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.
as I've written before--I can't find the thread--pseudonymy is easily defended. it has had a substantial tradition in american discourse since the founding
and there are very good reasons for maintaining it, even--*especially*--in a political context
the thought foremost in my mind is, education is going to become much more important for our children. not as a means of earning a living but as a means of becoming realized and independent humans in a dehumanizing age
the notion of education in the latter 20th century being wholly a matter of practical knowledge rather than of personal development has always been exaggerated
but set aside practicality; imagine a world where bodily survival and provision are not dependent on such learned skill
there is still a purpose to education in conveying to children the ways of living, thinking and acting and speaking, that we have found worthy
that is, the point of such education is guiding a child to becoming the kind of person who it is worth being for a lifetime
i was curious if or how they might justify any such moves
explicitly calling it "compelled speech" in a public statement is much more assertive than I'd expected
i wonder where this new respect for speech freedom is coming from ha ha
but fr i hadn't expected this and it feels like a big deal
it's the first meaningful rollback of Awokening policy, and MIT doing it in these terms gives significant elite cover to other schools that might _want_ do it
this isnt just netflix or doritos this is every product
the main reason it tends to be more pronounced in tech products is that tech products have vastly better and cheaper telemetry than legacy industries and it's easy to run sufficiently-powered A/B tests on consumers
facebook in particular was when i was there incredibly well-developed in this kind of measurement; their internal tooling and organizational practices in product analytics were afaik the best in the world
it was an exquisite organizational and technical accomplishment
i won't get into details although I don't think it's much of an industrial secret
but basically, the impact of every feature change and every product team could be rigorously measured and tracked and usually were
there was a ton of upside to this but perhaps one major downside