Skills and Antiskills

I think one semi-standard response to a common context-based skill incentive pattern is called "strategic incompetence". Fundamentally the pattern is "I can't do that tedious and thankless job, because I'm just not good at it." Low prestige office jobs are the classic example.

A google search against lesswrong turned up no mention of "strategic incompetence" which was something of a surprise to me.

One of the key issues that comes up around strategic incompetence is that it raises ethical complexities relative to egalitarian work norms where "everyone should do their part" and people with cultivated incompetence can "shirk" without it seeming like they are obviously shirking. In programming/scifi/geek contexts the contrasting virtue goes along with the slogan that specialization is for insects. This is one the reasons I like such contexts :-)

(Edited to add: Voting patterns seem tragic here from the perspective of rewarding that which causes good content. I'm saying something that people (currently) seem to think is worth "10" and the only reason I'm saying it is because katydee raised an interesting, more personal, and more general point that I could riff on, but the original article only has "3" and I'm one of those who upvoted it. This seems like evidence that "propagating reward back through the chain of causality that leads to good content" is not how people are voting... hence, the voting seems somewhat tragic. I wish people would up their voting game, because I want this forum to get better over time, not worse.)

I agree that there is a (context-dependent) spectrum of usefulness of a skill.

But I don't like the term "anti-skill" because "anti" implies the opposite of a skill - the inability to do something instead of a net negative effect. Additionally it is not clear what to call the neutral form. Also your examples are highly context sensitive - as you agree. I'd first like to see an example that is at least net-negative for the average case.

Instead I'd propose detach the usefulness from the word. Say advantagegous/neutral/disadvantageous skill.

Being able to dance doesn't force you to dance when at parties where there music playing. I would also rather spent 30 minutes dancing at high energy than going jogging for 30 minutes.

At the LW community camp in Berlin a bunch of people went to play ultimate frisbee instead of having conversations. I don't think those did that primarily because they have awesome ultimate frisbee skills that force them to play it. My best explanation would be that they thought the did enough serious talking for the day and wanting to switch modes.

Using this framework has enabled me to discern strengths and weaknesses that I had previously not considered, and in some cases those strengths and weaknesses have proven decisive to my planning.

Could you give example where it helped you make decisions against learning a skill?

Both the dancing and the acquiring computer skills example don't seem to me to be very convincing. Computer skill are useful enough that the slight issue of friends asking you to fix their computer shouldn't convince anyone to avoid building computer skills.

I thought "antiskill" would be an ability to avoid doing something that's bad for you. For example, knowing how to not put emotional pressure on other people would be an "antiskill" in that sense.

If dancing will largely prevent you from having interesting conversations, it may well be an antiskill-- but if you go to a lot of nightclubs where loud music makes conversation difficult, knowing how to dance seems very useful indeed!

This seems like a poor example -- why go to loud nightclubs if not to dance, conversely knowing how to dance increases the chance that you'll choose to go to loud nightclubs. The benefits and drawbacks of dancing are similar whether the music is loud or soft. It only makes sense if you were dragged to the party and had to make the best of it.

I think a better example would be martial arts -- there are situations where knowing martial arts could get you into a ton of trouble (eg some gang wants to beat you up as a show of dominance, but with trained instinct you manage to hurt one of them), and others where it could save your life. As a more mundane example, knowing facts about politics seems to polarize people by allowing them better motivated skepticism of opposing viewpoints.

I would analyze the concept using economics: a skill is an antiskill if its opportunity cost is (obviously) higher than the benefit you receive by performing it.
Clearly, the evaluation is context/resource dependant, there might be bias that prevents you from knowing that the antiskill is lowering your overall utility, or even preventing you to act under such knowledge, and that's exactly were the concept become useful.

Being good at video games is an obvious antiskill.

I think it's more useful to keep the meaning of "skill" as something like "the ability to do something well", which is what everybody expects you mean when you use the word, and talk instead about better and worse applications of skills. It's not the skill that's context dependent, but how useful or beneficial the application of the skill is in a particular scenario.

As Gunnar_Zarncke said, "antiskill", while catchy, is not a good description of a sometimes-detrimental skill. And almost every skill is sometimes a detriment. As you say, it's context-dependent.

For example, being natural at fighting makes you more likely to engage in a combat and die as a result, but it also makes you more likely to survive a combat when one is unavoidable.

Being a good engineer may mean that you are not promoted to a better paying management position.

Being quick-witted may mean that you don't learn to work hard until it's too late.

Using this framework has enabled me to discern strengths and weaknesses that I had previously not considered, and in some cases those strengths and weaknesses have proven decisive to my planning.

Can you give a few examples of this?

Is Bayesianism a skill or an anti-skill?