I am wondering about a trend I see in at least a couple of your posts. Of course I might be completely off the mark here but I will tell you and maybe something interesting will come of it.
It seems to me that a significant part of the posts are devoted to a kind of self affirming “I know something that other people don’t”. Now, it so happens that I have found myself in that kind of mentality many years ago and I needed a bit of a shock to start getting out of it. It seems to be that when a person really acquires knowledge they get on with applying the knowledge in the world instead of trying to inflate their self image through peer appraisal or other means. When the knowledge is not real or mature on the other hand, paradoxically, a very common behaviour is to try to teach!
There are many parts in the posts that imply certainty about exceedingly complex things and also, in some cases, seem to disregard moral ramifications. Talking about “how to squeeze power out of them”, “A rationalist would see through the illusory web of words to the essence beyond”, “I found I couldn’t teach them what they needed to know”, “I had this dearth of power that needed resolving”, “It feels awkward trying to alter people’s concepts while acting like words have “true” meanings” etc.
I am open to the possibility that you have found truth but I am not really sure that this and a couple of other posts do much more than stating confidence.
I am also worried that the last few posts have been making a lot of confident claims while sending a lot of ingroup signals, but not actually teaching me that much. I.e. I don’t actually know what I was supposed to learn from reading this post.
I think what you’re seeing is to some extent a response to a massive campaign by the “normies” as described in prior Bound_Up posts to deny that an individual can know things the normies don’t, or really that knowing things at all is a thing.
Even if I grant this as the goal, I don’t think the post provides good evidence for that claim. There’s a claim that the author knows how groups are made and moved, but that’s made abstractly without any example that shows that the author actually made or moved a group in a way that normies can’t.
This comment made me reconsider my comment below, and while I still don’t really feel like I learned something real from the last few posts, I am less skeptical of the type of content the author is trying to produce.
I am also less impressed with this article than with the previous ones, however...
It seems to be that when a person really acquires knowledge they get on with applying the knowledge in the world instead of trying to inflate their self image through peer appraisal or other means.
What if the acquired knowledge contains things like “you can’t do this (efficiently) alone; and whether other people join you depends more on how impressed they are with your image, rather than the actual quality of your plan”?
In such case “applying the knowledge in the world” and “trying to inflate one’s image though peer appraisal” would happen to be the same thing.
Yes, it is a sad truth that it is easier to explain a math equation to people if you’re good-looking, have a nice voice, competently play social games and other things that should be, but are not (and we must come to terms with that), irrelevant
I believe your logic is sound. A bare bones example of using people instrumentally could be needing to move a stone for building something. Or maybe, if the goal is to kill the people in question, they can be manipulated into dying under the rock that they are themselves carrying...
To me the idea of knowledge has a moral element as it does not only tell you how to do something but also what to do. Or maybe knowledge tells you ‘how’ and wisdom tells you ‘what’. It depends on how we are defining our terms. I like to use knowledge as containing both.
So yes, you are right that in my sentence there is the implied assumption, which is also the foundation of my critique of this post, that Bound_up does not exercise knowledge but is simply gathering attention and inflating his/hers self image by assuming superiority. In this light my statement is clumsily formulated as a supporting argument.
I am wondering about a trend I see in at least a couple of your posts. Of course I might be completely off the mark here but I will tell you and maybe something interesting will come of it.
It seems to me that a significant part of the posts are devoted to a kind of self affirming “I know something that other people don’t”. Now, it so happens that I have found myself in that kind of mentality many years ago and I needed a bit of a shock to start getting out of it. It seems to be that when a person really acquires knowledge they get on with applying the knowledge in the world instead of trying to inflate their self image through peer appraisal or other means. When the knowledge is not real or mature on the other hand, paradoxically, a very common behaviour is to try to teach!
There are many parts in the posts that imply certainty about exceedingly complex things and also, in some cases, seem to disregard moral ramifications. Talking about “how to squeeze power out of them”, “A rationalist would see through the illusory web of words to the essence beyond”, “I found I couldn’t teach them what they needed to know”, “I had this dearth of power that needed resolving”, “It feels awkward trying to alter people’s concepts while acting like words have “true” meanings” etc.
I am open to the possibility that you have found truth but I am not really sure that this and a couple of other posts do much more than stating confidence.
I am also worried that the last few posts have been making a lot of confident claims while sending a lot of ingroup signals, but not actually teaching me that much. I.e. I don’t actually know what I was supposed to learn from reading this post.
I think what you’re seeing is to some extent a response to a massive campaign by the “normies” as described in prior Bound_Up posts to deny that an individual can know things the normies don’t, or really that knowing things at all is a thing.
Even if I grant this as the goal, I don’t think the post provides good evidence for that claim. There’s a claim that the author knows how groups are made and moved, but that’s made abstractly without any example that shows that the author actually made or moved a group in a way that normies can’t.
This comment made me reconsider my comment below, and while I still don’t really feel like I learned something real from the last few posts, I am less skeptical of the type of content the author is trying to produce.
I am also less impressed with this article than with the previous ones, however...
What if the acquired knowledge contains things like “you can’t do this (efficiently) alone; and whether other people join you depends more on how impressed they are with your image, rather than the actual quality of your plan”?
In such case “applying the knowledge in the world” and “trying to inflate one’s image though peer appraisal” would happen to be the same thing.
Yes, it is a sad truth that it is easier to explain a math equation to people if you’re good-looking, have a nice voice, competently play social games and other things that should be, but are not (and we must come to terms with that), irrelevant
I believe your logic is sound. A bare bones example of using people instrumentally could be needing to move a stone for building something. Or maybe, if the goal is to kill the people in question, they can be manipulated into dying under the rock that they are themselves carrying...
To me the idea of knowledge has a moral element as it does not only tell you how to do something but also what to do. Or maybe knowledge tells you ‘how’ and wisdom tells you ‘what’. It depends on how we are defining our terms. I like to use knowledge as containing both.
So yes, you are right that in my sentence there is the implied assumption, which is also the foundation of my critique of this post, that Bound_up does not exercise knowledge but is simply gathering attention and inflating his/hers self image by assuming superiority. In this light my statement is clumsily formulated as a supporting argument.
Thanks!