Haters Gonna Hate is a popular catchphrase used to indicate one’s complete disregard for an individual or a group’s hostile remarks addressed towards the speaker.
Very few of my friends will read anything from LW that I link to them, and I suspect that they would find this link absolutely hilarious. I have never managed to get any of them to give a generalized account of exactly what they think is so systematically annoying about LW, though - they call the whole site 'pompous' and stop there.
Here's a similar story.
When I've had people shoulder surf while I was visiting the site, everyone asked, "LessWrong? What's that supposed to mean?" (5+ people). When I explained that it was a rational community where people tried to improve their thinking, they immediately began status attacks against me. One used the phrase "uber-intellectual blog" in a derogatory context and another even asked, "Are you going to come into work with a machine gun?" They often laughed at the concept.
Yup, sounds about right. The phrases 'snide intellectualism' and 'ivory tower' are things I've heard more than once. From my significant other, no less. I know his response is an aversion to the site and not to intellectualism in general, or else, well, he wouldn't be my significant other, but it's incredibly frustrating. I try to bring up topics in a general sense instead of 'I read this really great article on Less Wrong...' but it's always difficult to avoid using references from people here if it's a topic that LW deals with often.
I suppose this would be a good point to say I'm interested in advice from anyone who has successfully converted a friend or family member's opinion of the site from knee-jerk negative to neutral or positive, given that I spent most of yesterday fuming about something absolutely ridiculous and insulting that was said in response to me bringing up the topic of cryonics.
I suppose this would be a good point to say I'm interested in advice from anyone who has successfully converted a friend or family member's opinion of the site from knee-jerk negative to neutral or positive, given that I spent most of yesterday fuming about something absolutely ridiculous and insulting that was said in response to me bringing up the topic of cryonics.
Forget about what they think of a website. Who cares? The task is to train them out of thinking it is ok to say ridiculously insulting things to you at all! You're worth more than that!
It means two things: 1: The author, Kenneth Myers - a lesswronger himself apparently - wants to give advice on socializing to the rest of the community. I'm not sure how good the advice is.
2: He sees something odd about lesswrong, which isn't just that lesswrongers have different beliefs to other people. lesswrong is not just a bunch of people discussing weird ideas (in which case it would be ignorable), but neither is it discussing ideas which are part of a traditional academic discipline (in which case it would also be ignorable, as it would be the published work that would be important). I think that it's this in-betweenness which makes people uneasy
There's a certain irony in using that article. It'd probably find a comfortable home on LW, as a popular discussion post if not as a promoted one.
Actually, I'm pretty sure I've seen it linked here before.
I have been trying to find the words to say exactly that for a long time now.
Edit: exactly what is stated in the blog post, not "BTW, the post is from his own blog." That would have been very easy to find the words to say.
He must think smart people are too smart to think. I'm reminded of the movie Limitless and how poor, less smart, people are at writing about smarter people. Spoiler: In the movie the protagonist takes out a loan from a loan shark so that he can make more money with his new found cognitive powers, but forgets to pay it back, even though he's both rich and more intelligent. The writer doesn't seem to have copped that the character would have increased thinking capacity. Wash rinse repeat for most sci-fi movies unfortunately. Likewise this article seems to make the assumption that smart people don't think about socialising. Btw is that mind projection fallacy?
Are you thinking of normal psychological projection? I don't see anything very mind-projectiony about this.
The loan shark business seemed forced. Given the success he already had he just didn't need a loan from a loan shark. The loan shark didn't even give him that much cash. He couldn't have earned way, way more money than that in the time it took to round him up. At least, I could with that kind of intelligence boost.
Friendly neighborhood inferential distance surveyor: it sounded like your point was about forgetfulness, not taking the loan in the first place. In general, when you say "A, then B, even though C", it sounds like A is context-setting and B is what C should have prevented (as opposed to "C should have prevented A and B"). Except when it doesn't.
Sorry, I've been having a real big problem with specificity lately. I blame it on facebook.
You asked whether it might be mind-projection fallacy that caused him to assume that smart people are socially awkward. The article looks like it is being stereotypical rather than fallacious in some other way.
Of course I might just be projecting, here. :) I do consider myself to be smart, and I definitely try not to think much about socializing. Not that it's done me much good. I end up thinking about it anyway because that's the rational thing to do.
I click on the link, and I can't scroll down past the bullet point about American Idol conversations.