The Amish famously will never seek recourse in the secular legal system, no matter how bad the wrong or what the circumstances are. Does anyone here admire this aspect of the Amish culture?
I do think that this is admirable.
Cults also famously use all kinds of pressure tactics to prevent members from seeking out the law. This is bad.
I agree that this is bad.
But there’s a critical point here: whether the pressure to eschew lawsuits and similar legal-system tactics boils down to “if you do this, we don’t consider you a member of this community anymore”, or whether instead it’s something more severe. In the case of cults, it does tend to be much worse than that! (Even if it’s just the threat of expulsion combined with various psychological pressure tactics to convince the member that expulsion is intolerably horrible.)
I think that it’s almost always impossible for one member of a community to involve the law in a dispute with another community member and for them both to remain in the community thereafter. Sometimes this is perfectly fine and is the normative outcome—for example, suppose that Dave physically assaults Ellen while they’re playing D&D at their local gaming club, and Ellen calls the police, and presses charges against Dave. Is Dave going to continue as a member of the gaming club? No way. And nor should he! But, conversely, if Dave is minding his own business, and Ellen calls the police on him because she finds him vaguely alarming for unclear reasons (perhaps bigotry of some sort), and Dave ends up being hassled (or worse) by the cops even though he did nothing wrong—well, then it’s Ellen who can expect to be disinvited from the club’s meetings thenceforth. Either way, you generally don’t involve the law in your community disputes and then expect all parties involved to remain community members in good standing. It’s simply an unrealistic expectation.
After Ben’s post, 38% of responses to Nathan’s poll disagreed that there should be a way for Nonlinear to continue doing charity work with the support of the community, while 22% agreed. It’s unclear to me that a six-month campaign to gather negative information and then warn people about a group in your community is any less divisive in that regard than a lawsuit.
I think you are using an inapplicable definition of “community”. Your example of a D&D group calls to mind a “community” in the sense of “a group of single digit number of people who are in the same room socially interacting on a recurring basis.” In this sense of the word, neither EA nor rationality is a community. I agree that we should not expect Ben/Alice/Chloe to be in the same community with Kat/Emerson, for this narrow sense of community. And my assumption is that they weren’t on the day before Ben made his post. And that is fine.
There is a broader sense of the word “community”, which we might define as “an extended social network with shared identity and values”, which does apply to EA and rationality. I don’t see a reason why two people in a legal dispute shouldn’t be able to remain in this sort of community.
There is a broader sense of the word “community”, which we might define as “an extended social network with shared identity and values”, which does apply to EA and rationality. I don’t see a reason why two people in a legal dispute shouldn’t be able to remain in this sort of community.
You are right that there are different sorts and scales of “communities”. (It seems clear to me that these exist on a continuum from the gaming group to “all of rationality and/or EA”, rather than a strict binary, but that does not materially alter your point.)
But the degree to which a “community” can be productive and efficient (in whatever sense is applicable to the community’s purpose) is highly correlated with the degree to which it more resembles the former sort of community than the latter (i.e., its position, on some relevant dimensions, along this continuum). A shared (and adhered-to) understanding that one does not employ libel suits to settle within-community grudges constitutes a position along one (and a very important one) of those dimensions.
Going from having that understanding, to not having it, is a huge break. It substantially degrades the community’s ability to accomplish anything useful. If such a thing truly becomes necessary (and it certainly might), it means that something has gone catastrophically wrong with the community. (One can then discuss which party or parties are to blame for this breakdown—but that a breakdown has occurred, with disastrous consequences for the community’s effectiveness at its purpose, is in that case inarguable.)
I agree that these different sorts of communities exist along a continuum. What startles me is that you seem to think that the intimacy of the something of the smaller community can and should be scaled to the larger sort of community. To my mind, it is inherently a property of the small size. Trying to scale it sets of loud alarm bells. I’m not sure to what extent I endorse this, but possibly one way of summarizing the problems of overly controlling organizations like cults is that they try to take the intimacy or something of a small community and scale it.
I also strongly disagree with your presumption that we are talking about “Going from having [the understanding that we do not use libel suits within the community], to not having it”. I have never understood the rationalist community to have such a norm. From where I am sitting, Habryka is trying to create such a norm out of nothing, and I am not ok with that.
As I believe I have said already, I agree that libel suits, and law suits generally, can be damaging, and I certainly do not encourage anyone to use them. I’m just pointing out that having a norm against using lawsuits can be even more damaging.
What startles me is that you seem to think that the intimacy of the something of the smaller community can and should be scaled to the larger sort of community. To my mind, it is inherently a property of the small size. Trying to scale it sets of loud alarm bells.
Indeed, as you scale a community, the costs of adhering to a norm like this proportionally increase. (The rate of this increase, and the final amount of it, of course depend on various aspect of the community.) The benefits, however, do not proportionally decrease. Certainly there are points in community-space where the costs outweigh the benefits. (For example, when the community is as large, and as diverse in ideology and temperament and other things, as a country…) Those points tend to occur with greater likelihood in the region toward the higher end of the scale dimensions. This is all true.
It does not follow from any of the above, however, that this community cannot adhere to such a norm, or hasn’t adhered to it, or shouldn’t adhere to it, etc.
I also strongly disagree with your presumption that we are talking about “Going from having [the understanding that we do not use libel suits within the community], to not having it”. I have never understood the rationalist community to have such a norm. From where I am sitting, Habryka is trying to create such a norm out of nothing, and I am not ok with that.
I think that Gwern said it well:
This is an civil-society-wide norm, not a LW-only thing: arguments get arguments, not lawsuits.
And empirically, we can observe that Less Wrong and the greater “rationalist” community has always operated in accordance with such a norm.
Can you articulate what exactly the property of small communities is that we are talking about, and what its benefits are? I still am not forming a coherent picture of what the heck you are talking about because, again, the thing I was trying to point to in making this distinction I think is inherently a property of small groups.
Are you seriously now claiming that all of society has a norm against lawsuits? I think that is just obviously wrong, particularly for the US. And the misappropriation of the more traditional “arguments get arguments, not bullets” is just astoundingly oblivious. Lawsuits are a kind of argument! They are an example of the thing we are supposed to do instead of bullets!
No, I cannot empirically observe that the rationalist community has operated by such a norm. I can empirically observe that I know of no instance where one rationalist has actually filed a libel suit against another, but this is much more likely to be due to either (1) my ignorance of such a suit, or (2) the low rate of actually filing libel lawsuits in society at large combined with the small size of the rationalist community. I know of no instance of a rationalist going to space either, but I’m pretty sure we don’t have a norm against it. I’d never heard anyone speak of such a norm until the NL drama. That is significant evidence that there is no such norm.
Can you articulate what exactly the property of small communities is that we are talking about, and what its benefits are? I still am not forming a coherent picture of what the heck you are talking about because, again, the thing I was trying to point to in making this distinction I think is inherently a property of small groups.
I am talking about the community norm of not using lawsuits to settle arguments (and, more generally, disputes that are… just about words, let’s say). It’s not exclusively a property of small communities—that’s my point.
As for what the benefits of this norm are—wow, that rather broadens the scope of the discussion! I’d rather not have this comment thread spiral out of all reason or proportion…
Are you seriously now claiming that all of society has a norm against lawsuits?
Obviously not.
And the misappropriation of the more traditional “arguments get arguments, not bullets” is just astoundingly oblivious. Lawsuits are a kind of argument! They are an example of the thing we are supposed to do instead of bullets!
No, I cannot empirically observe that the rationalist community has operated by such a norm. … I’d never heard anyone speak of such a norm until the NL drama. That is significant evidence that there is no such norm.
Please attend carefully to exactly what I wrote:
And empirically, we can observe that Less Wrong and the greater “rationalist” community has always operated in accordance with such a norm.
I chose my words quite deliberately. I did not claim that we have always had this norm. (That may be true, but it is not what I am claiming there.) I claimed that we have operated in accordance with such a norm. That might’ve been just coincidence! But the fact that we’ve not deviated from the behavior the norm would mandate, is evidence of the norm’s effective existence.
I am talking about the community norm of not using lawsuits to settle arguments (and, more generally, disputes that are… just about words, let’s say). It’s not exclusively a property of small communities—that’s my point.
Then you misunderstood what I was trying to point at when I brought up the distinction about the scale of a community. I was trying to point at the fact that when lawsuits occur, there is likely already too much negative feeling between the parties for them to enjoy direct interactions even in a small group context, and if there isn’t already, the lawsuit causes it. I was pointing to a fact about human psychology, which on a pragmatic level we need to arrange our social structures to deal with. I was not pointing to a norm about using libel lawsuits.
At this point, you’ve failed to engage with my point that having a norm against lawsuits is harmful, even though lawsuits themselves are also harmful. I’m guessing your case for having such a norm is that lawsuits are harmful, which is not something I dispute. Is there any more to say?
But the fact that we’ve not deviated from the behavior the norm would mandate, is evidence of the norm’s effective existence.
Negligible evidence, especially in comparison to the lack of any past discussion of such a norm. Your argument here is so bad, and your choice of language so ambiguous, that I have to question whether you are even arguing in good faith.
My guess is River was asking because it gives some context on where you encountered different community norms (though my sense is that in your case your model of the community is not very dependent on your physical location, though there are many others for which it would be).
Then you misunderstood what I was trying to point at when I brought up the distinction about the scale of a community. I was trying to point at the fact that when lawsuits occur, there is likely already too much negative feeling between the parties for them to enjoy direct interactions even in a small group context, and if there isn’t already, the lawsuit causes it.
I understood your point perfectly well. But your very argument, right here, contains its own refutation, on two points:
Firstly, you say
when lawsuits occur, there is likely already too much negative feeling between the parties for them to enjoy direct interactions even in a small group context
(italics added)
But “even” is precisely the wrong word to use here. Indeed, in a small group context, if feelings are soured enough to even contemplate a hypothetical lawsuit, then no direct interaction is possible—and in a small group context, it’s direct interaction or bust. But in a larger group this doesn’t apply. One does not need that sort of “intimacy” to interact productively, neither before nor after the dispute.
Then, you say:
if there isn’t already, the lawsuit causes it
Yes! Exactly! The lawsuit causes it! Which is a good reason not to employ lawsuits!
At this point, you’ve failed to engage with my point that having a norm against lawsuits is harmful
Why do you say that I’ve failed to engage? I responded to that point, in this earlier comment.
I’m guessing your case for having such a norm is that lawsuits are harmful, which is not something I dispute. Is there any more to say?
Presumably, the “more to say” is some hypothetical argument that having a norm against lawsuits is so harmful that it outweighs any benefits of such a norm. Do you have such an argument?
Negligible evidence, especially in comparison to the lack of any past discussion of such a norm. Your argument here is so bad, and your choice of language so ambiguous, that I have to question whether you are even arguing in good faith.
Let’s set aside for the moment the question of whether my argument is bad. But what do you mean by saying that my choice of language was ambiguous? I think I’ve been as clear as is reasonable to expect, in a discussion like this. Are there some claims or statements I’ve made that you would like me to clarify? I’ll be happy to do so, if I can.
That’s it. You continue to refuse to engage with the argument that a norm against lawsuits is harmful. You presume that such a norm exists, to try to illegitimately shift the burden to me to show that it does not. Now you presume that lawsuits are more harmful than a norm against lawsuits, to again try to illegitimately shift the burden to me to show the reverse. Even if your position were sound, your argumentative tactics are dirty, and I will not continue to engage with them.
I do think that this is admirable.
I agree that this is bad.
But there’s a critical point here: whether the pressure to eschew lawsuits and similar legal-system tactics boils down to “if you do this, we don’t consider you a member of this community anymore”, or whether instead it’s something more severe. In the case of cults, it does tend to be much worse than that! (Even if it’s just the threat of expulsion combined with various psychological pressure tactics to convince the member that expulsion is intolerably horrible.)
I think that it’s almost always impossible for one member of a community to involve the law in a dispute with another community member and for them both to remain in the community thereafter. Sometimes this is perfectly fine and is the normative outcome—for example, suppose that Dave physically assaults Ellen while they’re playing D&D at their local gaming club, and Ellen calls the police, and presses charges against Dave. Is Dave going to continue as a member of the gaming club? No way. And nor should he! But, conversely, if Dave is minding his own business, and Ellen calls the police on him because she finds him vaguely alarming for unclear reasons (perhaps bigotry of some sort), and Dave ends up being hassled (or worse) by the cops even though he did nothing wrong—well, then it’s Ellen who can expect to be disinvited from the club’s meetings thenceforth. Either way, you generally don’t involve the law in your community disputes and then expect all parties involved to remain community members in good standing. It’s simply an unrealistic expectation.
After Ben’s post, 38% of responses to Nathan’s poll disagreed that there should be a way for Nonlinear to continue doing charity work with the support of the community, while 22% agreed. It’s unclear to me that a six-month campaign to gather negative information and then warn people about a group in your community is any less divisive in that regard than a lawsuit.
I think you are using an inapplicable definition of “community”. Your example of a D&D group calls to mind a “community” in the sense of “a group of single digit number of people who are in the same room socially interacting on a recurring basis.” In this sense of the word, neither EA nor rationality is a community. I agree that we should not expect Ben/Alice/Chloe to be in the same community with Kat/Emerson, for this narrow sense of community. And my assumption is that they weren’t on the day before Ben made his post. And that is fine.
There is a broader sense of the word “community”, which we might define as “an extended social network with shared identity and values”, which does apply to EA and rationality. I don’t see a reason why two people in a legal dispute shouldn’t be able to remain in this sort of community.
You are right that there are different sorts and scales of “communities”. (It seems clear to me that these exist on a continuum from the gaming group to “all of rationality and/or EA”, rather than a strict binary, but that does not materially alter your point.)
But the degree to which a “community” can be productive and efficient (in whatever sense is applicable to the community’s purpose) is highly correlated with the degree to which it more resembles the former sort of community than the latter (i.e., its position, on some relevant dimensions, along this continuum). A shared (and adhered-to) understanding that one does not employ libel suits to settle within-community grudges constitutes a position along one (and a very important one) of those dimensions.
Going from having that understanding, to not having it, is a huge break. It substantially degrades the community’s ability to accomplish anything useful. If such a thing truly becomes necessary (and it certainly might), it means that something has gone catastrophically wrong with the community. (One can then discuss which party or parties are to blame for this breakdown—but that a breakdown has occurred, with disastrous consequences for the community’s effectiveness at its purpose, is in that case inarguable.)
I agree that these different sorts of communities exist along a continuum. What startles me is that you seem to think that the intimacy of the something of the smaller community can and should be scaled to the larger sort of community. To my mind, it is inherently a property of the small size. Trying to scale it sets of loud alarm bells. I’m not sure to what extent I endorse this, but possibly one way of summarizing the problems of overly controlling organizations like cults is that they try to take the intimacy or something of a small community and scale it.
I also strongly disagree with your presumption that we are talking about “Going from having [the understanding that we do not use libel suits within the community], to not having it”. I have never understood the rationalist community to have such a norm. From where I am sitting, Habryka is trying to create such a norm out of nothing, and I am not ok with that.
As I believe I have said already, I agree that libel suits, and law suits generally, can be damaging, and I certainly do not encourage anyone to use them. I’m just pointing out that having a norm against using lawsuits can be even more damaging.
Indeed, as you scale a community, the costs of adhering to a norm like this proportionally increase. (The rate of this increase, and the final amount of it, of course depend on various aspect of the community.) The benefits, however, do not proportionally decrease. Certainly there are points in community-space where the costs outweigh the benefits. (For example, when the community is as large, and as diverse in ideology and temperament and other things, as a country…) Those points tend to occur with greater likelihood in the region toward the higher end of the scale dimensions. This is all true.
It does not follow from any of the above, however, that this community cannot adhere to such a norm, or hasn’t adhered to it, or shouldn’t adhere to it, etc.
I think that Gwern said it well:
And empirically, we can observe that Less Wrong and the greater “rationalist” community has always operated in accordance with such a norm.
Can you articulate what exactly the property of small communities is that we are talking about, and what its benefits are? I still am not forming a coherent picture of what the heck you are talking about because, again, the thing I was trying to point to in making this distinction I think is inherently a property of small groups.
Are you seriously now claiming that all of society has a norm against lawsuits? I think that is just obviously wrong, particularly for the US. And the misappropriation of the more traditional “arguments get arguments, not bullets” is just astoundingly oblivious. Lawsuits are a kind of argument! They are an example of the thing we are supposed to do instead of bullets!
No, I cannot empirically observe that the rationalist community has operated by such a norm. I can empirically observe that I know of no instance where one rationalist has actually filed a libel suit against another, but this is much more likely to be due to either (1) my ignorance of such a suit, or (2) the low rate of actually filing libel lawsuits in society at large combined with the small size of the rationalist community. I know of no instance of a rationalist going to space either, but I’m pretty sure we don’t have a norm against it. I’d never heard anyone speak of such a norm until the NL drama. That is significant evidence that there is no such norm.
May I ask which city you live in?
I am talking about the community norm of not using lawsuits to settle arguments (and, more generally, disputes that are… just about words, let’s say). It’s not exclusively a property of small communities—that’s my point.
As for what the benefits of this norm are—wow, that rather broadens the scope of the discussion! I’d rather not have this comment thread spiral out of all reason or proportion…
Obviously not.
Gwern has already addressed this.
Please attend carefully to exactly what I wrote:
I chose my words quite deliberately. I did not claim that we have always had this norm. (That may be true, but it is not what I am claiming there.) I claimed that we have operated in accordance with such a norm. That might’ve been just coincidence! But the fact that we’ve not deviated from the behavior the norm would mandate, is evidence of the norm’s effective existence.
I live in New York City. Why do you ask this?
Then you misunderstood what I was trying to point at when I brought up the distinction about the scale of a community. I was trying to point at the fact that when lawsuits occur, there is likely already too much negative feeling between the parties for them to enjoy direct interactions even in a small group context, and if there isn’t already, the lawsuit causes it. I was pointing to a fact about human psychology, which on a pragmatic level we need to arrange our social structures to deal with. I was not pointing to a norm about using libel lawsuits.
At this point, you’ve failed to engage with my point that having a norm against lawsuits is harmful, even though lawsuits themselves are also harmful. I’m guessing your case for having such a norm is that lawsuits are harmful, which is not something I dispute. Is there any more to say?
Negligible evidence, especially in comparison to the lack of any past discussion of such a norm. Your argument here is so bad, and your choice of language so ambiguous, that I have to question whether you are even arguing in good faith.
By the way, you haven’t answered:
What was the purpose of the question about my city of residence? What hinges on this?
My guess is River was asking because it gives some context on where you encountered different community norms (though my sense is that in your case your model of the community is not very dependent on your physical location, though there are many others for which it would be).
Indeed.
I understood your point perfectly well. But your very argument, right here, contains its own refutation, on two points:
Firstly, you say
(italics added)
But “even” is precisely the wrong word to use here. Indeed, in a small group context, if feelings are soured enough to even contemplate a hypothetical lawsuit, then no direct interaction is possible—and in a small group context, it’s direct interaction or bust. But in a larger group this doesn’t apply. One does not need that sort of “intimacy” to interact productively, neither before nor after the dispute.
Then, you say:
Yes! Exactly! The lawsuit causes it! Which is a good reason not to employ lawsuits!
Why do you say that I’ve failed to engage? I responded to that point, in this earlier comment.
Presumably, the “more to say” is some hypothetical argument that having a norm against lawsuits is so harmful that it outweighs any benefits of such a norm. Do you have such an argument?
Let’s set aside for the moment the question of whether my argument is bad. But what do you mean by saying that my choice of language was ambiguous? I think I’ve been as clear as is reasonable to expect, in a discussion like this. Are there some claims or statements I’ve made that you would like me to clarify? I’ll be happy to do so, if I can.
That’s it. You continue to refuse to engage with the argument that a norm against lawsuits is harmful. You presume that such a norm exists, to try to illegitimately shift the burden to me to show that it does not. Now you presume that lawsuits are more harmful than a norm against lawsuits, to again try to illegitimately shift the burden to me to show the reverse. Even if your position were sound, your argumentative tactics are dirty, and I will not continue to engage with them.