reads to me as "I didn't appreciate how I interpreted the tone as demanding."
I'd write the desired expression as:
"[I] [¬appreciate] [tone] AND [I] [interpret] ([tone] = [demanding])"
More substantially, I like this essay and think it's pointing at a very important thing. But also I feel like you don't talk enough about the difference between objective similarity (e.g. humans and chimps are similar in the grand scheme) and strategic similarity (e.g. pro-life voters and pro-gun voters go together). Often, to my eyes, what's happening with "TNoSD" is not so much narcissism but a contest over a local issue which is potentially solvable through politics. By nature of being local, it's "small", but by the nature of politics and struggle there's still going to be a (potentially nasty) fight.
> How do you feel about this story? Scott and Sigmund have observed the phenomenon of [people who seem very similar being very angry at one another], and have generated a model that seems to explain the observations. What do you think about their proposed explanation?
Echoing one of the things Freud says, I think there are (near)-universal human social instincts that (indirectly) lead to (1) motivation to have one or more people to blame when things go wrong, and to feel superior to; and (2) motivation to be part of groups that like each other. The natural result of (1-2) is that people are motivated to have ingroup(s) and outgroup(s).
I don't think matters at all whether the outgroup is different-but-not-too-different. I think outgroups can be anywhere in the range from "maximally different" to "imperceptibly different". Instead I think it's important that the outgroup be *salient*. It doesn't "scratch that itch" to have an outgroup who you never think about or hear about. I think salience, not magnitude-of-difference, is the main explanation for Scott's observations that Nazis didn't get riled up about the Chinese.
(These days, we have the nightly news and the internet providing a steady stream of videos from around the world etc. So we can get a steady drip of satisfaction out of feeling hatred towards groups even on the other side of the world. Those groups can still be salient enough to function as outgroups, even if we never meet them in person. But that was much less true in the 1940s and earlier.)
I agree that the local point you made about the difference between "I didn't appreciate the demanding tone" and "I didn't appreciate what I took to be a demanding tone" being real and meaningful.
I also think the point in your second imagined response ("Okay, but there’s a difference between someone being willing to explicitly acknowledge, when prompted...") being real and important. (I've echoed a similar sentiment in my writings, where I've complained about people bouncing off "self-evident" statements; and how explicitly bringing these up can result in agreeable nods without any deeper updates.)
I read this post with my friend, and we had very different takes on Section III. They were less on board with this difference being significant / about the significance of this local point in the broader context. They were of the opinion that Duncan should be more charitable.
The argument, as I understand, is: Duncan clearly is *capable* of modeling that the causal process behind the words "I didn't appreciate the demanding tone" is "I didn't appreciate what I took to be a demanding tone" - he explicitly does this unpacking in the essay! (And presumably he is capable of doing even more fine-grained modeling than that, e.g. unpacking the concepts "appreciate", "demanding" and "tone", and incorporating information from the broader context.) So Duncan *could* "just let it go", infer things from Tom's words even if they aren't explicitly said, and, goes the argument, Duncan *should* do this.
I am sympathetic to my-model-of-my-friend's desire to emphasize the "not tactically wise or likely to deescalate the situation" part more than what we as readers took away from the text. I did still appreciate the structural decomposition of the sentences; this helped me clarify the rationalist-sphere thoughts around "concepts such as 'demanding tone' are not fundamentally real". And it is a great example of The Narcissism of Small Differences, given that my friend and I had different takes on the importance of this difference, despite otherwise sharing many views.
---
Here is a thing I mentioned that helped my friend understand the distinction better:
I read a Twitter discussion that went like
Alice: "One of my least favorite rationalist jargon is 'I notice I am confused'. This brings no value in comparison to saying 'I am confused', but is just longer."
Bob: "Yeah, and I don't get why people bother saying 'I am confused', instead of just saying 'wut'."
(In case it is not clear, Bob is joking here. I think real-Bob wasn't as snarky as my presentation of them.)
So one can argue that "I am confused" is just shorthand for "I notice I am confused". Similarly, "wut" is just shorthand for "I am confused". But I argue that there's value in people saying "I notice I am confused" rather than "wut".
Similarly, there is real value in moving along on the spectrum "False!" - "That is false" - "I think that is false", or *crying and screaming* - "Help!" - "I need help, someone please help me."
(And, importantly, one doesn't have to always use the long version. There are situations where you prefer "Help!" over "I need help, someone please help me", and "That is false" over "I think that is false". The whole point is that they do not have the same function.)
These examples are about a slightly different phenomenon than Duncan's example, but I hope they are still helpful in illustrating differences.
"[I] [¬appreciate] ([I] [interpret] ([tone] = [demanding]))"
reads to me as "I didn't appreciate how I interpreted the tone as demanding."
I'd write the desired expression as:
"[I] [¬appreciate] [tone] AND [I] [interpret] ([tone] = [demanding])"
More substantially, I like this essay and think it's pointing at a very important thing. But also I feel like you don't talk enough about the difference between objective similarity (e.g. humans and chimps are similar in the grand scheme) and strategic similarity (e.g. pro-life voters and pro-gun voters go together). Often, to my eyes, what's happening with "TNoSD" is not so much narcissism but a contest over a local issue which is potentially solvable through politics. By nature of being local, it's "small", but by the nature of politics and struggle there's still going to be a (potentially nasty) fight.
Tim Urban's book goes into this in a way I think is pretty good: https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Our-Problem-Self-Help-Societies-ebook/dp/B0BTJCTR58
> How do you feel about this story? Scott and Sigmund have observed the phenomenon of [people who seem very similar being very angry at one another], and have generated a model that seems to explain the observations. What do you think about their proposed explanation?
Echoing one of the things Freud says, I think there are (near)-universal human social instincts that (indirectly) lead to (1) motivation to have one or more people to blame when things go wrong, and to feel superior to; and (2) motivation to be part of groups that like each other. The natural result of (1-2) is that people are motivated to have ingroup(s) and outgroup(s).
I don't think matters at all whether the outgroup is different-but-not-too-different. I think outgroups can be anywhere in the range from "maximally different" to "imperceptibly different". Instead I think it's important that the outgroup be *salient*. It doesn't "scratch that itch" to have an outgroup who you never think about or hear about. I think salience, not magnitude-of-difference, is the main explanation for Scott's observations that Nazis didn't get riled up about the Chinese.
(These days, we have the nightly news and the internet providing a steady stream of videos from around the world etc. So we can get a steady drip of satisfaction out of feeling hatred towards groups even on the other side of the world. Those groups can still be salient enough to function as outgroups, even if we never meet them in person. But that was much less true in the 1940s and earlier.)
Thought-provoking essay, thank you!
I agree that the local point you made about the difference between "I didn't appreciate the demanding tone" and "I didn't appreciate what I took to be a demanding tone" being real and meaningful.
I also think the point in your second imagined response ("Okay, but there’s a difference between someone being willing to explicitly acknowledge, when prompted...") being real and important. (I've echoed a similar sentiment in my writings, where I've complained about people bouncing off "self-evident" statements; and how explicitly bringing these up can result in agreeable nods without any deeper updates.)
I read this post with my friend, and we had very different takes on Section III. They were less on board with this difference being significant / about the significance of this local point in the broader context. They were of the opinion that Duncan should be more charitable.
The argument, as I understand, is: Duncan clearly is *capable* of modeling that the causal process behind the words "I didn't appreciate the demanding tone" is "I didn't appreciate what I took to be a demanding tone" - he explicitly does this unpacking in the essay! (And presumably he is capable of doing even more fine-grained modeling than that, e.g. unpacking the concepts "appreciate", "demanding" and "tone", and incorporating information from the broader context.) So Duncan *could* "just let it go", infer things from Tom's words even if they aren't explicitly said, and, goes the argument, Duncan *should* do this.
I am sympathetic to my-model-of-my-friend's desire to emphasize the "not tactically wise or likely to deescalate the situation" part more than what we as readers took away from the text. I did still appreciate the structural decomposition of the sentences; this helped me clarify the rationalist-sphere thoughts around "concepts such as 'demanding tone' are not fundamentally real". And it is a great example of The Narcissism of Small Differences, given that my friend and I had different takes on the importance of this difference, despite otherwise sharing many views.
---
Here is a thing I mentioned that helped my friend understand the distinction better:
I read a Twitter discussion that went like
Alice: "One of my least favorite rationalist jargon is 'I notice I am confused'. This brings no value in comparison to saying 'I am confused', but is just longer."
Bob: "Yeah, and I don't get why people bother saying 'I am confused', instead of just saying 'wut'."
(In case it is not clear, Bob is joking here. I think real-Bob wasn't as snarky as my presentation of them.)
So one can argue that "I am confused" is just shorthand for "I notice I am confused". Similarly, "wut" is just shorthand for "I am confused". But I argue that there's value in people saying "I notice I am confused" rather than "wut".
Similarly, there is real value in moving along on the spectrum "False!" - "That is false" - "I think that is false", or *crying and screaming* - "Help!" - "I need help, someone please help me."
(And, importantly, one doesn't have to always use the long version. There are situations where you prefer "Help!" over "I need help, someone please help me", and "That is false" over "I think that is false". The whole point is that they do not have the same function.)
These examples are about a slightly different phenomenon than Duncan's example, but I hope they are still helpful in illustrating differences.