Does anyone else associate the description “cold and calculating” with intelligence? I was wondering if you could describe dumb animals that rape and kill each other as cold and calculating and decided not. To me this article is suggesting libertarians are more intelligent.
Disclosure: I would not describe myself as libertarian (maybe because I’m not particularly interested in politics) although I did donate money to Ron Paul once and have read some libertarian documents, whereas I would describe myself as “feminine.”
I agree, it’s not a positive description. But looking on the upside...? Plus I was wondering if people realized or agreed that they were suggesting libertarians were smarter.
The type of murderer who just completely flips out isn’t described as “cold and calculating” but we might describe a strategic killer that way. However, that comparison just means the strategic one is thinking more—not necessarily that the thinking being done is more intelligent. It might only imply that the strategic one isn’t flying off the handle in response to emotion.
Try this scenario:
There’s a murder who wants to kill a certain victim. The murderer watches the victim for a while to discover their commuting habits. They make a plan and purchase supplies. After a few weeks of planning, the murderer waits in the bushes, possessing everything necessary to kill their victim—formaldehyde for a snare, handcuffs for restraints, a knife, and a first aid kit in case the victim hurts them in a struggle. They wait for an hour until the victim is in exactly the right spot, and then they pounce with the formaldehyde. The murder handcuffs the victim and takes them to a different location where nobody can see. Then the murderer kills the victim.
Is this murderer cold and calculating?
Did the murderer use more strategy than the average person might use on a camping trip that involves hunting?
I think the answer to that is “no”, so the meaning is potentially more like “cold enough to calculate” not “cold but intelligent”.
Also, “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care”. If people see you as malicious but weak, say a child who fights with the other kids, they’re likely to write you off as an annoyance and ignore you.
However, if they see you as malicious but strong, a fully grown person who is a rapist we’ll say, then one is seen as a threat and people will pull out all the stops to get rid of you. A serial rapist gets news coverage. People stay indoors to avoid them. Police put in extra effort.
How often have there been news reports of a child bully wandering the sidewalks, urging you to protect your children? Probably never. That would just make people laugh. But I’ve seen rapists on the news plenty of times.
I think LessWrong would be better off with a label that means something more along the lines of “harmless nerds” or “intelligent people who care about the world”.
I’m pretty sure cold and calculating means something more like “monstrous”.
I hadn’t realized LessWrongers were being called cold and calculating. Despite Hanson writing some libertarian things, my impression was the plurality of lesswrongers subscribed to socialism or liberalism. Is this erroneous?
Does the description imply that the person thinks they are superior to or separate from other people? If I were worried about being described as cold and calculating, I think I’d try to show I cared about and could relate to normal people, despite being, in some ways, atypical. So if a libertarian, or anyone, were worried about being described this way, maybe they should think of ways to show they’re not indifferent to the masses.
I think I agree with your remarks in general, although I’m not sure I understand what the kid/rapist example is saying. I’m getting the impression that “cold and calculating” means inhuman/monstrous, but also not like the animals, so maybe an impassive, evil robot monster.
I hadn’t realized LessWrongers were being called cold and calculating.
Really? There’s an article link in the OP. The Wall Street Journal did an article on LessWrong. Why don’t you read it?
Despite Hanson writing some libertarian things, my impression was the plurality of lesswrongers subscribed to socialism or liberalism. Is this erroneous?
The article links to a survey that LessWrongers did and so does the OP.
I see you’re new here. FYI people are not going to take kindly to it if you comment on threads without reading the OP and/or closely related materials (such as the WSJ link and survey in the OP). This is because a lot of the people here are very well read. Maybe you are, too, and can understand this. They also don’t take kindly to it if people haven’t endeavored to read about reasoning skills. Maybe you have already read some books on things like logic and biases or have read the sequences or something. If not, I’ll let you know that you need familiarity with these types of subjects if you want to fit in.
I had read the article extract included in the OP, didn’t look at the link. The article itself says that lesswrongers were part of the data set but I didn’t take this to mean this was about lesswrong in general.
What are the reasoning skills you identified as lacking in my comments? I clicked on all the links, certainly. The WSJ refers to the yourmorals and I had clicked on that but didn’t think it was lesswrong because it’s offsite and seems inaccessible. My information on the plurality being liberal/socialist is from a 2011 lesswrong census I read on this site, although I may be misremembering.
Is the point you’re disagreeing with that calling libertarians “cold and calculating” does not equal calling lesswrongers this? I agree that it’s calling a subset of lesswrongers “cold and calculating”- the libertarian subset.
I think to a certain audience I would describe myself as libertarian, although not to the lesswrong audience. My impression is that in general liberals are stereotyped as emotional, educated hippies whereas conservatives are stereotyped as selfish, stupid traditionalists. I had less idea what libertarians were stereotyped as, probably since there are less of them so people don’t really bother.
I want to know if I’m being irrational, that’s the whole point of this. But I’m unsure how to interpret your words or your tone. Is it a language thing, like you’re saying specific libertarian lesswrongers were called cold and calculating but I’m saying lesswrong as a community is not called this? Maybe it’s common for people to say things like this to each other, and I appreciate if you’re trying to help me, but that’s not how I’m left feeling after this interaction- maybe it’d be more helpful if you were more specific, just my impression- please don’t interpret this as a plea for you to sink time into educating me or something, I guess unless you want to of your own volition.
Sorry if I somehow offended you in the first place. Maybe you’re annoyed I didn’t get your child/rapist example? I think I understood your point about people fearing the rapist more, but I don’t see how it relates to the “cold and calculating” topic, unless you’re suggesting the kid would not be called this. It can be hard to communicate tone via the internet and I’m new to all internet forums as of a few months ago so I’m not desensitized yet or accustomed to internet culture. I’ve already realized people often come off very differently online vs offline.
The article itself says that lesswrongers were part of the data set but I didn’t take this to mean this was about lesswrong in general.
I read the subject line for the OP but the title of the article was so similar I didn’t notice it wasn’t exactly the same. Sigh. I think I’ve been had by change blindness. (There’s an interesting LW article I’m being reminded of right now.). My title oversight explains most of the confusion here.
What are the reasoning skills you identified as lacking in my comments?
None. It was perceived lack of motivation to read things that prompted that. This perception is fixed now. I’m sorry about that.
Maybe you’re annoyed I didn’t get your child/rapist example?
I am constantly alienated and usually somewhere near my limit for alienation. Often past it, often just below it. If I seem annoyed, that is probably to blame more than anything. I’m perma-annoyed.
I want to know if I’m being irrational, that’s the whole point of this.
If you want to continue after my oversight with the title, I will engage, but I should probably start over and re-focus. What specific perception(s) do you want to discuss?
Thanks for your reply, it makes me feel much better and I’m glad and impressed we’re not annoyed at each other, especially considering I can also be easily annoyed. I think a lot of people can understand being alienated but I don’t know what the rationalist solution is. For me, it was one of those things that was a feedback loop and thus really hard to get out of. That’s part of why I like HPMOR- Harry is like an alien trying to make a single friend. In his case, he’s alone because he’s superior to everyone and thus can’t rely on anyone else, which may be some cold comfort, but that wasn’t exactly my situation...
Thanks for your reply, it makes me feel much better and I’m glad and impressed we’re not annoyed at each other, especially considering I can also be easily annoyed.
Oh! Yay! (:
I think a lot of people can understand being alienated but I don’t know what the rationalist solution is.
It seems to me that many on LW are alienated, and it’s resulting in the most ridiculous clusterf… People desire to quickly jump to the conclusion that the person they’re talking to is not worth talking to (I think this might apply more to new people than others)… because they are so alienated and have to do something about it, but there’s this wild mix of causes of annoyance and it just makes a mess. There are older users who are spitting out logical fallacies, newer users who are clueless, new users who are sharp, old users who are sharp of course… and sometimes one annoys one’s self (which is what happened to me just now). And of course if people DON’T ignore annoying users, or at least tell them that they’re doing it wrong, they’re encouraged to stick around without improving the annoying behavior… but this is wrought with peril because as you have seen, if I am the one who made the mistake, and I tell you that you’ve made a mistake, I get to look like an idiot, and you get to feel bad for no reason. Many times, when somebody points out my mistake, it’s the same problem—they made a mistake but didn’t notice it, possibly because they’re so annoyed with the last 10 people that annoyed them that they’re not giving me the benefit of the doubt. Occasionally they do point out some mistake I made, so that’s good. But it seems like people here are a bit too apt to reach for the 2 x 4.
That’s part of why I like HPMOR- Harry is like an alien trying to make a single friend. In his case, he’s alone because he’s superior to everyone and thus can’t rely on anyone else, which may be some cold comfort, but that wasn’t exactly my situation...
What was your exact situation?
I am an alien for sure. I relate to not being able to rely on anyone else, but it is not comforting that I’m usually better at figuring things out than those around me. I have plenty of friends but the friendships are one-sided: I am understanding and emotionally supportive to them, but they do not understand me deeply enough so they aren’t really useful for me to talk to about my thoughts and feelings. I’ve noticed that most of the other aliens haven’t mastered staying rational when they’ve discovered an interesting alien they might get close to. This has ruined the vast majority of my attempts to get to know other aliens. I used to have a problem with staying rational when meeting other aliens myself—but that’s not my problem anymore. Now my problem is that nearly everybody else is going about it in dysfunctional ways and I’m burnt out on that. I have no idea how to solve this, so I’m just walking away from that catastrophe and I’ve decided to fill my time up with group projects for now.
Hah! Ok. They can be inappropriately described. :P But perhaps you mean something more along the lines of “it’s not worth thinking about this because WSJ is just saying that to make it sound more interesting.”
I was wondering if you could describe dumb animals that rape and kill each other as cold and calculating and decided not.
Actually you can. Snakes can be described as cold and calculating. Also a serial killer that rapes and kills other humans can be described as cold and calculating depending on his style. But yes overall it does also carry this implication:
To me this article is suggesting libertarians are more intelligent.
And generally higher IQ is correlated in our society with more libertarian social and economical positions.
...Why? You can ascribe any adjectives to any nouns, but why would you associate these with snakes in particular? I mean, cold, yes, strictly speaking, unless they have been on a warm rock lately. Or even in the sense that they probably lack humanlike emotions, but is that even meaningful to say about a snake, and even if it is, why would you want to put it in such a negative-affect-laden way?
And calculating? My pet snake is probably way worse at math than the average dog, let alone a bright parrot or five-year-old human. What would she even calculate? She finds warmth appealing and cold unappealing and drinks when she’s thirsty and strikes when I dangle a dead mouse in front of her and flinches when surprised and hides under her half-a-log when she’s got nothing else to do; this is not rocket science, her brain is about the size of a small raisin and it doesn’t need to be any bigger.
The story I heard from reading Campbell’s myth series of books was that snakes were originally considered powerful and wise creatures because they knew the secrets of immortality—they could shed their skin and become young again. This got wrapped up into the general Semitic set of myths and tropes, where the snake re-appears in the… Garden of Eden tempting Adam & Eve into the Fall. Eventually it and the angel ‘Satan’ got wrapped up into a new Manichean framework as the source of all evil and the Evil One himself, whereupon the powerful and wise aspects became negative (my good mentor is ‘wise’; your evil mentor is ‘calculating’).
The cold part is probably just literal: I’ve never picked up a warm-feeling snake.
I’m not sure but I’ve heard them being described in that way. Maybe because they are literally cold blooded and people fear snakes, so they have the cultural association of sociopathy attached to them.
I wasn’t saying it was a good description, I was just saying it is a description people would use. People kind of anthropomorphize everything, children I’ve observed pretty much do assume on some level animals have human like minds but that they chose to behave differently from social norms.
Does anyone else associate the description “cold and calculating” with intelligence? I was wondering if you could describe dumb animals that rape and kill each other as cold and calculating and decided not. To me this article is suggesting libertarians are more intelligent.
Disclosure: I would not describe myself as libertarian (maybe because I’m not particularly interested in politics) although I did donate money to Ron Paul once and have read some libertarian documents, whereas I would describe myself as “feminine.”
“Cold and calculating” also sounds synonymous with “sociopathic”.
So, this description is bad.
I agree, it’s not a positive description. But looking on the upside...? Plus I was wondering if people realized or agreed that they were suggesting libertarians were smarter.
The type of murderer who just completely flips out isn’t described as “cold and calculating” but we might describe a strategic killer that way. However, that comparison just means the strategic one is thinking more—not necessarily that the thinking being done is more intelligent. It might only imply that the strategic one isn’t flying off the handle in response to emotion.
Try this scenario:
There’s a murder who wants to kill a certain victim. The murderer watches the victim for a while to discover their commuting habits. They make a plan and purchase supplies. After a few weeks of planning, the murderer waits in the bushes, possessing everything necessary to kill their victim—formaldehyde for a snare, handcuffs for restraints, a knife, and a first aid kit in case the victim hurts them in a struggle. They wait for an hour until the victim is in exactly the right spot, and then they pounce with the formaldehyde. The murder handcuffs the victim and takes them to a different location where nobody can see. Then the murderer kills the victim.
Is this murderer cold and calculating?
Did the murderer use more strategy than the average person might use on a camping trip that involves hunting?
I think the answer to that is “no”, so the meaning is potentially more like “cold enough to calculate” not “cold but intelligent”.
Also, “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care”. If people see you as malicious but weak, say a child who fights with the other kids, they’re likely to write you off as an annoyance and ignore you.
However, if they see you as malicious but strong, a fully grown person who is a rapist we’ll say, then one is seen as a threat and people will pull out all the stops to get rid of you. A serial rapist gets news coverage. People stay indoors to avoid them. Police put in extra effort.
How often have there been news reports of a child bully wandering the sidewalks, urging you to protect your children? Probably never. That would just make people laugh. But I’ve seen rapists on the news plenty of times.
I think LessWrong would be better off with a label that means something more along the lines of “harmless nerds” or “intelligent people who care about the world”.
I’m pretty sure cold and calculating means something more like “monstrous”.
I hadn’t realized LessWrongers were being called cold and calculating. Despite Hanson writing some libertarian things, my impression was the plurality of lesswrongers subscribed to socialism or liberalism. Is this erroneous?
Does the description imply that the person thinks they are superior to or separate from other people? If I were worried about being described as cold and calculating, I think I’d try to show I cared about and could relate to normal people, despite being, in some ways, atypical. So if a libertarian, or anyone, were worried about being described this way, maybe they should think of ways to show they’re not indifferent to the masses.
I think I agree with your remarks in general, although I’m not sure I understand what the kid/rapist example is saying. I’m getting the impression that “cold and calculating” means inhuman/monstrous, but also not like the animals, so maybe an impassive, evil robot monster.
Really? There’s an article link in the OP. The Wall Street Journal did an article on LessWrong. Why don’t you read it?
The article links to a survey that LessWrongers did and so does the OP.
I see you’re new here. FYI people are not going to take kindly to it if you comment on threads without reading the OP and/or closely related materials (such as the WSJ link and survey in the OP). This is because a lot of the people here are very well read. Maybe you are, too, and can understand this. They also don’t take kindly to it if people haven’t endeavored to read about reasoning skills. Maybe you have already read some books on things like logic and biases or have read the sequences or something. If not, I’ll let you know that you need familiarity with these types of subjects if you want to fit in.
I had read the article extract included in the OP, didn’t look at the link. The article itself says that lesswrongers were part of the data set but I didn’t take this to mean this was about lesswrong in general.
What are the reasoning skills you identified as lacking in my comments? I clicked on all the links, certainly. The WSJ refers to the yourmorals and I had clicked on that but didn’t think it was lesswrong because it’s offsite and seems inaccessible. My information on the plurality being liberal/socialist is from a 2011 lesswrong census I read on this site, although I may be misremembering.
Is the point you’re disagreeing with that calling libertarians “cold and calculating” does not equal calling lesswrongers this? I agree that it’s calling a subset of lesswrongers “cold and calculating”- the libertarian subset.
I think to a certain audience I would describe myself as libertarian, although not to the lesswrong audience. My impression is that in general liberals are stereotyped as emotional, educated hippies whereas conservatives are stereotyped as selfish, stupid traditionalists. I had less idea what libertarians were stereotyped as, probably since there are less of them so people don’t really bother.
I want to know if I’m being irrational, that’s the whole point of this. But I’m unsure how to interpret your words or your tone. Is it a language thing, like you’re saying specific libertarian lesswrongers were called cold and calculating but I’m saying lesswrong as a community is not called this? Maybe it’s common for people to say things like this to each other, and I appreciate if you’re trying to help me, but that’s not how I’m left feeling after this interaction- maybe it’d be more helpful if you were more specific, just my impression- please don’t interpret this as a plea for you to sink time into educating me or something, I guess unless you want to of your own volition.
Sorry if I somehow offended you in the first place. Maybe you’re annoyed I didn’t get your child/rapist example? I think I understood your point about people fearing the rapist more, but I don’t see how it relates to the “cold and calculating” topic, unless you’re suggesting the kid would not be called this. It can be hard to communicate tone via the internet and I’m new to all internet forums as of a few months ago so I’m not desensitized yet or accustomed to internet culture. I’ve already realized people often come off very differently online vs offline.
I read the subject line for the OP but the title of the article was so similar I didn’t notice it wasn’t exactly the same. Sigh. I think I’ve been had by change blindness. (There’s an interesting LW article I’m being reminded of right now.). My title oversight explains most of the confusion here.
None. It was perceived lack of motivation to read things that prompted that. This perception is fixed now. I’m sorry about that.
I am constantly alienated and usually somewhere near my limit for alienation. Often past it, often just below it. If I seem annoyed, that is probably to blame more than anything. I’m perma-annoyed.
If you want to continue after my oversight with the title, I will engage, but I should probably start over and re-focus. What specific perception(s) do you want to discuss?
Thanks for your reply, it makes me feel much better and I’m glad and impressed we’re not annoyed at each other, especially considering I can also be easily annoyed. I think a lot of people can understand being alienated but I don’t know what the rationalist solution is. For me, it was one of those things that was a feedback loop and thus really hard to get out of. That’s part of why I like HPMOR- Harry is like an alien trying to make a single friend. In his case, he’s alone because he’s superior to everyone and thus can’t rely on anyone else, which may be some cold comfort, but that wasn’t exactly my situation...
Oh! Yay! (:
It seems to me that many on LW are alienated, and it’s resulting in the most ridiculous clusterf… People desire to quickly jump to the conclusion that the person they’re talking to is not worth talking to (I think this might apply more to new people than others)… because they are so alienated and have to do something about it, but there’s this wild mix of causes of annoyance and it just makes a mess. There are older users who are spitting out logical fallacies, newer users who are clueless, new users who are sharp, old users who are sharp of course… and sometimes one annoys one’s self (which is what happened to me just now). And of course if people DON’T ignore annoying users, or at least tell them that they’re doing it wrong, they’re encouraged to stick around without improving the annoying behavior… but this is wrought with peril because as you have seen, if I am the one who made the mistake, and I tell you that you’ve made a mistake, I get to look like an idiot, and you get to feel bad for no reason. Many times, when somebody points out my mistake, it’s the same problem—they made a mistake but didn’t notice it, possibly because they’re so annoyed with the last 10 people that annoyed them that they’re not giving me the benefit of the doubt. Occasionally they do point out some mistake I made, so that’s good. But it seems like people here are a bit too apt to reach for the 2 x 4.
What was your exact situation?
I am an alien for sure. I relate to not being able to rely on anyone else, but it is not comforting that I’m usually better at figuring things out than those around me. I have plenty of friends but the friendships are one-sided: I am understanding and emotionally supportive to them, but they do not understand me deeply enough so they aren’t really useful for me to talk to about my thoughts and feelings. I’ve noticed that most of the other aliens haven’t mastered staying rational when they’ve discovered an interesting alien they might get close to. This has ruined the vast majority of my attempts to get to know other aliens. I used to have a problem with staying rational when meeting other aliens myself—but that’s not my problem anymore. Now my problem is that nearly everybody else is going about it in dysfunctional ways and I’m burnt out on that. I have no idea how to solve this, so I’m just walking away from that catastrophe and I’ve decided to fill my time up with group projects for now.
Unless it will sell more newspapers.
Hah! Ok. They can be inappropriately described. :P But perhaps you mean something more along the lines of “it’s not worth thinking about this because WSJ is just saying that to make it sound more interesting.”
“Cold and calculating” is a boo light for intelligence.
Actually you can. Snakes can be described as cold and calculating. Also a serial killer that rapes and kills other humans can be described as cold and calculating depending on his style. But yes overall it does also carry this implication:
And generally higher IQ is correlated in our society with more libertarian social and economical positions.
...Why? You can ascribe any adjectives to any nouns, but why would you associate these with snakes in particular? I mean, cold, yes, strictly speaking, unless they have been on a warm rock lately. Or even in the sense that they probably lack humanlike emotions, but is that even meaningful to say about a snake, and even if it is, why would you want to put it in such a negative-affect-laden way?
And calculating? My pet snake is probably way worse at math than the average dog, let alone a bright parrot or five-year-old human. What would she even calculate? She finds warmth appealing and cold unappealing and drinks when she’s thirsty and strikes when I dangle a dead mouse in front of her and flinches when surprised and hides under her half-a-log when she’s got nothing else to do; this is not rocket science, her brain is about the size of a small raisin and it doesn’t need to be any bigger.
Sure. Have you never heard of an adder?
The story I heard from reading Campbell’s myth series of books was that snakes were originally considered powerful and wise creatures because they knew the secrets of immortality—they could shed their skin and become young again. This got wrapped up into the general Semitic set of myths and tropes, where the snake re-appears in the… Garden of Eden tempting Adam & Eve into the Fall. Eventually it and the angel ‘Satan’ got wrapped up into a new Manichean framework as the source of all evil and the Evil One himself, whereupon the powerful and wise aspects became negative (my good mentor is ‘wise’; your evil mentor is ‘calculating’).
The cold part is probably just literal: I’ve never picked up a warm-feeling snake.
I’m not sure but I’ve heard them being described in that way. Maybe because they are literally cold blooded and people fear snakes, so they have the cultural association of sociopathy attached to them.
I wasn’t saying it was a good description, I was just saying it is a description people would use. People kind of anthropomorphize everything, children I’ve observed pretty much do assume on some level animals have human like minds but that they chose to behave differently from social norms.