I think Eliezer has a different set of “reasons a comment might aggravate him” than most of the other authors who’ve complained to us. (note: I’m not that confident in the following, and I don’t want this to turn into a psychoanalyze Eliezer subthread and will lock it if it appears to do that)
I think one of the common failure modes he wants the ability to delete are “comments that tug a discussion sideways into social-reality-space” where people’s status/tribal modes kick in, distorting people’s epistemics and the topic of the conversation. In particular, comments that subtly do this in such a way that most people won’t notice, but the decline becomes inevitable, and there’s no way to engage with the discussion that doesn’t feed into the problem.
I think looking at his current Facebook Wall (where he deletes things that annoy him) is a pretty reasonable look into what you might expect his comments on LW to look like.
But, speaking of that:
I think an important factor to consider in your calculus is that the end result of the the 2 years of great comments you refer to, was Eliezer getting tired of dealing with bullshit and moving to Facebook where him moderating heavily results in fewer complaints (since it’s more obviously his personal fiefdom as opposed to setting sitewide norms of what moderation is acceptable). And he intends to stay there unless LW enables some FB-like features.
I’m not 100% sure what the timeline was and whether 2007-09 was a problem, but the end result of Eliezer engaging in public discussion was deciding that he didn’t want to to that anymore, and that’s exactly the problem that this post is trying to solve, and that I don’t think you’re engaging with the costs of.
It seems to me like our views interact as follows, then:
I say that in the absence of open and lively criticism, bad ideas proliferate, echo chambers are built, and discussion degenerates into streams of sheer nonsense.
You say that in the presence of [what I call] open and lively criticism, authors get tired of dealing with their critics, and withdraw into “safer” spaces.
Perhaps we are both right. What guarantee is there, that this problem can be solved at all? Who promised us that a solution could be found? Must there be a “middle way”, that avoids the better part of both forms of failure? I do not see any reason to be certain of that…
Suppose we accept this pessimistic view. What does that imply, for charting the way forward?
I don’t know. I have only speculations. Here is one:
Perhaps we ought to consider, not the effects of our choice of norms on behavior of given authors, but rather two things:
For what sorts of authors, and for what sorts of ideas, does either sort of norm (when implemented in a public space like Less Wrong) select?
What effects, then, does either sort of norm have, on public consensus, publicly widespread ideas, etc.?
I think Eliezer has a different set of “reasons a comment might aggravate him” than most of the other authors who’ve complained to us. (note: I’m not that confident in the following, and I don’t want this to turn into a psychoanalyze Eliezer subthread and will lock it if it appears to do that)
I think one of the common failure modes he wants the ability to delete are “comments that tug a discussion sideways into social-reality-space” where people’s status/tribal modes kick in, distorting people’s epistemics and the topic of the conversation. In particular, comments that subtly do this in such a way that most people won’t notice, but the decline becomes inevitable, and there’s no way to engage with the discussion that doesn’t feed into the problem.
I think looking at his current Facebook Wall (where he deletes things that annoy him) is a pretty reasonable look into what you might expect his comments on LW to look like.
But, speaking of that:
I think an important factor to consider in your calculus is that the end result of the the 2 years of great comments you refer to, was Eliezer getting tired of dealing with bullshit and moving to Facebook where him moderating heavily results in fewer complaints (since it’s more obviously his personal fiefdom as opposed to setting sitewide norms of what moderation is acceptable). And he intends to stay there unless LW enables some FB-like features.
I’m not 100% sure what the timeline was and whether 2007-09 was a problem, but the end result of Eliezer engaging in public discussion was deciding that he didn’t want to to that anymore, and that’s exactly the problem that this post is trying to solve, and that I don’t think you’re engaging with the costs of.
It seems to me like our views interact as follows, then:
I say that in the absence of open and lively criticism, bad ideas proliferate, echo chambers are built, and discussion degenerates into streams of sheer nonsense.
You say that in the presence of [what I call] open and lively criticism, authors get tired of dealing with their critics, and withdraw into “safer” spaces.
Perhaps we are both right. What guarantee is there, that this problem can be solved at all? Who promised us that a solution could be found? Must there be a “middle way”, that avoids the better part of both forms of failure? I do not see any reason to be certain of that…
Suppose we accept this pessimistic view. What does that imply, for charting the way forward?
I don’t know. I have only speculations. Here is one:
Perhaps we ought to consider, not the effects of our choice of norms on behavior of given authors, but rather two things:
For what sorts of authors, and for what sorts of ideas, does either sort of norm (when implemented in a public space like Less Wrong) select?
What effects, then, does either sort of norm have, on public consensus, publicly widespread ideas, etc.?