I’m concerned that the described examples of holding individual comments to high epistemic standards don’t seem to necessarily apply to top-level posts, or linked content- one reason I think this is bad is that it is hard to precisely critique something which is not in itself precise, or which contains metaphor, or which contains example-but-actually-pointing-at-a-class writing where the class can be construed in various different ways.
Critique of fuzzy intuitions and impressions and feelings often involves fuzzy intuitions and impressions and feelings, I think- and if this stuff is restricted in critique but not in top level content it makes top level content involving fuzzy intuitions and impressions and feelings hard to critique, despite I think being exactly the content which needs critiquing the most.
Strong comment standards seem like they would be good for a space (no strong opinion on whether LW should be that space), but it would probably want to also have high standards in top level posts, possibly review and feedback prior to publication, to keep them up to the same epistemic standards. Otherwise I think moderation argument over which interpretations of vague content were reasonable would dominate.
Additionally, strong disagree on “weaken the stigma around defensiveness” as an objective of moderation. One should post arguments because one believes they are valid, and clarify misunderstandings because they are wrong, not argue or post or moderate to try to save personal status. It may be desirable to post and act with the objective of making it easier to not be defensive, but we still want people in themselves to try to avoid taking it as a referendum on their person. In terms of fairness, I’m not sure how you’d judge it- it is valid for the part people have most concerns about to not be the part which is desired to be given the most attention, I think, in even formal peer review. It’s also valid for most people to disagree with and have critiques of a piece of content. The top level post author (or the link post’s author) doesn’t have a right to “win”- it is permissible for the community to just not think a post’s object level content is all that good. If there was to be a fairness standard that justified anything, it’d certainly want to be spelled out in more detail and checked by someone other than the person feeling they were treated unfairly.
Critique of fuzzy intuitions and impressions and feelings often involves fuzzy intuitions and impressions and feelings, I think- and if this stuff is restricted in critique but not in top level content it makes top level content involving fuzzy intuitions and impressions and feelings hard to critique, despite I think being exactly the content which needs critiquing the most.
If I’ve given the impression that I object to and want to restrict fuzziness itself, then I’d like to clarify and reverse that impression ASAP. I think it’s entirely possible to do fuzzy intuitions and impressions and feelings in a high-quality, high-epistemic way, and I think it’s a critical part of the overall ecosystem of ideas; as an example I’d point to ~the entire corpus of work written by Anna Salamon.
I don’t think there’s a conflict between freedom of fuzziness and high standards; the key is to flag things. If it’s an intuition, note that it’s an intuition; if there’s no formal argumentation behind it, note that; if you think it would be resistant to update and also think that’s correct, just be open about that up front. That way, people who want to engage know what they’re dealing with, and know which lines of approach will be useful versus which will be futile.
A sort of cheesy, empty example, since I’m trying to come up with it on the fly and there’s no actual topic at hand:
I don’t know, I don’t really have arguments to back this up, but I’m getting the sense that there’s a very large and powerful dynamic in play in this situation that no one has pointed at or addressed. Like, when I imagine a world where we’ve fully solved all four of the problems that USERFACE has pointed out, I still get a deep, sinking, doomy feeling in my stomach. This is just intuition, but it’s pretty strong, and I’m wondering if anybody else has thoughts in that direction.
One should post arguments because one believes they are valid, and clarify misunderstandings because they are wrong, not argue or post or moderate to try to save personal status
Strong agree. But I claim that I have seen myself and others attempt to do exactly that in response to damaging falsehoods, and that the response has been criticism of defensiveness.
Like, the point wasn’t to salvage personal status; the point was the original attack contained falsehoods, and this was dismissed as if the only activity taking place was a status fight. There was a bucket error going on, a bucket error that I think the ideal LW would have incentive slopes against, and encourage people to grow out of being vulnerable to.
A quote that I believe I cited at the time, which feels relevant here, too:
Draco knew, he knew what he’d done wrong. He’d been so tired after casting twenty-seven Locking Charms for all the other Dragon Warriors. Less than a minute wasn’t enough time to recover after each spell. And so he’d just cast Colloportus on his own padlocked glove, just cast the spell, not put in all his strength to bind it stronger than Harry Potter or Hermione Granger could undo.
But nobody was going to believe that, even if it was true. Even in Slytherin, nobody would believe that. It sounded like an excuse, and an excuse was all that anyone would hear.
… I believe that one of the foremost goals of LessWrong, at least from a social norms standpoint, is to become the sort of place where Draco could say “I think you should seriously consider the possibility that I didn’t cast Colloportus as strongly as I could have, and that therefore Hermione counterspelling it isn’t conclusive re: our relative magical strengths” and not get laughed off stage. And I think that mods who care about that and are unified in their commitment to it are a crucial ingredient.
(Edit: have updated the specific quote in the post to more clearly point at what I’m actually advocating.)
One thing I noticed by writing a blog slash posting here, is that the rules for posts and comments are importantly different. In comments you have discussion norms in a way you don’t for main posts, and for main posts you have an on-the-record property that comments don’t have. So when writing comments, one needs to be very careful about certain types of norms of fairness and politeness, and forms of argumentation, and be even more careful about rhetorical flourish.
But in exchange there’s an understanding that you’re not held to your statements and positions (outside of the comment section itself, at least) the way a post would be. Thus, I draw a distinction that if I put something in a post it is ‘fair game’ to be quoted and held as my position in an outside context, whereas a comment doesn’t do that, it’s on the record but it’s exploratory, and in several cases I’ve used it to say things in comments that I didn’t feel comfortable saying in full posts.
Right now I believe the way we handle issues with top-level posts is to not promote them to front page if there are problems, and only curate them if they’re excellent, combined with lots of voting, which seems pretty good. When I do things that are against LW norms (which I occasionally do since all my blog posts are auto-posted here) I have no problem getting the message that I did that (whether or not I already knew that I’d done that) through these systems.
I’m concerned that the described examples of holding individual comments to high epistemic standards don’t seem to necessarily apply to top-level posts, or linked content- one reason I think this is bad is that it is hard to precisely critique something which is not in itself precise, or which contains metaphor, or which contains example-but-actually-pointing-at-a-class writing where the class can be construed in various different ways.
Critique of fuzzy intuitions and impressions and feelings often involves fuzzy intuitions and impressions and feelings, I think- and if this stuff is restricted in critique but not in top level content it makes top level content involving fuzzy intuitions and impressions and feelings hard to critique, despite I think being exactly the content which needs critiquing the most.
Strong comment standards seem like they would be good for a space (no strong opinion on whether LW should be that space), but it would probably want to also have high standards in top level posts, possibly review and feedback prior to publication, to keep them up to the same epistemic standards. Otherwise I think moderation argument over which interpretations of vague content were reasonable would dominate.
Additionally, strong disagree on “weaken the stigma around defensiveness” as an objective of moderation. One should post arguments because one believes they are valid, and clarify misunderstandings because they are wrong, not argue or post or moderate to try to save personal status. It may be desirable to post and act with the objective of making it easier to not be defensive, but we still want people in themselves to try to avoid taking it as a referendum on their person. In terms of fairness, I’m not sure how you’d judge it- it is valid for the part people have most concerns about to not be the part which is desired to be given the most attention, I think, in even formal peer review. It’s also valid for most people to disagree with and have critiques of a piece of content. The top level post author (or the link post’s author) doesn’t have a right to “win”- it is permissible for the community to just not think a post’s object level content is all that good. If there was to be a fairness standard that justified anything, it’d certainly want to be spelled out in more detail and checked by someone other than the person feeling they were treated unfairly.
If I’ve given the impression that I object to and want to restrict fuzziness itself, then I’d like to clarify and reverse that impression ASAP. I think it’s entirely possible to do fuzzy intuitions and impressions and feelings in a high-quality, high-epistemic way, and I think it’s a critical part of the overall ecosystem of ideas; as an example I’d point to ~the entire corpus of work written by Anna Salamon.
I don’t think there’s a conflict between freedom of fuzziness and high standards; the key is to flag things. If it’s an intuition, note that it’s an intuition; if there’s no formal argumentation behind it, note that; if you think it would be resistant to update and also think that’s correct, just be open about that up front. That way, people who want to engage know what they’re dealing with, and know which lines of approach will be useful versus which will be futile.
A sort of cheesy, empty example, since I’m trying to come up with it on the fly and there’s no actual topic at hand:
I’d upvote a comment like that in a heartbeat.
Strong agree. But I claim that I have seen myself and others attempt to do exactly that in response to damaging falsehoods, and that the response has been criticism of defensiveness.
Like, the point wasn’t to salvage personal status; the point was the original attack contained falsehoods, and this was dismissed as if the only activity taking place was a status fight. There was a bucket error going on, a bucket error that I think the ideal LW would have incentive slopes against, and encourage people to grow out of being vulnerable to.
A quote that I believe I cited at the time, which feels relevant here, too:
… I believe that one of the foremost goals of LessWrong, at least from a social norms standpoint, is to become the sort of place where Draco could say “I think you should seriously consider the possibility that I didn’t cast Colloportus as strongly as I could have, and that therefore Hermione counterspelling it isn’t conclusive re: our relative magical strengths” and not get laughed off stage. And I think that mods who care about that and are unified in their commitment to it are a crucial ingredient.
(Edit: have updated the specific quote in the post to more clearly point at what I’m actually advocating.)
One thing I noticed by writing a blog slash posting here, is that the rules for posts and comments are importantly different. In comments you have discussion norms in a way you don’t for main posts, and for main posts you have an on-the-record property that comments don’t have. So when writing comments, one needs to be very careful about certain types of norms of fairness and politeness, and forms of argumentation, and be even more careful about rhetorical flourish.
But in exchange there’s an understanding that you’re not held to your statements and positions (outside of the comment section itself, at least) the way a post would be. Thus, I draw a distinction that if I put something in a post it is ‘fair game’ to be quoted and held as my position in an outside context, whereas a comment doesn’t do that, it’s on the record but it’s exploratory, and in several cases I’ve used it to say things in comments that I didn’t feel comfortable saying in full posts.
Right now I believe the way we handle issues with top-level posts is to not promote them to front page if there are problems, and only curate them if they’re excellent, combined with lots of voting, which seems pretty good. When I do things that are against LW norms (which I occasionally do since all my blog posts are auto-posted here) I have no problem getting the message that I did that (whether or not I already knew that I’d done that) through these systems.