Comment by Florentine on Maps vs Buttons; Nerds vs Normies · 2018-01-10T23:08:01.585Z · LW · GW

Addendum: Even among groups that call themselves nerds, a pause long enough to usefully trace the origin of an idea tends to bring the conversation to a screeching trainwreck halt, or politely ignore your silence while everyone else moves the conversation on past whatever you were thinking about, but that might be a sample-specific thing.

Comment by Florentine on Maps vs Buttons; Nerds vs Normies · 2018-01-10T23:04:35.696Z · LW · GW

I pretty much only give answers based on beliefs(2), but I’m not sure I’m the kind of person you’re looking for feedback from. Mostly it comes down to: Mapping is costly and usually not personally beneficial, and if you wanted a real judgment based on a real map, a judgment I could base predictions on...you’d have to wait a couple of weeks while I figured out how to get sources on the subject to even begin to do research on it to form a useful position, (which assumes I care so much about this topic that I’m willing to do days or weeks of research on it) and then when you challenged me on it I’d assume you had more background and more information, would ask you to explain your position, would find it convincing in the moment, and would only really know hours or days later, after thinking about what you said some more, whether I—actually—found it convincing enough to update my map.

That’s...very difficult and time-invested, especially if I’m not going to interact with that conversation partner a lot. Signaling allegiance with the shibboleth of the hour is by contrast low-cost, easy to fake, and good enough for most interactions.

Do I have beliefs(1)? Sure, on some things, but I bet I’ll have to look something up to remember why.

I have no idea how well anything like that generalizes to other people who give mostly/exclusively beliefs(2) based answers (I feel like most people are actually using such answers for coalition building or self-defense; the self-defense in the sense of keeping one’s job or not being cussed at or punched makes sense to me; the objectives of the coalitions are generally opaque to me); I hope it’s useful to someone, but take with several grains of salt.