when I first encountered Eliezer Yudkowsky, I actually had a bad vibe about him. If I’d followed that feeling, I would’ve missed out on learning from one of the authors who has helped me a lot.
Have you ever been completely wrong about a bad vibe? If so, what did you learn from it?
I learned a lot from him and I STILL have a bad vibe about him. People can be correct, useful, and also unsafe. (Primarily, I suspect him to be high on scales of narcissism, to which I’m very sensitive. Haven’t met the guy personally, but his text reeks of it. Doesn’t negate his genius; just negates my will to engage with him in any other dimension.)
Of course, vibes are not infallible. As I mentioned in the post, a bad first vibe can change when you get to know someone more. So if you can collect more information in a low-risk way, it may be worth it. Reading someone’s writing is usually (though not always) pretty low-risk.
I think a lot of my learning when I’ve changed my mind about someone’s vibe has been implicit, similar to what Anni’s comment is pointing at. Getting a better sense of what flavors of bad feelings are less reliable, which I expect to also update the mechanism that produced those particular kinds of vibes in the first place.
How often do we risk losing something important by assigning too high a priority to a bad vibe?
Personally, I try not to ignore any vibe or thought, but I also attempt to prioritize them by importance. Maybe I should start a ‘bad vibes journal’—a record of every time I feel something off and then compare it to the actual outcomes. My sense is that I often misjudge, but without tracking it, I can’t really calibrate my accuracy.
when I first encountered Eliezer Yudkowsky, I actually had a bad vibe about him. If I’d followed that feeling, I would’ve missed out on learning from one of the authors who has helped me a lot.
Have you ever been completely wrong about a bad vibe? If so, what did you learn from it?
I learned a lot from him and I STILL have a bad vibe about him. People can be correct, useful, and also unsafe. (Primarily, I suspect him to be high on scales of narcissism, to which I’m very sensitive. Haven’t met the guy personally, but his text reeks of it. Doesn’t negate his genius; just negates my will to engage with him in any other dimension.)
Of course, vibes are not infallible. As I mentioned in the post, a bad first vibe can change when you get to know someone more. So if you can collect more information in a low-risk way, it may be worth it. Reading someone’s writing is usually (though not always) pretty low-risk.
I think a lot of my learning when I’ve changed my mind about someone’s vibe has been implicit, similar to what Anni’s comment is pointing at. Getting a better sense of what flavors of bad feelings are less reliable, which I expect to also update the mechanism that produced those particular kinds of vibes in the first place.
How often do we risk losing something important by assigning too high a priority to a bad vibe?
Personally, I try not to ignore any vibe or thought, but I also attempt to prioritize them by importance. Maybe I should start a ‘bad vibes journal’—a record of every time I feel something off and then compare it to the actual outcomes. My sense is that I often misjudge, but without tracking it, I can’t really calibrate my accuracy.