Based on about a dozen of Said’s comments I read I don’t expect them to update on what I’m gonna write. But I wanted to formulate my observations, interpretations, and beliefs based on their comments anyway. Mostly for myself and if it’s of value to other people, even better (which Said actually supports in another comment 🙂).
Said refuses to try and see the world via the glasses presented in the OP
In other words, Said refuses to inhabit Aella’s frame
Said denies the existence of the natural concept frame and denies any usefulness of it even if it were a mere fake concept
It seems to me that Said is really confident about their frame and is signaling against inhabiting other people’s frames
Most people usually aren’t onto anything good, so this, again, ought to be the default assumption.
It seems to me that Said actually believes there is no value in inhabiting other people’s frames
This seems bad, actually. It seems to me like a sign of insecurity and unjustified submission. I, for one, have no interest in having my conversation partners signal that they’re vulnerable to me (nor have I any interest in signaling to that I’m vulnerable to them).
Everyone has vulnerabilities. Showing them and thus becoming vulnerable doesn’t signal insecurity or submission, actually the opposite. It requires high self-confidence (self-acceptance?) and signals openness and honesty to the other person. The benefit is that it leads to significantly deeper interactions.
And the benefit of inhabiting another one’s frame? If I use the “camera position and orientation” definition of a frame mentioned by Vaniver, inhabiting other person’s frame allows you to see things that may be occluded from your point of view and thus give you new evidence. The least it can give you is a new interpretation of data that you gathered yourself. But it can possibly introduce genuinely new evidence to you, because frames serve as lenses and by making you focus on one thing they also make you subconsciously ignore other things.
This seems bad, actually. It seems to me like a sign of insecurity and unjustified submission. I, for one, have no interest in having my conversation partners signal that they’re vulnerable to me (nor have I any interest in signaling to that I’m vulnerable to them).
Everyone has vulnerabilities. Showing them and thus becoming vulnerable doesn’t signal insecurity or submission, actually the opposite. It requires high self-confidence (self-acceptance?) and signals openness and honesty to the other person. The benefit is that it leads to significantly deeper interactions.
You didn’t quote the specific thing I was responding to, with the quoted paragraph, so let’s review that. Aella wrote:
So if frame control looks so similar to just being a normal person, what are some signs that someone isn’t doing frame control? Keeping in mind that these are pointers, not absolute, and not doing these doesn’t mean someone is doing frame control.
They give you power over them, like indications that they want your approval or unconditional support in areas you are superior to them. They signal to you that they are vulnerable to you.
What is being described here is unquestionably a signal of submission. (And wanting the approval of someone you just met is absolutely a sign of insecurity.)
“Openness and honesty” are not even slightly the same thing as “want[ing] [someone’s] approval” or giving someone (whom you’ve just met!) “unconditional support”. To equate these things is tendentious, at best.
Behaving in such an overtly insecure fashion, submitting so readily to people you meet, does not lead to “significantly deeper conversations”; it leads to being dominated, exploited, and abused. Likewise, signaling “vulnerability” in this fashion means signaling vulnerability to abuse.
And the benefit of inhabiting another one’s frame? If I use the “camera position and orientation” definition of a frame mentioned by Vaniver, inhabiting other person’s frame allows you to see things that may be occluded from your point of view and thus give you new evidence. The least it can give you is a new interpretation of data that you gathered yourself. But it can possibly introduce genuinely new evidence to you, because frames serve as lenses and by making you focus on one thing they also make you subconsciously ignore other things.
You see, this is what I mean when I say that I’m against fake frameworks.
You’ve taken a metaphor (the “frame” as a “camera position and orientation”); you’ve reasoned within the metaphor to a conclusion (“inhabiting other person’s frame allows you to see things that may be occluded from your point of view”, “it can possibly introduce genuinely new evidence to you”); and then you haven’t checked to see whether what you said makes sense non-metaphorically. You’ve made metaphorical claims (“frames serve as lenses”), but you haven’t translated those back into non-metaphorical language.
So on what basis should we believe these claims? On the strength of the metaphor? On our faith in its close correspondence with reality? But it’s not a very strong metaphor, and its correspondence to reality is tenuous…
This is not an idle objection—even in this specific case! In fact, I think that “inhabiting other person’s frame” almost always does not give you any new evidence—though it can easily deceive you by making you think that you’ve genuinely “considered things from a new perspective”. I think that it is very easy to deceive yourself into imagining that you are being open-minded, that you’re “putting yourself into someone else’s shoes”, that you’re using the “principle of charity” to “pass an Intellectual Turing Test”, etc., when in fact you’re just recapitulating your own biases, and distorting another person’s ideas by forcing them into the mold of your own worldview. (Or, if you like, we could say: frames serve as lenses, but lenses can distort just as easily as they can magnify…)
The best way to learn what another person thinks is to listen to what they say, read what they write, and watch what they do. No amount of “inhabiting their frame” will substitute for that.
Said refuses to try and see the world via the glasses presented in the OP
In other words, Said refuses to inhabit Aella’s frame
Ah yes, the classic rhetorical form: “if you disagree with me, that’s because you refuse even to try to see things my way!”
Yeah, could be. Or, it could be that your interlocutor considered your ideas, and found them wanting. It could be that they actually, upon consideration, disagree with you.
In this case, given that I’ve extensively argued against the claims and ideas presented in the OP, I think that the former hypothesis hardly seems likely.
Said denies the existence of the natural concept frame and denies any usefulness of it even if it were a mere fake concept
I’m not a fan of “fake frameworks” in general. I’m in favor of believing true things, and not false things.
It seems to me that Said is really confident about their frame and is signaling against inhabiting other people’s frames
Given that I don’t think “frames” are a useful concept (in the way that [I think] you mean them), my only answer to this one can be mu.
Most people usually aren’t onto anything good, so this, again, ought to be the default assumption.
It seems to me that Said actually believes there is no value in inhabiting other people’s frames
Most people are idiots, and most people’s ideas are dumb.
That’s not some sort of declaration of all-encompassing misanthropy; it’s a banal statement of a plain (and fairly obvious) fact. (Sturgeon’s Law: 90% of everything is crap.)
So the default assumption, when you meet someone new and they tell you their amazing ideas, is that this person at best has some boring, ordinary beliefs (that may or may not be true, but are by no means novel to you); and at worst, that they have stumbled into some new form of stupidity.
Now, that’s the default; of course there are exceptions, and plenty of them. (Are exceptions to this rule more or less likely among “rationalists”, and at “rationalist” gatherings? That’s hard to say, and probably there is significant, and non-random, variation based on subcultural context. But that is a matter for another discussion.) One should always be open to the possibility of encountering genuinely novel, interesting, useful ideas. (Else what is the point of talking to other people?)
But the default is what it is. We can bemoan it, but we cannot change it (at least, not yet).
(Reply to second part of parent comment in a sibling comment, for convenience of discussion.)
Based on about a dozen of Said’s comments I read I don’t expect them to update on what I’m gonna write. But I wanted to formulate my observations, interpretations, and beliefs based on their comments anyway. Mostly for myself and if it’s of value to other people, even better (which Said actually supports in another comment 🙂).
Said refuses to try and see the world via the glasses presented in the OP
In other words, Said refuses to inhabit Aella’s frame
Said denies the existence of the natural concept frame and denies any usefulness of it even if it were a mere fake concept
It seems to me that Said is really confident about their frame and is signaling against inhabiting other people’s frames
It seems to me that Said actually believes there is no value in inhabiting other people’s frames
Everyone has vulnerabilities. Showing them and thus becoming vulnerable doesn’t signal insecurity or submission, actually the opposite. It requires high self-confidence (self-acceptance?) and signals openness and honesty to the other person. The benefit is that it leads to significantly deeper interactions.
And the benefit of inhabiting another one’s frame? If I use the “camera position and orientation” definition of a frame mentioned by Vaniver, inhabiting other person’s frame allows you to see things that may be occluded from your point of view and thus give you new evidence. The least it can give you is a new interpretation of data that you gathered yourself. But it can possibly introduce genuinely new evidence to you, because frames serve as lenses and by making you focus on one thing they also make you subconsciously ignore other things.
You didn’t quote the specific thing I was responding to, with the quoted paragraph, so let’s review that. Aella wrote:
What is being described here is unquestionably a signal of submission. (And wanting the approval of someone you just met is absolutely a sign of insecurity.)
“Openness and honesty” are not even slightly the same thing as “want[ing] [someone’s] approval” or giving someone (whom you’ve just met!) “unconditional support”. To equate these things is tendentious, at best.
Behaving in such an overtly insecure fashion, submitting so readily to people you meet, does not lead to “significantly deeper conversations”; it leads to being dominated, exploited, and abused. Likewise, signaling “vulnerability” in this fashion means signaling vulnerability to abuse.
You see, this is what I mean when I say that I’m against fake frameworks.
You’ve taken a metaphor (the “frame” as a “camera position and orientation”); you’ve reasoned within the metaphor to a conclusion (“inhabiting other person’s frame allows you to see things that may be occluded from your point of view”, “it can possibly introduce genuinely new evidence to you”); and then you haven’t checked to see whether what you said makes sense non-metaphorically. You’ve made metaphorical claims (“frames serve as lenses”), but you haven’t translated those back into non-metaphorical language.
So on what basis should we believe these claims? On the strength of the metaphor? On our faith in its close correspondence with reality? But it’s not a very strong metaphor, and its correspondence to reality is tenuous…
This is not an idle objection—even in this specific case! In fact, I think that “inhabiting other person’s frame” almost always does not give you any new evidence—though it can easily deceive you by making you think that you’ve genuinely “considered things from a new perspective”. I think that it is very easy to deceive yourself into imagining that you are being open-minded, that you’re “putting yourself into someone else’s shoes”, that you’re using the “principle of charity” to “pass an Intellectual Turing Test”, etc., when in fact you’re just recapitulating your own biases, and distorting another person’s ideas by forcing them into the mold of your own worldview. (Or, if you like, we could say: frames serve as lenses, but lenses can distort just as easily as they can magnify…)
The best way to learn what another person thinks is to listen to what they say, read what they write, and watch what they do. No amount of “inhabiting their frame” will substitute for that.
Ah yes, the classic rhetorical form: “if you disagree with me, that’s because you refuse even to try to see things my way!”
Yeah, could be. Or, it could be that your interlocutor considered your ideas, and found them wanting. It could be that they actually, upon consideration, disagree with you.
In this case, given that I’ve extensively argued against the claims and ideas presented in the OP, I think that the former hypothesis hardly seems likely.
I’m not a fan of “fake frameworks” in general. I’m in favor of believing true things, and not false things.
Given that I don’t think “frames” are a useful concept (in the way that [I think] you mean them), my only answer to this one can be mu.
Most people are idiots, and most people’s ideas are dumb.
That’s not some sort of declaration of all-encompassing misanthropy; it’s a banal statement of a plain (and fairly obvious) fact. (Sturgeon’s Law: 90% of everything is crap.)
So the default assumption, when you meet someone new and they tell you their amazing ideas, is that this person at best has some boring, ordinary beliefs (that may or may not be true, but are by no means novel to you); and at worst, that they have stumbled into some new form of stupidity.
Now, that’s the default; of course there are exceptions, and plenty of them. (Are exceptions to this rule more or less likely among “rationalists”, and at “rationalist” gatherings? That’s hard to say, and probably there is significant, and non-random, variation based on subcultural context. But that is a matter for another discussion.) One should always be open to the possibility of encountering genuinely novel, interesting, useful ideas. (Else what is the point of talking to other people?)
But the default is what it is. We can bemoan it, but we cannot change it (at least, not yet).
(Reply to second part of parent comment in a sibling comment, for convenience of discussion.)