For some of us, being perceived as nice is one of the most important ways we can help ourselves in real life. And the best way to be consistently perceived as nice is to be constantly concerned with the niceness of the statements one makes, and seriously try to avoid giving offense. If I became blunt and plain-spoken it would hurt me in real life. It would not be worth it to me. Except in very rare situations (such as if I’m personally responsible for saving lives, and I have to be deliberately rude to do it.)
In the interests of rationality, I’ll refrain in future from criticizing un-PC statements because they’re “not nice.” I don’t want to confuse anyone. But I can’t make those statements myself—that comes at a cost I won’t pay.
Do you ordinarily find that you have difficulty maintaining different registers(1) for different contexts?
If so, I sympathize and wish you luck in overcoming that difficulty. It is an enormously useful skill: as you say, being perceived as nice is valuable, and different communities perceive different kinds of behavior as nice, so you do best to learn to signal appropriately for different contexts (2).
If you don’t have difficulty with this, though, then your comment puzzles me. If you agree with FKARoko that LW norms support “un-PC” (3) posts, or in any event ought to, then what cost are you concerned about… what’s the cost? Conversely, if you don’t agree with him, why refrain from criticizing un-PC statements… what confusion?
(2) Unless, of course, you spend all your time in only one community.
(3) Caveat: I don’t really understand what “PC” means; I’m using the term because it’s the term you and FKARoko both use. I gather you use it here as synonymous with “nice,” although in my own experience niceness often has more to do with how a statement is framed than what is actually being said.
For clarity’s sake: PC means politically correct and usually refers to political inoffensiveness. The term isn’t really apt for the current discussion because there was no talk of politics.
I don’t know if I’m great at code-switching. I can tell that LW is “not PC” or blunt-spoken. But the thing is, when some heuristic is good for you in most of your life, you may internalize it and simply make it a constant feature of your personality. For example, if it’s usually a bad idea for you to use swear words, you may be better off just not swearing at all, even when you’re in the saloon and swearing would be socially appropriate. You may want to personally identify as a non-curser. It makes double-sure that you’ll never swear at the wrong time.
If you don’t trust yourself to be socially agile in switching from situation to situation, then I think “better safe than sorry” makes sense.
If you don’t trust yourself to be socially agile in switching from situation to situation, then I think “better safe than sorry” makes sense.
Agreed as far as it goes. But that’s a big “if.”
The social agility you’re talking about is an important life skill. If I spend some time in contexts where a particular behavior has social benefits and some time in contexts where the same behavior has social costs, then I get the best results by staying aware of the context that I’m in and behaving appropriately.
That said, I do appreciate that it’s harder for some people than others. If I can’t do that, the next-best thing is to construct a superposition of rulesets and always apply it. This is similar to what you’re suggesting here… if the costs of cursing in the no-curse environments are much higher than the benefits of cursing in the yes-curse environments, adopting a “don’t curse regardless of context” rule as you suggest can work OK.
My point is, it’s a second-best option. Paying attention to my environment as it changes and responding accordingly has better payoffs, if I can manage it.
being perceived as nice is one of the most important ways we can help ourselves in real life
not just for some, for all of us. It is in everyone’s narrow self interest to sacrifice epistemology for signalling purposes. And in real life one has to do that. But here at least, I think that we should establish the opposite norm.
Look, what is the point of you trying to appear PC on LW? I for one am just not impressed. I already know that you’re from a certain demographic that implies lots of good things about you. But it implies bad things about you if you can’t turn off the the signalling BS in a context where it is socially very harmful, I.e. A rationality website.
Throughout the sequences it has been made clear that there usually is some local incentive for motivated cognition. Wanting to appear PC is no different: it’s just another reason that people have for blowing their thought process up, with all the usual downsides, e.g. The downside that you often simply don’t know what the cost will be because you would only be able to compute the cost of the motivated cognition if you were not engaging in it. Suffice it to say that I think we should have very strong norms against motivated cognition here on LW.
As I see it, the problem there is that saying “we shouldn’t be affected by this stuff” does not mean that we aren’t affected by this stuff. Knowing your cognitive biases allows for workarounds—it doesn’t cause them not to exist.
In particular, saying to others “you’re smart people, you should not be affected by such nuances” and then not bothering to put them into place oneself is almost a cliched way to come across as an arsehole on the Internet and have people not want to bother listening to the speaker, no matter how right they may be. The message communicated is not “you should be affected less”, but “I am inept.” This reduces one’s effectiveness.
Postel’s law: “Be conservative in what you send; be liberal in what you accept.”
If someone posts like a raging arsehole, they can be as right as they like, but people still won’t welcome them or want to listen to them. It’s not as effective a communication strategy as thinking before typing: your aim is to get the effect you want, not to win the conversation.
I speak here as a (hopefully) recovering arsehole. I have no plans to compromise the accuracy of what I’m saying, but it is useful to say it in a way that doesn’t repel people from even reading.
I know you’re not impressed. I know folks around here don’t like it much. I’m glad there are such folks who say what they think without signaling. I respect that attitude, and it’s partly because I respect it that I’m here. I do want to know what people think when they’re solely concerned with accuracy. But I don’t really want to imitate them—maybe a little, but not thoroughly.
Truth is, I used to be socially awkward. These days, I’m not, but it’s not because I’m any cleverer at dealing with people, it’s because I’ve adopted a persona that’s all about being, let’s say, harmless. Positive and gentle. Trying to please. It’s kind of a good all-purpose heuristic—if I make some kind of faux pas, people will think “oh, she’s clueless, but she’s nice.” I’m good with nice-but-clueless.
And if you really want to be 100% nice-but-clueless, you have to be that way all the time. It’s not just political PC—I make a deliberate point of, as much as possible, never thinking or speaking badly of anyone. Not even in private. Not even in forums where the opposite norm holds. Once you start down that path, there’s a chance that you might be bitchy in public. And you can’t really afford that if you have other flaws and weaknesses, I think; I need people to forgive me my mistakes.
Would it be worth it to change? As you point out, I can’t know, because I’m within the world of motivated cognition. That said, I can think of circumstances where I probably ought to change—if I worked in the private sector, for example, or if I chose an advisor who really values frankness (both live possibilities.) There may come a point where “nice but clueless” stops working for me. And then I’ll really have to take this stuff seriously. But I have no idea who I’ll be, once I’m not nice-but-clueless.
A couple of times here, I’ve run into guys who find nice really annoying. It was useful for me to be a good bit blunter than unusual with them, and I’m inclined to believe that the experiment in flexibility was good for me.
The problem, I think, is that nice involves such a light touch that for some people, it fails to make contact.
I like nice. I prefer nice. And I think it’s got some very definite limits.
I make a deliberate point of, as much as possible, never thinking or speaking badly of anyone. Not even in private
Then I think that you are in grave danger of getting pretty badly screwed by someone. There are genuinely bad people in this world, and there are lots of kind-of-bad people who will screw you over and rationalize it somehow. You have to have a healthy skepticism (not paranoia) about people’s motives, it’s the only way to prevent someone taking your money or your job/house etc. Seriously, forget the darned debate: if what you say is true, you are probably in serious danger of being taken advantage of in some way.
If I were you, I would seriously consider trying to improve your social skills the hard way, i.e. by learning social skills, and not engaging in potentially massively self-harming motivated cognition.
Ah… I should have read this before replying to what you said elsewhere.
So, you’re aware that presenting as “nice but clueless” works against you in communities where cluelessness isn’t a point in your favor, but you prefer to optimize for the communities where it is.
I doubt you’ll ever “have to,” in the sense of being forced to by circumstances. That’s what I meant by it being your choice to make.
Plenty of people live their entire lives optimizing for minimizing social friction at the cost of expressing their thoughts clearly and unambiguously… presenting as “nice but clueless,” in other words. “Going along to get along” is another way to say it. I suspect that as long as you make the choice to do so, you will be able to find situations that allow you to, just like they do.
That’s what value judgments are for, after all: they let you construct a preference order among possible states of the world, and therefore drive the choices you make. The decision to present as “nice but clueless” will affect the sorts of acquaintances you make, the sorts of communities you join, the sorts of organizations you work for, and so forth.
To put it differently: like it or not, you actually have a lot of power over your own future.
So the question is, how confident are you in the preference order you’re defending?
If you’re confident in it, then great… you’re choosing the world you want, which is as it should be, and I wish you joy of it.
OTOH, if you are uncertain, then I suggest that you might do better to explore the roots of that uncertainty yourself, rather than wait for events to somehow force you to change your mind.
I like that attitude. It is also not irrational because you are aware of it and deliberately choose to be that way. I believe that Less Wrong features a way too much ought. I don’t disagree with the consensus on Cryonics at all, yet I’m not getting a contract because I’m too lazy and I like to be lazy. My usual credo is, I can’t lose as long as I don’t leave my way. That doesn’t mean I am stubborn. I allow myself to alter my way situational.
Rationality is about winning and what constitutes winning is purely subjective. If you don’t care if the universe is tiled with paperclips rather than being filled with apes having sex under the stars, that is completely rational as long as you are aware what exactly you care or don’t care about.
Do you think that your beliefs regarding what you care about could be mistaken? That you might tell yourself that you care more about being lazy than about getting cryonics done, but that in fact, under reflection, you would prefer to get the contract?
...in fact, under reflection, you would prefer to get the contract?
I can’t solve that problem right now. It implies that part of my volition is not, in fact, part of what I want or should not be part of my goals. Why would I only listen to the part of my inner self favoring long-term decisions? I could take the car to drive to that Christmas party to visit my family and friends, or I could stay home because of black ice. After all there will be many more Christmas parties without black ice in future, and even more in the far future where there will be backups? But where does this thinking lead? I want both of course. On reflection, not dying is more important than party. But on further reflection I do not have enough data that would allow me to conclude that any long-term payoff could outweigh extensive restraint at present.
There are also some practical considerations about Cryonics. I am in Germany, I don’t know of any Cryonics companies here. I don’t know what is the likelihood of being frozen quickly enough in case of accident. When I know I’m going to die in advance then I can still get a contract then. So is the money really worth it, given that most pathways to death result in no expected benefits from a Cryonics contract?
Look, what is the point of you trying to appear PC on LW?
Because this is not a private mailing list?
Imagine some scientist or politician came here to get a dose of rationality just to come across a discussion where someone argues that he knows more and then tells everyone to keep their idiot mouths shut? This happened on Less Wrong and the person who said so might have even been factually correct. Besides that this caused some uproar and damaged Less Wrong it is also a bad way of communicating truth and rationality. Stating conclusions like that is not a way to refine rationality. People do not come here to learn facts, e.g. that they are dumb, but how to arrive at such factual conclusions.
IMO if a top politician or scientist came here and found politically correct BS as the standard ideology on this so called “rational” website, they would probably sigh and close the page never to return. Why should they? They have better things to do with their time than listen to BS.
On the other hand, I don’t think they would be impressed if we didn’t have the skill to frame potentially inflammatory facts in a delicate way. I am not arguing against careful, delicate framing. I am arguing against MOTIVATED COGNITION.
I’m not suggesting that Less Wrong should conceal the truth to schmooze certain ideologies. What I am suggesting is that Less Wrong is NOT about teaching people how to score Karma points on Less Wrong but in the real world.
Less Wrong has to be able to apply rationality in a reconcilable dose rate.
Less Wrong has to keep care that it does not shut itself up in its own ivory-tower.
Less Wrong has to be focused on teaching utilizable rationality skills.
Motivated cognition can be a double-edged sword. If you overcompensate against political correctness you can easily end up pursuing an introversive self-image that leads to ingroup bias. Less Wrong has to be in an equilibrium of internal affairs and public relations.
Political correctness bias is not the cure to ingroup bias. If you have an ingroup bias problem, you solve the ingroup bias problem with the usual rationality tactics—like being honest about the weaknesses of the ingroup.
As far as I can tell, the best path is to vigorously fight PC bias and ingroup bias. You can have both. Really.
For some of us, being perceived as nice is one of the most important ways we can help ourselves in real life. And the best way to be consistently perceived as nice is to be constantly concerned with the niceness of the statements one makes, and seriously try to avoid giving offense. If I became blunt and plain-spoken it would hurt me in real life. It would not be worth it to me. Except in very rare situations (such as if I’m personally responsible for saving lives, and I have to be deliberately rude to do it.)
In the interests of rationality, I’ll refrain in future from criticizing un-PC statements because they’re “not nice.” I don’t want to confuse anyone. But I can’t make those statements myself—that comes at a cost I won’t pay.
Do you ordinarily find that you have difficulty maintaining different registers(1) for different contexts?
If so, I sympathize and wish you luck in overcoming that difficulty. It is an enormously useful skill: as you say, being perceived as nice is valuable, and different communities perceive different kinds of behavior as nice, so you do best to learn to signal appropriately for different contexts (2).
If you don’t have difficulty with this, though, then your comment puzzles me. If you agree with FKARoko that LW norms support “un-PC” (3) posts, or in any event ought to, then what cost are you concerned about… what’s the cost? Conversely, if you don’t agree with him, why refrain from criticizing un-PC statements… what confusion?
==
(1) I mean “register” in the linguistics sense.
(2) Unless, of course, you spend all your time in only one community.
(3) Caveat: I don’t really understand what “PC” means; I’m using the term because it’s the term you and FKARoko both use. I gather you use it here as synonymous with “nice,” although in my own experience niceness often has more to do with how a statement is framed than what is actually being said.
For clarity’s sake: PC means politically correct and usually refers to political inoffensiveness. The term isn’t really apt for the current discussion because there was no talk of politics.
I don’t know if I’m great at code-switching. I can tell that LW is “not PC” or blunt-spoken. But the thing is, when some heuristic is good for you in most of your life, you may internalize it and simply make it a constant feature of your personality. For example, if it’s usually a bad idea for you to use swear words, you may be better off just not swearing at all, even when you’re in the saloon and swearing would be socially appropriate. You may want to personally identify as a non-curser. It makes double-sure that you’ll never swear at the wrong time.
If you don’t trust yourself to be socially agile in switching from situation to situation, then I think “better safe than sorry” makes sense.
Agreed as far as it goes. But that’s a big “if.”
The social agility you’re talking about is an important life skill. If I spend some time in contexts where a particular behavior has social benefits and some time in contexts where the same behavior has social costs, then I get the best results by staying aware of the context that I’m in and behaving appropriately.
That said, I do appreciate that it’s harder for some people than others. If I can’t do that, the next-best thing is to construct a superposition of rulesets and always apply it. This is similar to what you’re suggesting here… if the costs of cursing in the no-curse environments are much higher than the benefits of cursing in the yes-curse environments, adopting a “don’t curse regardless of context” rule as you suggest can work OK.
My point is, it’s a second-best option. Paying attention to my environment as it changes and responding accordingly has better payoffs, if I can manage it.
not just for some, for all of us. It is in everyone’s narrow self interest to sacrifice epistemology for signalling purposes. And in real life one has to do that. But here at least, I think that we should establish the opposite norm.
Look, what is the point of you trying to appear PC on LW? I for one am just not impressed. I already know that you’re from a certain demographic that implies lots of good things about you. But it implies bad things about you if you can’t turn off the the signalling BS in a context where it is socially very harmful, I.e. A rationality website.
Throughout the sequences it has been made clear that there usually is some local incentive for motivated cognition. Wanting to appear PC is no different: it’s just another reason that people have for blowing their thought process up, with all the usual downsides, e.g. The downside that you often simply don’t know what the cost will be because you would only be able to compute the cost of the motivated cognition if you were not engaging in it. Suffice it to say that I think we should have very strong norms against motivated cognition here on LW.
As I see it, the problem there is that saying “we shouldn’t be affected by this stuff” does not mean that we aren’t affected by this stuff. Knowing your cognitive biases allows for workarounds—it doesn’t cause them not to exist.
In particular, saying to others “you’re smart people, you should not be affected by such nuances” and then not bothering to put them into place oneself is almost a cliched way to come across as an arsehole on the Internet and have people not want to bother listening to the speaker, no matter how right they may be. The message communicated is not “you should be affected less”, but “I am inept.” This reduces one’s effectiveness.
Postel’s law: “Be conservative in what you send; be liberal in what you accept.”
If someone posts like a raging arsehole, they can be as right as they like, but people still won’t welcome them or want to listen to them. It’s not as effective a communication strategy as thinking before typing: your aim is to get the effect you want, not to win the conversation.
I speak here as a (hopefully) recovering arsehole. I have no plans to compromise the accuracy of what I’m saying, but it is useful to say it in a way that doesn’t repel people from even reading.
Sorry, I don’t understand you. Who said that someone should not be affected by cognitive biases?
I know you’re not impressed. I know folks around here don’t like it much. I’m glad there are such folks who say what they think without signaling. I respect that attitude, and it’s partly because I respect it that I’m here. I do want to know what people think when they’re solely concerned with accuracy. But I don’t really want to imitate them—maybe a little, but not thoroughly.
Truth is, I used to be socially awkward. These days, I’m not, but it’s not because I’m any cleverer at dealing with people, it’s because I’ve adopted a persona that’s all about being, let’s say, harmless. Positive and gentle. Trying to please. It’s kind of a good all-purpose heuristic—if I make some kind of faux pas, people will think “oh, she’s clueless, but she’s nice.” I’m good with nice-but-clueless.
And if you really want to be 100% nice-but-clueless, you have to be that way all the time. It’s not just political PC—I make a deliberate point of, as much as possible, never thinking or speaking badly of anyone. Not even in private. Not even in forums where the opposite norm holds. Once you start down that path, there’s a chance that you might be bitchy in public. And you can’t really afford that if you have other flaws and weaknesses, I think; I need people to forgive me my mistakes.
Would it be worth it to change? As you point out, I can’t know, because I’m within the world of motivated cognition. That said, I can think of circumstances where I probably ought to change—if I worked in the private sector, for example, or if I chose an advisor who really values frankness (both live possibilities.) There may come a point where “nice but clueless” stops working for me. And then I’ll really have to take this stuff seriously. But I have no idea who I’ll be, once I’m not nice-but-clueless.
A couple of times here, I’ve run into guys who find nice really annoying. It was useful for me to be a good bit blunter than unusual with them, and I’m inclined to believe that the experiment in flexibility was good for me.
The problem, I think, is that nice involves such a light touch that for some people, it fails to make contact.
I like nice. I prefer nice. And I think it’s got some very definite limits.
Then I think that you are in grave danger of getting pretty badly screwed by someone. There are genuinely bad people in this world, and there are lots of kind-of-bad people who will screw you over and rationalize it somehow. You have to have a healthy skepticism (not paranoia) about people’s motives, it’s the only way to prevent someone taking your money or your job/house etc. Seriously, forget the darned debate: if what you say is true, you are probably in serious danger of being taken advantage of in some way.
If I were you, I would seriously consider trying to improve your social skills the hard way, i.e. by learning social skills, and not engaging in potentially massively self-harming motivated cognition.
You may be right there.
Ah… I should have read this before replying to what you said elsewhere.
So, you’re aware that presenting as “nice but clueless” works against you in communities where cluelessness isn’t a point in your favor, but you prefer to optimize for the communities where it is.
OK, fair enough: that’s your choice to make.
I’m not sure, really. I’m open to changing my mind. I may have to, after all.
I doubt you’ll ever “have to,” in the sense of being forced to by circumstances. That’s what I meant by it being your choice to make.
Plenty of people live their entire lives optimizing for minimizing social friction at the cost of expressing their thoughts clearly and unambiguously… presenting as “nice but clueless,” in other words. “Going along to get along” is another way to say it. I suspect that as long as you make the choice to do so, you will be able to find situations that allow you to, just like they do.
That’s what value judgments are for, after all: they let you construct a preference order among possible states of the world, and therefore drive the choices you make. The decision to present as “nice but clueless” will affect the sorts of acquaintances you make, the sorts of communities you join, the sorts of organizations you work for, and so forth.
To put it differently: like it or not, you actually have a lot of power over your own future.
So the question is, how confident are you in the preference order you’re defending?
If you’re confident in it, then great… you’re choosing the world you want, which is as it should be, and I wish you joy of it.
OTOH, if you are uncertain, then I suggest that you might do better to explore the roots of that uncertainty yourself, rather than wait for events to somehow force you to change your mind.
I like that attitude. It is also not irrational because you are aware of it and deliberately choose to be that way. I believe that Less Wrong features a way too much ought. I don’t disagree with the consensus on Cryonics at all, yet I’m not getting a contract because I’m too lazy and I like to be lazy. My usual credo is, I can’t lose as long as I don’t leave my way. That doesn’t mean I am stubborn. I allow myself to alter my way situational.
Rationality is about winning and what constitutes winning is purely subjective. If you don’t care if the universe is tiled with paperclips rather than being filled with apes having sex under the stars, that is completely rational as long as you are aware what exactly you care or don’t care about.
Do you think that your beliefs regarding what you care about could be mistaken? That you might tell yourself that you care more about being lazy than about getting cryonics done, but that in fact, under reflection, you would prefer to get the contract?
I can’t solve that problem right now. It implies that part of my volition is not, in fact, part of what I want or should not be part of my goals. Why would I only listen to the part of my inner self favoring long-term decisions? I could take the car to drive to that Christmas party to visit my family and friends, or I could stay home because of black ice. After all there will be many more Christmas parties without black ice in future, and even more in the far future where there will be backups? But where does this thinking lead? I want both of course. On reflection, not dying is more important than party. But on further reflection I do not have enough data that would allow me to conclude that any long-term payoff could outweigh extensive restraint at present.
There are also some practical considerations about Cryonics. I am in Germany, I don’t know of any Cryonics companies here. I don’t know what is the likelihood of being frozen quickly enough in case of accident. When I know I’m going to die in advance then I can still get a contract then. So is the money really worth it, given that most pathways to death result in no expected benefits from a Cryonics contract?
Because this is not a private mailing list?
Imagine some scientist or politician came here to get a dose of rationality just to come across a discussion where someone argues that he knows more and then tells everyone to keep their idiot mouths shut? This happened on Less Wrong and the person who said so might have even been factually correct. Besides that this caused some uproar and damaged Less Wrong it is also a bad way of communicating truth and rationality. Stating conclusions like that is not a way to refine rationality. People do not come here to learn facts, e.g. that they are dumb, but how to arrive at such factual conclusions.
IMO if a top politician or scientist came here and found politically correct BS as the standard ideology on this so called “rational” website, they would probably sigh and close the page never to return. Why should they? They have better things to do with their time than listen to BS.
On the other hand, I don’t think they would be impressed if we didn’t have the skill to frame potentially inflammatory facts in a delicate way. I am not arguing against careful, delicate framing. I am arguing against MOTIVATED COGNITION.
I’m not suggesting that Less Wrong should conceal the truth to schmooze certain ideologies. What I am suggesting is that Less Wrong is NOT about teaching people how to score Karma points on Less Wrong but in the real world.
Less Wrong has to be able to apply rationality in a reconcilable dose rate.
Less Wrong has to keep care that it does not shut itself up in its own ivory-tower.
Less Wrong has to be focused on teaching utilizable rationality skills.
Motivated cognition can be a double-edged sword. If you overcompensate against political correctness you can easily end up pursuing an introversive self-image that leads to ingroup bias. Less Wrong has to be in an equilibrium of internal affairs and public relations.
Political correctness bias is not the cure to ingroup bias. If you have an ingroup bias problem, you solve the ingroup bias problem with the usual rationality tactics—like being honest about the weaknesses of the ingroup.
As far as I can tell, the best path is to vigorously fight PC bias and ingroup bias. You can have both. Really.