I'm becoming intolerant. Help.

The best cure against such prideful attitudes is to ask yourself what you have to show in terms of practical accomplishments and status if you're so much more rational and intellectually advanced than ordinary people. If they are so stupid and delusional to be deserving of such intolerance and contempt, then an enlightened and intellectually superior person should be able to run circles around them and easily come out on top, no?

Now, if you actually have extremely high status and extraordinary accomplishments, then I guess you can justify your attitudes of contemptuous superiority. (Although an even higher status is gained by cultivating attitudes of aristocratic generosity and noblesse oblige.) If not, however, and if you're really good at "losing to evidence," as you put it, this consideration should be enough to make your attitudes more humble.

Slytherin answer: If you're surrounded by idiots, figure out how idiots work and use them to your advantage; ideally in ways that they don't even recognize. Getting irritated at them for being idiots is like getting irritated at a cat for not being a dog — it's bad instrumental rationality; the irritation doesn't help you accomplish your goals. They may be idiots, and you can't fix that; but you can treat them nicely enough that they won't get in your way and may even be useful to you. Find ways to practice this.

Hufflepuff answer: Sounds like you need the company of other rationalists. Does your area have a LW meetup yet? Meanwhile, try to consider the obstacles, distractions, and other cognitive interference that these other folks might be dealing with. Find ways to sympathize — after all, you're not perfect, either. (And for that matter, if religionists are so wrong, why does going to church make so many of them so happy? They must be right about something.)

Very interesting, because my exposure to LW (and the sequences in particular) had the opposite effect. I'm now better at dealing with others and with dealing with stupidity in general.

My slightly exaggerated thought process used to be: "I'm clearly right about this, so I'll just repeat and rephrase my arguments until they figure out they're wrong and I'm right. If they don't understand it they're hopeless and I'll just "flip the bit" on them and move on with my life."

The problem, of course, is that the strategy is ineffective, and using an ineffective strategy again and again is not rational at all. So I would say the correct strategy is to ask yourself: "Given my understanding of the sequences and of human psychology, what line of argumentation is going to be most effective?". In this situation you probably want to leave a line of retreat and you probably want to make an effort to close the inferential gap.

If you're right (in a "facts are on my side" kind of way) you can usually force people to give in but at what cost? Resentment and burned bridges. You might win the battle, but you'll lose the war.

PS: Insulting your opponent, although an understandable outlet of your frustration, is a form of defecting from the positive-sum game of a civil discussion. I remind myself of this whenever I feel the impulse to insult.

Hang out with people who are smarter than you are, so that you get lots of practice being the one who's wrong in an argument.

Remember that when you are right, your goal is not to emit true statements but to cause the other person to believe true ideas. The default implicit model of argument is that if they don't get it at first, you just have to hit harder; try instead to think of convincing someone as navigating a maze or solving a puzzle, a complex and delicate process that may require lots of backtracking if you mess up.

I emotionally/connotationally associate the condition of not thinking clearly with poverty. A person can be born in unfavorable conditions, in which case it might be almost impossible to get into a better situation without substantial help, or it might take a lot of luck, or significant ability.

Since there is already a well-absorbed set of emotional connotations with the condition of povery (low-status but with lean to status-agnostic; burden for others not in this condition; unfair, deserving of compassion and help; theoretical possibility of full recovery) that seems to match what one would wish to associate with people not thinking clearly, you could just transfer these intuitions by associating the categories in your thinking.

We also need a productive charity, to make use of comparative advantage.

I'm more tolerant of religion than I was a few years ago, mostly because once I got an idea of all the other ways humans (including myself!) are irrational, singling those who hold incorrect opinions on something irrelevant like metaphysics is a bit unfair.

Ways human tend to be irrational: choosing a career based on very little information (the idea of the number of well-off teenagers in western countries that know more about the World of Warcraft gameplay system (or equivalent) than about the costs and benefits of the various career paths they could choose is depressing); pretty much any strongly-held opinion on politics that isn't backed by some serious scholarship or experience, opinions on what others think of you and how much that matters, opinions on what kind of things are good and bad, buying unneeded stuff, getting in debt, moral panics, drugs ...

Next to those, does it matter if somebody incorrectly thinks the Bible was divinely inspired, or that we get reincarnated after death, as long as he's being a reasonable, civilized human being (and not a fanatical nut)? That'd be a good reason to ignore their opinions on abstract intellectual subjects, but not a reason to think very harshly of them.

Well, the effect LW had on me was the opposite. Many arguments have subtle sides which are hidden from the first sight, and much of this I have realised reading LW. It can happen that it's me who misses the point, and it's very unpleasant after having argued about the point passionately. And even if I am right and the opponent is wrong, I know that the path to the truth isn't usually simple and short. I used to have beliefs which today I see as clearly wrong. I am fairly confident that today I have beliefs which I would find wrong in the future, and which other better informed people consider wrong even today. If I don't want to call past myself a moron (I certainly don't) and don't want to be called a moron by the wiser people, I should be quite careful in putting the moron label onto others.

So, what to do if you want to be more tolerant, for example, when you meet a religious believer? My advice is based on things that usually help me:

• Try to remember that you were effectively an agnostic not long ago, and if your interlocutor deserves to be called a moron for believing in God, you deserved to be called at least a half-moron for being agnostic about the question. Perhaps you wouldn't like that conclusion.
• Try to remember when you have changed your mind about other issues you were pretty certain before. That helps to understand that being mistaken isn't necessarily the same as being an idiot. (If you can't remember a single instance when you have abandoned a strongly held belief, take it as evidence that you do something wrong.)
• Think about high-status intelligent religious people.
• Remember that abstract reasoning about abstract issues like (some modern weak version of) religion or free will isn't hallmark of practical rationality and intelligence. Being right about abstract problems that don't affect their life is not every person's priority.
• Before the debate starts, suppose that the interlocutor has a really clever logically consistent theology supported by clever convoluted intuition pumps and that you would need to destroy dozens of Plantingaesque proofs of God to make a good counter-argument. In most of the actual cases your opponent's argument would rather be "but what keeps the atoms together, if not Jesus", but it doesn't matter. A long debate against a skilled theologian demagogue should be such an unpleasant experience that even the slightest chance of that happening should convince you to drop the topic as soon as possible.
• In the beginning of any debate, try to think what you want to achieve. The opponent saying "oops, you were right and I was wrong, I deconvert now"? That's not going to happen, and it's a rationalist's obligation not to engage in futile actions.

Modification from religion to Bayesianism or other issues is pretty straightforward.

And whether you indeed should calm down? If you debating style even remotely resembles that of Xah Lee (I don't have that impression from reading your comments), you should. I have clicked on your link to XL's rant against Wikipedia. After having read the first sentence, I thought "what a self-conscious jerk", and at the end of the whole thing I was fairly certain that I am going to ignore all his opinions. If you want to actually communicate with others - rather than voice your opinions - you should avoid that style at all costs.

Can you elaborate on what you mean when you say you regard anyone who isn't Bayesian as moronic? I'm not sure what it means to "be Bayesian".

Your experience is interesting. I find that while I have started looking on more things as more insane than before, it has made me less argumentative and more tolerant. My thought process is something like, "So many people are so wrong on so much stuff that my trying to help them usually won't make a difference. They never had a chance to become right because they were exposed to all the wrong memes. So I'll stop trying to improve other people's thinking except where I think it might actually work, and then I'll be nice so that I don't lose a rare chance to help somebody." The eventual effect is that I see more of the irrationality around me, but feel less need to do anything about it.

I don't know if trying to emulate my reaction sounds like something you'd want, and I'm even less confident that it will work, but I find that just seeing how other people deal with something can give me ideas about how I should do so.

What should I do?

Step 1: Stop being frustrated with them for not knowing/understanding. Instead, direct your frustration at yourself for not successfully communicating.

Step 2: Come to know that the reason for your failure to communicate is not a lack of mastery over your own arguments. It is a lack of understanding of their arguments. Cultivate the skill of listening. Ask which school of martial arts presents the best metaphor for your current disputation habits. Which school best matches the kind of disputation you would like to achieve?

Step 3: In the course of learning to listen, you may also learn other things. The people you are talking to are probably not idiots. Sometimes they will be right and you will be wrong. Notice those occasions. Examine, analyze, and cherish those occasions. Come to see them as winning. After all, you came out of that dispute having gained something useful (knowledge). Your teacher, on the other hand, gained nothing but ephemeral status.

It very well may be, that this intolerance of yours has nothing to do with this site. You would became intolerant anyway, only to a slightly different set of beliefs.

You can't expect to win a singlehanded fight to protect the entire world from its own stupidity. You need to choose your battles.

Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.

-- Friedrich Schiller

I know I've believed some pretty stupid stuff that only seemed dumb in retrospect. I've found that keeping this in mind helps one be more tolerant of people believing in stupid things. Would you be intolerant of yourself from two years ago or five years ago? If you had a time machine, how would you treat your past self?

Perhaps you should solidify in your mind whether you think it's a good thing or a bad thing on net. Come up with ways in which it could be a good thing and ways in which it could be a bad thing. One particular way that it could be a bad thing is that you dramatically underestimate inferential distance, so it's much harder to actually change people's minds than it feels (there's a reason the sequences are long; those had more design time go into them than whatever you come up with on the fly). This means that if there are any social drawbacks to arguing with people, they can easily outweigh the benefits improving thought.

Would it help to do a cost-benefit analysis of being more tolerant vs. the status quo? I've found that the amount of enlightenment that I can give certain people is small enough that I lose more utility through the emotional impact of the argument than I gain through giving them knowledge.

I now tend regard anyone who isn't Bayesian as either uneducated or moronic. Same thing about materialist reductionism, only with a slightly lower confidence.

To be blunt, that is a bit strange. In my experience you are far more likely to find a material reductionist than you are to find a Bayesian. This leads me to think that you might be too withdrawn, which might be causing you to have a poor model of what ideas other people are likely to hold, and adding to your general sense of misanthropy. Of course, I'm generalizing from only a few examples (I have talked with others who have this problem) so you should take that into consideration.

Are you in college? If so, perhaps you would do well to hang around the science buildings and look around for science or atheism or freethought-centric groups that meetup on some regular basis (assuming there are no LW meetups near you, as is the case with me). Could you give a brief outline of your current situation? Maybe that would help us to help you.

Suppose you hear someone stating that yesterday it was 7C and today it is 14C, so it's "twice as warm".

When I hear that, I cringe a bit, but these days (older, wiser, milder) I think the better thing to do is just to lightly smile or something. The 'higher status behavior' is to not always to try to "score", but instead to ignore it, unless there is some direct negative effect.

I know exactly how you feel.

As far as I'm concerned, recognizing that I could be that completely oblivious and ignorant person if I was subjected to a different personal experience from my current one helps a lot to not think significantly less of them.

Actually, I once was that ignorant person. So I try to imagine how someone would have needed to talk to me, in order to convince me of something, back when I was an ignorant superstitious fool myself. It's not easy, that's for sure. Try to thoroughly imagine how you would talk to someone whom you love and respect, but who unfortunately holds some highly irrational beliefs... how would you talk with your parents or your kids about this? Imagine it vividly and carry that attitude and style of "soft" arguing over to people whom you aren't as close to. It takes some effort to cultivate that attitude, but I'm trying because both emotionally and intellectually I know it's the right thing to do.

Another approach is to contemplate the various virtues that people can have, and consider their relative importance. You might need to do this as a sort of regular meditation.

As an off-the-cuff, how would you sort by importance: rationality, creativity, knowledge, diligence, empathy^1 , kindness, honor, and generosity^2 ? Does how you act correspond to how you answer? If not, make a practice of reminding yourself.

You may also find it useful to enumerate the virtues of the specific people who are annoying you. If you cannot think of any, stop associating with them. If the thought of not associating with them is unpleasant, examine that unpleasantness to discover their virtues.

1= Empathy is a talent for understanding others, which may or may not result in being kinder to them.

2 = Generosity should be taken in the broadest sense: determination to help others despite costs to oneself, and may or may not involve giving material possessions.

I know this sounds snarky, but it's serious: Are you married?

Ideally a life partner will share many of your values, but no two people share all values, and you'll need to respect the ones that differ. (Even if you're both Bayesian, in area where you have different values/axioms you will not necessarily agree).

I wonder if it's not a problem with compartmentalization? Because in many contexts, these issues about truth needn't be in the forefront. In contexts where issues about truth are at the forefront, wherever people are having intellectual discussions are making decisions, it is often more contextually appropriate to be argumentative.

Maybe your concern about intolerance is a warning that you need more interactions of the former type for a better balance in your life. That is, interactions that are social and comfortable and bring back your sense of humor and comradery towards other people.

I think I can relate quite a bit. It is absolutely infuriating when someone does anyone care to try to be rational. I am always having to explain to people why I care about what is true. The question to me has become like nails on a chalkboard. the thing that has helped me mildly is that most people do not have any education on what it means to be rational. they they have not even been introduced to the concept ( other than Hollywood rationality which is almost as irritating). I also remember that at one time I was kind of like them which makes it so that I tend to educate them about it (although I think I am as a teacher/mentor).

Find some really intolerant people to hang out with. Objectivists would be -f-o-o-d- good. (But that was an interesting idea for a while).