I think on Less Wrong of all places people should be able to say things like that if they think they are true. Gandhi and Martin Luther King aren’t really known for their internal experience of universal love and compassion, they are known for the remarkable works they accomplished. The magnitude of their compassion as far as we know is a reflection of the mythology surrounding them. There is absolutely no reason to believe that having the same internal experience as them will lead to accomplishments so grand, and in fact it seems very unlikely to me given the large number of extremely accomplished meditators who claim to have the internal experience of universal loving-kindness. Though they are large in number, very few (potentially = 0) are as well known as Gandhi. Not being able to point to works as remarkable as some of the most remarkable historical figures in our current cultural awareness is very scant evidence that someone does not experience universal love and compassion of the same sort.
I think on Less Wrong of all places people should be able to say things like that if they think they are true.
What’s the prior on understanding the mind of MLK or Gandhi well enough to make a realistic comparison? And why choose people who are practically venerated as modern saints? I don’t think that such a comparison is ever truly innocuous. It’s a common Dark Arts ploy to associate oneself with beloved historical figures in the hope of basking in the light of their greatness.
Not being able to point to works as remarkable as some of the most remarkable historical figures in our current cultural awareness is very scant evidence that someone does not experience universal love and compassion of the same sort.
The objection isn’t whether someone actually experienced compassion similar to that of Gandhi. The objection is that comparing oneself to Gandhi raises the specter of the Association Fallacy.
I don’t think that such a comparison is ever truly innocuous. It’s a common Dark Arts ploy to associate oneself with beloved historical figures in the hope of basking in the light of their greatness.
Yes, so you’re doing what everyone else did throughout my life: you’re attributing unflattering motivations to me that I don’t have. It’s not just you, it’s almost everyone who I’ve interacted with.
My uncharitable interpretation of this sort of thing was
People like Epictetus are uncomfortable about the possibility of me behaving more ethically than they are, because they don’t want to look bad by comparison, and they’re attacking my motivations to nullify the threat (c.f. Robin Hanson’s Looking Too Good)
I never talked about this, because I figured that there was no point: I thought “these people have dug themselves into such a deep epistemic rabbit hole that they can’t out of it – they can’t see me for who I am independently of what I say.
My current hypothesis is that you’re not doing this, you don’t have some sort of evil Hansonian agenda, rather, the situation is instead that you don’t know that it’s possible for humans to rewire their motivations so as to be almost completely unrelated to relative status.
Yes, so you’re doing what everyone else did throughout my life: you’re attributing unflattering motivations to me that I don’t have. It’s not just you, it’s almost everyone who I’ve interacted with.
My point is that comparing yourself favorably to someone like Gandhi is a very common rhetorical tactic. For example, here’s Dan Quayle comparing himself to JFK. While the statement he made was literally true, it was perceived as implying other similarities and his opponent called him on it.
From the other comments it seems that you did not intend to imply other similarities to MLK or Gandhi. I wish to convey that even if you personally don’t have this motive, in common use such comparisons do have this motive. Therefore, for someone hearing such a comparison made, there’s a very high prior that such a motive exists.
My current hypothesis is that you’re not doing this, you don’t have some sort of evil Hansonian agenda, rather, the situation is instead that you don’t know that it’s possible for humans to rewire their motivations so as to be almost completely unrelated to relative status.
The philosopher who provided my username counseled indifference to status. I am familiar with the notion.
My objection is not about motivation, but about motivation as perceived by an outside observer. I take it as a general principle that the message one intends to send, the message one actually sends, and the message received need not be the same. Consider Polya’s traditional math professor: “He says a, he writes b, he means c; but it really should be d.” What are the poor students to make of this muddle?
Back to our hypothetical observer. If the observer does not know your mind, all he has to go on are the literal meaning of the words you use and any connotations associated with them via common usage or community standards. It is possible for these connotations to warp the meaning to something altogether different from what you intended, even if the observer is wholly neutral. Real people have their own filters and perceptions, which can further change the meaning. I have a vague hypothesis that much social convention is just a way of standardizing communication to avoid these kinds of problems.
Here are my observations: It’s a common tactic among politicians to favorably compare themselves to famous historical figures. It’s common among cranks to compare their own struggles to the persecution of Galileo. In general, there’s a rhetorical device of people comparing themselves to famous figures in order to imply that they have other characteristics in common. This has led me to assign a very low prior probability to such a comparison being wholly innocuous.
As a result, when I see such a statement made, my reaction is to become more a lot cynical about the piece and to question the author’s motives.
Sure, this makes sense. But sufficiently strong filters will filter out people when they say very unusual things independently of whether or not they’re true :D. Catching diamonds in the rough requires more refined heuristics. How would you be able to tell if somebody actually felt universal love and compassion like MLK?
I don’t think I’d ever reach that conclusion based on someone’s self-reporting. Too prone to bias.
So what would convince me? Well, the same way MLK convinced me: actions. Not in the sense of having to lead a civil rights movement, but rather in the sense of displaying that level of love and compassion when there is a cost to doing so. Are you so committed that you’d risk imprisonment or assassination? There’s really no way for me to tell unless real life tests your mettle. I admit, it’s a high bar. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
How then would I gauge the love and compassion of someone who had to hazard neither life nor liberty? I have on occasion witnessed people perform generous acts which would not have even occurred to me, but upon seeing them I could not doubt their rectitude. More common is just a general pattern of behavior: how an individual interacts with others.
they can’t see me for who I am independently of what I say.
In a text-only medium, what you say is all there is. Even face to face, what you say is a large part of what there is. And in any case, what you say flows from who you are.
Are you actively trying to misinterpret his point?
No. It is possible that I have, nonetheless, misinterpreted his point. However, having reread the context, I see nothing amiss; I am not seeing whatever it is that you are seeing. What are you seeing?
He’s saying, more or less: people take me too literally, they miss the forest for the trees. Your response was to nitpick his statement in a way that missed that point he was trying to make. It seemed ironic, in a way that would irritate me endlessly if I were Jonah.
Ok, yes, I find nitpicking tedious and a great pain also, and far too much of it goes on on LW. But I was not intending a nitpick, but the basic point that what anyone says is their presentation of who they are. Charitable reading and forest and trees and etc. understood, everything that Jonah wants to communicate still has to come through the bottleneck of his words.
I think on Less Wrong of all places people should be able to say things like that if they think they are true. Gandhi and Martin Luther King aren’t really known for their internal experience of universal love and compassion, they are known for the remarkable works they accomplished. The magnitude of their compassion as far as we know is a reflection of the mythology surrounding them. There is absolutely no reason to believe that having the same internal experience as them will lead to accomplishments so grand, and in fact it seems very unlikely to me given the large number of extremely accomplished meditators who claim to have the internal experience of universal loving-kindness. Though they are large in number, very few (potentially = 0) are as well known as Gandhi. Not being able to point to works as remarkable as some of the most remarkable historical figures in our current cultural awareness is very scant evidence that someone does not experience universal love and compassion of the same sort.
What’s the prior on understanding the mind of MLK or Gandhi well enough to make a realistic comparison? And why choose people who are practically venerated as modern saints? I don’t think that such a comparison is ever truly innocuous. It’s a common Dark Arts ploy to associate oneself with beloved historical figures in the hope of basking in the light of their greatness.
The objection isn’t whether someone actually experienced compassion similar to that of Gandhi. The objection is that comparing oneself to Gandhi raises the specter of the Association Fallacy.
Yes, so you’re doing what everyone else did throughout my life: you’re attributing unflattering motivations to me that I don’t have. It’s not just you, it’s almost everyone who I’ve interacted with.
My uncharitable interpretation of this sort of thing was
I never talked about this, because I figured that there was no point: I thought “these people have dug themselves into such a deep epistemic rabbit hole that they can’t out of it – they can’t see me for who I am independently of what I say.
My current hypothesis is that you’re not doing this, you don’t have some sort of evil Hansonian agenda, rather, the situation is instead that you don’t know that it’s possible for humans to rewire their motivations so as to be almost completely unrelated to relative status.
What do you think?
My point is that comparing yourself favorably to someone like Gandhi is a very common rhetorical tactic. For example, here’s Dan Quayle comparing himself to JFK. While the statement he made was literally true, it was perceived as implying other similarities and his opponent called him on it.
From the other comments it seems that you did not intend to imply other similarities to MLK or Gandhi. I wish to convey that even if you personally don’t have this motive, in common use such comparisons do have this motive. Therefore, for someone hearing such a comparison made, there’s a very high prior that such a motive exists.
The philosopher who provided my username counseled indifference to status. I am familiar with the notion.
My objection is not about motivation, but about motivation as perceived by an outside observer. I take it as a general principle that the message one intends to send, the message one actually sends, and the message received need not be the same. Consider Polya’s traditional math professor: “He says a, he writes b, he means c; but it really should be d.” What are the poor students to make of this muddle?
Back to our hypothetical observer. If the observer does not know your mind, all he has to go on are the literal meaning of the words you use and any connotations associated with them via common usage or community standards. It is possible for these connotations to warp the meaning to something altogether different from what you intended, even if the observer is wholly neutral. Real people have their own filters and perceptions, which can further change the meaning. I have a vague hypothesis that much social convention is just a way of standardizing communication to avoid these kinds of problems.
What you’re writing here is very close to what’s been on my mind.
What I was responding to was “I don’t think that such a comparison is ever truly innocuous.”
That sounds like it’s about your perceptions as opposed to other people’s perceptions. :-). Did I misunderstand?
That specific line was my perception, yes.
The bit that followed it was intended as a general statement.
Ok, so can you help me understand your own perception?
Sure.
Here are my observations: It’s a common tactic among politicians to favorably compare themselves to famous historical figures. It’s common among cranks to compare their own struggles to the persecution of Galileo. In general, there’s a rhetorical device of people comparing themselves to famous figures in order to imply that they have other characteristics in common. This has led me to assign a very low prior probability to such a comparison being wholly innocuous.
As a result, when I see such a statement made, my reaction is to become more a lot cynical about the piece and to question the author’s motives.
Sure, this makes sense. But sufficiently strong filters will filter out people when they say very unusual things independently of whether or not they’re true :D. Catching diamonds in the rough requires more refined heuristics. How would you be able to tell if somebody actually felt universal love and compassion like MLK?
I don’t think I’d ever reach that conclusion based on someone’s self-reporting. Too prone to bias.
So what would convince me? Well, the same way MLK convinced me: actions. Not in the sense of having to lead a civil rights movement, but rather in the sense of displaying that level of love and compassion when there is a cost to doing so. Are you so committed that you’d risk imprisonment or assassination? There’s really no way for me to tell unless real life tests your mettle. I admit, it’s a high bar. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
How then would I gauge the love and compassion of someone who had to hazard neither life nor liberty? I have on occasion witnessed people perform generous acts which would not have even occurred to me, but upon seeing them I could not doubt their rectitude. More common is just a general pattern of behavior: how an individual interacts with others.
In a text-only medium, what you say is all there is. Even face to face, what you say is a large part of what there is. And in any case, what you say flows from who you are.
What would you have people do instead?
Are you actively trying to misinterpret his point?
No. It is possible that I have, nonetheless, misinterpreted his point. However, having reread the context, I see nothing amiss; I am not seeing whatever it is that you are seeing. What are you seeing?
He’s saying, more or less: people take me too literally, they miss the forest for the trees. Your response was to nitpick his statement in a way that missed that point he was trying to make. It seemed ironic, in a way that would irritate me endlessly if I were Jonah.
Ok, yes, I find nitpicking tedious and a great pain also, and far too much of it goes on on LW. But I was not intending a nitpick, but the basic point that what anyone says is their presentation of who they are. Charitable reading and forest and trees and etc. understood, everything that Jonah wants to communicate still has to come through the bottleneck of his words.