there very likely exist misrepresentations. There are many reasons for this, but I can assure you that I never deliberately lied and that I never deliberately tried to misrepresent anyone. The main reason might be that I feel very easily overwhelmed
I think the thing to remember is that, when you’ve run into contexts where you feel like someone might not care that they’re setting you up to be judged unfairly, you’ve been too overwhelmed to keep track of whether or not your self-defense involves doing things that you’d normally be able to see would set them up to be judged unfairly.
You’ve been trying to defend a truth about a question—about what actions you could reasonably be expected to have been sure you should have taken, after having been exposed to existential-risk arguments -- that’s made up of many complex implicit emotional and social associations, like the sort of “is X vs. Y the side everyone should be on?” that Scott Alexander discusses in “Ethnic Tension and Meaningless Arguments”. But you’ve never really developed the necessary emotional perspective to fully realize that the only language you’ve had access to, to do that with, is a different language: that of explicit factual truths. If you try to state truths in one language using the other without accounting for the difference, blinded by pain and driven by the intuitive impulse escape the pain, you’re going to say false things. It only makes sense that you would have screwed up.
written in a tearing hurry, akin to a reflexive retraction from the painful stimulus
Try to progress to having a conscious awareness of your desperation, I mean a conscious understanding of how the desperation works and what it’s tied to emotionally. Once you’ve done that, you should be able to consciously keep in mind better the other ways that the idea of “justice” might also relate to your situation, and so do a lot less unjust damage. (Contrariwise, if you do choose to do damage, a significantly greater fraction of it will be just.)
It might also help to have a stronger deontological proscription against misrepresenting anyone in a way that would cause them to be judged unfairly. That proscription would put you under more pressure to develop this kind of emotional perspective and conscious awareness, although it would do this at the cost of adding extra deontological hoops you have to jump through to escape the pain when it comes. If this leaves you too bound-up to say anything, you can usually go meta and explain how you’re too bound-up, at least once you have enough practice at explaining things like that.
I’m sorry. I claim to have some idea what it’s like.
(Also, on reflection, I should admit that mostly I’m saying this because I’m afraid of third parties keeping mistakenly unfavorable impressions about your motives; so it’s slightly dishonest of me to word some of the above comments as simply directed to you, the way I have. And in the process I’ve converted an emotional truth, “I think it’s important for other people not to believe as-bad things about your motives, because I can see how that amount of badness is likely mistaken”, into a factual claim, “your better-looking motives are exactly X”.)
I think the thing to remember is that, when you’ve run into contexts where you feel like someone might not care that they’re setting you up to be judged unfairly, you’ve been too overwhelmed to keep track of whether or not your self-defense involves doing things that you’d normally be able to see would set them up to be judged unfairly.
You’ve been trying to defend a truth about a question—about what actions you could reasonably be expected to have been sure you should have taken, after having been exposed to existential-risk arguments -- that’s made up of many complex implicit emotional and social associations, like the sort of “is X vs. Y the side everyone should be on?” that Scott Alexander discusses in “Ethnic Tension and Meaningless Arguments”. But you’ve never really developed the necessary emotional perspective to fully realize that the only language you’ve had access to, to do that with, is a different language: that of explicit factual truths. If you try to state truths in one language using the other without accounting for the difference, blinded by pain and driven by the intuitive impulse escape the pain, you’re going to say false things. It only makes sense that you would have screwed up.
Try to progress to having a conscious awareness of your desperation, I mean a conscious understanding of how the desperation works and what it’s tied to emotionally. Once you’ve done that, you should be able to consciously keep in mind better the other ways that the idea of “justice” might also relate to your situation, and so do a lot less unjust damage. (Contrariwise, if you do choose to do damage, a significantly greater fraction of it will be just.)
It might also help to have a stronger deontological proscription against misrepresenting anyone in a way that would cause them to be judged unfairly. That proscription would put you under more pressure to develop this kind of emotional perspective and conscious awareness, although it would do this at the cost of adding extra deontological hoops you have to jump through to escape the pain when it comes. If this leaves you too bound-up to say anything, you can usually go meta and explain how you’re too bound-up, at least once you have enough practice at explaining things like that.
I’m sorry. I claim to have some idea what it’s like.
(Also, on reflection, I should admit that mostly I’m saying this because I’m afraid of third parties keeping mistakenly unfavorable impressions about your motives; so it’s slightly dishonest of me to word some of the above comments as simply directed to you, the way I have. And in the process I’ve converted an emotional truth, “I think it’s important for other people not to believe as-bad things about your motives, because I can see how that amount of badness is likely mistaken”, into a factual claim, “your better-looking motives are exactly X”.)