I am super, super in favor of this experiment, and would have enthusiastically participated fully in it something like 2 years ago, before moving to Terabithia. I think it’s tackling the biggest things missing from the community and am very excited to see what happens.
Well, given the trajectory of your own life, Qiaochu, I think that actually counts as an argument against “Dragon Army”, and really the rationalist community as a whole, being good for the participants. I notice that you’ve shifted from posting insightful, detailed blog posts to impersonally spamming links to rationalist ingroup bullshit on Facebook all the time—in some sense it’s like you’ve been trending in the direction of being less and less of a real person as time goes on. (Which, as a friend of mine pointed out, is actually generically very common, like how a smart and quirky high school student goes to Harvard, starts adopting more and more of a “professional” demeanor, becomes progressively less interesting, and eventually dies a mental death far in advance of their physical expiration...)
Oh, dear. This is terrible, and I wish you hadn’t posted it, because there’s literally no value to be had in delivering this sort of message in this sort of way. Disendorse; I claim this is evidence that most of your arguments about social capability should be somewhat discounted, since they’re coming from someone unskilled.
I honestly think this person has been engaged with enough, at least until they make the kind of concrete claims you’ve been asking for. I think it’s commendable to have responded with the good mix of “look at their plausibly good points while calling them out on their bad points”, but at some point it becomes uncommendable to engage with people who are clearly not arguing in good faith.
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.
(Comment too long to add more directly.)
Somewhere else in the comments, Qiaochu says:
Well, given the trajectory of your own life, Qiaochu, I think that actually counts as an argument against “Dragon Army”, and really the rationalist community as a whole, being good for the participants. I notice that you’ve shifted from posting insightful, detailed blog posts to impersonally spamming links to rationalist ingroup bullshit on Facebook all the time—in some sense it’s like you’ve been trending in the direction of being less and less of a real person as time goes on. (Which, as a friend of mine pointed out, is actually generically very common, like how a smart and quirky high school student goes to Harvard, starts adopting more and more of a “professional” demeanor, becomes progressively less interesting, and eventually dies a mental death far in advance of their physical expiration...)
Oh, dear. This is terrible, and I wish you hadn’t posted it, because there’s literally no value to be had in delivering this sort of message in this sort of way. Disendorse; I claim this is evidence that most of your arguments about social capability should be somewhat discounted, since they’re coming from someone unskilled.
I honestly think this person has been engaged with enough, at least until they make the kind of concrete claims you’ve been asking for. I think it’s commendable to have responded with the good mix of “look at their plausibly good points while calling them out on their bad points”, but at some point it becomes uncommendable to engage with people who are clearly not arguing in good faith.
Yeah, I’m done replying at this point. +1 for the outside view check, though—if I weren’t already done, I would’ve appreciated your intervention.
I disagree.
Fair. Care to put forth a model? You don’t have to; simply weighing in is also a contribution (just a less useful one).
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!