Our ability to concretely describe the effects of social groups on people in general are kind of limited, but things like “person X joined social group Y and now they concretely do behavior Z” are available. If you see people join a group and then become concretely worse (in your own assessment), I think it can be valuable to refer to specifics. I think it can be important and virtuous to convey what you think is a pernicious process, and unfortunately naming someone you personally know is a very effective, if cruel way to do it. Anecdata, and especially anecdata based on the content of someone’s facebook feed, is not a great snapshot of a person at different times, but it’s still a source of information.
I’m not sure what you think a better sort of way to deliver this sort of message is, but to some extent any nicer way to do it would be less effective in conveying how bad you think the situation is.
That seems true and correct to me. I note that my response to this specific comment was … motivationally entangled? … with my responses to this person’s other comments, and that I was adopting a cross-comment strategy of “try to publicly defend certain norms while engaging with everything else that doesn’t violate those norms.”
I think it’s defensible to say that, in so doing, I lost … fine-grained resolution? … on the specific thing being said above, and could’ve teased out the value that you were able to identify above separate from my defense of a) norms and b) Qiaochu.
Our ability to concretely describe the effects of social groups on people in general are kind of limited, but things like “person X joined social group Y and now they concretely do behavior Z” are available. If you see people join a group and then become concretely worse (in your own assessment), I think it can be valuable to refer to specifics. I think it can be important and virtuous to convey what you think is a pernicious process, and unfortunately naming someone you personally know is a very effective, if cruel way to do it. Anecdata, and especially anecdata based on the content of someone’s facebook feed, is not a great snapshot of a person at different times, but it’s still a source of information.
I’m not sure what you think a better sort of way to deliver this sort of message is, but to some extent any nicer way to do it would be less effective in conveying how bad you think the situation is.
That seems true and correct to me. I note that my response to this specific comment was … motivationally entangled? … with my responses to this person’s other comments, and that I was adopting a cross-comment strategy of “try to publicly defend certain norms while engaging with everything else that doesn’t violate those norms.”
I think it’s defensible to say that, in so doing, I lost … fine-grained resolution? … on the specific thing being said above, and could’ve teased out the value that you were able to identify above separate from my defense of a) norms and b) Qiaochu.
Thanks!