I wonder about how much I want to keep pressing on this, but given that MIRI is refocusing towards comms strategy, I feel like you “can take it.”
The Sequences don’t make a strong case, that I’m aware of, that despair and hopelessness are very helpful emotions that drive motivations or our rational thoughts processes in the right direction, nor do they suggest that displaying things like that openly is good for organizational quality. Please correct me if I’m wrong about that. (However they… might. I’m working on why this position may have been influenced to some degree by the Sequences right now. That said, this is being done as a critical take.)
If despair needed to be expressed openly in order to actually make progress towards a goal, then we would call “bad morale” “good morale” and vice-versa.
I don’t think this is very controversial, so it makes sense to ask why MIRI thinks they have special, unusual insight into why this strategy works so much better than the default “good morale is better for organizations.”
I predict that ultimately the only response you could make—which you have already—is that despair is the most accurate reflection of the true state of affairs.
If we thought that emotionality was one-to-one with scientific facts, then perhaps.
Given that there actually currently exists a “Team Optimism,” so to speak, that directly appeared as an opposition party to what it perceives as a “Team Despair”, I don’t think we can dismiss the possibility of “beliefs as attire” quite yet.
so to speak, that directly appeared as an opposition party to what it perceives as a “Team Despair”,
I think this gets it backward. There were lots of optimisitc people that kept not understanding or integrating the arguments that you should be less optimistic, and people kept kinda sliding off really thinking about it, and finally some people were like “okay, time to just actually be extremely blunt/clear until they get it.”
(Seems plausible that then a polarity formed that made some people really react against the feeling of despair, but I think that was phase two)
I wonder about how much I want to keep pressing on this, but given that MIRI is refocusing towards comms strategy, I feel like you “can take it.”
The Sequences don’t make a strong case, that I’m aware of, that despair and hopelessness are very helpful emotions that drive motivations or our rational thoughts processes in the right direction, nor do they suggest that displaying things like that openly is good for organizational quality. Please correct me if I’m wrong about that. (However they… might. I’m working on why this position may have been influenced to some degree by the Sequences right now. That said, this is being done as a critical take.)
If despair needed to be expressed openly in order to actually make progress towards a goal, then we would call “bad morale” “good morale” and vice-versa.
I don’t think this is very controversial, so it makes sense to ask why MIRI thinks they have special, unusual insight into why this strategy works so much better than the default “good morale is better for organizations.”
I predict that ultimately the only response you could make—which you have already—is that despair is the most accurate reflection of the true state of affairs.
If we thought that emotionality was one-to-one with scientific facts, then perhaps.
Given that there actually currently exists a “Team Optimism,” so to speak, that directly appeared as an opposition party to what it perceives as a “Team Despair”, I don’t think we can dismiss the possibility of “beliefs as attire” quite yet.
I think this gets it backward. There were lots of optimisitc people that kept not understanding or integrating the arguments that you should be less optimistic, and people kept kinda sliding off really thinking about it, and finally some people were like “okay, time to just actually be extremely blunt/clear until they get it.”
(Seems plausible that then a polarity formed that made some people really react against the feeling of despair, but I think that was phase two)