They’re critical questions, but one of the secret-lore-of-rationality things is that a lot of people think criticism is bad, because if someone criticizes you, it hurts your reputation.
I am so confused about this statement. Is this a joke?
But that seems like a weird joke to make with a journalist who almost certainly doesn’t get it.
Or maybe I am failing to parse this. I read this as saying “people in the rationality community believe that criticism is bad because that hurts your reputation, but I am a contrarian within that community and think it’s good” which would seem like a kind of hilarious misrepresentation of where most people in the community are at on the topic of criticism, so maybe you meant something else here.
I thought he just meant “criticism is good, actually; I like having it done to me so I’m going to do it to you”, and was saying that rationalists tend to feel this way.
I affirm Seth’s interpretation in the grandparent. Real-time conversation is hard; if I had been writing carefully rather than speaking extemporaneously, I probably would have managed to order the clauses correctly. (“A lot of people think criticism is bad, but one of the secret-lore-of-rationality things is that criticism is actually good.”)
I think some kinds of criticism are good and some are not. Criticizing you because I have some well-stated objection to your ideas is good. Criticizing you by saying “Zach posts in a place which contains fans of Adolf Hitler” is bad. Criticizing you by causing real-life problems to happen to you (i.e. analogous to doxing Scott) is also bad.
The “one of those” phrasing makes me think there was prior conversational context about this before the start of the interview. From my own prior knowledge of Zack, my guess is that it is a tragedy of the green rationalist type sentiment. But it doesn’t exactly fit.
They’re critical questions, but one of the secret-lore-of-rationality things is that a lot of people think criticism is bad, because if someone criticizes you, it hurts your reputation. But I think criticism is good, because if I write a bad blog post, and someone tells me it was bad, I can learn from that, and do better next time.
I read this as saying ‘a common view is that being criticized is bad because it hurts your reputation, but as a person with some knowledge of the secret lore of rationality I believe that being criticized is good because you can learn from it.’
And he isn’t making a claim about to what extent the existing LW/rationality community shares his view.
I think you’re parsing it very literally. This was an in person conversation with much less strict rules of construction.
I took it to mean: there’s a lore in the rationality community that criticism is good because it helps you improve, contrary to the general feeling that it’s bad because it hurts your reputation.
It’s presented out of order because there’s a conversation going on where the speaker only has a rough idea they want to communicate and they’re putting it into words as they go, and there’s non-verbal feedback going on in the process we can’t see.
When I imagine myself in Metz’s position I expect he would take this same meaning, and I therefore think it’s likely a lot of other readers would take the same meaning. I think the only major ambiguity exists when readers parse it as something different than a transcript.
The secret lore of the Rationalist movement is that some specific kinds of criticism make Rationalists hate you, such as criticizing someone for being too friendly to racists. The secret truth of rationality is that all “criticism” is at least neutral and possibly good for a perfectly rational agent, including criticizing the agent for being too friendly to racists.
My thoughts
- Reputation is real, but less real than you think or hope. And reputation is asymmetrically fact-favored—just speak the truth and keep being you, and your reputation will follow. - Slander may cause dumb or mean people to turn against you, but wise people will get it and kind people will forgive you, and those people are who really matters. - Bad press is good press. It helps you win at the attention economy. - The Rationalists are better at accepting criticism, broadly construed, than average. - The Rationalists are better at handling culture-war stuff than average, but mostly because they are more autistic and more based than average. - The average sucks. Seek perfection. - I understand on an emotional level being afraid of cancel culture. I used to be. For me it’s tied up with fear of social isolation, loneliness, rejection. I overreacted to this and decided to “not care what other people think” (while still actually caring that people saw me as clever, contrarian, feminine, etc; I just mean I decided to be egotistical.) This led to the opposite failure of not listening enough to others. but it was a lot of fun. I think the right identity-stance is in between.
On a personal level, crockers rule made me happier and believe more true things. Even activating, unfair, or false criticism as a gift of feedback. The last time someone said something super triggering to me, it caused me to open up my feelings and love people more. The time before that, I became more accepting of embarrassing kinks I had—and this time was from some quite off-base trolly criticism. It’s related to “staring into the void” or considering the worst possible scenarios—literally as in “what if I lose my job” but also spiritually like “what if people stop loving me.” Kinda like how you’re supposed to think of death five times a day to be happy. Or like being a dnd monk I imagine. Either they’re right and you deserve it or they’re wrong and it doesn’t matter.
I am so confused about this statement. Is this a joke?
But that seems like a weird joke to make with a journalist who almost certainly doesn’t get it.
Or maybe I am failing to parse this. I read this as saying “people in the rationality community believe that criticism is bad because that hurts your reputation, but I am a contrarian within that community and think it’s good” which would seem like a kind of hilarious misrepresentation of where most people in the community are at on the topic of criticism, so maybe you meant something else here.
I thought he just meant “criticism is good, actually; I like having it done to me so I’m going to do it to you”, and was saying that rationalists tend to feel this way.
Yeah, that would make sense to me, but the text does seem at least unclear on whether that’s what Zack did try to say (and seems good to clarify).
I affirm Seth’s interpretation in the grandparent. Real-time conversation is hard; if I had been writing carefully rather than speaking extemporaneously, I probably would have managed to order the clauses correctly. (“A lot of people think criticism is bad, but one of the secret-lore-of-rationality things is that criticism is actually good.”)
I think some kinds of criticism are good and some are not. Criticizing you because I have some well-stated objection to your ideas is good. Criticizing you by saying “Zach posts in a place which contains fans of Adolf Hitler” is bad. Criticizing you by causing real-life problems to happen to you (i.e. analogous to doxing Scott) is also bad.
Cool, makes sense. Transcript editing is hard, as I know from experience.
This may be an example of one of those things where the meaning is clearer in person, when assisted by tone and body language.
The “one of those” phrasing makes me think there was prior conversational context about this before the start of the interview. From my own prior knowledge of Zack, my guess is that it is a tragedy of the green rationalist type sentiment. But it doesn’t exactly fit.
I read this as saying ‘a common view is that being criticized is bad because it hurts your reputation, but as a person with some knowledge of the secret lore of rationality I believe that being criticized is good because you can learn from it.’
And he isn’t making a claim about to what extent the existing LW/rationality community shares his view.
I think you’re parsing it very literally. This was an in person conversation with much less strict rules of construction.
I took it to mean: there’s a lore in the rationality community that criticism is good because it helps you improve, contrary to the general feeling that it’s bad because it hurts your reputation.
It’s presented out of order because there’s a conversation going on where the speaker only has a rough idea they want to communicate and they’re putting it into words as they go, and there’s non-verbal feedback going on in the process we can’t see.
When I imagine myself in Metz’s position I expect he would take this same meaning, and I therefore think it’s likely a lot of other readers would take the same meaning. I think the only major ambiguity exists when readers parse it as something different than a transcript.
My literal interpretation of Zack:
The secret lore of the Rationalist movement is that some specific kinds of criticism make Rationalists hate you, such as criticizing someone for being too friendly to racists.
The secret truth of rationality is that all “criticism” is at least neutral and possibly good for a perfectly rational agent, including criticizing the agent for being too friendly to racists.
My thoughts
- Reputation is real, but less real than you think or hope. And reputation is asymmetrically fact-favored—just speak the truth and keep being you, and your reputation will follow.
- Slander may cause dumb or mean people to turn against you, but wise people will get it and kind people will forgive you, and those people are who really matters.
- Bad press is good press. It helps you win at the attention economy.
- The Rationalists are better at accepting criticism, broadly construed, than average.
- The Rationalists are better at handling culture-war stuff than average, but mostly because they are more autistic and more based than average.
- The average sucks. Seek perfection.
- I understand on an emotional level being afraid of cancel culture. I used to be. For me it’s tied up with fear of social isolation, loneliness, rejection. I overreacted to this and decided to “not care what other people think” (while still actually caring that people saw me as clever, contrarian, feminine, etc; I just mean I decided to be egotistical.) This led to the opposite failure of not listening enough to others. but it was a lot of fun. I think the right identity-stance is in between.
On a personal level, crockers rule made me happier and believe more true things. Even activating, unfair, or false criticism as a gift of feedback. The last time someone said something super triggering to me, it caused me to open up my feelings and love people more. The time before that, I became more accepting of embarrassing kinks I had—and this time was from some quite off-base trolly criticism.
It’s related to “staring into the void” or considering the worst possible scenarios—literally as in “what if I lose my job” but also spiritually like “what if people stop loving me.” Kinda like how you’re supposed to think of death five times a day to be happy. Or like being a dnd monk I imagine. Either they’re right and you deserve it or they’re wrong and it doesn’t matter.