I own the “everything-list” Google Group, which has no explicit moderation policy, although I do block spam and the occasional completely off-topic post from newbies who seemingly misunderstood the subject matter of the forum. It worked fine without controversy or anything particularly bad happening, at least in the first decade or so of its existence, when I still paid attention to it. I would prefer if Eliezer also adopted an informal but largely “hands off” policy here. But looking at Eliezer’s responses to recent arguments as well as past history, the disagreement seems to be due to some sort of unresolvable differences in priors/values/personality and not amenable to discussion. So I disagree but feel powerless to do anything about it.
1) Admins overestimate the effect that certain policies have on behavior (they may underestimate random effects, or assign effects to the wrong policy); just like parents might overestimate the effect of parenting choices, or managers overestimate the impact of their decisions (“we did daily stand-up meetings, and the project was completed on time—the daily stand-up meetings must be the cause!”).
2) Eliezer is more concerned about the public image of LessWrong (both because of how it reflects on CFAR and SIAI, and on the kind of people it may attract) than you are (were?) about the everything-list.
For what it’s worth I’m fine with moderation of stupid things like discussing assassinations, and of banning obnoxious trolls and cranks and idiots, and the main reason to refrain from those kind of mod actions would be to avoid scaring naive young newcomers who might see it as an affront against Sacred Free Speech.
Your testimony of a case where you still have quality discussion with very light moderation makes me slightly less in favor of heavy-handed moderation.
(I’m not sure that the moderation here is becoming “stronger” recently, as opposed to merely a bit more explicit)
3) Eliezer’s tolerance for “crazy” or stupid posts is so low that he’s way more pissed off by even a small number of them existing than other people are.
It seems to me the occasional crazy idea posted here wouldn’t reflect that badly on CFAR and SIAI, if they had a policy of “LW is an open forum and we’re not responsible for other people’s posts”, especially if the bad ideas are heavily voted down and argued against, with the authors often apologizing and withdrawing their own posts.
If that were true, LessWrong would have such an INCREDIBLY HUGE advantage over most every major religion. LessWrong hasn’t managed to raise armies and invade sovereign nations yet, after all.
Thinking in those terms, it makes me strongly suspect anyone turned away by a single bad post is engaging in some VERY motivated cognition, and probably would not have stayed long. (A high noise:signal ratio, on the other hand, would be genuinely damaging)
For what it’s worth I’m fine with moderation of stupid things like discussing assassinations, and of banning obnoxious trolls and cranks and idiots, and the main reason to refrain from those kind of mod actions would be to avoid scaring naive young newcomers who might see it as an affront against Sacred Free Speech.
Do you think there’s a big risk of evaporative cooling because Eliezer bans too many things? (assuming his current level of banning, not a much higher one) It’s true that the infamous Roko case seems to fit the bill, and Wei Dai’s concerns make me at least think it’s possible—but I would expect a greater risk in the opposite direction, of the quality of discussion being watered down by floods of comments on stupid topics, meaning that people who don’t have time to sort through all the clutter may end up giving up participating in most discussions.
I would expect a greater risk in the opposite direction, of the quality of discussion being watered down by floods of comments on stupid topics, meaning that people who don’t have time to sort through all the clutter may end up giving up participating in most discussions.
Having spent a few years chatting on karma-less, completely unmoderated fora (spam would be deleted, but nothing else), I can say that this does not seem to occur. The pattern seems to be that when someone says something the forum considers stupid, this is remarked upon, and then they either attempt to improve to be more in line with the general opinion, or leave. People are not really gluttons for punishment—if a community does not welcome them, they (usually) will not continue participating in it—and the ratio of new users to old users is typically very low, so norms are maintained in the medium term (barring major news coverage or something).
Although I guess without the deletion policy discussion may drift further away from rationality, so if you think most of that would be boring or mindkilling, it may be of value.
I own the “everything-list” Google Group, which has no explicit moderation policy, although I do block spam and the occasional completely off-topic post from newbies who seemingly misunderstood the subject matter of the forum. It worked fine without controversy or anything particularly bad happening, at least in the first decade or so of its existence, when I still paid attention to it. I would prefer if Eliezer also adopted an informal but largely “hands off” policy here. But looking at Eliezer’s responses to recent arguments as well as past history, the disagreement seems to be due to some sort of unresolvable differences in priors/values/personality and not amenable to discussion. So I disagree but feel powerless to do anything about it.
Interesting. A couple hypotheses:
1) Admins overestimate the effect that certain policies have on behavior (they may underestimate random effects, or assign effects to the wrong policy); just like parents might overestimate the effect of parenting choices, or managers overestimate the impact of their decisions (“we did daily stand-up meetings, and the project was completed on time—the daily stand-up meetings must be the cause!”).
2) Eliezer is more concerned about the public image of LessWrong (both because of how it reflects on CFAR and SIAI, and on the kind of people it may attract) than you are (were?) about the everything-list.
For what it’s worth I’m fine with moderation of stupid things like discussing assassinations, and of banning obnoxious trolls and cranks and idiots, and the main reason to refrain from those kind of mod actions would be to avoid scaring naive young newcomers who might see it as an affront against Sacred Free Speech.
Your testimony of a case where you still have quality discussion with very light moderation makes me slightly less in favor of heavy-handed moderation.
(I’m not sure that the moderation here is becoming “stronger” recently, as opposed to merely a bit more explicit)
3) Eliezer’s tolerance for “crazy” or stupid posts is so low that he’s way more pissed off by even a small number of them existing than other people are.
It seems to me the occasional crazy idea posted here wouldn’t reflect that badly on CFAR and SIAI, if they had a policy of “LW is an open forum and we’re not responsible for other people’s posts”, especially if the bad ideas are heavily voted down and argued against, with the authors often apologizing and withdrawing their own posts.
A crazy idea reflects badly on the ideology that spawned the crazy idea.
If that were true, LessWrong would have such an INCREDIBLY HUGE advantage over most every major religion. LessWrong hasn’t managed to raise armies and invade sovereign nations yet, after all.
Thinking in those terms, it makes me strongly suspect anyone turned away by a single bad post is engaging in some VERY motivated cognition, and probably would not have stayed long. (A high noise:signal ratio, on the other hand, would be genuinely damaging)
No one here felt distraught with religion? Not even a little? :)
No, the main reason is to avoid evaporative cooling and slippery slopes, a.k.a., the reasons free speech is such a sacred value.
Keep in mind Eliezer himself would be considered a crank by most “mainstream skeptics”.
Do you think there’s a big risk of evaporative cooling because Eliezer bans too many things? (assuming his current level of banning, not a much higher one) It’s true that the infamous Roko case seems to fit the bill, and Wei Dai’s concerns make me at least think it’s possible—but I would expect a greater risk in the opposite direction, of the quality of discussion being watered down by floods of comments on stupid topics, meaning that people who don’t have time to sort through all the clutter may end up giving up participating in most discussions.
Having spent a few years chatting on karma-less, completely unmoderated fora (spam would be deleted, but nothing else), I can say that this does not seem to occur. The pattern seems to be that when someone says something the forum considers stupid, this is remarked upon, and then they either attempt to improve to be more in line with the general opinion, or leave. People are not really gluttons for punishment—if a community does not welcome them, they (usually) will not continue participating in it—and the ratio of new users to old users is typically very low, so norms are maintained in the medium term (barring major news coverage or something).
Although I guess without the deletion policy discussion may drift further away from rationality, so if you think most of that would be boring or mindkilling, it may be of value.
Eliezer has pretty blatantly stated that the reasoning was #2
There is a large difference between running a private list and a more accessible forum associated with an organization (the logos on top).