I think a potential drawback of this strategy is that people tend to become more hesitant to argue with you. Their instincts tell them you’re a high-status person they can’t afford to offend or risk looking stupid in front of. If you seem less confident, less cool, and less high-status, the mental barrier for others to be disagreeable, share weird ideas, or voice confusion in your presence is lower.
I try to remember to show off some uncoolness and uncertainty for this reason, especially around more junior people. I used to have a big seal plushie on my desk in the office, partially because I just like cute stuffed animals, but also to try to signal that I am approachable and non-threatening and can be safely disagreed with.
+1 and this seems like an important failure mode John was hitting hard for me until I realized how bad his social skills are a few months ago, at which point I realized I can interact with him like an autist. He isn’t advertising that well imo; guessing his opinions by interpolating between autistic people I’ve known, I doubt as many people updated on his recent posts as he might intuitively expect.
I mean, I am in a sense a weird edge case, due to my weird mix of education/experience levels at different things. But I figured it was worth mentioning.
This just seems false to me honestly. You just have to signal in public that you’re willing to be authentic, that you’re not going to retaliate against those who come after you (I.e. try to change your mind in constructive ways), that you’re actually willing to change your mind (by actually doing so on minor points), and so on.
Status is power and people with power are more likely to be trusted if they don’t misuse that power in public.
For a more specific example, I am currently on hunger strike in protest of ASI, and there are people still willing to debate AI risk with them. I am not yet so polarising that people avoid the topic entirely.
That can go too far though, as you can then be viewed as the weird person with the seal plushie, which now means you’re harder to approach and somewhat threatening because you’re different from others, which implies there might be potential difficulties with communication or whatever and so maybe it’s better to avoid you, or not, because then I’m the one being weird… I’ll just go and talk to Bob to avoid all of this.
I think a potential drawback of this strategy is that people tend to become more hesitant to argue with you. Their instincts tell them you’re a high-status person they can’t afford to offend or risk looking stupid in front of. If you seem less confident, less cool, and less high-status, the mental barrier for others to be disagreeable, share weird ideas, or voice confusion in your presence is lower.
I try to remember to show off some uncoolness and uncertainty for this reason, especially around more junior people. I used to have a big seal plushie on my desk in the office, partially because I just like cute stuffed animals, but also to try to signal that I am approachable and non-threatening and can be safely disagreed with.
+1 and this seems like an important failure mode John was hitting hard for me until I realized how bad his social skills are a few months ago, at which point I realized I can interact with him like an autist. He isn’t advertising that well imo; guessing his opinions by interpolating between autistic people I’ve known, I doubt as many people updated on his recent posts as he might intuitively expect.
I mean, I am in a sense a weird edge case, due to my weird mix of education/experience levels at different things. But I figured it was worth mentioning.
This just seems false to me honestly. You just have to signal in public that you’re willing to be authentic, that you’re not going to retaliate against those who come after you (I.e. try to change your mind in constructive ways), that you’re actually willing to change your mind (by actually doing so on minor points), and so on.
Status is power and people with power are more likely to be trusted if they don’t misuse that power in public.
For a more specific example, I am currently on hunger strike in protest of ASI, and there are people still willing to debate AI risk with them. I am not yet so polarising that people avoid the topic entirely.
That can go too far though, as you can then be viewed as the weird person with the seal plushie, which now means you’re harder to approach and somewhat threatening because you’re different from others, which implies there might be potential difficulties with communication or whatever and so maybe it’s better to avoid you, or not, because then I’m the one being weird… I’ll just go and talk to Bob to avoid all of this.
Or something like that.
Yeah, per Kaj’s no free lunch thing https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WK979aX9KpfEMd9R9/how-to-dress-to-improve-your-epistemics?commentId=Q3do78rjEk6mrrtKf