and found ways to communicate with people that made them feel more heard/respected/validated and less dismissed/misunderstood/pained. I’m guessing Nate would agree with this, though, and I’m guessing he’s probably tried a lot of things and simply hasn’t found strategies that are effective (and that don’t trade off against other desireada, like honesty or Nate energy/motivation). I’m not sure though—I mostly believe this because other people have told it to me & because it seems like he put in a fair amount of effort/reflection in his communication guide.
I guess my TLDR is something like “I think you’re pointing at a real problem, and it would indeed be great if Nate were better at communicating, but I also feel like there’s something important about Nate’s perspective that feels missing here.”
I disagree on both points. I wasn’t aware before talking with him, and I’d been in alignment and around the Bay for years. Some of my MATS mentees had been totally unaware and were considering engaging with him about something. Peter wasn’t informed before starting a work relationship, and Nate didn’t tell Peter (and maybe Thomas either) before working with them.
I second this—I skimmed part of nate’s comms doc, but it’s unclear to me what turntrout is talking about unless he’s talking about “being blunt”—it sounds that overall there’s something other than bluntness going on, cuz I feel like we already know about bluntness / we’ve thought a lot about upsides and downsides of bluntness people before.
So, I don’t know what actually happened here. But I at least want to convey support for:
“There are ways of communicating other than being blunt that can… unsettlingly affect you [or, at least, some people], which are hard to explain, and their being hard to explain makes it psychologically harder to deal with because when you try to explain it or complain about it people are kinda dismissive.”
(I’m not expressing a strong opinion here about whether Nate should have done something different in this case, or what the best way for Turntrout, Vivek’s team, or others should relate to it. I’m just trying to hold space for “I think there’s a real thing people should be taking seriously as a possibility and not just rounding off to ‘Turntrout should have thicker skin’ or something)
I have some guesses about the details but they’re mostly informed by my interactions with people other than Nate, which give me sort of an existence proof, and I’m wary of speculating myself here without having actually had this sort of conversation with Nate.
I really wish it were possible for this conversation to address what the affected people are coming in with. I suspect (from priors and the comments here) that there are social effects that are at core not located in either Nate or TurnTrout that result in this.
I might reply later, but I want to note that Nate’s comms doc doesn’t really track my (limited) experience of what it feels like to talk with Nate, and so (IMO) doesn’t make great sense as a baseline of “what happened?”.
Ah yeah. I’m a bit of a believer in “introspection preys upon those smart enough to think they can do it well but not smart enough to know they’ll be bad at it”[1], at least to a partial degree. So it wouldn’t shock me if a long document wouldn’t capture what matters.
epistemic status: in that sweet spot myself