I wrote a really long essay in response to your comment, but it became ranty. In that essay I painstakingly signaled my quite detailed understanding of the relevant social psychology and signaling games. Take it on faith that I am not “tone deaf”. Nor am I exactly consciously-defecting against local norms of communication; it’s more that I don’t have the psychological-motivational resources necessary to go along with them despite knowing that they exist and that I am treading on people’s toes by not following them. (The marginal external cost for not being more clear may seem high, but the marginal internal cost for being more clear is higher than you expect.) I won’t post that essay here, I might email you parts of it.
But your comment is really off the mark, so I feel compelled to respond to some parts of it.
When you believe things
I didn’t talk about any of my beliefs. I talked about my model of what academic theists might believe, but I spent many sentences explaining why having models similar to theirs is dangerous. More importantly, it’s worth reiterating, I was talking about what academic theists might** believe. (I tend to (at least partially motivatedly) underestimate the effectiveness of my disclaimers, so I have to put in even more disclaimers.)
The way I brought it up might be interpreted as saying that it’s plausible. I do find plausible a computational superintelligence-centered model of something like what I think academic theists might also be trying to model. I despise Less Wrong and others for assuming that the intuitions motivating at least some of the ideas or models similar to those of academic theology are obviously not worth being not contemptuous of, and do not want to back-pedal on that point. Thus insofar as you inferred that I meant to imply that the intuitions behind theistic-ish models are possibly well-motivated to the extent that it is worth talking about them, you are correct. If you think my bothering to try to look at those models and their possible underlying intuitions/motivations is incorrect, you are wrong. If you think that my doing so while not being especially careful to speak in a way that does not lead to my being easily discounted is wrong, then you’re right, but only for values of “wrong” that, as I said, are not personally psychologically realistic for me to try to avoid.
You are violating this guideline so severely that it makes me think about the last time we met and wonder about your mental health.
The party before the wedding? I’d been awake for over 30 hours and had been cooped up in a car for about 10 hours. I was also on adderall in order to keep myself awake and had not eaten nearly enough (half a hamburger over the course of the day, I think? though I did eat some pizza soon after arriving at the party). I was further stressed because a car full of 4 rationalists can easily be stressful (even if it’s mostly pretty fun). I had no money for a hotel that night and was worried about that. (I had money in an account but couldn’t access it because I’d recently lost my wallet.) I was standing near Carl who I’d recently had a slightly heated short exchange with on Less Wrong and was thus kind of distracted. (I get a lot more distracted by those kinds of things than most people.) The most salient previous time you and I had talked I’d been pretty weird which was distracting me. (I really, really dislike having made (moral-ish) errors.) All those contributed to me being somewhat ‘off’. Being psychologically ‘off’ probably caused a lot of those problems in the first place, but even taken together they are not very strong evidence of being crazy, even when seen retrospectively upon reading my Less Wrong comments.
I’ve known a number of people who sort of wobbled on that line and were very good people before, during, and after, and your text kind of reminds me of their speech.
I can only make sense of your comment by assuming that this experience plus a predisposition to not ignoring the tails of important distributions led you to respond strongly. Even so I think your response is really, really, really extreme, and despite my claimed deep understanding of the relevant social psychology and social game theory I’m still somewhat confused that you responded the way you did. I would assume you hadn’t read my comment carefully and were responding to a surface-level pattern match, but you mentioned that you looked up the Heraclitus quote (I’m actually quoting T. S. Eliot quoting Heraclitus; I linked to T. S. Eliot later in the comment), which indicates that you read at least somewhat thoroughly if not particularly so. I notice confusion. Is there a piece of the puzzle I’m missing? For example, have you recently talked to Anna about me? (I deserve like 5,000 Bayes points if you have.)
I can see why your comment was voted up 14 times: LW is fucking retarded. But that you wrote your comment the way you did in the first place somewhat confuses me.
If you are seriously questioning your own basic mental health, please seek assistance from a wise and competent family member or close friend.
I want to apologize for that comment in public. It was inappropriately personal and judgmental and I’m embarrassed to have said what I said.
My goal was to express deep and serious concern for your well being if this concern was well placed and otherwise shock you into seeing yourself from the outside and thereby perhaps lead you to be more thoughtful about your tone and content. Given my embarrassment, I sort of share your unhappiness about the upvoting, but not really surprised… Rather than being “retarded” its more precise to say that LW’s point system is substantially a signaling game where the aggregate behavior of the voter/software conglomeration promote (among other things) swiftly-posted science-flavored moralistic criticism with very little human charity/humor/warmth. This isn’t entirely bad (it creates an interesting space for conversations that seem to be impossible anywhere else on the net) but it’s not entirely healthy either.
If I was going to respond to your request for explanation at all it should have involved much more charity, humor, and warmth, but I messed up, and I’m sorry for any harm or distress that I’ve caused.
I voted it up because I was worried about you and hoped you would take
seriously the possibility that you’re having a manic episode or other bad
psychological or neurological thing.
I don’t know you apart from reading your LW comments. (I do know someone who
had a serious manic episode.)
I wrote a really long essay in response to your comment, but it became ranty. In that essay I painstakingly signaled my quite detailed understanding of the relevant social psychology and signaling games. Take it on faith that I am not “tone deaf”. Nor am I exactly consciously-defecting against local norms of communication; it’s more that I don’t have the psychological-motivational resources necessary to go along with them despite knowing that they exist and that I am treading on people’s toes by not following them. (The marginal external cost for not being more clear may seem high, but the marginal internal cost for being more clear is higher than you expect.) I won’t post that essay here, I might email you parts of it.
But your comment is really off the mark, so I feel compelled to respond to some parts of it.
I didn’t talk about any of my beliefs. I talked about my model of what academic theists might believe, but I spent many sentences explaining why having models similar to theirs is dangerous. More importantly, it’s worth reiterating, I was talking about what academic theists might** believe. (I tend to (at least partially motivatedly) underestimate the effectiveness of my disclaimers, so I have to put in even more disclaimers.)
The way I brought it up might be interpreted as saying that it’s plausible. I do find plausible a computational superintelligence-centered model of something like what I think academic theists might also be trying to model. I despise Less Wrong and others for assuming that the intuitions motivating at least some of the ideas or models similar to those of academic theology are obviously not worth being not contemptuous of, and do not want to back-pedal on that point. Thus insofar as you inferred that I meant to imply that the intuitions behind theistic-ish models are possibly well-motivated to the extent that it is worth talking about them, you are correct. If you think my bothering to try to look at those models and their possible underlying intuitions/motivations is incorrect, you are wrong. If you think that my doing so while not being especially careful to speak in a way that does not lead to my being easily discounted is wrong, then you’re right, but only for values of “wrong” that, as I said, are not personally psychologically realistic for me to try to avoid.
The party before the wedding? I’d been awake for over 30 hours and had been cooped up in a car for about 10 hours. I was also on adderall in order to keep myself awake and had not eaten nearly enough (half a hamburger over the course of the day, I think? though I did eat some pizza soon after arriving at the party). I was further stressed because a car full of 4 rationalists can easily be stressful (even if it’s mostly pretty fun). I had no money for a hotel that night and was worried about that. (I had money in an account but couldn’t access it because I’d recently lost my wallet.) I was standing near Carl who I’d recently had a slightly heated short exchange with on Less Wrong and was thus kind of distracted. (I get a lot more distracted by those kinds of things than most people.) The most salient previous time you and I had talked I’d been pretty weird which was distracting me. (I really, really dislike having made (moral-ish) errors.) All those contributed to me being somewhat ‘off’. Being psychologically ‘off’ probably caused a lot of those problems in the first place, but even taken together they are not very strong evidence of being crazy, even when seen retrospectively upon reading my Less Wrong comments.
I can only make sense of your comment by assuming that this experience plus a predisposition to not ignoring the tails of important distributions led you to respond strongly. Even so I think your response is really, really, really extreme, and despite my claimed deep understanding of the relevant social psychology and social game theory I’m still somewhat confused that you responded the way you did. I would assume you hadn’t read my comment carefully and were responding to a surface-level pattern match, but you mentioned that you looked up the Heraclitus quote (I’m actually quoting T. S. Eliot quoting Heraclitus; I linked to T. S. Eliot later in the comment), which indicates that you read at least somewhat thoroughly if not particularly so. I notice confusion. Is there a piece of the puzzle I’m missing? For example, have you recently talked to Anna about me? (I deserve like 5,000 Bayes points if you have.)
I can see why your comment was voted up 14 times: LW is fucking retarded. But that you wrote your comment the way you did in the first place somewhat confuses me.
Better to see the professionals.
I want to apologize for that comment in public. It was inappropriately personal and judgmental and I’m embarrassed to have said what I said.
My goal was to express deep and serious concern for your well being if this concern was well placed and otherwise shock you into seeing yourself from the outside and thereby perhaps lead you to be more thoughtful about your tone and content. Given my embarrassment, I sort of share your unhappiness about the upvoting, but not really surprised… Rather than being “retarded” its more precise to say that LW’s point system is substantially a signaling game where the aggregate behavior of the voter/software conglomeration promote (among other things) swiftly-posted science-flavored moralistic criticism with very little human charity/humor/warmth. This isn’t entirely bad (it creates an interesting space for conversations that seem to be impossible anywhere else on the net) but it’s not entirely healthy either.
If I was going to respond to your request for explanation at all it should have involved much more charity, humor, and warmth, but I messed up, and I’m sorry for any harm or distress that I’ve caused.
I voted it up because I was worried about you and hoped you would take seriously the possibility that you’re having a manic episode or other bad psychological or neurological thing.
I don’t know you apart from reading your LW comments. (I do know someone who had a serious manic episode.)
I haven’t recently talked with Jennifer about you, nor about any related topics, nor do I see other routes by which concerns would have leaked to her.