shw1n

One of my favorite quotes re: the classics:

"Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago."

Would these letters be The Federalist Papers?

Coincidentally was just chatting about this to my wife.

All of my productivity pretty much stems from blocking distraction.

Rarely has the work been hard in itself. Sure I’ve been lost a few times, but imo you can almost always break it down into some manageable chunk.

But fighting the boredom when dopamine hits are clicks away is a savage battle.

Phone in another room, headphones on with just-loud-enough no-lyrics techno, distracting websites blocked, or ones I need have their newsfeeds removed (using extensions I’ve written myself in some cases).

Yet the danger comes from tools I can’t block because I need them, ChatGPT, Google, Wikipedia. Pursuing any interesting curiosity that arises during work can lead to a dangerous rabbit hole.

In the real world, however, votes tend not to be politically coherent. Instead, what we see in a hyperpartisan polity, is that a diverse set of views collapses after an issue achieves partisan identity status. Talking about a thing through a partisan lens is what causes the partisan collapse. Hence the effects of mass and then social media on the quality of our discussions.

nailed it imo

not above politics, just think productive discussion can't happen if people don't know why they support things beyond "the tribe supports it"

or acknowledge when a belief is tribal vs reason-based

Ironically this seems another perfect example of the tribalism the article is about, saying:

- the right-leaning folks were just propagandized - the left-leaning folks were justified

- that questioning this at all is indirectly responsible for breaking every government on earth

- assumed politics must not affect me, or that I must get defensive, run away, or not ask questions

The opposition always being assumed ignorant and the tribe always being justified is a perfect example of tribalism

The idea here is that some percentage of "the left" and "right"'s views are arbitrary, so the chances of someone independently coming up with a perfectly matching set to either side is low

Agreed re: the center can have an ideology, that's the bottom circle in the graph

I fully agree that any group can behave tribally, even the rationalists (which I'm not part of).

Also not advocating ignoring politics, I'm advocating for consciously acknowledging whether one wants to discover truth or remain in their bubble, and some methods for doing the former if desired.

B/c while inaction can harm, plenty of "actions" without understanding have led to horrible outcomes (e.g. Salem witch trials). This is what truth-seeking can avoid.

yeah fair, I added an explanation that each point is an average

I actually wonder this constantly, hence the footnotes about wondering what my tribe is, accounting for being wrong in probabilities, and even the purpose of this post:

finding people that can spot mistakes in my thinking

Hmm maybe I'm misunderstanding, but each red dot represents the average of a collection of views

The idea behind PG's article (as I understand it) is that "the left" and "right" have some degree of arbitrary positions they support, so the chances of any individual independently coming up a set of positions that perfectly matches is extremely low.

But individual positions could very well be scattered across the spectrum, some very left, some very right, but together would likely average out to near the middle

the difference is the person stabbing of their own independent accord can be convinced to stop

the tribe-following stabber cannot

That's not what this is saying at all.

"Understand my argument" does not imply correctness in the slightest.

It's possible to understand an incorrect argument and show where it's going wrong, plenty of people can detect fallacies. I've both done it to others and had it done to me.

This seems to be a combining of "understanding" and "agreeing", which are separate things.

This entire argument is based on incorrect assumptions.

I'm not just inferring this from different values. As I said in the article, people are openly and literally telling me they'd prefer to stay in the bubble:

"I'll often ask: if the opposite of your beliefs were true, would you want to know?

Surprisingly, I've had good friends, who enjoy political debate, explicitly answer ‘no’. And even many who initially answer ‘yes’ will later admit to the answer really being ‘no’."

Desiring to seek truth is not referring to the energy someone is willing to expend, it's related to this^ ignoring, or asking to stop once an exploration proves the fundamental belief their world rests on as false.

edit: punctuation

Neopets, created an account around 2nd grade.

Eventually learned HTML to spruce up my profile.

Then discovered running a “mall” to earn Neopoints and so I handcrafted a banner in MS Paint and manually mapped pixels for turning it into a link map

Then had my neopoints stolen by a fake website, tried to recreate fake website for myself, leading to… CTFs, hacking & cybersecurity

yep exactly

I'm not claiming moral high ground, or that my method is a better or happier way of living life, I'm only claiming it's better for finding out what's true, with the assumption some objective truth exists.

The sentence that covers this in the piece:

"If someone is self-aware enough to consciously acknowledge their choice to remain in the bubble, that’s totally fair. I respect it like I’d respect anyone who chooses to participate in a more traditional religion. My issue is when this view is falsely passed off as an intellectually-driven one."

I wrote about a lack of desire to find truths, not getting opinions en-masse from groups, and a method to find them

very different

the idea's that we're so tribal these days (maybe it's always been like this) that it's largely impossible

but here's how we can change that, etc

ty!

curious where you moved?

I completely understand it could not have what we're looking for, which is why this was only one component among larger ones (family + new job)

If that hypothesis is true, then probably the best thing for society is to provide cultural structures that let us indulge than impulse in non-harmful ways, instead of, say, giving it to religions that also tell us to murder gay people.

I agree with this take a lot, and actually tried to imagine what Religion 2.0 could be based on this premise

In that case who you think is the "least worst" is also a reflection of values

perceived values -- if someone has the same values and rankings as you, but was exposed to different information, then with this logic you'll never be able to find out or flip them

as I said to the other commenter, basically all comes down to "are you open to the chance you're wrong"

you could view that chance as low as 0.001%, but it shouldn't be 0

and if someone opposite the aisle from you believes the same thing about you, there's zero chance to flip them

with direct discussion about values, it's possible

basically all comes down to "are you open to the chance you're wrong"

you could view that chance as low as 0.001%, but it shouldn't be 0

I reject this idea, someone voting for the "least worst candidate" does not wholly endorse everything they stand for

As someone said in this thread, in the US two-party system, coalitions are formed before the vote vs after in other countries

The whole purpose of this piece is to precisely encourage pointed discussion about values directly and skip the proxying

this is actually in the footnotes and addressed by the "thinking in bets" section

"[9] Fully understanding I can be the one in the wrong -- however, when this is the case, the person explaining is usually able to:

understand my argument convey their disagreement in good faith without circular reasoning or rhetorical tricks"

"There's a 40% chance this succeeds because of A, 25% chance of B, 10% of X, and 5% something we haven't thought of"

it was a joke, didn't think I'd have to explain but the key difference is I'm open to being convinced this view is wrong

this is probably my favorite comment on this post so far, super interesting

if you can find the article I'd love to read it

yep the purpose of the essay was to:

1) show the situations in which politics can't be discussed productively (dogmatic ideologies)

2) show how to avoid being dogmatic yourself

I absolutely encourage people to discuss politics productively

you can be "not tribal" and still protest/put pressure on the system, has nothing to do with being moderate

tribalism refers to how you get your beliefs, not what you do with them

as I like to say, "I'm tribal against tribalists" :)

I actually encourage discussion in the essay, as long as people are well-intentioned or until you hit a point of dogma

But if anyone is closed to the idea of an idea being wrong, no discussion can really be had