thank you for your comment! i agree that it would be bad to write the bottom line first when it comes to epistemics. that’s essentially what i tried to do with the cope and that evidently didn’t work.
however, i do feel like there is a misrepresentation of what is actually going on in the post somewhat, which i am happy to take the blame for as an artifact of my writing being unclear. your comment frames this as an epistemic problem, but i am not fighting a cartoony battle to stop myself from believing in elitism, that ship has long sailed.
i’m trying to figure out what to do about the contempt. it turns out that when i am around people i find intellectually unserious, i deny them personhood and i act in an incredibly shitty way. my worldview says this is bad and i am sure you agree; my nervous system becomes suffused with hatred and does it anyway.
I am often dismayed and annoyed by how other people seem to lack particular virtues that I prize, or abilities that I have. Like being not very truthseeking, being interested in stuff that seems dumb and pointless to me, etc.
But it helps to remember that other people have a lot of virtues that I don’t have—for instance, I’m pretty lazy, but a lot of people I know are incredibly hardworking and diligent even when working miserable, difficult jobs. A lot of people are very empathetic, or have good social awareness, or are good at being pleasant and sociable , which (as I’ve mentioned) are departments where I’m lacking.
In particular it helps to remember that many people kind of construct a self-serving moral system that overweights the virtues they themselves possess—eg, an athelete might tend to think “wow, look at these weaklings who can’t even take care of their own health!”, while a contrarian nerd will think “I can’t believe how much ordinary sheeple go along with convention and don’t think for themselves”, somebody who appreciates opera and is good at analyzing literature will think “it’s criminal how many people go through life consuming whatever entertainment Netflix and Tiktok puts in front of them, without exerting any effort or agency trying to seek out and appreciate the richness that human culture has to offer”, and so forth. In my view, taking care of your health, thinking for yourself, and seeking to become cultured are all good virtues! But it’s easy to over-index on the virtues you yourself possess and know best, while ignoring the ones that you’re weak on. So I try not to judge people too harshly when they fall short in the areas where I’m strongest.
One way that I notice this self-serving bias is when it shows up around things that are totally unrelated to objective virtues. Like, I notice myself taking pride in the fact that I have good taste in videogames, and I tend to inwardly scoff at how much time other people spend watching prestige-TV shows (I love movies, but generally find the meandering plots of TV shows to be tedious and unsatisfying). But from an external perspective I can recognize that videogames are (in most senses) even more tedious than TV shows, so what the hell am I talking about? Yet I sometimes still have a weird sense of superiority for being the kind of person who knows a lot about The Witness and Kerbal Space Program, instead of the kind of person who knows a lot about Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones or whatever.
Maybe this is weird/stupid, but to a certain extent, it’s almost nice that other people tend to lack some of my virtues, because then I can have something where I can feel special and distinctive. If everyone was really rationalist, I think that would be hugely better for society / the planet overall, but at least on this non-rationalist planet we can have the consolation prize of feeling cool and unique. (Similarly, christians might wish the whole world was christian, but given that it isn’t, they can at least take pride in being the few people who manage to keep the faith.)
In particular I’ve spent a lot of time lately hanging out with my wife’s family, who are pretty dumb and always making stupid decisions on a practical level, misprioritizing things in their life, have bad bland populist politics, are totally uninterested in philosophy except insofar as they’re religious and really strongly believe-in-belief, and so on and so on. (I hang out with them so much because they live nearby, help watch our toddler daughter, plus they recently let us live with them for a couple months while we moved out of an apartment but hadn’t yet bought a house, etc.)
My wife and I indeed do look down on them in a lot of ways, and spend a good amount of time complaining about them—it’s hard not to be annoyed by all the various little things they do that we would do differently, since little examples are constantly coming up as we go about our lives, rather than it just being an abstract difference in life philosophies or whatever.
But again, they have a lot of virtues that help make up for their shortcomings—most notably they are very family-oriented (for instance they have ben incredibly generous to us re: watching our toddler and letting us live with them for a bit!), do a decent job looking out for each other, et cetera. So, I’ve gotta respect that in general, and in particular be grateful for the specific helpful things they’ve done for me.
They’re also sympathetic insofar as their shortcomings are somewhat downstream of challenging life circumstances. They grew up much poorer than I am, in rural Yukon, without even many books around and certainly this was way before rationalist internet communities, etc—all of this is less conducive to developing a sophisticated worldview, correct takes on epistemology, whatever. Plus they’re just 1-2 generations older than me, which makes people less mentally sharp, more set in their ways, etc. So I kinda feel like “there but for the grace of god go I”.
Going further than just ordinary sympathy for overcoming adverse life circumstances, the philosopher Spinoza was the original guy who came up with the “stop believing in free will --> cultivate compassion for your fellow man” concept, and I think there’s a lot to recommend that approach. (Some aspects of Buddhism have a similar vibe: at the end of the day, the universe is just a bunch of physics playing out as part of a long chain of dependent origination, so from a certain perspective it seems foolish to get too mad or worked up over it!)
Finally, although being around them is in some ways aggravating (because it involves regularly watching them make dumb/suboptimal decisions on all different scales), in other ways it’s fine and perfectly enjoyable to simply chill out with someone, even if they’re dumber than you or whatever. My usual preferred mode of social interaction is, like, intellectual conversation, talking about the news, writing long introspective comments on LessWrong, et cetera, and these approaches don’t work well with them. But I can always watch a movie with them, make snacks, have fun playing around with our joyful toddler, go for a walk, talk with them about what I’ve been up to so far that day and hear what they’ve been up to, do some joint activity (like doing christmas together or just assembling some ikea furniture or cooking dinner with them), et cetera. It’s not the most fun thing ever, but it can be reasonably pleasant.
I suppose this ability to just chill out is enabled by recognizing that I shouldn’t engage with them in my usual most-comfortable / most-preferred way, but should expend a bit of effort making sure to engage with them in a way that works for them. And in a possibly weird/stupid way, it might even be somewhat helpful for me to have a strong sense of my own intellectual superiority in these interactions, similar to how some people (such as in the tumblr SJW space!) talk about people with a “secure sense of masculinity” as opposed to people with an anxious, insecure sense of their masculinity who might be tempted to act really macho and constantly seek social validation of their maleness. My default most-preferred way of interaction can almost be like an intellectual duel or tennis match (or something a little more cooperative than that, but still with competitive aspects): bouncing ideas back and forth, moving fast and making correct intellectual moves, trying to come up with good insights that will be impressive and helpful for the other person. I don’t think this is bad, or mostly/entirely motivated by status anxiety or etc. But it’s nice to be able to shift out of that “intellectual sparring” mode and interact with people in other ways too. So being able to comfortably think to myself “yeah, this person is not a great intellectual sparring partner” is perhaps useful.
I think you had this experience in the philosophy meetup and found it horrifying and depressing—which is very understandable because you literally went to a group that has a giant “THIS CLUB IS FOR DOING TRUTHSEEKING” arrow above the door, and then realized that actually you should switch away from engaging people based on truthseeking to instead just shooting the shit and making jokes!! But in other contexts that don’t have a giant “THIS ACTIVITY IS ABOUT TRUTHSEEKING” arrow above the door, I think that a similar technique of “engaging with people on the level that works for them” would seem less horrifying-and-depressing, and more just an application of pragmatism / good social graces / what Buddhists would call skillful means / etc.
Totally unrelated aside, but I wonder if maybe some of the jokes you were making might have been lampooning some of the contradictions in peoples’ thought / making fun of philosophical word-games / generally expressing some of your thinking style and worldview. So although I can see how it felt depressing to shift modes like this, possibly it might not have been as intellectually counterproductive as you’re telling it. (More people were converted to rationalism by reading HPMOR than by reading the Sequences, right?) But of course idk, I wasn’t there.
Personally I’d advise against randomly hitting up a sports bar (unless you happen to like sports!), but it could be interesting to pick some random non-intellectual hobby you have (like hiking or videogames or anime or board games or whatever) and meet some folks based on that shared interest.
But it helps to remember that other people have a lot of virtues that I don’t have --
This is a really important thing, and not just in the obvious ways. Outside of a small social bubble, people can be deeply illegible. I don’t understand their culture, their subculture, their dominant culture frameworks, their mode of interaction, etc. You either need to find the overlaps or start doing cultural anthropology.
I worked for a woman, once. She was probably 60 years my senior. She was from the Deep South, and deeply religious. She once casually confided that she would sometimes spend 2 hours of her day on her knees in prayer, asking to become a better person. And you know what? It worked. She moved through the world as a force for good and kindness. Not in one big dramatic way, but just sort of casually shedding kindness around her, touching people’s lives. She’d lift up someone in a frustrating moment. She’d inspire someone to be a bit more of their better self. She’d gotten all the answers on questions like racism very right, not in a social justice way, but she wouldn’t accept it at all.
She was also a damn competent businesswoman. She could instantly identify where to put a retail location.
And I could relate to her on those levels, her business skills and her ethics. And I’m sure she was doing a lot of work on her end to accommodate the fact that I was a peculiar kid.
But I couldn’t have discussed academic philosophy with her. She’d have understood EA instantly; her business skills and her compassion would have done that. But she’d still insist on “inefficiently” helping the human being in front of her, too. She would have looked at something like LessWrong and concluded everyone was basically crazy. (Narrator: But would she have been wrong?)
Now, I’ve painted a glowing picture here, and she would reprimand me for it. If I’m being honest, she was maybe 1-in-100 at practical ethics, not a national champion.
But the world is full of people like her. There are a couple of people sitting in that sports bar you’d be damn privileged to know, if only you could bridge the cultural gaps. Hell, there are usually some damn fine systematizing geeks in that sports bar. Have you ever really listened to true sports fans? Even back before sports betting corrupted the whole endeavor, many people took great joy in tracking endless stats and building elaborate models. They could be worse than your average Factorio player!
Finally, truth seeking can be a tricky thing. Do it wrong, and your beliefs can turn you into a monster. And a lot of people choose to optimize for “not being a monster” by not taking abstract ideas too seriously.
“to a certain extent, it’s almost nice that other people tend to lack some of my virtues, because then I can have something where I can feel special and distinctive”
That’s an important part of human nature to recognize! It’s how groups can get along—The (also hilarious) Gervais Principle talks about it:
Your recollections of spending time with your inlaws brings up an interesting asymmetry: you only talk about you adjusting to fit with their ways of being. If, apart from any intellectual disparity between you and them, you view them to be social or humanistic equals, should you expect them to have an equal obligation to fit with you as you have to fit with them? Put another way, what does it imply about your view of them socially or humanistically that you (apparently) do not have this symmetrical expectation?
Oh, I think they probably try to adapt in a variety of ways to be more hospitable & compatible with me when I’m around. (Although to a certain extent, maybe I’m more weird (less “normie”) than they are, plus I’m from a younger generation, so the onus is more on me socially to adapt myself to their ways?) But the focus of my comment was about the ways that I personally try to relate to people who are quite different from me. So I didn’t want to dive into how they might find it difficult or annoying being around me and how they might deal with this (though I’m sure they do find me annoying in some ways—another reason to be grateful, have humility, etc!).
“many people kind of construct a self-serving moral system that overweights the virtues they themselves possess”—or wish/believe themselves to possess.
It’s interesting that you say you’re bad at normie conversation and socializing, and yet, once you decided you couldn’t take the people at that meetup seriously, you became the life of the party!
I recommend Core Transformation. It’s about noticing you also have a bottom line written about which aspects of your affective patterns are bad. You typically won’t be able to get any traction on them until you inhabit a radical pro symptom position, allowing you to see what’s good about the contempt. By seeing that clearly, you can find alternative strategies that don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater, which your contemptuous parts have some chance of updating on.
But as with dogs, there is nothing I can do to “fix” other people into being intellectually serious, or anything else I think they should be. I take people as I find them and leave them the same way.
My guess is that what Richard is trying to gesture at, and what I would claim you should maybe do, is separate the concept of moral patienthood and moral agency to a greater extent. Like with a dog, you might love and cherish a child without respecting their policies or their moral reasoning at the level that they’re at. And you might care a lot about their happiness, protecting them from harm, empathizing with their sorrows, meeting their preferences, making them feel comfortable, etc.
Obviously you shouldn’t literally treat an adult exactly the same way you would treat a dog or a child, but I think that there might be a path to channeling respect for them as moral patients who feel, who love, who grieve, who dream, etc. while also completely acknowledging their shortcomings
I guess to reframe another way: Are you incredibly shitty towards babies and dogs? If you are, then (assuming you agree that babies and dogs are moral patients) I would claim that your problem it is about how to treat with care and empathy beings who you don’t intellectually respect. It’s not (just) about how to find a path to intellectually respecting adults that don’t merit it because there will always be beings that merit empathy and love but not intellectual respect.
I also think intellectual respect is not a binary trait with respect to whether you have it for an individual or not. I think that you can (and often should) have intellectual respect for an individual on some topics but not others. E.g. I merit no intellectual respect on any topic related to sports. I think a lot of rationality is about trying to deserve intellectual respect on increasingly meta/abstract levels (e.g. while I don’t think I merit any intellectual respect on any topic related to sports, I would hope that I would merit some intellectual respect if I were to try to confer about how to approach learning about sports, because I try to be thoughtful about how to learn new topics in an efficient, unbiased, and truth-seeking way). But I think that even for the people who are most worthy of intellectual respect writ broad, there’s quite a bit of unevenness.
I think this is an important point a bit buried here. I like my therapist and listen to her and want her advice—she’s not just a sounding board. However, I am pretty sure I’m smarter than her, and I’m definitely more oriented toward truth-seeking, which doesn’t seem to be something she really thinks about much. And yes, I do find myself frustrated and contemptuous during some conversations. But I continue to see her because I trust that she still has a lot to teach me! I’d be a terrible truth seeker if I saw her fumble one conversation and decided that she couldn’t help me in any way.
So I guess the important thing is that I don’t engage her in philosophical debates? Jenn, perhaps the answer is to meet with “common” folks on their own ground. It strikes me while writing this that the philosophy meetup you went to might have been the worst possible setting to test your empathy. These people were racing on hands and knees to call themself the fastest in the world and had never even heard of running.
Well, at least they’re not dogs! Cats wandering around do prettify a neighbourhood, as long as they’re not doing their business in my garden, and I extend them the same grudging tolerance as they do to us. I don’t stroke them, despite Jordan Peterson’s advice.
Is there a rationalist consensus on free will vs determinism?
Someone already mentioned Spinoza. I was surprised he wasn’t included in the lists of books you’re reading. Spinoza would say that strong emotions (even those based on inadequate ideas) will always overcome less strong emotions (even those based on adequate ideas). So your shame is unlikely to shut down your hatred unless it develops into profound self-loathing, which would probably do more harm than good, overall. Spinoza also says that weaker emotions can win by duration (persisting over time). In addition, his whole philosophy is based on the idea that we don’t have free will and therefore cannot be blamed for our mistakes and the destruction they wreak. Sapolsky supports Spinoza’s claims with current science and is very persuasive. Spinoza would likely advise you to develop your love of humanity by dedicated practice and allow it to resolve your contempt gradually.
I can see myself in this post and I think you are right that this is an emotional problem! Which in part means I don’t believe you’ll resolve the contempt by trying to think your way through it.
I think instead it would be cool to have a discussion where you feel the contempt and the shame you have around it, as well as giving those emotions space without denying them.
There are questions I would be interested in understanding, such as, in what ways do you feel judged for having this contempt? Do you feel it’s unfair? What other emotions exist around this problem? Is there anger or sadness that others in less wrong (i.e. your own community) aren’t trying to understand the contempt that you are feeling in the way you would hope?
“when i am around people i find intellectually unserious, i deny them personhood”—this seems like a great jumping off point for contemplating what “personhood” means, both in general and to you, specifically. In particular, if the partial derivative of someone’s personhood with respect their intellectual seriousness is so large does that mean you’re overweighting intellectual seriousness among all of the possible contributors to personhood? If so, is this because you genuinely value intellectual seriousness that much more than all those other factors, or is it just that you’re paying more attention to it and, perhaps, not making the effort to recognize and/or suitably value the other factors when (implicitly) evaluating their personhood?
Sorry, I kind of think this comment misses the point. I already know when I would like for personhood to be granted, the problem is that my emotions do not agree.
If it’s helpful, I think this analogizes to a person who knows intellectually that dogs are not frightening, but gets scared in the presence of dogs anyways.
I suppose that analogy brings up some interesting interventions to try...
If you’d be so kind, could you clarify whether it is your (intellectual?) knowing or your emotional (feeling?) that is broader/more inclusive w.r.t. personhood? And am I correct to read this as saying you believe the former should trump the latter? Or is it just that the lack of agreement troubles you without your needing to “choose sides” between the two?
That’s correct, it’s my intellectual knowing that’s more inclusive. While it’s often important to pay attention to what your emotions are telling you, sometimes the emotions are saying something stupid or antisocial, and in this case I don’t think there is much to be gained by conceding any ground to it.
Yet, ironically(?), your emotions are telling you to rely more narrowly on your estimation of the person’s intellect? I think that’s what had me confused—I was assuming you were saying your intellect wanted you to focus on intellect while your emotions were urging you to include emotions, among possibly other factors. One would hope that the emotional drive to use narrower criteria would be short-lived in comparison to your more deeply rooted (?) intellectual position.
thank you for your comment! i agree that it would be bad to write the bottom line first when it comes to epistemics. that’s essentially what i tried to do with the cope and that evidently didn’t work.
however, i do feel like there is a misrepresentation of what is actually going on in the post somewhat, which i am happy to take the blame for as an artifact of my writing being unclear. your comment frames this as an epistemic problem, but i am not fighting a cartoony battle to stop myself from believing in elitism, that ship has long sailed.
i’m trying to figure out what to do about the contempt. it turns out that when i am around people i find intellectually unserious, i deny them personhood and i act in an incredibly shitty way. my worldview says this is bad and i am sure you agree; my nervous system becomes suffused with hatred and does it anyway.
this feels like a different breed of problem.
Okay, yup, that makes sense!
I guess personally:
I am often dismayed and annoyed by how other people seem to lack particular virtues that I prize, or abilities that I have. Like being not very truthseeking, being interested in stuff that seems dumb and pointless to me, etc.
But it helps to remember that other people have a lot of virtues that I don’t have—for instance, I’m pretty lazy, but a lot of people I know are incredibly hardworking and diligent even when working miserable, difficult jobs. A lot of people are very empathetic, or have good social awareness, or are good at being pleasant and sociable , which (as I’ve mentioned) are departments where I’m lacking.
In particular it helps to remember that many people kind of construct a self-serving moral system that overweights the virtues they themselves possess—eg, an athelete might tend to think “wow, look at these weaklings who can’t even take care of their own health!”, while a contrarian nerd will think “I can’t believe how much ordinary sheeple go along with convention and don’t think for themselves”, somebody who appreciates opera and is good at analyzing literature will think “it’s criminal how many people go through life consuming whatever entertainment Netflix and Tiktok puts in front of them, without exerting any effort or agency trying to seek out and appreciate the richness that human culture has to offer”, and so forth. In my view, taking care of your health, thinking for yourself, and seeking to become cultured are all good virtues! But it’s easy to over-index on the virtues you yourself possess and know best, while ignoring the ones that you’re weak on. So I try not to judge people too harshly when they fall short in the areas where I’m strongest.
One way that I notice this self-serving bias is when it shows up around things that are totally unrelated to objective virtues. Like, I notice myself taking pride in the fact that I have good taste in videogames, and I tend to inwardly scoff at how much time other people spend watching prestige-TV shows (I love movies, but generally find the meandering plots of TV shows to be tedious and unsatisfying). But from an external perspective I can recognize that videogames are (in most senses) even more tedious than TV shows, so what the hell am I talking about? Yet I sometimes still have a weird sense of superiority for being the kind of person who knows a lot about The Witness and Kerbal Space Program, instead of the kind of person who knows a lot about Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones or whatever.
Maybe this is weird/stupid, but to a certain extent, it’s almost nice that other people tend to lack some of my virtues, because then I can have something where I can feel special and distinctive. If everyone was really rationalist, I think that would be hugely better for society / the planet overall, but at least on this non-rationalist planet we can have the consolation prize of feeling cool and unique. (Similarly, christians might wish the whole world was christian, but given that it isn’t, they can at least take pride in being the few people who manage to keep the faith.)
In particular I’ve spent a lot of time lately hanging out with my wife’s family, who are pretty dumb and always making stupid decisions on a practical level, misprioritizing things in their life, have bad bland populist politics, are totally uninterested in philosophy except insofar as they’re religious and really strongly believe-in-belief, and so on and so on. (I hang out with them so much because they live nearby, help watch our toddler daughter, plus they recently let us live with them for a couple months while we moved out of an apartment but hadn’t yet bought a house, etc.)
My wife and I indeed do look down on them in a lot of ways, and spend a good amount of time complaining about them—it’s hard not to be annoyed by all the various little things they do that we would do differently, since little examples are constantly coming up as we go about our lives, rather than it just being an abstract difference in life philosophies or whatever.
But again, they have a lot of virtues that help make up for their shortcomings—most notably they are very family-oriented (for instance they have ben incredibly generous to us re: watching our toddler and letting us live with them for a bit!), do a decent job looking out for each other, et cetera. So, I’ve gotta respect that in general, and in particular be grateful for the specific helpful things they’ve done for me.
They’re also sympathetic insofar as their shortcomings are somewhat downstream of challenging life circumstances. They grew up much poorer than I am, in rural Yukon, without even many books around and certainly this was way before rationalist internet communities, etc—all of this is less conducive to developing a sophisticated worldview, correct takes on epistemology, whatever. Plus they’re just 1-2 generations older than me, which makes people less mentally sharp, more set in their ways, etc. So I kinda feel like “there but for the grace of god go I”.
Going further than just ordinary sympathy for overcoming adverse life circumstances, the philosopher Spinoza was the original guy who came up with the “stop believing in free will --> cultivate compassion for your fellow man” concept, and I think there’s a lot to recommend that approach. (Some aspects of Buddhism have a similar vibe: at the end of the day, the universe is just a bunch of physics playing out as part of a long chain of dependent origination, so from a certain perspective it seems foolish to get too mad or worked up over it!)
Finally, although being around them is in some ways aggravating (because it involves regularly watching them make dumb/suboptimal decisions on all different scales), in other ways it’s fine and perfectly enjoyable to simply chill out with someone, even if they’re dumber than you or whatever. My usual preferred mode of social interaction is, like, intellectual conversation, talking about the news, writing long introspective comments on LessWrong, et cetera, and these approaches don’t work well with them. But I can always watch a movie with them, make snacks, have fun playing around with our joyful toddler, go for a walk, talk with them about what I’ve been up to so far that day and hear what they’ve been up to, do some joint activity (like doing christmas together or just assembling some ikea furniture or cooking dinner with them), et cetera. It’s not the most fun thing ever, but it can be reasonably pleasant.
I suppose this ability to just chill out is enabled by recognizing that I shouldn’t engage with them in my usual most-comfortable / most-preferred way, but should expend a bit of effort making sure to engage with them in a way that works for them. And in a possibly weird/stupid way, it might even be somewhat helpful for me to have a strong sense of my own intellectual superiority in these interactions, similar to how some people (such as in the tumblr SJW space!) talk about people with a “secure sense of masculinity” as opposed to people with an anxious, insecure sense of their masculinity who might be tempted to act really macho and constantly seek social validation of their maleness. My default most-preferred way of interaction can almost be like an intellectual duel or tennis match (or something a little more cooperative than that, but still with competitive aspects): bouncing ideas back and forth, moving fast and making correct intellectual moves, trying to come up with good insights that will be impressive and helpful for the other person. I don’t think this is bad, or mostly/entirely motivated by status anxiety or etc. But it’s nice to be able to shift out of that “intellectual sparring” mode and interact with people in other ways too. So being able to comfortably think to myself “yeah, this person is not a great intellectual sparring partner” is perhaps useful.
I think you had this experience in the philosophy meetup and found it horrifying and depressing—which is very understandable because you literally went to a group that has a giant “THIS CLUB IS FOR DOING TRUTHSEEKING” arrow above the door, and then realized that actually you should switch away from engaging people based on truthseeking to instead just shooting the shit and making jokes!! But in other contexts that don’t have a giant “THIS ACTIVITY IS ABOUT TRUTHSEEKING” arrow above the door, I think that a similar technique of “engaging with people on the level that works for them” would seem less horrifying-and-depressing, and more just an application of pragmatism / good social graces / what Buddhists would call skillful means / etc.
Totally unrelated aside, but I wonder if maybe some of the jokes you were making might have been lampooning some of the contradictions in peoples’ thought / making fun of philosophical word-games / generally expressing some of your thinking style and worldview. So although I can see how it felt depressing to shift modes like this, possibly it might not have been as intellectually counterproductive as you’re telling it. (More people were converted to rationalism by reading HPMOR than by reading the Sequences, right?) But of course idk, I wasn’t there.
Personally I’d advise against randomly hitting up a sports bar (unless you happen to like sports!), but it could be interesting to pick some random non-intellectual hobby you have (like hiking or videogames or anime or board games or whatever) and meet some folks based on that shared interest.
This is a really important thing, and not just in the obvious ways. Outside of a small social bubble, people can be deeply illegible. I don’t understand their culture, their subculture, their dominant culture frameworks, their mode of interaction, etc. You either need to find the overlaps or start doing cultural anthropology.
I worked for a woman, once. She was probably 60 years my senior. She was from the Deep South, and deeply religious. She once casually confided that she would sometimes spend 2 hours of her day on her knees in prayer, asking to become a better person. And you know what? It worked. She moved through the world as a force for good and kindness. Not in one big dramatic way, but just sort of casually shedding kindness around her, touching people’s lives. She’d lift up someone in a frustrating moment. She’d inspire someone to be a bit more of their better self. She’d gotten all the answers on questions like racism very right, not in a social justice way, but she wouldn’t accept it at all.
She was also a damn competent businesswoman. She could instantly identify where to put a retail location.
And I could relate to her on those levels, her business skills and her ethics. And I’m sure she was doing a lot of work on her end to accommodate the fact that I was a peculiar kid.
But I couldn’t have discussed academic philosophy with her. She’d have understood EA instantly; her business skills and her compassion would have done that. But she’d still insist on “inefficiently” helping the human being in front of her, too. She would have looked at something like LessWrong and concluded everyone was basically crazy. (Narrator: But would she have been wrong?)
Now, I’ve painted a glowing picture here, and she would reprimand me for it. If I’m being honest, she was maybe 1-in-100 at practical ethics, not a national champion.
But the world is full of people like her. There are a couple of people sitting in that sports bar you’d be damn privileged to know, if only you could bridge the cultural gaps. Hell, there are usually some damn fine systematizing geeks in that sports bar. Have you ever really listened to true sports fans? Even back before sports betting corrupted the whole endeavor, many people took great joy in tracking endless stats and building elaborate models. They could be worse than your average Factorio player!
Finally, truth seeking can be a tricky thing. Do it wrong, and your beliefs can turn you into a monster. And a lot of people choose to optimize for “not being a monster” by not taking abstract ideas too seriously.
“to a certain extent, it’s almost nice that other people tend to lack some of my virtues, because then I can have something where I can feel special and distinctive”
That’s an important part of human nature to recognize! It’s how groups can get along—The (also hilarious) Gervais Principle talks about it:
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/
Your recollections of spending time with your inlaws brings up an interesting asymmetry: you only talk about you adjusting to fit with their ways of being. If, apart from any intellectual disparity between you and them, you view them to be social or humanistic equals, should you expect them to have an equal obligation to fit with you as you have to fit with them? Put another way, what does it imply about your view of them socially or humanistically that you (apparently) do not have this symmetrical expectation?
Oh, I think they probably try to adapt in a variety of ways to be more hospitable & compatible with me when I’m around. (Although to a certain extent, maybe I’m more weird (less “normie”) than they are, plus I’m from a younger generation, so the onus is more on me socially to adapt myself to their ways?) But the focus of my comment was about the ways that I personally try to relate to people who are quite different from me. So I didn’t want to dive into how they might find it difficult or annoying being around me and how they might deal with this (though I’m sure they do find me annoying in some ways—another reason to be grateful, have humility, etc!).
“many people kind of construct a self-serving moral system that overweights the virtues they themselves possess”—or wish/believe themselves to possess.
It’s interesting that you say you’re bad at normie conversation and socializing, and yet, once you decided you couldn’t take the people at that meetup seriously, you became the life of the party!
I recommend Core Transformation. It’s about noticing you also have a bottom line written about which aspects of your affective patterns are bad. You typically won’t be able to get any traction on them until you inhabit a radical pro symptom position, allowing you to see what’s good about the contempt. By seeing that clearly, you can find alternative strategies that don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater, which your contemptuous parts have some chance of updating on.
Dogs are intellectually unserious, yet many people love them, and “talk” to them on their level.
(But me, I don’t like dogs and keep away from them.)
i do not want to treat other people as if they are dogs. sorry if i’m being obtuse.
But as with dogs, there is nothing I can do to “fix” other people into being intellectually serious, or anything else I think they should be. I take people as I find them and leave them the same way.
Let me be obtuse in return.
Why not?
My guess is that what Richard is trying to gesture at, and what I would claim you should maybe do, is separate the concept of moral patienthood and moral agency to a greater extent. Like with a dog, you might love and cherish a child without respecting their policies or their moral reasoning at the level that they’re at. And you might care a lot about their happiness, protecting them from harm, empathizing with their sorrows, meeting their preferences, making them feel comfortable, etc.
Obviously you shouldn’t literally treat an adult exactly the same way you would treat a dog or a child, but I think that there might be a path to channeling respect for them as moral patients who feel, who love, who grieve, who dream, etc. while also completely acknowledging their shortcomings
I guess to reframe another way: Are you incredibly shitty towards babies and dogs? If you are, then (assuming you agree that babies and dogs are moral patients) I would claim that your problem it is about how to treat with care and empathy beings who you don’t intellectually respect. It’s not (just) about how to find a path to intellectually respecting adults that don’t merit it because there will always be beings that merit empathy and love but not intellectual respect.
I also think intellectual respect is not a binary trait with respect to whether you have it for an individual or not. I think that you can (and often should) have intellectual respect for an individual on some topics but not others. E.g. I merit no intellectual respect on any topic related to sports. I think a lot of rationality is about trying to deserve intellectual respect on increasingly meta/abstract levels (e.g. while I don’t think I merit any intellectual respect on any topic related to sports, I would hope that I would merit some intellectual respect if I were to try to confer about how to approach learning about sports, because I try to be thoughtful about how to learn new topics in an efficient, unbiased, and truth-seeking way). But I think that even for the people who are most worthy of intellectual respect writ broad, there’s quite a bit of unevenness.
I think this is an important point a bit buried here. I like my therapist and listen to her and want her advice—she’s not just a sounding board. However, I am pretty sure I’m smarter than her, and I’m definitely more oriented toward truth-seeking, which doesn’t seem to be something she really thinks about much. And yes, I do find myself frustrated and contemptuous during some conversations. But I continue to see her because I trust that she still has a lot to teach me! I’d be a terrible truth seeker if I saw her fumble one conversation and decided that she couldn’t help me in any way.
So I guess the important thing is that I don’t engage her in philosophical debates? Jenn, perhaps the answer is to meet with “common” folks on their own ground. It strikes me while writing this that the philosophy meetup you went to might have been the worst possible setting to test your empathy. These people were racing on hands and knees to call themself the fastest in the world and had never even heard of running.
How do you feel about cats?
Well, at least they’re not dogs! Cats wandering around do prettify a neighbourhood, as long as they’re not doing their business in my garden, and I extend them the same grudging tolerance as they do to us. I don’t stroke them, despite Jordan Peterson’s advice.
Well, I guess we’re different. I always want to pet all the dogs and all the cats too.
Is there a rationalist consensus on free will vs determinism?
Someone already mentioned Spinoza. I was surprised he wasn’t included in the lists of books you’re reading. Spinoza would say that strong emotions (even those based on inadequate ideas) will always overcome less strong emotions (even those based on adequate ideas). So your shame is unlikely to shut down your hatred unless it develops into profound self-loathing, which would probably do more harm than good, overall. Spinoza also says that weaker emotions can win by duration (persisting over time). In addition, his whole philosophy is based on the idea that we don’t have free will and therefore cannot be blamed for our mistakes and the destruction they wreak. Sapolsky supports Spinoza’s claims with current science and is very persuasive. Spinoza would likely advise you to develop your love of humanity by dedicated practice and allow it to resolve your contempt gradually.
I don’t think your writing is unclear :)
I can see myself in this post and I think you are right that this is an emotional problem! Which in part means I don’t believe you’ll resolve the contempt by trying to think your way through it.
I think instead it would be cool to have a discussion where you feel the contempt and the shame you have around it, as well as giving those emotions space without denying them.
There are questions I would be interested in understanding, such as, in what ways do you feel judged for having this contempt? Do you feel it’s unfair? What other emotions exist around this problem? Is there anger or sadness that others in less wrong (i.e. your own community) aren’t trying to understand the contempt that you are feeling in the way you would hope?
“when i am around people i find intellectually unserious, i deny them personhood”—this seems like a great jumping off point for contemplating what “personhood” means, both in general and to you, specifically. In particular, if the partial derivative of someone’s personhood with respect their intellectual seriousness is so large does that mean you’re overweighting intellectual seriousness among all of the possible contributors to personhood? If so, is this because you genuinely value intellectual seriousness that much more than all those other factors, or is it just that you’re paying more attention to it and, perhaps, not making the effort to recognize and/or suitably value the other factors when (implicitly) evaluating their personhood?
Sorry, I kind of think this comment misses the point. I already know when I would like for personhood to be granted, the problem is that my emotions do not agree.
If it’s helpful, I think this analogizes to a person who knows intellectually that dogs are not frightening, but gets scared in the presence of dogs anyways.
I suppose that analogy brings up some interesting interventions to try...
If you’d be so kind, could you clarify whether it is your (intellectual?) knowing or your emotional (feeling?) that is broader/more inclusive w.r.t. personhood? And am I correct to read this as saying you believe the former should trump the latter? Or is it just that the lack of agreement troubles you without your needing to “choose sides” between the two?
That’s correct, it’s my intellectual knowing that’s more inclusive. While it’s often important to pay attention to what your emotions are telling you, sometimes the emotions are saying something stupid or antisocial, and in this case I don’t think there is much to be gained by conceding any ground to it.
Yet, ironically(?), your emotions are telling you to rely more narrowly on your estimation of the person’s intellect? I think that’s what had me confused—I was assuming you were saying your intellect wanted you to focus on intellect while your emotions were urging you to include emotions, among possibly other factors. One would hope that the emotional drive to use narrower criteria would be short-lived in comparison to your more deeply rooted (?) intellectual position.