First: no, it absolutely is a “major weakness in people” that they prefer to avoid engaging with relevant criticism merely on the basis of the “tone”, “valence”, etc., of the critics’ words. It is, in fact, a huge weakness. Overcoming this particular bias is one of the single biggest personal advances in epistemic rationality that one can make.
Or put another way, “Your strength as a rationalist is the extent to which it takes more Charisma to persuade you of false things, and less Charisma to persuade you of true things”
I do think many people could be served by trying to find the truth in harsh criticisms, to wonder if part of the sting is the recognition the critic was right. You’re example of ArsDigita was quite helpful in getting a concrete demonstration of the value of that kind of critique.
The thing is, Greenspun failed.
People are not empty-machines of perfect reasoning. There’s an elephant in our brains. If the critique is to land, if it is to change someone’s mind or behavior, it has to get through to the elephant.
Second: you imply a false dichotomy between the “improv session” sort of faux-criticism I describe, and “exuding disgust and contempt”. Those are not the only options! It is entirely possible to criticize someone’s ideas, very harshly, while exhibiting (and experiencing) no significant emotionally-valenced judgment of the person themselves.
Indeed. It is also possible (I claim) to give pointed criticism while remaining friendly. The elephant doesn’t like it when words look like they come from an enemy. If you fail to factor in the elephant, and your critique doesn’t land, that is your own mistake. Just as they have failed to see the value of the critique, you have failed to see the weight of the elephant.
The executives and other board members of ArsDigita failed, but if Greenspun could have kept their ear by being friendlier, and thereby increased the chances of changing their minds or behavior, Greenspun also failed at rationality.
If it is rational to seek the truth of criticism even when it hurts, then it is also rational to deliver your criticism in a friendly way that will actually land. Or put another way, your strength as a rationalist is the extent to which it takes less Wisdom to notice your plans will fail.
FWIW, I mostly don’t buy this framing. I think people being passively-aggressively hostile towards you in the way some LW commenters seem to valorize is I think reasonably well-correlated with indeed just not understanding your core points, not being valuable to engage with, and usually causing social dynamics in a space to go worse.
To be clear, this is a very small minority of people! But I think mostly when people get extremely frustrated at this extremely small minority of people, they pick up on it indeed being very rarely worth engaging with them deeper, and I don’t think the audience ends up particularly enlightened either (the associated comments threads are ones I glance over most reliably, and definitely far far underperform the marginal top-level posts in terms of value provided to the reader, which they usually trade off against).
I think people definitely have some unhealthy defensiveness, but the whole framing of “oh, you just need to placate the dumb elephant in people’s brains” strikes me as a very bad way to approach resolving that defensiveness successfully. It matters whether you surround yourself with sneering people, it really has a very large effect on you and your cognition and social environment and opportunities to trade.
Or put another way, “Your strength as a rationalist is the extent to which it takes more Charisma to persuade you of false things, and less Charisma to persuade you of true things”
I do think many people could be served by trying to find the truth in harsh criticisms, to wonder if part of the sting is the recognition the critic was right. You’re example of ArsDigita was quite helpful in getting a concrete demonstration of the value of that kind of critique.
The thing is, Greenspun failed.
People are not empty-machines of perfect reasoning. There’s an elephant in our brains. If the critique is to land, if it is to change someone’s mind or behavior, it has to get through to the elephant.
Indeed. It is also possible (I claim) to give pointed criticism while remaining friendly. The elephant doesn’t like it when words look like they come from an enemy. If you fail to factor in the elephant, and your critique doesn’t land, that is your own mistake. Just as they have failed to see the value of the critique, you have failed to see the weight of the elephant.
The executives and other board members of ArsDigita failed, but if Greenspun could have kept their ear by being friendlier, and thereby increased the chances of changing their minds or behavior, Greenspun also failed at rationality.
If it is rational to seek the truth of criticism even when it hurts, then it is also rational to deliver your criticism in a friendly way that will actually land. Or put another way, your strength as a rationalist is the extent to which it takes less Wisdom to notice your plans will fail.
FWIW, I mostly don’t buy this framing. I think people being passively-aggressively hostile towards you in the way some LW commenters seem to valorize is I think reasonably well-correlated with indeed just not understanding your core points, not being valuable to engage with, and usually causing social dynamics in a space to go worse.
To be clear, this is a very small minority of people! But I think mostly when people get extremely frustrated at this extremely small minority of people, they pick up on it indeed being very rarely worth engaging with them deeper, and I don’t think the audience ends up particularly enlightened either (the associated comments threads are ones I glance over most reliably, and definitely far far underperform the marginal top-level posts in terms of value provided to the reader, which they usually trade off against).
I think people definitely have some unhealthy defensiveness, but the whole framing of “oh, you just need to placate the dumb elephant in people’s brains” strikes me as a very bad way to approach resolving that defensiveness successfully. It matters whether you surround yourself with sneering people, it really has a very large effect on you and your cognition and social environment and opportunities to trade.
Agreed. I was trying to point out how refusing to be friendly, even from a cynical point of view, is counterproductive.