eigenrobot Profile picture
Oct 22, 2019 17 tweets 3 min read Read on X
eigenrobots theory and practice of complimenting people!!!!

a thread, inspired by a lovely metacompliment
part one: how to give compliment's

1. notice something you like in someone else

2. tell them you like it
this is perhaps harder than you might think. both steps require Art
noticing something you like in someone else may be harder for some people than others.

my suspicion is that complimenting may be difficult for misanthropists, for example, if they are not inclined to notice beauty in their fellow man; or for those who react with fear to social
fortunately this is a skill that may be consciously trained

for example

make a list of ten people in your life

go down that list and for each think of something about them that is laudatory

it doesnt need to be a big thing--often subtleties are better than prominent traits
eventually, you can learn to see Good in others reflexively

beyond embiggening ones Charm, this is an important trait to develop for living a happy life

(naturally it should be tempered with Prudence but the impulse ought to be there)
suppose you have noticed something you like about someone. How do you tell them?

"I like it that you X" is a good start! And it will quite generally be well-received. You don't need to go past this.
being really masterful in delivery is harder. here is the pith of it.

people live in their own stories. a deeply-felt compliment will be one that lets them tell a better story about themselves.
to do this thoroughly--and I'm not sure it can be done entirely consciously--one must have some intuition about another's story; show their intuition; and guide the complimentee to the new story

this is a necessarily intimate exercise
(delivering a mortal insult is a left-hand path mirror of this but is almost always despicable and if done without Charity and Grace corrodes the insulter more than the insulted)
Some pitfalls.

Do not lie when you deliver a compliment. This is harder than an honest compliment, for one thing, as it is difficult to tell a story around a kernel of falsehood. It also may deceive the complimented and deprive them of a chance to live a better, truer story.
Relatedly, don't give empty compliment. It's important to _perceive_ something good and true, and share that story. Grasping at unheartfelt tropes will ring hollow and never stick, and over time people will notice and devalue such statements.
Flattery is fine as long as it is _true_ but you must have a very deft delivery or you will read as fulsome and the recipient will be flustered or put off. Flatter rarely and well and honestly.
Closing thoughts.

People need to be seen and need to be loved (there may not be a difference).

Giving someone a compliment shows that you perceive them, perhaps better than they do themselves.

Compliments ennoble the giver and recipient alike.

Be excellent to each other. ❤️
appending this lovely real life example

ps dont forget to send thank you cards after Christmas
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More from @eigenrobot

Sep 18
Set normative considerations aside a moment.

Is there any way that Dems and the left, going forward, could credibly commit to not suppressing speech? I don't see it.

If not, is recent suppression of speech by the administration construable as strategic retaliation?
It's tricky.

This dynamic is _not_ obviously gainfully-modeled as IPD. Instead of acting simultaneously, one agent (here representing something like a D/R coalition) decides to act in each round.

Who acts next round is nondeterministic and may be affected by actions this round.
More things to consider in this model:

1. If party institutions are ahistorically weak, which I think they are now, discounting of future rounds ought to be treated as relatively intense, which makes commitment more difficult
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Sep 16
somewhere along the way i think maybe what happened was, eliezer started believing everything he thought

easy pitfall as you age, probably. IME when you spend enough time thinking, certain things crystalize and you get less patient about the process

happens to everyone prolly
the vital urge to say "ok, how is this wrong" starts to fade as you get older, because you've played that game so many times that it gets tiresome and you start to think you know what that room holds

usually you're right, but it's an easy way to get stuck
second issue is the cost of doing this sort of inquiry gets higher as you accumulate more committed beliefs or expectations

once more, you're usually more likely to be "correct" at any given moment, but updating gets very costly as your world model is built out and solidified
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Sep 13
its been a long week so tonight please relax as i relate to you the tale of a great episode in american autism Image
our third president, thomas jefferson, was immensely autistic

he spent much of his time inventing questionably useful devices, getting hung up on and beefing over irrelevant abstractions, pursuing unwise relationships w subordinates, and recording data for no particular reason Image
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he combined several of these hobbies in an extended incident in the court of france where he was serving as america's ambassador ("minister plenipotentiary") in the mid 1780s, succeeding a real scientist and charmer, benjamin franklin

big shoes to fill! and he tried. awkwardly Image
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Aug 30
pulled the entire 10 volume set of a 1964 children's reading collection from a used bookstore for $18

i regard this as a colossal win

the introduction is worth reading as a contrast to contemporary pedagogical philosophy. implicit here is a colossal cultural loss Image
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i went to the bookstore to kill time between helping out with a medical emergency but found myself moved to buy these after recalling a trip to the library yesterday with my 4yo, when i noticed the entire children's section was Feelings slop

meanwhile, in 1964: Image
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after my first find i wandered to my favorite bookstore in Minneapolis and found another children's anthology, this one first published in the 1920s (unfortunately incomplete)

~$15, BOGO

as with the other collection, the prefaces contain much ancient wisdom lost to our time Image
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Aug 29
this explains a lot about what's going on, for those of you paying attention
additional context

america probably has the most productive agricultural land on earth not regularly subjected to wars of extermination Image
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"why are these soils good" because theyre basically steppes but with rain Image
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Aug 26
fyi trump ppl

the reason that nerds are unhappy about trump firing federal reserve people isnt because they particularly like those specific people

issue is that it makes the fed look beholden to the executive and this is a very bad outcome for economic stability
the fed hasnt covered itself in glory lately for sure but the counterfactual where its progressively and openly politicized is pretty much just a world of hyperinflation and impoverishment because thats a side effect of how unstable governments use politicized central banks
i think a steelman for "end the fed" is that we've left this absurdly powerful yet nigh defenseless institution sitting in plain sight like a loaded gun during a period of immensely high trust and as that period comes to a close someone is gonna make a first grab at the pistol
Read 5 tweets

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