Toxic Attitudes about Greatness

[Elliot]

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This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://curi.us/2587-toxic-attitudes-about-greatness

[Dface]

@Elliot

This attitude is toxic and I want to warn people against it.

Oh ok, I think i have it in the form of i gotta be great.

@Elliot

The idea I got from Deutsch is sort of like: society is broken, the default status quo is broken, so you have to be way better than most people just to avoid disaster.

One of my first thoughts is why not focus on the bad stuff then? It’s like focusing on a bunch of good things and hopefully maybe it makes you a good person. It’s like focusing on global optima i think

@Elliot

It’s all stick, no carrot.

Oh i see how it can be all stick no carrot like one tries so hard to be good only to be seen as not as bad.

@Elliot

Deutsch also basically said you have to question conventional romance and monogamy, and have great outlier ideas, or else have awful relationships.

Why the focus on relationships? Questioning monogamy like that sounds like excusing certain kind of behavior

@Elliot

And you have to question conventional philosophy (like induction) and find something far better or else you’ll have awful philosophy ideas (and therefore e.g. have poor prospects at doing good work as a scientist or AI researcher).

There’s still successful people without questioning induction like that.

@Elliot

And, according to Deutsch, if you don’t adopt especially good versions of libertarian type ideas about politics and economics, then you’ll have really awful ideas on those subjects, with various bad consequences.

That’s a lot of all or nothing thinking from them

@Elliot

And if you practice a religion you’re probably just full of really nasty static memes that drive you to really immoral behaviors and ideas;

Probably maybe, but I’ve seen so many reasonable religious people that it’s hard to believe they do immoral stuff like that.

@Elliot

static memes make you have anti-criticism attitudes and biases and otherwise sabotage the means of correcting errors, which is according to Deutsch basically the most evil, immoral, depraved thing you can do.

I don’t like DD’s attitude like there’s so much hostility and it’s so black and white

@Elliot

A practical result of this is that many of Deutsch’s fans lie about wanting all types and strengths of criticism on all topics, lie about their openness to debate, lie about how open to outlier ideas they are, lie about being thick-skinned, and lie about liking and wanting intellectual conversations when they are actually having negative emotions.

Those fans secretly disagree with DD about taking criticism

@Elliot

They can feel especially pressured to be great regarding this specific issue to avoid Deutsch’s moral condemnation, but they generally aren’t already great at it, and some try to fake it until they make it, which I’ve never seen work.

It’s hard to express in words but that moral condemnation stuff is so extreme from DD

@Elliot

Another example of Deutsch’s all-or-nothing attitude is when he tweeted:

All compulsory education, “tough” or not, “love” or not, in camps or not, and whether it “traumatises” or not, is a violation of human rights.

That sounds like whataboutism to me like an agenda is trying to be pushed

P.S. I think after my 4th or 5th comment to a quote in this reply I thought that it would be hard to handle a lot of criticism or questioning to the things I said. I don’t know why i thought that.

[LMD]

I appreciate you sharing this thank you.

@Elliot

This attitude is toxic

So does toxic here means like an insidious attitude? An attitude that’ll block me? An attitude that will poison things (me? my life? my thinking?)

@Elliot

For Deutsch, you have to be one of the very best just to be OK, decent, acceptable – you actually don’t really get to be considered great or special for doing that. It’s all stick, no carrot. It’s toxic.

I like the “all stick, no carrot” metaphor. I hadn’t heard that before.

@Elliot

I’m guessing that LMD picked up some of Deutsch’s attitude.

When you first mentioned Deutsch, I was actually kind of surprised. I thought my attitude might have more to do with Rand, but the examples you gave from Deutsch all resonated with me. I somehow didn’t pick up on that attitude from Deutsch.

@Elliot

Another example of Deutsch’s all-or-nothing attitude is when he tweeted:

All compulsory education, “tough” or not, “love” or not, in camps or not, and whether it “traumatises” or not, is a violation of human rights.

The tweet was a comment on Troubled US teens left traumatised by tough love camps, which it linked to.

I read half the article. That kids were/are literally kidnapped by masked people from their beds at night is so fucked up. Deutsch’s comment really seems to miss what is so objectionable about what’s happening there. I think you’re right that he is implicitly defending the camps as not being worse than other schools.

I guess things being qualitatively different can matter a lot. I remember reading an idea that I think Charles Tew said (but I’m not sure and I’m not quoting him). The idea as I remember it was: the difference between murder and wasting someone’s time is a matter of degree. And I’ve thought about that idea from time to time. But I don’t think wasting someone’s time and murdering them are as bad as each other. I think everyone would prefer to have their time wasted by someone to being killed by them. I don’t think someone should be condemned as a murderer for wasting someone’s time. Similarly, I don’t think normal schools should be condemned like a kidnapping wilderness camp, nor parent’s who send their children to normal school condemned like parents who organise to have their child kidnapped by masked strangers.

[anonymous107]

@LMD

@Elliot

Another example of Deutsch’s all-or-nothing attitude is when he tweeted:

All compulsory education, “tough” or not, “love” or not, in camps or not, and whether it “traumatises” or not, is a violation of human rights.

The tweet was a comment on Troubled US teens left traumatised by tough love camps, which it linked to.

I read half the article. That kids were/are literally kidnapped by masked people from their beds at night is so fucked up. Deutsch’s comment really seems to miss what is so objectionable about what’s happening there. I think you’re right that he is implicitly defending the camps as not being worse than other schools.

I guess things being qualitatively different can matter a lot. I remember reading an idea that I think Charles Tew said (but I’m not sure and I’m not quoting him). The idea as I remember it was: the difference between murder and wasting someone’s time is a matter of degree. And I’ve thought about that idea from time to time. But I don’t think wasting someone’s time and murdering them are as bad as each other. I think everyone would prefer to have their time wasted by someone to being killed by them. I don’t think someone should be condemned as a murderer for wasting someone’s time. Similarly, I don’t think normal schools should be condemned like a kidnapping wilderness camp, nor parent’s who send their children to normal school condemned like parents who organise to have their child kidnapped by masked strangers.

Deutsch basically replied to “abusive teen wilderness camps are bad” with “all schools are bad”.

This has some parallel to replying to “black lives matter” with “all lives matter”. That’s a well known attitude which I think Deutsch also favors. The point of it is to deny that anti-black racism (particularly by cops) is a problem in society. Saying “all lives matter” is a defense of many people, particularly many cops, as non-racists (or alternatively one could claim there are roughly equal amounts of racism against all races). People on both sides (who think society is or isn’t racist) should be able to agree that that’s the meaning.

[Elliot]

@LMD

@Elliot

This attitude is toxic

So does toxic here means like an insidious attitude? An attitude that’ll block me? An attitude that will poison things (me? my life? my thinking?)

Toxic = harmful. For more nuance see e.g. Urban Dictionary: toxic

@LMD

@Elliot

I’m guessing that LMD picked up some of Deutsch’s attitude.

When you first mentioned Deutsch, I was actually kind of surprised. I thought my attitude might have more to do with Rand, but the examples you gave from Deutsch all resonated with me. I somehow didn’t pick up on that attitude from Deutsch.

Oh cool I’m glad I could provide some insight there.