█████ has safety and socio██████ needs that aren’t being fully met
needs to feel safe and so on and no rhetoric will change those emotions before or without situations changing
the more times you run a convincing proof against someone who can’t emotionally accept it, the more you blunt the convincing proof on them
If I were snarky, I would respond that they find themselves in a state of psychological unsafety because they keep taking hubristic bets and pushing their friends away, regardless, it is still ultimately our problem to solve.
Another adds
so [mako’s] post is implying that [rationalists] should be able to maslow people lmao
I do totally buy this. “Maslowing” is a term that arose at some point to mean: ensuring that enough of a person’s basic selfish needs are met, that they can begin to think of other people, the rest of the world, or of loftier needs like self-actualization.
I resolve, this task of providing enough psychological safety to allow a person to admit when they were deeply, haplessly wrong (dependent on others for guidance and correction! How horrifying!), is a rationality technique, perhaps the most important rationality technique.
I find that narcissism is our most common adversary, especially in hyperpublic contexts like the global online discourse where narcissism is hard as fuck to resist, and runs in the water.
Narcissism is exactly a felt need to defend a delusional narrative of perfection.
I was already going to respond simply that your friend believes these things because they want to believe them. They have to want to be rational.
As for me, I don’t put rationality above all things, because I think it can be something you delude yourself into both idolising and thinking you’re attaining; you can become something like a paperclip maximiser because you’ve convinced yourself it’s logical. After having been something of a virulent atheist rationalist many years back, I realised that many of the people on my ‘side’ were in fact narrow-minded and often heartless gits, and some of the religious folk were warm, funny, and very open-minded; faith for them was more of a matter of how they wanted the world to be, a matter of aesthetics and drive.
So, basically, if your heart’s not in the right place, who cares how rational/right you think you are? That certainly applies to your friend.
Update: The goblin sack weighs in:
If I were snarky, I would respond that they find themselves in a state of psychological unsafety because they keep taking hubristic bets and pushing their friends away, regardless, it is still ultimately our problem to solve.
Another adds
I do totally buy this. “Maslowing” is a term that arose at some point to mean: ensuring that enough of a person’s basic selfish needs are met, that they can begin to think of other people, the rest of the world, or of loftier needs like self-actualization.
I resolve, this task of providing enough psychological safety to allow a person to admit when they were deeply, haplessly wrong (dependent on others for guidance and correction! How horrifying!), is a rationality technique, perhaps the most important rationality technique.
I find that narcissism is our most common adversary, especially in hyperpublic contexts like the global online discourse where narcissism is hard as fuck to resist, and runs in the water.
Narcissism is exactly a felt need to defend a delusional narrative of perfection.
It is a product of social incentives.
We will improve the incentives.
I was already going to respond simply that your friend believes these things because they want to believe them. They have to want to be rational.
As for me, I don’t put rationality above all things, because I think it can be something you delude yourself into both idolising and thinking you’re attaining; you can become something like a paperclip maximiser because you’ve convinced yourself it’s logical. After having been something of a virulent atheist rationalist many years back, I realised that many of the people on my ‘side’ were in fact narrow-minded and often heartless gits, and some of the religious folk were warm, funny, and very open-minded; faith for them was more of a matter of how they wanted the world to be, a matter of aesthetics and drive.
So, basically, if your heart’s not in the right place, who cares how rational/right you think you are? That certainly applies to your friend.