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0 pointsNevermark8mo ago0 comments

> I know people calling "hype" are motivated by something.

You had me until you basically said, "and for my next trick, I am going to make up stories".

Projecting is what happens when someone doesn't understand some other people, and from that somehow concludes that they do understand those other people, and feels the need to tell everyone what they now "know" about those people, that even those people don't know about themselves.

Stopping at "I don't understand those people." is always a solid move. Alternately, consciously recognizing "I don't understand those people", followed up with "so I am going to ask them to explain their point of view", is a pretty good move too.

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positron268mo ago

> so I am going to ask them to explain their point of view

In times when people are being more honest. There's a huge amount of perverse incentive to chase internet points or investment or whatever right now. You don't get honest answers without reading between the lines in these situations.

It's important to do because after a few rounds of battleship, when people get angry, they slip something out like, "Elon Musk" or "big tech" etc and you can get a feel that they're angry that a Nazi was fiddling in government etc, that they're less concerned about overblown harm from LLMs and in fact more concerned that the tech will wind up excessively centralized, like they have seen other winner-take-all markets evolve.

Once you get people to say what they really believe, one way or another, you can fit actual solutions in place instead of just short-sighted reactions that tend to accomplish nothing beyond making a lot of noise along the way to the same conclusion.

NevermarkOP8mo ago

> You don't get honest answers without reading between the lines in these situations.

Yes, there is an art to asking people who seem to have non-sensical viewpoints to explain the reasoning behind those viewpoints.

The less apparently sensible their viewpoint is, the more likely something interesting is happening. They may have a disconnect between their conscious reasoning vs. actual reasoning, or there is communication impedance mismatch, or they have non-obvious assumptions they haven't made explicit, etc.

Their real reasoning often reveals something important (they may actually be right, they have a different communication style worth becoming aware of, they are interpreting things from a very different experience/wisdom base, ...), but it often takes patience and creativity to tease out.

And it can be a challenge to avoid coming on too strong, i.e. appearing judgmental, in a conversation whose premise is genuinely "WTF are you thinking?"

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