Identity; Jerks; Exceptions; That's Not Who I Am Apologies

[Elliot]

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This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://curi.us/2582-identity-jerks-exceptions-thats-not-who-i-am-apologies

[ActiveMind]

Cool post. I like this type of post. I think it’s the “how people are like” part of it I like. I also like the dishonesty analysis.

@Elliot

People who are interested in philosophy commonly try to identify their philosophical skill level with their best and most focused activities. When they make dumb errors, they blame being tired or distracted or whatever (which is how they spend most of their lives) instead of blaming inadequate skill and practice.

I think I’ve done this. I’ve definitely done it with math.

@Elliot

With bad things, people commonly look at what’s typical in order to avoid seeing themselves as bad. Their bad traits don’t count because they do them the minority of the time. But with good things, they look at their best results, not their typical results, in order to see themselves as especially good. This is biased.

Is this an example of self-lying? I don’t think people would be conscious of this. I wasn’t, but I now think I’ve done lots of this.

Is self-lying always unconscious to some degree? I guess the usual thing is that people have a sense that something is wrong but then don’t want to figure out. So evasion.

Can people believe something they have clearly stated in their own to be false to be true at the same time?

@Elliot

Special Exceptions Add Up

Also there’s never an excuse to choose evil over good, or a mixture, no matter how small the choice is.

[LMD]

@Elliot

There are celebrities who misbehave badly then issue an apology in which they say “that’s not who I am”. But it is. They did it.

It’s funny, in saying “that’s not who I am” you’re admitting you’ve considered (on some level) what this action says about who you are, but then when you don’t like it you say “that’s not who I am” instead of revising your ideas about yourself. It’s like you’re admitting you found out that what you did makes you a bad person but then you just ignore that.

[Dface]

@Elliot

But a typical jerk is someone who is a jerk 10% or less of the time,

How do you know that someone’s a typical jerk online if they only interact a little bit n not 100% of the time? Like the ~16 hours they’re awake

When u say this:

@Elliot

But a typical jerk is someone who is a jerk 10% or less of the time,

Does 1% of the time count too?

@Elliot

When they make dumb errors, they blame being tired or distracted or whatever (which is how they spend most of their lives) instead of blaming inadequate skill and practice.

I think we had a convo about this topic before, but my thinking is if im tired and im making dumb mistakes maybe I should stop for now and take a break. Should I just expect to get less done but still something when tired?

@Elliot

(which is how they spend most of their lives)

Oh i didnt think about that. If we’re at our peak of not tired after waking, then the other times we work it’s when we do get more and more tired

Edit:In case anyone wants to know the topic I was referring to. I think it was this:

Dface's Topic about Self-Help Books He's Reading

People get angry and act like a jerk and think that “I was having a bad day” is a good excuse because they aren’t usually like that. If famous, they may give a public apology saying that’s “not who I am” (I think because on most days of their life they didn’t do anything like that). Who you are near your worst is actually really important and says a lot about you. For many purposes, judging people by the minimum quality standard they maintain at all times is a better approach than looking at th…

[ActiveMind]

@Dface

How do you know that someone’s a typical jerk online if they only interact a little bit n not 100% of the time?

How do we know history when we don’t have evidence for everything that ever happened? We get some evidence and reason based on that. Getting more evidence may or may not change our views.

@Dface

Does 1% of the time count too?

For what? Being characterized as a jerk? I don’t think so. It counts in the sense that you shouldn’t be a jerk 1% of the time either. But you’re not a bad person if you’re a jerk 1% of the time though. It also depends on what ways they’re a jerk. I don’t think we have general exact numbers and measures for when people are jerks.

I think there are different standards for when we characterize people as a type of person for different behaviors. It’s based on cultural expectations for those behaviors. Murdering is something normal people never do and everyone is expected to know to never do it. So if you murder someone once you’re a murderer.

@Elliot

You only have to rape one person, once, to be a rapist. You only have to yell at your secretary once a month to be a bad boss.

When you work a lot with one person it’s normal that you’ll get frustrated with them sometimes, and sometimes your emotions will burst and you’ll yell at that person. That’s expected from our culture, but there’s an amount of yelling at your coworker that our culture deems unwarranted. That’s why Elliot said once a month for yelling at your secretary and once ever for raping.

[Elliot]

@ActiveMind

For what? Being characterized as a jerk? I don’t think so. It counts in the sense that you shouldn’t be a jerk 1% of the time either. But you’re not a bad person if you’re a jerk 1% of the time though. It also depends on what ways they’re a jerk. I don’t think we have general exact numbers and measures for when people are jerks.

1% of the time is over an hour and a half per week. Seems like a lot of time to spend being a jerk on a regular basis. It depends on what specifically you’re doing though.

[Dface]

@ActiveMind

We get some evidence and reason based on that.

I think that makes sense to me. Like what if someone makes a reddit post and one can tell they’re a typical jerk through their writing.

[ActiveMind]

@Elliot

1% of the time is over an hour and a half per week. Seems like a lot of time to spend being a jerk on a regular basis.

I didn’t calculate it, which I should’ve. I think an hour and a half per week of “normal jerk behavior” would make one a jerk.

I thought you used “the time” to mean the time where you interacted with other people, not all the time including sleep and such. Is that a strictly wrong interpretation? It seems ambiguous to me.

[Elliot]

@ActiveMind

I thought you used “the time” to mean the time where you interacted with other people, not all the time including sleep and such. Is that a strictly wrong interpretation? It seems ambiguous to me.

Yeah there’s some ambiguity.

[anonymous105]

I think this is a good post and an interesting observation. I broadly agree. I think I basically agree with all of your points about identity surrounding bad traits.

I’m going to respond to the one part I might disagree with.

@Elliot

But with good things, they look at their best results, not their typical results, in order to see themselves as especially good. This is biased.

I am not sure I actually disagree with you, because the majority of your post was about bad traits, not good ones. And in this quote you don’t specifically pass much value judgement on this behavior.

So rather than focusing on disagreeing or agreeing, I’ll just comment.

I think in many situations it is okay for people to do the quoted behavior, and to be biased for themselves in that way.

I think it’s important to recognize the stuff you are good at, and what you can achieve at your best. Your best results are important. This is maybe not true if your best results are a total fluke you can’t replicate at all… but as long as your best results are something you can achieve with some regularity, that’s important and good and I think it makes sense to identify with that. A good writer doesn’t need to spend 50% or more of their time writing good books. They could spend way less time writing than that and still write several good books that are worth being proud of.

A simple way to say it, incorporating some of your observations about jerks: I think if you’re a jerk 5% of the time, then you’re a jerk. And I think if you’re a jerk approximately 0% of the time and really nice 5% of the time, then you’re nice. You don’t have to be nice all the time to everyone. If you treat people fine most of the time, and especially nice sometimes, that’s basically the behavior of a nice person.

One other thing that also muddies this is that a lot of people are something more like a jerk X% of the time, and nice Y% of the time. So then they see themselves as nice, and how others see them varies a lot based on what behaviors each individual is exposed to. This is a common realistic situation that applies to many (most?) people. And when this applies, then I think under an impartial analysis the bad traits are more important than the good traits. You’re not a nice person if you beat your wife once a month, even if you’re super nice to everyone at church each Sunday.

So it’s important to consider both kinds of traits, and not just ignore the bad ones and then identify with the good ones.

But when someone has a good trait in a particular area, and they don’t have contradictory bad traits in the same area, then I think it is okay for them to identify with that good trait. Even if the good trait is only being lived up to a small percentage of the time.

[Dface]

I was thinking of writing my conflicting ideas with this article. I think im inspired by evaporating clouds n writing down ideas and their motivation/reason.

@Elliot

But a typical jerk is someone who is a jerk 10% or less of the time, and mostly only when there’s some sort of reason not totally at random.

I think 10% is too little for a typical jerk cuz it’s less than 50%. I think typical means something hapoens occasionally like it happens a lot. I dont think I know what typical means in numbers

I think 1% is so small for being considered a typical jerk like 1/100 times someone is a jerk. That sounds rare rather than typical. I dont know if typical and rare is mutually exclusive.

Last conflicting idea for now:

@Elliot

and mostly only when there’s some sort of reason not totally at random.

Can someone be a jerk totally at random? Am I reading this quote wrong? There’s gotta be a reason someone is a jerk or else they arent one. Really, I dont get the quote

[Elliot]

@anonymous105

I think it’s important to recognize the stuff you are good at, and what you can achieve at your best. Your best results are important. This is maybe not true if your best results are a total fluke you can’t replicate at all… but as long as your best results are something you can achieve with some regularity, that’s important and good and I think it makes sense to identify with that.

I agree. Good point. It depends on the type of thing.

If you’re a chess player, your peak, typical and low-end performances are all important to evaluating your skill level. They’re all things a coach would care about when deciding whether to include you or someone else on their team for a team chess tournament. Similar points apply to all sorts of competitive activities (e.g. sports and esports), including to some extent debates.

If you’re a writer who can accurately evaluate your writing during editing, and your best writing isn’t rare, then maybe you could fill a book with mostly your best writing and some good writing and no bad writing.

If you’re a scientist and you make one huge breakthrough, that can define your career. Making one breakthrough and being useless the rest of your life can contribute a lot more than a scientist who makes zero breakthroughs but does mid-tier work for decades.

If you think of yourself as a great philosopher/thinker based on infrequent peak performance, I think that’s problematic because you won’t be at your peak performance most of the time when discussing with people or making decisions in your life. If you think philosophy applies to life instead of just being an abstract field, then to use it well in your life you’ll need to be good at it most of the time, not just have a high peak. You won’t be doing your peak critical thinking when reading most books. And you won’t be able to have your published writing match your peak performance unless you limit how much you publish, which a lot of people do and that can be OK, but being able to write a lot of high quality essays is nicer. I think inability to perform anywhere near their peak, or at the same level as the small amount of selective stuff they publish, is one of the reasons many intellectuals avoid debate.

There are some intellectuals who put a lot of work in public. Like they make hundreds of hours of podcasts. There are even some who actually blog a lot and can write a large amount, which I think is better. If you aspire to be like them (as I think some of my readers do), you need more than a high peak performance.

This also relates to stuff like error rate and how it can exponentially branch debates if the error rate exceeds the error correction rate. (If you make an error, then when resolving that sub-issue you make three errors, and that’s your typical average performance for dealing with a sub-issue, then the discussion will branch exponentially and never finish even if your conversation partner makes zero errors.) Just having some great ideas sometimes doesn’t fix some of the issues with having a lot of errors mixed in throughout.

[anonymous105]

@Elliot

If you think of yourself as a great philosopher/thinker based on infrequent peak performance, I think that’s problematic because you won’t be at your peak performance most of the time when discussing with people or making decisions in your life. If you think philosophy applies to life instead of just being an abstract field, then to use it well in your life you’ll need to be good at it most of the time, not just have a high peak. You won’t be doing your peak critical thinking when reading most books. And you won’t be able to have your published writing match your peak performance unless you limit how much you publish, which a lot of people do and that can be OK, but being able to write a lot of high quality essays is nicer. I think inability to perform anywhere near their peak, or at the same level as the small amount of selective stuff they publish, is one of the reasons many intellectuals avoid debate.

Yeah, that makes sense. I think I touched on this a little at the end of my post.

You’re not a nice person if you beat your wife once a month, even if you’re super nice to everyone at church each Sunday.

Those are contradictory, and I think it would be reasonable to say the bad one is more important than the good one. The bad one is really bad. The good trait is totally overshadowed by the bad trait.

I think that this type of situation can be true for any given kind of trait. I’m going to quote myself again, and bold one part of the quote that I want to elaborate on.

But when someone has a good trait in a particular area, and they don’t have contradictory bad traits in the same area, then I think it is okay for them to identify with that good trait. Even if the good trait is only being lived up to a small percentage of the time.

I think that identifying with your best performance, even if that performance is infrequent, may only make sense if you do not have contradictory bad performances.

So maybe if you are really good at philosophy occasionally, but most of the time you are a very sloppy and lazy thinker, it wouldn’t make much sense to identify primarily with the rare times you’re good. Your bad traits are contradictory to that, rather than in some unrelated area.

What exactly “contradictory bad traits” actually means might be complex and nuanced. I have some guesses how I could analyze this but I don’t think I have an amazing understanding of it.

I think it’s fairly straightforward in the case of mean/nice behavior, but even then there is some more nuance than I previously discussed.

For example, before I said that if you’re both mean and nice, the meanness is more important and IMO it makes sense to call you a jerk. But what if you’re only a jerk in very specific contexts? Maybe your job involves auditing businesses and you come into contact with a lot of bosses, and when a boss is a jerk to his staff, you are a jerk to that boss. But aside from that, you’re quite nice a lot of the time. I think it might be totally reasonable for you to identify with your nicest self, and not consider yourself a jerk in general, because your mean behavior is focused towards more appropriate/deserving targets. You might be both mean and nice, but in this specific context those two traits are not as contradictory as they might be in a different context.

And in the case of a writer, you said:

If you’re a writer who can accurately evaluate your writing during editing, and your best writing isn’t rare, then maybe you could fill a book with mostly your best writing and some good writing and no bad writing.

In that example, time spent on good writing might be relatively uncommon. But your ability to identify good writing would need to be much more reliable and consistent. Imagine instead that you wrote good stuff sometimes, and wrote incomprehensible garbage just as often, but you were not reliably able to identify the difference. In that case, you would likely have a lot of published work that was really bad, as well as some that was good. I think it would be way more questionable for you to identify as a “Good Writer” at that point.

When the good and bad traits are directly contradictory like that, I don’t think it makes sense to only identify with the good stuff. It may be that in the examples you had in mind, such as philosophy, this is an important distinction.