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Butterfly Ideas

lesswrong.com

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11–19 of 19 posts

Re: Butterfly Ideas

#11

Post by koliber »

thot_experiment wrote: post #5
LargeTomato wrote: post #3

This website is written in a very self aggrandizing way. At this point I feel like I am biased against the articles before reading them because every article seems to explicitly state, or attempt to implicitly state, how smart the author is. Meanwhile, I read some blog posts that are posted onto HN that are not like that.

The LW crowd is all like that, I think it's neat that they've been able to create this echo chamber for themselves because it leads to some really wonky ideas and norms. I think the rationalists have mostly failed at their stated goals ("raise the sanity waterline"?) at least on an object level. However, I do think there's a good amount of value in the second order effects of a big group of nerds who are rich enough…

Think about this!!!!

Re: Butterfly Ideas

#12

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

shunyaekam wrote: post #9

Therapy helps in overcoming pretentiousness, no doubt. This is an emotional problem, feelings of worthlessness, attaching one's sense of identity to how smart one is etc. It's a big problem, especially among people with no life (family, self-care habits), eg nerds with no purpose. Making up a term just so you can continue jerking each other off intellectually wont help you with anything.

From TFA:

> Sometimes talking with my friends is like intellectual combat, which is great. I am glad I have such strong cognitive warriors on my side. But not all ideas are ready for intellectual combat. If I don’t get my friend on board with this, some of them will crush an idea before it gets a chance to develop, which feels awful and can kill off promising avenues of investigation.

That doesn't describe anything like what you've described in your comment.

Re: Butterfly Ideas

#13

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

082349872349872 wrote: post #2

We used to use "thinking out loud" as the tag for these...

Sometimes when I am thinking out loud, I am sounding out ideas I feel are pretty strong (I might be right, I might be wrong).

Sometimes when I am thinking out loud, I am sounding out ideas I feel are pretty weak. These are "butterfly ideas".

Re: Butterfly Ideas

#14

Post by johnfn »

lisper wrote: post #7

"Butterfly idea" is a cute aphorism but there is already a term of art for this which ought to be in more widespread use especially among nerds: hypothesis, as in, "This is just a hypothesis, but ..."

That doesn’t seem quite right: people still try to quash hypotheses. The difference seems to be that butterfly ideas are not quite at the “try to quash it!” stage just yet.

Re: Butterfly Ideas

#15

Post by akprasad »

lisper wrote: post #7

"Butterfly idea" is a cute aphorism but there is already a term of art for this which ought to be in more widespread use especially among nerds: hypothesis, as in, "This is just a hypothesis, but ..."

I'm not so sure. Where a hypothesis is vulnerable to evidence, a butterfly idea seems vulnerable to emotion:

> I’ve been on the butterfly crushing end of this myself- I’m thinking of a particular case last year where my friend brought up an idea that, if true, would require costly action on my part. I started arguing with the idea, they snapped at me to stop ruining their dreams. I chilled out, we had a long discussion about their goals, how they interpreted some evidence, and why they thought a particular action might further said goals, etc.

Re: Butterfly Ideas

#16

Post by 8n4vidtmkvmk »

zh3 wrote: post #8

This point I thought was telling (the internet is not what it once was):- >"...what I write in public ends up being on the very defensible end of the things I think"

Was there a time when people were friendlier on the internet? I actually think the internet is a little more civilized. HN is pretty good, and even on Reddit there's lots of pleasant interactions.

Prior to that, all I remember is flame wars in random forums. Maybe I was young and dumb and baitable.

Re: Butterfly Ideas

#17

Post by 8n4vidtmkvmk »

shunyaekam wrote: post #9

Therapy helps in overcoming pretentiousness, no doubt. This is an emotional problem, feelings of worthlessness, attaching one's sense of identity to how smart one is etc. It's a big problem, especially among people with no life (family, self-care habits), eg nerds with no purpose. Making up a term just so you can continue jerking each other off intellectually wont help you with anything.

That's a pretty harsh take. I think it's worth fleshing out an idea a bit more to see how much value it has before you try to destroy it. If the cons outweigh the pros too heavily at the onset you might not bother trying to overcome them when there might actually have been something valuable there or something that could have been realized in a different way.

Re: Butterfly Ideas

#19

Post by mikewarot »

8n4vidtmkvmk wrote: post #16
zh3 wrote: post #8

This point I thought was telling (the internet is not what it once was):- >"...what I write in public ends up being on the very defensible end of the things I think"

Was there a time when people were friendlier on the internet? I actually think the internet is a little more civilized. HN is pretty good, and even on Reddit there's lots of pleasant interactions. Prior to that, all I remember is flame wars in random forums. Maybe I was young and dumb and baitable.

It used to be completely normal to talk about putting on Asbestos Underwear to defend against possible flaming comments online.

It was the exception rather than inevitable back then.

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