On Enjoying Disagreeable Company

It also looks pretty damn childish, despite having lots of fun mature-sounding rationalist words. A silly playground arguments is still a silly playground argument.

Agreed. Post-grad vocabulary, pre-school behaviour.

I don't disagree. My goal in all of this is to make it so that Alicorn and I don't have to treat each other like enemies anymore -- so she can reply to my comments, and I to hers. To end this drama, in other words. And that really is the long and short of it.

For various reasons I'm having trouble understanding, Alicorn is committed to not relaxing her shunning of me. I consider this inconsistent of her and unproductive, for much the same reasons you give.

I would love for the hostility to end too, because it's pretty stupid that people can't publicly reply to each other on a message board. They should try to resolve past difference. ("You first" doesn't count as trying, IMHO.) It's not that I have a reason why I want to reply to Alicorns comments specifically; it's just that the whole charade of having to take circuitous routes to posting because of the presence of the other is just ... stupid.

If Alicorn and a mediator want to come to a (private, online) bargaining table so we can understand and settle our differences, great! That would take the talk off the main, and eliminate the basis for me calling Alicorn inconsistent.

Finding a mediator is the easy part. Getting my committment to such talks is easy too. All that's left is ...

Who not being content when asked to stop? Me, or Alicorn?

First link:

[Alicorn:] Since at least one person seems to agree with you, I'm genuinely curious now. Assuming I'm correct in detecting sarcasm there, can you elaborate?

[Me:] [No, because ...]

[Alicorn:] [Do it anyway.]

Later, in the second link:

[Alicorn:] Let me clarify: you think I'm immature, almost constantly in error, you won't explain my failures in enough [!] detail for me to make use of the information even when I ask, [!] [emphasis added]

---

It's clear to me that what's going on is:

1) Alicorn wanted me to explain something to her that had a lot of emotional significance.

2) I refused.

3) Alicorn kept asking.

4) Finally finding herself on the receiving end in one of these situations, she seeks to "get back" by withholding her replies from me.

But I'm sure there are other interpretations. In any case, whatever you might say of me at least Alicorn was being "excessively persistent" when asked to stop ... well, at least by the standards she expects out of everyone else.

Thirded.

Ok. I've just downvoted you for at this point borderline trolling. There are lot of people here who aren't Alicorn. I'm not going to bother discussing your claim that Alicorn didn't benefit from this since there's already enough people wasting time on that in your main subthread. So I'll simply note that I am at least one person who found Alicorn's post very useful. I've used a technique much like what Alicorn layed out here but she makes multiple points that a) allow me to consciously understand what I'm doing better and b) to improve on some aspects of that technique.

Since there are 30 upvotes for the post, I'm pretty sure that multiple other people found this useful (it is possible that some of those votes are due to perceived status but given the anonymous nature of upvoting it seems unlikely that more than a few of them are).

Please stop damaging the signal to noise ratio.

1. The usefulness may not reduce the sincerity of the liking, but it certainly reduces the depth. If Steve gives me stuff, and I like him because of that usefulness, and then Steve stops giving me stuff... JRM no more like Steve. Viewing friendships as exchanges isn't evil or wrong, but if it's usefulness that's the prime driver, that's a different sort of friendship than one I really want.

2. There are qualities that are troublesome that aren't physically dangerous. Affiliating yourself mentally with people who don't care so much about the truth is likely to rub off. I'd like to think of myself as a particularly resilient and incorruptible person, but there's a certain necessary diligence to retain that self-view (which I believe is related to actual resilience and incorruptibility.)

3. On liking people not being counterproductive to changing behaviors: You might be right. I was considering the (perhaps) increased willingness to tolerate troublesome behavior and the reward function of friendships coming to those who are troublesome in some serious way. It may depend on the people involved. Or I might just be wrong.

4. I think when we look at petty problems to determine dislikes (She likes the mundane and stupid American Idol, while I like the brilliant and intellectual Top Chef), that is indeed counterproductive. But most of the limited number of people I take an active dislike to.... I don't want to try to be their friends. At all. And I think the world is a better place for my lack of trying.

5. I think the more serious and common error is to put up with malfeasing people past the point it's reasonable. I also think people tend to trust statements from others overmuch, even when that person has a track record of untrustworthiness. For most, a post on "Staying Away From Hazardous Humans You Like," would be more beneficial.

--JRM

It's instrumentally useful to give people the perception that you like them

Hmm. I've found that it's most effective to give people the perception that you're having fun and not judging them. The best way to give a perception like that is to actually have fun and conceal any snap judgments you make. This tactic doesn't seem to have the downsides of liking the wrong people.

It varies. These stories as commonly told seem to actually focus more on what would be here labeled as ritual rather than moral law more than anything else. (For example one such story is about a man is seen buying bacon at a store but it turns out he was buying it because his wife is pregnant and had a craving.) Empirically when this sort of heuristic is applied in the real world it applies generally when there are actual victims but the one engaging in the bad behavior in question is of high status (frequently either a rich philanthropist or a Rabbi) and the victims are either of low status (for example, converts, potential converts, children, mamzerim (Edit: They are a technical class of bastards who are somewhat discriminated against in ultra-orthodox settings)) or the victims are an abstract collection (frequently the government if it is say tax fraud).

It might help to give two recent concrete examples. Leib Tropper is an ultra-Orthodox Rabbi who it turned out was sexually exploiting women whose conversion he was supervising. Despite the existence of actual recorded phone conversations being circulated, repeated denial of any wrong-doing was a common refrain in the ultra-Orthodox world. Similarly, during the ongoing Rubashkin scandal with Agriprocessors, much of the Orthodox community has decided that they really aren't guilty or are not guilty of anything that major. The stories in this case they've decided to tell are conspiratorial and portray the US federal prosecutors as somewhat similar to the government of Czarist Russia.

BTW the original injunction of "Dan lekaf zchus" - "benefit of doubt" in approximate translation - comes from Ethics of the Fathers, and I believe one of the major commenters (R.Yonah IIRC) suggested, essentially, giving heavy weight to the prior: if the person is generally good you should try to explain an apparently bad act, and vice versa! you should explain an apparently good act of a bad person UNfavorably. Pretty sane thought.

I'm not sure. One can see how this goes wrong in Talmudic contexts. For example, there are a lot midrashim that explain away apparently good behavior by Esau and Ishmael, and there are a lot of midrashim that explain away or try to justify apparently bad or deceptive behavior by Jacob. Yet, a simple reading of the Biblical text shows that what is actually happening is that these just aren't 1 dimensional characters. So this general tendency can be actively distorting.

Edit: For others reading, midrashim are a classical Jewish set of stories generally told in an interconnected fashion to fill in apparent gaps in the Biblical stories.

Thanks! Okay, that's pretty clear now, makes sense.

I find it easy to agree with this as I've owned quite a few old cars myself (mostly by keeping a newer car for a long time). It really is just a heuristic. It's not even a heavily weighted heuristic for me - I take much more notice of driving errors like wandering across lane dividers than the age of the vehicle. But driving is probably the most dangerous thing I do and it's worth taking as much statistical advantage as I can get....

That car sure looks old! That correlates with low income, and lower intelligence.

I know plenty of very smart people who have old crummy cars that get them from A to B and act as pretty effective countersignals.

I was talking about the means, whereby one alters one's "search priorities" when seeking to understand situations involving the target. This sort of selective perception may not be a direct corruption of existing knowledge, but it still constitutes an attention bias akin to privileging a hypothesis.

I agree that the emotional aspect isn't relevant to my concern, though I could imagine having instrumental qualms somewhat analogous to the above.

It is my impression that people generally have an epistemic distortion already and Alicorn's advice would help them overcome it. When we justify our own actions, we place a weight on circumstances and give ourselves a fair benefit of the doubt. When we look for the reasons for other people's actions we often do not know, care to know or just plain care about what the circumstances were. No benefit of the doubt here. Reversing this bias seems a good and healthy thing to do. Judge others as you would judge yourself may sound simple but it takes the sort of persistence that Alicorn outlines.

How do you protect yourself against a sociopath while still liking them? Also, how can you LIKE someone you know is a sociopath?

Yes, if he's not actually a sociopath, it's probably worth learning to like him.

But the odds of him being a sociopath are high enough that the expected utility doesn't point that way at all. The disutility of being exploited by a sociopath is far worse than the opportunity cost of not liking this one person.

Story, then tl;dr follows -

Tickling was a major weapon amongst kids I played with back when I was in elementary school (along with pinching, but only girls did that). I had the notion that "this would never do!" and "I have to worry about this all the time!" Somehow that got it in my head to try to desensitize myself to tickling.

I'd heard that it was impossible to tickle yourself, and after TRYING it, I took a guess: maybe it was because you already knew where and how you were going to be tickled?

Iteration 1: Quickly tickle myself by randomly flailing my arms at various places on my body. No dice.

Iteration 2: Notice that I'd synchronized my arms in the first iteration. Tried desynch-ing them. Still no good.

Iteration 3: Tried also using a feather in one hand. Nope.

Iteration 4: Closed my eyes in the process. I could feel the ticklish feeling!

Iteration 5: Did all of the above in an extremely dark, closed closet. Worked!

After I figured this out, I repeated the process a few times while gradually slowing down the speed of tickling. I've been non-ticklish since then. Caveats: some sensitivity has come back in my feet; less so around my stomach; I do not recall how ticklish I was before this desensitization.

tl;dr - I sat in a dark closet, with a feather in my hand, closed my eyes, and proceeded to flail my arms/fingers randomly at myself

Seconded. I'd like to hear this as well. I am ticklish enough to be able to tickle myself, popularly supposed to be impossible.

This is encouraging (I have the same feeling), but I have no idea what I am supposed to do with the idea. Obviously, first try to find people who would falsify it, but then what?

I still want to know where the disagreeable LW-ers are. Come out, come out, wherever you are!

Seems so. O53 C5 E37 A22 N94.

Do you stop enjoying sex when you use birth control?

I stop enjoying sex when the other person isn't really aroused. The mechanisms for detecting affect evolved before language and abstract cognition. There is good reason to believe that it takes a whole lot of effort to alter or falsify them. These mechanisms are tools, we are stuck with them, so it behooves us to use them optimally. I think trying to like someone is suboptimal.

Someone trying to like me is like a rapid-onset smile. Someone who simply likes me is like a slow-onset smile.

Instead of trying to like things because it's instrumentally useful, I think it's far better to strive for optimal instrumentality from one's liking.

The former would be like learning about a genre of music because it's popular. The latter is like delving into a genre of music because one finds it moving. Great things come out of the latter. Mediocrity comes out of the former.

(Underlying this debate is the erroneous notion of the "blank slate." Our emotions are not a blank slate. They are a finely tuned processing and guidance mechanism, just not tuned for our present circumstances.)

Why would that knowledge be a problem? Do cars stop working when you know how they work?

That isn't a good analogy. Many humans have trouble actively trying to change their own emotional or belief states. The analogy that might be more appropriate is trying to deceive oneself into believing a false statement. I don't think that the analogy quite holds either liking someone is much closer to an emotional setting. It is thus closer to someone say deliberately conditioning themselves in some way. Even if you know, you are doing it, you can still use fairly primitive conditioning. But Nanani's question is one that still requires some response: the car analogy is not sufficient.

A neutral "why haven't you applied this advice to me?" would have been a reasonable query.

No, it wouldn't have been, but let's try that just so you're convinced.

ETA:

you already have a history of causing negative emotional reactions in Alicorn and from the tone it seems like you're trying to cause more.

When someone, to the best of my knowledge, isn't practicing remotely close to what she preaches (and I've held silent on the first several times she preached this), and claims special insight on it, my obligation to point this out overrides most other obligations. That, and nothing else, motivates my comment.

ETA2: And before you suggest another brilliant idea like, "At least you should have kept this to PM": no, Alicorn's made pretty clear that's not an option either.

A story for curious onlookers:

On March 25 I received a PM from Morendil. Its full text follows.

Hi Alicorn,

Silas has asked me to inquire with you if you would now be "able to return to dialogue with (him)". This comment of yours was the trigger for thinking the question was timely.

After an hour or so of dithering, I've decided to grant the request, on limited terms: I've promised to ask you a question, and that is all.

Please feel free to answer me, or not answer as you see fit. Please feel free to provide any message you'd like me to pass back to Silas, or not. I will not relay anything back unless you ask me explicitly.

My motivations are, mainly, curiosity as to what's going on, and a desire to be a cooperator when asked for help explicitly.

I hope my decision causes no future ill feelings between us, though I accept full responsibility if it does.

I replied:

First of all, you've engendered no ill will for yourself; I can understand why you chose to relay the message.

However, I need more information before I can proceed. Specifically, I need to know how said dialogue would take place (format, presence of third parties, time, topic, ostensible goal of the conversation); I need to know something about Silas's motivations for making this attempt (because he finds it annoying to coexist on LW with someone who won't talk to him? because he looks at it as a challenge? because he finds me scintillating and admirable and regrets not being able to bask in my company? because he wants to look magnanimous and charismatic upon publicly interacting with me again?); and I need to know whether it's going to take the form of "Silas said X and Y and acknowledges why this led to shunning but is sorry now and wants to apologize" or the form "gosh, hasn't it been long enough, won't Alicorn just let bygones be bygones already?" The latter form of "reconciliation" is neither useful nor, as a general heuristic, safe, and I won't undertake it. I could likely be persuaded to receive an attempt at the other, although the answers to the other questions would have to be satisfactory. (Kindly don't prime him with my specific examples, as they're rather obviously connotatively tagged and they lose a lot of informative power if he doesn't come up with them himself.)

One thing to note is that nothing in that comment is new since I stopped talking to Silas. I stopped talking to him in spite of the fact that I was reasonably sure I could make myself like him, simply because I judged the tradeoff to be not worth it. Liking somebody on purpose is time-consuming and hard. In order to reverse the decision, it has to be shown both that it was worth trying to like him at the time, and that it is additionally worth the cost of reversal now in the form of a weakened consistency effect the next time I'm invited to return to talking to someone I've previously written off. (Note that I may be forced to rely on this exact consistency effect if, for example, I'm ever abused by a loved one and manage to leave once and am then pressured to return. It is not trivial for me to have a self-image of someone who stays gone after leaving.)

Morendil's reply (including a minor edit he clarified in a separate message):

Thanks for replying. I'm now feeling nearly discharged of the obligation I've taken on voluntarily: it seems to me that I've delivered the key message I've been asked to get across, i.e. that Silas would like to be at least able to offer peace talks.

As I said earlier, I intend to pass nothing back that you don't explicitly ask me to, and I prefer to err on the safe side and look for something in quotes with a request from you along the lines of "tell Silas the following". (And again, replying is optional.)

Ideally, this would be something that I can pass back to Silas such that from that point on, the two of you can either continue with the status quo or negotiate further on mutually agreeable terms. I have no burning desire to see this go one way or the other; I do have a preference for being a go-between only so long as necessary.

I said:

You may tell Silas the following:

I am tentatively willing to engage, preliminarily through a go-between, whom it is your responsibility to find and keep interested if Morendil declines to continue providing the service. This exchange's continuation is dependent on satisfactory explanations from you through the go-between about your motives for wanting to resume being on speaking terms with me, and a summary of why it ought to be considered worth both my time and some undesirable peripheral psychological effects.

Apart from a mis-addressing of the passing on of this message, I heard nothing more on the topic from anyone thereafter.

Yes, but at least I want to lift off the albatross of having to avoid replying her comments (and her mine) even when it adds to the discussion and is not specifically directed at her. The advice she's given in this article (and past ones) show she believes herself to be an expert on this, but won't take even this reasonable step.

Actually, there's one more important thing I should add: I have conclusive evidence that Alicorn has much to gain from getting over this dislike, by her very own standards. I can prove this by showing that she enjoys my posting, and wishes to reply to -- and even provoke -- my posting, just so long as she knows it's not me. That shows a critical failure to apply her advice when could actually do some good, or at least a failure to recognize a set of heuristics that correctly indicate when the advice should be used.

So why is Alicorn's advice particularly insightful on this subject?