Thanks for the detailed reply!
Based on this feedback, I think my criticisms reflect mostly on my fit with the LWers I happened to meet, and on my unreasonably high standards for a largely informal group.
Algernoq
Karma: 536
I agree with that.
Thanks, glad it’s of interest.
In this case, Harry was narcissistic before he learned about magic, when he had no realistic chance of boundless success (when he was one of many child prodigies, most of whom would turn out “pretty much ordinary” (Ch. 10), not the only magician-scientist), which is evidence that Harry’s narcissism was due to his upbringing, not due to a realistic awareness of his own strengths.
I disagree with the premise that off-the-scale smart people are usually narcissistic, but I agree that many child prodigies are narcissistic. The work of doing research or another off-the-scale smart person activity encourages humility because of repeated failures (incorrect theories, etc.) on the way to new successes. Child prodigies (especially with a narcissistic parent, who distorts results to protect their own ego) can seem to go from success to success without apparent failures and while feeling fundamentally superior to others.
Wow. You just:
ignored my evidence
blamed me for society’s problems
More politely, you fell into the cognitive bias of incorrectly discounting unpleasant information.
This kind of shit is exactly what I’ve read rape victims have to put up with. People don’t want to believe unpleasant things, and prefer to blame the victim’s normal choices instead of recognizing that there’s a problem.
If you actually have evidence to support me being unable to perceive the world accurately, please tell me what it is. Otherwise, don’t tell me that I’m not feeling what I know I’m feeling.
Some of my specific examples:
I’ve met two sociopaths socially, coincidentally both management consultants. Trustworthy mutual friends confirmed they had long-term partners and that they also cheated a lot without regard for others’ feelings. I also saw this personally: on different occasions I saw each of them with a long-term partner and with a short-term hookup. One of these people tried to seduce my long-term girlfriend, and the other tried to set me up with someone he was tired of hooking up with, without disclosing his involvement with her. Both of them failed, but it wasn’t a sure thing in either case. This is an extreme example; more generally I don’t like seeing people get lied to, and don’t like competing in an environment where the baseline assumption is that the other people are emotionally-damaged liars (because the people with these issues tend to do the most dating). I’m also somewhat bothered that the social norm is generally to pretend not to know about cheating/lying in friends’ relationships, because there’s no positive reward to sharing the information.
At work, in my current job, the technically competent senior engineer with average social skills was passed over for promotion in favor of a technically incompetent senior engineer who covers for his incompetence with posturing and salesmanship. I’m also tired of frequent calls from salesmen who want me to pay 30% too much for something I don’t need.
More generally, the structure of many organizations rewards sociopaths. Look up the MacLeod hierarchy for one popular theory.
Please update on this information, and let me know if you have any true or useful information that’s relevant here. In other circumstances I’d recommend an apology as well, for following a conversational pattern that typically offends people and is factually incorrect.
[What makes an executive might be] “functioning without recourse”—living without any level above you to take over if you falter, or even to tell you if you’re getting it wrong
Alternatively, successful executives might be defined by “always having recourses”—a large-enough social network, blame-shifting ability, and general competence.
Relentless self-improvement.
In other words, learn and train, and then test yourself in the real world, in a situation where it’s possible to lose. Meaningful tests include getting the best score on a hard test, getting published in a prestigious journal, making a prototype that works, selling a lot of units, etc.
Most people don’t bother to seriously improve themselves even after seeing other people succeed. Extraordinary motivation is required. One common source of this motivation is having a “tiger mother”; a narcissistic and status-seeking parent—working obsessively is less painful than being cast out of one’s family. Another common motivation is getting citizenship in a 1st-world country—studying obsessively is less painful than living in a poor and politically-unstable nation. A few people just want success for its own sake, but most people can’t summon the necessary will without an external threat.
Examples: Buzz Aldrin:
“The second man to walk on the moon?” his father said. “Number two?”
Arguably, Rational!Harry
Harry’s mouth twisted bitterly...Always Harry had been encouraged to study whatever caught his attention, bought all the books that caught his fancy, sponsored in whatever maths or science competitions he entered. He was given anything reasonable that he wanted, except, maybe, the slightest shred of respect. (Ch.1)
Elon Musk recommends 1. rigorously evaluating plans to make sure they are realistic, and 2. working “like hell”.
Richard Feynman enjoyed doing this to himself for the sake of solving interesting problems:
I used to do whatever I felt like doing—it didn’t have to do with whether it was important for the development of nuclear physics, but whether it was interesting and amusing for me to play with.
This interest in solving difficult problems lets Feynman do well despite his relentless disregard for status:
You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It’s their mistake, not my failing.
Quirrelmort wonders about how to motivate people to munchkin their way to victory:
It is possible that you have already done everything you can. Yet I find this a very rare event indeed, and more often said than done. I suspect rather that you have only done what you customarily do. I cannot truly comprehend what drives others to break their bounds, since I never had them. People remain surprisingly passive when faced with the prospect of death. Fear of public ridicule or losing one’s livelihood is more likely to drive men to extremes and the breaking of their customary habits. On the other side of the war, the Dark Lord had excellent results from the Cruciatus Curse, judiciously used on Marked servants who cannot escape punishment except by success, with no reasonable efforts accepted. Imagine their state of mind within yourself, and ask yourself whether you have truly done all that you can… (Ch. 92)
Relentless self-improvement is also the secret recipe for getting into prestigious universities, becoming powerful, and seeming to sparkle with extra life force. But, it’s a high price to pay—relentless self-improvement changes you and pulls you away from people who take the lazy path.
Ahh, that makes more sense.
Got an engineering job not in the defense industry.
intelligent enough to make a meaningful contribution
If you’re doing it to make a “meaningful contribution”, not for fun, it can be hard to stay motivated without outside assurances that you’re doing “well”.
throw in the towel? grow up?
It’s hard not to identify as a child prodigy anymore. If you want to do something, there are things to do to increase your odds of success. For example, if you want to do really well on the Math GRE, do practice problems until you know all the concepts and get the score you want on practice tests. Unfortunately, this takes a lot of focus over a long time. If you want to make a meaningful contribution, look at Mark Andreessen’s advice: get pretty good at two separate areas/fields, then do something that uses both of them. The other option, being the best at one specific area, requires competing with people who enjoy studying so much it damages their health. Good luck.
This type of question is difficult to answer here because my answer necessarily relies mostly on relatively non-academic sources, largely personal experience, and it’s hard to discuss this topic for the same reasons it’s hard to discuss politics.
That makes sense—this and a few other replies are making me doubt my ability to accurately weigh the evidence. The pro-narcissism examples tend to be vivid and exciting and so are more memorable than anti-narcissism examples which tend to be ordinary and less interesting. One solution might be to re-read a large-enough sample of HPMOR and rate how indicative of narcissism is everything Harry says or does. This would be interesting but would take some time. I’ll be much less confident in my conclusions until I do this.
Unfortunately, psychology terms/traits are difficult to quantify, e.g. I can’t know someone is “10% narcissistic” in the same way I know a glass of water is “10% full”. I agree, different people have different levels of narcissism.
To test my narcissism detection mechanism, I will look at how narcissistic the main characters of a few other popular books are. This is a better test than looking for narcissism in other characters in HPMOR (where the most-frequently-observed character is the most narcissistic). The evidence against narcissism is the opposite of the traits listed: average or low sense of self-importance, primarily interested in others, goals are usually about others, many relationships, etc.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: Grandiose? No—Elizabeth has no expectation of becoming Queen or even, initially, of marrying a very rich man. Self-obsessed? No—Elizabeth is concerned for her sisters’ welfare as much as she is for her own. Troubles with normal relationships? No—she has social contacts appropriate for her era and standing. Furious if criticized? No—she reacts to criticism with thoughtful calm in public, followed by private reflection. Fantasies of unbound success, power, etc.? No—she wants to marry a good man and live happily etc.
The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien: Grandiose? No—Frodo longs to remain in the Shire, at peace. Self-obsessed? No—Frodo takes the Ring for the good of other people, and resists the urge to use it himself. Troubles with normal relationships? No—Frodo is well-liked by the Fellowship and many friends attend his going-away party. Requires extreme admiration for everything? No—Frodo is OK with being subservient to Gandalf. etc.
Watchmen by Alan Moore: Grandiose? No—Dan Dreiberg (Nite Owl) retired from crime-fighting and lives quietly. Self-obsessed? Probably not—While Dreiberg lives alone, he goes out of his way to help Rorschach and Laurie. Troubles with normal relationships? Maybe—Dreiberg lives alone, and it’s not clear what he does with his time outside of the events of the story. Fantasies of unbound success, power, etc? No—Dreiberg is not seeking more power, and only reactivates his crime-fighting gear when driven to it by the events of the story. Feels entitled? No—is frustrated but doesn’t complain much at all when Dr. Manhattan takes Laurie to Mars.
From these negative results I conclude that my narcissism detector is working adequately.
Yes, it’s that “rationality” is arrogant and condescending.
Most of the high-status people I have met go out of their way to be pleasant even to much lower-status people. The selfish ones do this because it’s easier to manipulate friends than enemies; the others have other reasons such as being “nice” or “friendly”, but the end result is the same.
Rationality, on the other hand, believes “that which can be destroyed by the truth should be,” and tries to claim the highest possible status (others are illogical, have goals that don’t make sense, and aren’t trying to save all of history from, for example, acausal AI blackmail, and therefore are inferior). Understandably, this doesn’t persuade most people. As the people of Melos found during the Peloponnesian War, abstract arguments about what is “right” don’t carry weight unless both sides have enough strength/status to threaten the other.
Rationality is like mathematics: useful but not adequate on its own for guiding real-world decision-making. Other required ingredients for high effectiveness are ample domain-specific knowledge and mostly-accurate gut feelings. There are numerous examples of forebrain lesions that disrupt emotional processing also causing poor decision-making, and examples of irrational and rarely-self-aware people who are very successful by conventional measures.
In negotiations, an effective strategy is to argue within the other side’s moral framework (set of norms). The strategy of calling the other side stupid tends not to work very well, unless it’s part of an appeal within a third party’s moral framework (e.g. a powerful observer’s) to get them to intervene. Thus, two effective strategies would be 1. actually do tests to show that assimilating the Rationality memeplex improves conventional success, or 2. “be nicer to everyone” (as Herm. tells Harry in HPMOR).
Additionally, Rationality discussion dives right into some massively unpleasant topics: apocalypse scenarios, amorality on a civilization-wide scale, the insanity of baseline humans, and the epistemological uncertainty of the Universe. While true and often useful, there is a high cognitive cost for carrying around this information. For example: nearly all great mathematicians have been men, because men can in general survive while being very naive about the real world, while women in general in existing societies must spend additional effort to be liked in order to stay safe, leaving less mental effort available for mathematics. Thus, many people recognize that losing their false beliefs will make them less happy and less effective (e.g. unable to be part of a religion, or to relate to people as people instead of bags of evolved motivations) and choose not to participate in Rationality.
In short, if you tell someone they’re stupid for not agreeing with you, don’t expect to change their mind.
Good luck man. I did a different kind of engineering, but here is some advice I wish I had heard 15 years ago:
https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2009/03/12/some-thoughts-on-grad-school/
Thought #6: Listen to the Married Graduate Students and Ignore the Unmarried Students Who Live in the Dorms
Students with families have perspective on life and friends outside of the university. They tend to be happy and productive and think sleeping on the futon in your office is childish. They also bathe every day. Which is a nice bonus. The students who are unmarried and living in the dorm have probably escaped, thus far, exposure to the real world in any meaningful form, and because of this they are likely to have a warped sense of personal worth and work habits, and suffer from weird guilt issues. Ignore them.
In other words, don’t try to be some sort of software ronin: this is less effective than having enough balance and boundaries to maintain some relationships that aren’t about your special interest. If you would rather do programming than be around people, that’s OK but it’s still good to do other activities with other people even if they are not “useful”. What is meant by “usefulness” if not you and others enjoying what you have created? Generally speaking, if you are doing work to “save the world” rather than for cash money, you are being lied to and underpaid, and the dollar amount that you are being underpaid is the amount you value feeling like you are “saving the world”.
Also, and this is not a popular opinion on this forum, I think Elon Musk has the right idea about AI Safety. This is heavily cultural, and Elon’s proposal (let everyone grid-link themselves to their own all-powerful AI) is in line with culturally Protestant values, while the LW proposal (appoint an all-powerful council of elders who decree who is and is not worthy to use AI technology, based on their own research into the doctrine) is in line with culturally Catholic values. I will never give up my heritage of freedom, my right of self-defense, my right to privacy on my own computer in my own home, and my cultural ideal of equality of all before the law and before the Creator. I look forward to healthy debate with the AI Safety Experts. The American heritage of “fair play” and civil rights is a defense against totalitarian government. The AI Safety Expert Panel would be in a position to cause the AI equivalent of the Irish Potato Famine by hoarding all the AI and distributing it in an “equitable” way that does not include my fellow Irish. The great thing about freedom is that I get to make up my own mind about what software I want to use, create, or buy; the AI Safety Expert Panel does not and will never have the right to confiscate my rightful property; and this heritage of freedom will save the AI Safety Expert Panel from accidentally becoming the dystopia that they seek to prevent.
You sound unhappy. Do you still hold these conclusions when you are very happy?
didn’t have the luck to find a nice community of people. Perhaps nice individuals, but not a “tribe”
I wish I could up-vote this whole comment more, and especially this line. I agree with your points and it’d be interesting to see a top-level post about this.
You’re right; I don’t feel like part of a “tribe” now, though I have some good friends/family, and it comes through in my writing. There are a few genuinely nice tribes I could join (by helping/entertaining tribe members to build reciprocity, and signaling belonging with my style choices), and I should prioritize this for sanity’s sake. Ideally, I would find a tribe of smart and well-adjusted people who want to try to not die, i.e. try to get rich and then make the needed science happen. There are only a few people interested in this project, though, and they tend to be crazy, making forming such a tribe near-impossible. Joining a tribe that values being a good person and enjoying cultured recreation (and avoiding depressive patterns of thinking about how all conventional roads lead to death) is probably a good way to go. This is a strange game we all are playing, where only the meaningless rules are clearly written.
Someone was going to tell me a Rationality joke, but the memetic hazard drove them to insanity.
I have doubts that it is actually true
What do you mean? The conventional meaning of these words, in context, is to tell me that:
I didn’t see what I saw.
I’m not tired of interacting with sociopaths.
To quote XKCD: “communicating badly and then acting smug when you’re misunderstood is not cleverness. I hope we’ve learned something today.”
you are dating wrong people and working at a wrong place
What do you mean? It sounds like you’re just telling me to change my environment.
Do you know of a human society to join that does not contain sociopaths?
Do you know of a reliable way to identify sociopaths prior to interacting with them?
That’s hearsay and it seems to me to be not too reliable...
Can you be more specific about how things that I observe firsthand are “heresy”?
How do you reconcile dismissing my statements with the base rate for sociopathy? A few percent is enough for most people to meet many sociopaths during their life.
So? Maybe they have an open relationship.
what does that have to do with sociopathy?
You recommendation was considered and rejected.I disagree with each of these statements for obvious reasons. If you’re not trolling, I would be happy to discuss further.
In summary:
I believe I have met sociopaths. I believe the evidence strongly supports this. It looks like you’re ignoring evidence. What is your motivation/goal here?
The suggestion to change my environment is not useful, because other environments will also have sociopaths. I agree that avoiding unpleasant environments is bad in general.
My earlier post was intended to say that large status differentials are usually bad for the lower-status person in the relationship, whether in poly- or mono- relationships. I also wanted to get confirmation that other people have similar problems with sociopaths and rape, and hopefully get ideas for addressing these from the unique perspective of LW. Both of these goals were apparently not communicated clearly.
Again, my goal was:
I’d like to see more “calm discussion” of status differentials in relationships, because a general solution here would address nearly all concerns about polyamory.
This seems to have failed.
I give you one karma in the spirit of the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma.
I’d like to see more “calm discussion” of status differentials in relationships, because a general solution here would address nearly all concerns about polyamory. Thanks to HPMOR for helping me understand the real world.
One recipe for being a player is to go after lower-status (less-attractive) people, fulfill their romantic needs with a mix of planned romance, lies and bravado, have lots of sex, and then give face-saving excuses when abandoning them.
This isn’t illegal. It’s very difficult to prosecute actually giving other people STDs, or coercing them into sex. Merely telling lies to get sex (or, to swap genders and stereotype, get status and excessive support without providing sex) isn’t so bad in comparison.
I’m indignant at Evolution (not at polyamory, monogamy, men, etc.) because I strongly suspect several of my previous partners were raped, and unable to prosecute it. They sort-of got over it and just didn’t tell future partners (me) about it. My evidence for this includes being told stories that sounded like half-truths (a stalker followed me! and I was drugged! and now I have this scar! but nothing happened!) and overly-specific denials (nothing’s happened to me that would give me panic attacks!). Another quoted a book about recovering from sexual assault. I haven’t actually asked any of them, but I don’t want to because this conversation would be massively unpleasant as well as unhelpful. Hypothetically:
F: So, yeah. That happened.
M: I’m sorry, not your fault, etc...
M: So, you know who did it?
F: …yes (in 90% of cases)
M: I want to know who so...
F: No. I’m not a barbarian. Let’s move forward.
M: If (when) someone threatens you again, will you threaten them back?
F: No. Again, I’m not a barbarian. I’ll avoid them socially but that’s it, and I’m out of luck if they’re not breaking any laws in public.
M: In my experience with bullies, they don’t care about social punishment. They only care about credible physical or legal threats. They’re also generally cowards...
F: That’s horrifying! I’d never threaten anyone like that!
M: OK, threatening mutually assured destruction comes more naturally to some people than others. Will you at least tell me if you feel scared because someone is pushing your boundaries...
F: No!
M: Well, I don’t want to let people push you around and disrupt both of our lives even more. The alternatives (getting rid of privacy, or always carrying high-powered non-lethal weapons) seem more inconvenient. What do you think?
F: I think I’m breaking up with you, because you’re creepy.I am tired of realizing that people I care about were damaged by abusive relationships, and I’m tired of competing with sociopaths in dating and at work. There aren’t any good alternatives (ignoring the evil is irrational and near-impossible, fighting the evil is creepy and near-impossible, and becoming a player makes me sad). The “winning” strategy seems to be narcissism and salesmanship—a mix of Donald Trump and Richard Feynman—and not feeling guilty about hurting other people. My current “good” strategy is being single and focusing on technical skills now to minimize baggage in the future. Given that Einstein and JFK are adored despite their numerous affairs, perhaps I should update this, or hurry up and invent (a Hobbesian) Leviathan.
without people getting indignant at you
In summary, don’t fuck your cultists unless you’ve turned evil.
YC funding is totally worth going after! He made the right choice given that info. That’s what I get for passing on rumors.
If I want something, it’s Rational. If you want something, it’s a cognitive bias.