Don't Be Afraid of Asking Personally Important Questions of Less Wrong

Virtue ethics: "there are no stupid questions, only stupid people."

Seriously though, I wish LW was less attached to single parameter models of human competence (IQ tests, g, and the like). This undercurrent of ordering people from best to worst based on single parameter models from the early 1900s psychometrics is pretty toxic. These models are severely silly of course, like any vast dimension reduction strategy has to be, but its the ordering that's bad.

What's wrong with being stupid? What's wrong with being perceived as stupid?

It seems that the "stupid" you're referring to is "not knowledgeable", or perhaps "poor aptitude". Those are both things that can (largely) be trained.

Personally, I judge people for lacking open-mindedness, and to a lesser extent curiosity, and to a lesser extent ambition. I sense that this is a rather common way that smart people judge others. But I don't think it's common to judge people for temporarily lacking knowledge.

Thank you for sharing this and encouraging others to also share in similar situations.

Holy cow this comment almost made me cry. Thanks for your honesty.

I really wanted to point out that sometimes it's not stuff like whether or not we should use nicotine when we study, or even which career we should choose; sometimes it's really harrowing stuff that completely muddles our ability to think and that can turn out horribly for you and everyone else if you don't just ask for help. And this is a great place to ask for help.

This is excellent. I wish I could upvote you twice.

Users can always start a throwaway account, and post in a thread. That's done on reddit. It may be more difficult to start a discussion with a throwaway account, but I suppose it could be done. I just discussed this in the open thread. Some etiquette was covered:

• Indicate clearly, and from the beginning, that the account you're using is a throwaway. For example, "this is a throwaway account..."

• Use it to discuss topics you don't want to have your real name, or your regular account linked to, but don't use it as an excuse to engage Less Wrong at a lower level than you usually do.

• Don't use the throwaway account as a mask to get away with trolling, harassment, bad jokes, vitriol, or not trying to be reasonable.

The community may be indifferent, or sympathetic, but usually not exclusionary. I mean, if somebody is using a throwaway account to discuss why it's rational for all of us to start hating this one particular outgroup, that would deservedly receive flak. However, maybe someone wants to discuss really signing up for cryonics, but the feel it's still too weird to have their name publicly linked to it. Or, maybe, they have a problem they believe Less Wrong might be able to solve better than other online, or meatspace, support communities, but they're embarrassed for people to know it's them. If I was in that particular sort situation, I would make it clear that I'm already a regular user of Less Wrong, and it's too harrowing.

However, no user would be obliged to qualify why they're using a throwaway, even if another user doesn't have the perspective to understand why a throwaway might feel necessary.

There's two ways I'm thinking your aversion could be interpreted: not revealing something because mostly you feel it's personally embarrassing, or not revealing something you because you believe you would be widely negatively judged for it. I tried to offer a solution to the former interpretation of the problem in the other comment. In this comment, I'll cover what I believe makes sense when you believe you'd be very harshly judged. I don't believe such aversions to sharing such thoughts are miscalibrated.

I'll start with an example. When I wrote this above post, when example I was considering using was from one user, not using a real name, who was asking about whether it was worth taking an illegal psychoactive substance for its therapeutic and cognitive effects. Now, I didn't need to ask anyone's permission to include their own perspectives as examples, and I still don't. That's because nobody does. However, this one user might be linked to their public identity. I'm not mentioning either the username, nor the substance in question, so it's not searchable. That was an edge case for which I erred to be more discrete, and not very publicly profile someone who asks a more taboo question. They got the answer they wanted, which is what's important. I wrote the post so individual users would get value for themselves, not ask questions out of a sense of 'improving the community', or whatever.

That's the sort of personal detail that might attract unwanted attention outside of Less Wrong norms. Talking about our own personal politics, or ideological beliefs (fringe-science, social, philosophical, etc.), that aren't shared by most others isn't always appreciated on Less Wrong. It's fine to hold those beliefs if you're willing to accept you may very well be wrong, but debating such on Less Wrong still seems problematic. However, the community has shifted from "politics is the mind-killer to "politics is hard mode to "we have other sites specifically for discussing controversial topics".

Upvoted

What I meant was that stupid questions can be asked without the poser of the question being mass downvoted, or being repudiated as an incredibly stupid person who should go away and who is then discouraged from asking even good questions. Often, the questions in the Stupid Questions threads were not about what one person should do. For example, someone asked the question: "how do I talk to strangers?"

However, I don't mean that the premise of a 'stupid' question can't be rejected, or criticized. For example, some of the questions about what I should do were replied to with 'don't do that'. Of course, figuring out what supplements are worth taking, or what to study in university, aren't 'stupid' questions. However, some questions will seem dumb, so do criticize or reject them, just without making it personal.

If someone asks the question 'how do I do X?', that implies that doing X is a good idea. So, I recommend people either explain their reasons for believing an intent to act is justified, or at least ask everyone else if it's worth doing, directly prior to asking how they go about doing it.

Jiro, next time you're responding to a stupid question, maybe we can try stating "I don't X is:

• worth your time."

• what you should do."

• what most people can succeed at doing."

etc.

Then, explain the reason(s) why, and suggest why they should choose an alternative, included neglected ones.

If this is still on LessWrong, then how others concur, or vote, will be an indicator of if everyone else thinks that a good idea. If it is, and the original poser of the question doesn't heed the warning, then we've tried the best we can, and we can't force the other person not to act. Of course, if you think someone is in danger, then maybe repudiating what someone intends to do as stupid and dangerous and being sterner/harsher could be warranted.

I'm not too familiar with him. It doesn't seem he's using downvotes for their intended purposes in this site, nor in good faith interpreting those he votes down as trying in earnest to learn or make valuable contributions. I'm guessing it's difficult for moderators to permanently solve the problem because Mr. Nier may use sockpuppet accounts.

I made an oversight. Should I edit my OP to include a caveat or note about noticing abuse of voting mechanisms, and how to deal with it?

Depends on how old the friend is, and how prone she is to making dramatic declarations of that sort she doesn't actually follow through on, and on her relationship to her parents.

In general - if she's young (which from my current perch maps to mid-20s or so) and her relationship with her parents seems generally healthy, and she's not prone to following through on ill-advised oaths purely for the sake of consistency, I would probably ignore all of that and encourage her to talk (to someone) about her feelings about her father and his diagnosis and her own mental health, and expect her to gradually come to some kind of peace with it.

If she's older than that, or if she's more compulsive about consistency, I might engage her on the relationships question more actively... why not marry, for example? If her concern is with her spouse having to care for her, etc., I'd probably open the conversation up a little into questions of informed consent and whether she feels that's a situation people can choose to risk for themselves, and that sort of thing. If her concern is something else, I'd listen and try to decide whether it's a fair concern, and act accordingly.

If her relationship with her parents is unhealthy, I'd probably focus on that first. Not sure what I'd say exactly, but I'd encourage her to talk about that relationship and what she expects from it and whether she endorses that, and if not how she might go about changing that relationship.

It's not so much "saying to" but providing the person a space to be clear about the assumptions that drive her thinking.

I'm the author. It's not an error. I posted in Main because I believe a fair amount of people only read articles posted in Main. I never posted this in Main, but it seemed important enough to share to increase visibility or whatever. My apologies if it's bothersome.

I suspect editing posts changes their date (possibly with some restrictions?), and the order is determined by current date rather than original date.

Did you mean to post a link here? I'm not seeing one.