But he’s also stating that he thinks I have literally nothing to offer him by way of new information and vice-versa. That’s pretty low!
This is definitely not how I saw it.
I’m sure everyone has a lot to learn from everyone else. The big challenge is that this learning is costly and we have extremely limited resources. There’s an endless number of discussions we could be part of, and we all have very limited time left in total (for discussions and other things). So if I try to gently leave a conversation, it’s mainly a signal of “I don’t think that this is the absolutely most high-value thing for me to be doing now”, which is a high bar!
Second, I think you might have been taking this a bit personally, like me trying to hold off conversation was a personal evaluation as you as a person.
Again, I know very little about you, and I used to know even less (when you made the original comment). This is the comment in question:
Defending a position by pointing out that a portion (however big or small) of the critics of the position are ‘vitriolic’ isn’t actually a valid argument. If people really hate something so much so that they get emotional about it that’s still pretty good evidence that the something is bad.
This really doesn’t give me much insight into your position or background. Basically all I know about you is that you wrote these two sentences here, and have written a few comments on LessWrong in the past. My prior for “person with an anonymous name on LessWrong, a few previous comments there, and so on”, doesn’t make me incredibly excited to spend a lot of time going back and forth with. I’ve been burned in the past, a few times, with people who match similar characteristics.
Often people who use anonymous accounts wind up being terrific, it’s just hard to discern which are which, early on.
About that last line; I’m fine with you replying or not replying. I wish you the best in the continuation of your intellectual journey.
Lastly, I’ll note that this “White Fragility” is a very sensitive topic that I’m not excited to chat about publicly on forums like this. (In part because my comments on this get downvoted a lot, in part because this sort of discussion can easily be used as ammunition later on by anyone interested (against either myself or any of the other commenters who responds)). My identity is clearly public, so there is real risk.
I write blog posts on LessWrong that are far less controversial, and am much more happy to publicly discuss those topics.
Thanks for the longer comments here!
Quick thoughts, on my end:
This is definitely not how I saw it.
I’m sure everyone has a lot to learn from everyone else. The big challenge is that this learning is costly and we have extremely limited resources. There’s an endless number of discussions we could be part of, and we all have very limited time left in total (for discussions and other things). So if I try to gently leave a conversation, it’s mainly a signal of “I don’t think that this is the absolutely most high-value thing for me to be doing now”, which is a high bar!
Second, I think you might have been taking this a bit personally, like me trying to hold off conversation was a personal evaluation as you as a person.
Again, I know very little about you, and I used to know even less (when you made the original comment). This is the comment in question:
This really doesn’t give me much insight into your position or background. Basically all I know about you is that you wrote these two sentences here, and have written a few comments on LessWrong in the past. My prior for “person with an anonymous name on LessWrong, a few previous comments there, and so on”, doesn’t make me incredibly excited to spend a lot of time going back and forth with. I’ve been burned in the past, a few times, with people who match similar characteristics.
Often people who use anonymous accounts wind up being terrific, it’s just hard to discern which are which, early on.
About that last line; I’m fine with you replying or not replying. I wish you the best in the continuation of your intellectual journey.
Lastly, I’ll note that this “White Fragility” is a very sensitive topic that I’m not excited to chat about publicly on forums like this. (In part because my comments on this get downvoted a lot, in part because this sort of discussion can easily be used as ammunition later on by anyone interested (against either myself or any of the other commenters who responds)). My identity is clearly public, so there is real risk.
I write blog posts on LessWrong that are far less controversial, and am much more happy to publicly discuss those topics.