I'm not a regular user of LW, but I wanted to weigh in anyway. The style of endless asymmetric-effort criticism can be very wearing on people with perfectionist or OCD-like tendencies. I am, sadly, one of those people. In my head is a multi-faced voice of rage and criticism that constantly second guesses my decisions and thoughts and says many of the same things about anyone else's work or life or decisions. This kind of thing is one of the faces, able to find fault in anything and treat it all with importance both high and invariant over any sort of context. I think the voice is something like an IFS firefighter. In fact, here he is now:
wow. You come to LessWrong (stop abbreviating) and you can't even be bothered to put five seconds into reading Kaj's Unlocking the Emotional Brain summary to see if it really is a firefighter and not a protector?
It's exhausting and demoralizing. This is far from the only component, to be fair, and I actually don't doubt that Said is honestly trying to make the world a better place... but this particular flavor of criticism is not making things better. It can be done well, but this isn't it. This makes people, over time and without really noticing it at first, get a submodule installed in their heads that constantly criticizes, second guesses, attempts to justify, apologizes for, pre-emptively clarifies, and talks itself out of things in every domain of life.
...though I guess that may be a natural attractor state for minds like this. Still, while the circumstances for the ban are unfortunate, I think it was correct. For anyone who wants to do anything, having enough energy to do it is key, and things like this just drain it. It's like fighting a wall of molasses.
2Small note that is probably pretty simple by the standards of this excellent comment section, but strong emotion is, itself a problem that needs to be solved, often first. It's like snowfall on the driveway. Some people get a little with the vagaries of life, others get a lot. Sometimes it melts quickly, sometimes you have to shovel it.
To be less metaphorical, people need to feel believed, cared for, and like they'd be listened to. Nail-in-head woman might be a bit silly to not take the nail out of her head, and I used to believe something closer to that in the general case. These days, though, when someone is having trouble with something and their head is clouded to obvious solutions, I might like to:
- Hug them if they're willing
- Listen for awhile, and hold in mind that my initial advice might be wrong, insufficient, and that they've probably already tried some of my ideas early on
- Ask questions and iterate to try to find what the underlying problems is (LessWrong and Rationality helped me a ton in trying to debug my own mind and find better ways to formulate the problems I face)
Feeling seen, feeling heard, believed - it seems pretty important for a lot of people in ways that I may not fully understand yet. I know politics is the mindkiller, so I won't dive too deep, but I will say that it seems a lot of online political discussion doesn't get past the "this issue is real and mostly like we say it is, your lack of belief hurts" stage.
That first, and then we can talk solutions.
Oh, definitely, I truly think this is most of the explanation, but was curious how much the other direction contributed.
Small hypothesis that I'm not very confident of at all but is worth mentioning because I've seen it surfaced by others:
"We live in the safest era in human history, yet we're more terrified of death than ever before."
What if these things are related? Everyone talks about kids being kept in smaller and smaller ranges despite child safety never higher, but what if keeping kids in a smaller range is what causes their greater safety?
Like I said, I don't fully believe this. One counterargument is that survivorship bias shouldn't apply here - even if people in the past died much more often from preventable safety-related things like accidents or kidnappings, their friends and family would remain to report their demise to the world. In other words, if free-roaming was really as risky as we think it is, there should be tons of stories of it from the past, and I don't tend to see as many.
(although maybe comment threads I read on the matter select for happy stories on free-roaming as a kid in the 80s and select against sad ones, I dunno)
Yeah, but then you really lose the capacity to deanonymize effectively. On priors, I can guess you’re likely to be American or Western European, probably like staying up late if you’re the former/live in Western timezones. I can read a lot more of your comments and probably deduce a lot, but just going off your two comments alone doesn’t make it any more likely to find where you live, for instance.
Even quantum cryptography couldn't restore cleartext that had half of it redacted and replaced with "----" or something.
Strong upvote from me, this is a huge cause issue in my life and I'm sure in many others. Any mental stuff aside, it seems the brain has strong control systems around not wanting to do too much of stuff it doesn't like, and more of stuff it can't get enough of.
One thing I've always wondered about is how a person's affinities and frustrations are made. Why do some people love to write, so much so that time for writing just appears without conscious effort, whereas others find it a grinding chore they can't wait to be done with? What makes some people feel a calling to be, say, a veterinarian or a plumber? Why do most people dislike exercise but a few really love it and couldn't make themselves stop if they tried?
If we can figure this out, maybe we can figure out how to move stuff between categories. Rather than trying to learn how to live with the suck, maybe we can find ways to make stuff not suck, as much as we can, at least.
Sorry, yes, this is what I was also getting at, that the joke has basis in reality. My comment was not worded very well.
I mean, it's a joke for a reason. SpongeBob had its "daring escape through the perfume department" gag, too.
Okay, this is definitely true, too. I also do enjoy a more consistent ability to justify my actions and beliefs, which is far from nothing and not worth writing off. I guess, for me, the missing ingredient is that the other person gets it once I make a logical and reasonable justification; if that happens, I think it's fine to be friends with a very critical person.