6 ms·

Science and technology and other nerdy pursuits can be really valuable, and certainly don’t require you to be judgmental of others. The problem, as I’ve seen i

by es7 4y ago

Science and technology and other nerdy pursuits can be really valuable, and certainly don’t require you to be judgmental of others. The problem, as I’ve seen it is that people who are bad at some of the other ‘games’ that make a meaningful life lean too heavily on science and technology as a coping mechanism. That coping mechanism could be many things: nerdy pursuits, alcohol, video games, etc. Whatever your pursuit, if you’re being judgmental of most other people, then you’re probably missing something big and should take some time to reflect on what that is for you.

routerl 4y ago
> Whatever your pursuit, if you’re being judgmental of most other people, then you’re probably missing something big Sure, but this may very well be intentional and good; an entire community can become pathological, and it then makes sense (and is good) for principled people to trust their judgement, even if it makes them an outcast. Liberal-minded people often had this reaction to the mid-century rise of fascism, to the point of turning that into art. I'm specifically thinking of Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionescu, but there are many other examples.
- hans1729 4y ago
  >it then makes sense (and is good) for principled people to trust their judgement, even if it makes them an outcast. I don't get this. Being judgemental always seemed immature to me. Being curious and trying to understand why individuals or groups do seemingly irrational things: yes. Being judgemental (or "principled" (is this synonymous?)): no. To me, that was always a sign of someone who hasn't made sense of themselves yet. At what point have you made so much sense of anything that you can make a defining principle out of it? That just robs one of agency, reminding of religion and stubbornness. I get that being fixated on some idiom is helpful in avoiding mental drift and maintaining focus, but that seems like the end of the road in terms of advantages. At the same time, that fixation limits your ability to go beyond the things you felt you understood years ago, whenever the principle was cemented into your cortex. Is it a desire for deeper stability? For ground truth? Because if I look at what people actually are, no matter how intelligent they may be in some domain, what I see is not able to come up with general idioms. Not even close, actually. What I see is brains trying to make sense out of noise with extreme simplifications, rather fitting the data to their model than the other way around. I never got the advantage of saying "well now MY model fits this pattern, PERIOD!".
  - golergka 4y ago
    Have you experienced a moment when most of your nation supports an unjust invasion, and many openly and proudly dream of genocide?
    - waqf 4y ago
      I think it's very useful in such a case to investigate, as scientifically and dispassionately as possible, exactly how such a moment came to be. And I think that would involve "getting into the heads" of the supporters of the cause. Do you not think so?
      - watwut 4y ago
        Well, if you see that to be in dichotomy with being principled or judging, then it is less noble then you seem to imply.
        waqf 4y ago
        If by "being principled or judging" you mean labelling people as evil and dismissing them then I don't accept that that's axiomatically noble. If by "being principled or judging" you mean having any ethical values at all, then I don't see that it is inconsistent with striving to understand others' minds; I was asking because it appeared that the poster I was responding to thought so.
        watwut 4y ago
        It is not noble to intentionally bias yourself toward "proudly dream of genocide" which is exactly what you propose is doing. You do propose to spend a lot of effort to get into the heads of perpetrators ... but there is no equivalent feeling of pressure to get into the head and reality of victims who need help, support and defense right now. There is also difference between explaining and rationalizing and what is proposed here sounds to me closer to "rationalizing" - because you start with assumption that analysis should not end in negative judgement. The "how it came to be" in real world history tend to be fairly long complicated story. It gets to be explained and revised literally for years after the fact, as important document start surfacing or people who were afraid to talk starts to talk. Typically it starts 20 years ago, when some journalists ended up beaten and arrested and someone's business interests something. You can in fact study history of holocaust with principled opinion and judgement that Holocaust was bad.
alar44 4y ago
[flagged]
- blindmute 4y ago
  This post could be satire, but it sadly isn't
temp8964 4y ago
However, in high school, many of other kids are in fact playing stupid games. Boys hang out do stupid things, or compete who’s the bigger bully. Girls play social games with bullies.
pm90 4y ago
Im guilty of being rather judgmental of others who performed worse than me in academics. I don’t really want to go into the reasons but, yes its very unhealthy to think that way. People have their reasons for why they choose to focus on some things and not others. Perhaps the most important goal of a good society is to be able to assign people to things they’re most suited for.
- dasz 4y ago
  I've found that there's a kind of person who excels at academic pursuits but isn't so great elsewhere. Especially outside academia. I was judged harshly at school. Fast forward years later and I'm that guy who hired someone who got better scores than me. Annoyingly I later also had to fire them because they couldn't deliver. Those scores didn't help them succeed. Too much theory. They had not played the associated game of project management. Too much focus on getting good caused excessive success in their local minima instead of the bigger picture. I realised this lesson quite frequently in many ways and our hiring is now more around the competency game. Can they do it? So now the bar is set differently and there's multiple games you need to play and succeed in. Better have hobbies outside IT as well. We've gotten suspicious of people who overplay in the tech sandpit. Its suboptimal in our view. Hiring adult humans who can succeed with adult supervision seems like a better overall situation.
- hans1729 4y ago
  >People have their reasons for why they choose to focus on some things and not others. You're saying that like those "reasons" are properties of the personality of their beholders. They are not, it's coping mechanisms all the way down. >Perhaps the most important goal of a good society is to be able to assign people to things they’re most suited for. Perhaps we should stop putting things as wild as brains into boxes labelled "suited for X, suited for Y". Perhaps the most important goal of a good individual is to be able to leave others alone, so they can flourish instead of trying to fit the arbitrary concepts that random other participants made up for them to fit into.
- Bancakes 4y ago
  It seems like such an outdated world view that "person X is born to do Y. His ancestry is such." Everyone can put efforts to adapt and learn new concepts and skills and isn't that the point of university? I'm confident out of 100 somali pirates, one of them is the most apt to learn python.

by es7 4y ago

routerl 4y ago

> Whatever your pursuit, if you’re being judgmental of most other people, then you’re probably missing something big Sure, but this may very well be intentional and good; an entire community can become pathological, and it then makes sense (and is good) for principled people to trust their judgement, even if it makes them an outcast. Liberal-minded people often had this reaction to the mid-century rise of fascism, to the point of turning that into art. I'm specifically thinking of Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionescu, but there are many other examples.

hans1729 4y ago
>it then makes sense (and is good) for principled people to trust their judgement, even if it makes them an outcast. I don't get this. Being judgemental always seemed immature to me. Being curious and trying to understand why individuals or groups do seemingly irrational things: yes. Being judgemental (or "principled" (is this synonymous?)): no. To me, that was always a sign of someone who hasn't made sense of themselves yet. At what point have you made so much sense of anything that you can make a defining principle out of it? That just robs one of agency, reminding of religion and stubbornness. I get that being fixated on some idiom is helpful in avoiding mental drift and maintaining focus, but that seems like the end of the road in terms of advantages. At the same time, that fixation limits your ability to go beyond the things you felt you understood years ago, whenever the principle was cemented into your cortex. Is it a desire for deeper stability? For ground truth? Because if I look at what people actually are, no matter how intelligent they may be in some domain, what I see is not able to come up with general idioms. Not even close, actually. What I see is brains trying to make sense out of noise with extreme simplifications, rather fitting the data to their model than the other way around. I never got the advantage of saying "well now MY model fits this pattern, PERIOD!".
- golergka 4y ago
  Have you experienced a moment when most of your nation supports an unjust invasion, and many openly and proudly dream of genocide?
  - waqf 4y ago
    I think it's very useful in such a case to investigate, as scientifically and dispassionately as possible, exactly how such a moment came to be. And I think that would involve "getting into the heads" of the supporters of the cause. Do you not think so?
    - watwut 4y ago
      Well, if you see that to be in dichotomy with being principled or judging, then it is less noble then you seem to imply.
      - waqf 4y ago
        If by "being principled or judging" you mean labelling people as evil and dismissing them then I don't accept that that's axiomatically noble. If by "being principled or judging" you mean having any ethical values at all, then I don't see that it is inconsistent with striving to understand others' minds; I was asking because it appeared that the poster I was responding to thought so.
        watwut 4y ago
        It is not noble to intentionally bias yourself toward "proudly dream of genocide" which is exactly what you propose is doing. You do propose to spend a lot of effort to get into the heads of perpetrators ... but there is no equivalent feeling of pressure to get into the head and reality of victims who need help, support and defense right now. There is also difference between explaining and rationalizing and what is proposed here sounds to me closer to "rationalizing" - because you start with assumption that analysis should not end in negative judgement. The "how it came to be" in real world history tend to be fairly long complicated story. It gets to be explained and revised literally for years after the fact, as important document start surfacing or people who were afraid to talk starts to talk. Typically it starts 20 years ago, when some journalists ended up beaten and arrested and someone's business interests something. You can in fact study history of holocaust with principled opinion and judgement that Holocaust was bad.

alar44 4y ago

[flagged]

blindmute 4y ago
This post could be satire, but it sadly isn't

temp8964 4y ago

However, in high school, many of other kids are in fact playing stupid games. Boys hang out do stupid things, or compete who’s the bigger bully. Girls play social games with bullies.

pm90 4y ago

Im guilty of being rather judgmental of others who performed worse than me in academics. I don’t really want to go into the reasons but, yes its very unhealthy to think that way. People have their reasons for why they choose to focus on some things and not others. Perhaps the most important goal of a good society is to be able to assign people to things they’re most suited for.

dasz 4y ago
I've found that there's a kind of person who excels at academic pursuits but isn't so great elsewhere. Especially outside academia. I was judged harshly at school. Fast forward years later and I'm that guy who hired someone who got better scores than me. Annoyingly I later also had to fire them because they couldn't deliver. Those scores didn't help them succeed. Too much theory. They had not played the associated game of project management. Too much focus on getting good caused excessive success in their local minima instead of the bigger picture. I realised this lesson quite frequently in many ways and our hiring is now more around the competency game. Can they do it? So now the bar is set differently and there's multiple games you need to play and succeed in. Better have hobbies outside IT as well. We've gotten suspicious of people who overplay in the tech sandpit. Its suboptimal in our view. Hiring adult humans who can succeed with adult supervision seems like a better overall situation.
hans1729 4y ago
>People have their reasons for why they choose to focus on some things and not others. You're saying that like those "reasons" are properties of the personality of their beholders. They are not, it's coping mechanisms all the way down. >Perhaps the most important goal of a good society is to be able to assign people to things they’re most suited for. Perhaps we should stop putting things as wild as brains into boxes labelled "suited for X, suited for Y". Perhaps the most important goal of a good individual is to be able to leave others alone, so they can flourish instead of trying to fit the arbitrary concepts that random other participants made up for them to fit into.
Bancakes 4y ago
It seems like such an outdated world view that "person X is born to do Y. His ancestry is such." Everyone can put efforts to adapt and learn new concepts and skills and isn't that the point of university? I'm confident out of 100 somali pirates, one of them is the most apt to learn python.