True. But I do think we’ve run enough experiments on ‘don’t say anyone is a bad person, only point out bad actions and bad logic and false beliefs’ to know that people by default read that as claims about who is bad, and we need better tech for what to do about this.
As long as we understand that “bad person” is shorthand for “past and likely near-future behaviors are interfering with group goals”, It’s a reasonable judgement to make. And it’s certainly useful to call out people you’d like to eject from the group, or to reduce in status, or to force a behavioral change on.
I don’t object to calling someone a bad person, I only object to believing that such a thing is real.
The thing is, I don’t think that shorthand (along with similar things like “You’re an idiot”) ever stays understood outside of very carefully maintained systems of people working closely together in super high trust situations, even if it starts out understood.
I’d agree. Outside of closely-knit, high-trust situations, I don’t think it’s achievable to have that subtlety of conceptual communication. You can remind (some) people, and you can use more precise terminology where the distinction is both important and likely to succeed. In other cases, maintaining your internal standards of epistemic hygiene is valuable, even when playing status games you don’t like very much.
1. The OP read as directly moralizing to me. I do realize it doesn’t necessarily spell it out directly, but moralizing language rarely is. I don’t know the author of the OP. There are individuals I trust on LW to be able to have this sort of conversation without waging subtle-or-unsubtle wars over who is a bad person, but they are rare. I definitely don’t assume that for random people on the internet.
2. My “Be in the top 50% morally” statement was specifically meant to be in the context of the full Scott Alexander post, which is explicitly about (among other things) people being worried about being a good person.
And, yes, I brought the second point up (and I did bring it up in an offhand way without doing much to establish the context, which was sloppy. I do apologize for that).
But afterward providing the link, it seemed like people were still criticizing that point. And… I’m not sure I have a good handle on how this played out. But my impression is something like you and maybe a couple others were criticizing the 50% comment as if it were part of a different context, whereas if you read the original post it’s pretty clearly applying to the “when should you consider yourself a good/bad or blameworthy/praiseworthy person?” context. So things that seem (to me) to make sense to criticize are either the entire frame of the post (rather than the specific rule about ’be in the top 50%”) or criticizing the 50% rule in it’s original context. And it didn’t seem like that’s what was happening.
You’re the one bringing up the question of whether someone’s a bad person.
True. But I do think we’ve run enough experiments on ‘don’t say anyone is a bad person, only point out bad actions and bad logic and false beliefs’ to know that people by default read that as claims about who is bad, and we need better tech for what to do about this.
As long as we understand that “bad person” is shorthand for “past and likely near-future behaviors are interfering with group goals”, It’s a reasonable judgement to make. And it’s certainly useful to call out people you’d like to eject from the group, or to reduce in status, or to force a behavioral change on.
I don’t object to calling someone a bad person, I only object to believing that such a thing is real.
The thing is, I don’t think that shorthand (along with similar things like “You’re an idiot”) ever stays understood outside of very carefully maintained systems of people working closely together in super high trust situations, even if it starts out understood.
I’d agree. Outside of closely-knit, high-trust situations, I don’t think it’s achievable to have that subtlety of conceptual communication. You can remind (some) people, and you can use more precise terminology where the distinction is both important and likely to succeed. In other cases, maintaining your internal standards of epistemic hygiene is valuable, even when playing status games you don’t like very much.
I think two different things are going on here:
1. The OP read as directly moralizing to me. I do realize it doesn’t necessarily spell it out directly, but moralizing language rarely is. I don’t know the author of the OP. There are individuals I trust on LW to be able to have this sort of conversation without waging subtle-or-unsubtle wars over who is a bad person, but they are rare. I definitely don’t assume that for random people on the internet.
2. My “Be in the top 50% morally” statement was specifically meant to be in the context of the full Scott Alexander post, which is explicitly about (among other things) people being worried about being a good person.
And, yes, I brought the second point up (and I did bring it up in an offhand way without doing much to establish the context, which was sloppy. I do apologize for that).
But afterward providing the link, it seemed like people were still criticizing that point. And… I’m not sure I have a good handle on how this played out. But my impression is something like you and maybe a couple others were criticizing the 50% comment as if it were part of a different context, whereas if you read the original post it’s pretty clearly applying to the “when should you consider yourself a good/bad or blameworthy/praiseworthy person?” context. So things that seem (to me) to make sense to criticize are either the entire frame of the post (rather than the specific rule about ’be in the top 50%”) or criticizing the 50% rule in it’s original context. And it didn’t seem like that’s what was happening.