"I have strong feelings, and therefore I will invent rational-sounding excuses to justify my feelings, and I know they are right because they are mine!" kind of writing.
Very illuminating reading. I'm particularly fond of these closing lines:
> pay careful attention to what you’re afraid they’re going to write, and why you wouldn’t want it to be public. Then apply some rational thinking.
This is precisely the ideal I try to aim for. Sure, I get defensive when I feel attacked; that appears to be part of human nature. But the key to improvement is finding error and trying to correct it. It can be incredibly helpful to have an outside point of view.
A big theme of this essay is the author knowingly raging against things that he is well aware that he is complicit in. I don't know exactly how to describe the tone, but that line makes total sense as part of the "bit."
> the reason you act like this is because you don't understand that you are doing something wrong
No, it's actually because you don't think it's wrong in the first place.
I understand why people prefer to lie to protect other's emotions, or why people prefer being high-status rather than being right, but I disagree with that, I think it's wrong.
> Maybe it’s sociopathic to prey on emotions this way.
This is why greeks practised Rhetorics. Remarking on the practice, one philosopher said the exact same thing. He said, "You are using people's emotions to weigh in as against the facts of the case."
People have been unaccountably good to me. I have no
enemies, and if certain persons have masqueraded as such,
they’ve been far too good-natured to have ever pained me.
Anytime I read something written against me, I not only
share the sentiment but feel I could do the job far better
myself. Perhaps I should advise would-be enemies to send
me their grievances beforehand, with full assurance that
they will receive my every aid and support. I have even
secretly longed to write, under a pen name, a merciless
tirade against myself. Ah, the unvarnished truths I harbor!
- from the autobiographical essay Gwern cites elsewhere
> I didn't say they were being dishonest, I said it feels dishonest.
The phrase “it feels” is not carte blanche to say what you want.
I could say, “Someone reading this post might think that you’re an axe murderer.” Certainly not me, I don’t think you’re an axe murderer. But someone reading this post might think so. What this does is introduce a new topic of conversation—that topic is you, and whether you’re an axe murderer. I’ve done it without saying anything untrue. It is literally true, that someone reading this post might think that you’re an axe murderer. That has much the same effect as an accusation, but I’ve given you no real way to respond.
When you write “it feels”, there is an implied subject, who is feeling those feelings. That subject is you.
>"I feel like I'm faking that I actually know what I'm talking about".
I have a theory that pretty much everyone feels like this and the only reason anything gets done is because people are trying to stop other people from finding out that they think this about themselves.
It's written in the frame of "I used to be a huge believer of not X, but now I learned X is true! And that gives me credibility!". No one talks like this except people trying to manipulate you.
For a second, I thought this was about Homi K. Bhabha, notorious among other things for this gem of a sentence:
"If, for a while, the ruse of desire is calculable for the uses of discipline soon the repetition of guilt, justification, pseudo-scientific theories, superstition, spurious authorities, and classifications can be seen as the desperate effort to 'normalise' formally the disturbance of a discourse of splitting that violates the rational, enlightened claims of its enunciatory modality."
> Everyone is capable of deluding themselves into believing their current, morally questionable actions will be seen as justified in the future
This is dissonance, defined. Seeing one's actions as maybe being justified later is just rationalizing using other's feelings or thoughts. It's not cool to speak for others and if one is not careful, they can burn their entire life down around themselves.
reply