not all factual corrections will be delivered in pleasing forms
Yep, but I think your example does not go far enough. “Annoying but good-faith LW comments” is one thing, but valuable critique can also come from the mouths of openly sneering bad-faith internet trolls.[1] If you can keep yourself from over-updating on negativity into depression spirals, you may extract some actually useful feedback from your haters’ drivel! (You may want to route it through spite instead of empathy, though. As in, “this fool wants me to fail, but they’ve just brought me useful information, of their own volition!”.)
I think it’s true there can be useful things about listening to bad faith internet trolls, but, I do kinda think you can save the world mostly without interact with bad faith internet trolls (unless you have some additional reason to take them seriously).
(the “at least as annoying as John” and “NOT at least as annoying as openly sneering internet trolls” is an empirical belief based on the contingent state of the rationalsphere and professional world and broader world. I don’t think the internet trolls are actually a good use of your time, en net)
Yeah, it’s not a good use of your time to seek that out. But if you do happen to stumble upon them (e. g., if they intruded into your garden, or if Zvi’s newsletter covered an incident involving them, with quotes), and a statement from them causes a twinge of “hm, there may be something to it...”, investigating that twinge may be useful. You shouldn’t necessarily crush it in a burst of cognitive dissonance/self-protectivenss.
Giving attention to sneering comments that happen to bubble to your attention isn’t Pareto optional on any front. If you want to learn where you are wrong, seek out the most insightful people who disagree with you (and not just the ones that use long essays to lay out their case logically).
Yep, but I think your example does not go far enough. “Annoying but good-faith LW comments” is one thing, but valuable critique can also come from the mouths of openly sneering bad-faith internet trolls.[1] If you can keep yourself from over-updating on negativity into depression spirals, you may extract some actually useful feedback from your haters’ drivel! (You may want to route it through spite instead of empathy, though. As in, “this fool wants me to fail, but they’ve just brought me useful information, of their own volition!”.)
You know how that meme goes, “Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made a Great Point”.
I think it’s true there can be useful things about listening to bad faith internet trolls, but, I do kinda think you can save the world mostly without interact with bad faith internet trolls (unless you have some additional reason to take them seriously).
(the “at least as annoying as John” and “NOT at least as annoying as openly sneering internet trolls” is an empirical belief based on the contingent state of the rationalsphere and professional world and broader world. I don’t think the internet trolls are actually a good use of your time, en net)
Yeah, it’s not a good use of your time to seek that out. But if you do happen to stumble upon them (e. g., if they intruded into your garden, or if Zvi’s newsletter covered an incident involving them, with quotes), and a statement from them causes a twinge of “hm, there may be something to it...”, investigating that twinge may be useful. You shouldn’t necessarily crush it in a burst of cognitive dissonance/self-protectivenss.
Giving attention to sneering comments that happen to bubble to your attention isn’t Pareto optional on any front. If you want to learn where you are wrong, seek out the most insightful people who disagree with you (and not just the ones that use long essays to lay out their case logically).