Despite my general stance in favor of free speech and open discussion, I don’t necessarily disagree with this; in this case it seems like reputational concerns are, indeed, worth considering.
However, separately from whether this essay is included in the collection, I think that this is something that it’s worth it for us to discuss, here on Less Wrong:
… the content of the essay might be interpreted as a veiled attempt to justify the author’s moral transgressions
Veiled attempt or not, does the content of this essay have any bearing on the author’s moral transgressions? If yes—in what way? Are there, in fact, serious problems with the perspective and the analysis presented in this essay? (Note: I upvoted the essay; if there are implications or consequences of its analysis that I’ve overlooked, I would very much like to be shown what they are.)
In short: if such an accusation might conceivably be made, it would behoove us to give it serious thought and discussion.
in this case it seems like reputational concerns are, indeed, worth considering.
Reputation is a two-place function. Do we really care about impressing people who don’t understand the concept of “Endorsement of the text of a specific blog post does not constitute endorsement of anything else about the author”?
does the content of this essay have any bearing on the author’s moral transgressions? If yes—in what way?
Suppose Francis commits a moral transgression. Community members propose that Francis be ostracized for the safety of the community. Francis says, “But others are guilty of just as much of the transgressive behavior as I—you’re just scapegoating me because I have a narrower affordance width. Have you read the post about affordance widths?—it was nominated for the Best-of-2018 collection!”
In this hypothetical scenario, community members are probably going to be pretty suspicious that Francis is just trying to use the “affordance widths” concept to evade punishment—it’s the sort of thing a guilty man has an incentive to say even if it’s false. A few might go even further, and point out that the very concept of affordance widths is something a guilty man has an incentive to invent, even if it’s not useful. (Although, obviously, the questions of whether others besides Francis are also guilty, and whether the concept of affordance widths is useful, need to be judged on their own merits.)
Reputation is a two-place function. Do we really care about impressing people who don’t understand the concept of “Endorsement of the text of a specific blog post does not constitute endorsement of anything else about the author”?
I don’t know; do we? The question, I think, is: at whom is this “Best Of” collection aimed? Who’s the target audience, who are the expected audiences, etc.? I don’t know the answers to that—presumably the LW team do. Clearly, though, there exist plausible answers to these questions in the context of which the answer to your question is “yes, we do”. Do you disagree? (LW team folks—care to weigh in on the question of target audience?)
I think I’m logically required to? Earlier this year, you defended my work on the grounds that it’s wrong to
attack[ ] someone’s writings [...] not because there is anything at all mistaken about them, but because of some alleged “sinister context” that [one is] bringing in from somewhere else.
(The ellipsis snips out a clause specifying the subject matter of “abstract epistemology and Bayesian inference”, but a subsequent comment broadens the scope to “or any on-topic claims”.)
If I take this literally as a specification of the real rule, then I don’t see why it wouldn’t apply even when the alleged sinister context is a pattern of sexual abuse with multiple witnesses. The difference between adjudicating the social legitimacy of objections in the comment section, and inclusion in the Best-of-2018 compilation, doesn’t seem that relevant to me—does it seem so to you? Or am I missing something else?
I feel slightly awkward pointing this out, because the observation that my work has benefitted from the same kind of procedural consideration that might also benefit the work of someone who has committed serious crimes, might cause someone using vague pattern-matching rather than actually paying attention to cast doubt on my moral character. But I have a general policy of refusing to care about impressing people who don’t understand the concept of “Procedural rules defend both wholly innocent people, and people who are guilty of other crimes not governed by the particular rule in question.”
Without disagreeing with anything you say in this comment, let me note that the question I was asking was a narrow one, concerning only the matter of whether ‘we’ (by which I took you to mean: “the Less Wrong community”) do, or do not, care about impressing (or, more generally, care about our reputation with) unspecified people, or groups thereof, outside said Less Wrong community, who lack certain epistemic skills or norms.
Now, if the answer to this question is a flat “No”, then we are done here and nothing more needs to be said; all my earlier comments (to which you allude) apply, all your comments also apply, and in general we know where we stand.
However, supposing that the answer is instead (a suitably qualified) “Yes”, then there’s a conversation to be had.
That narrow point having been made, here’s a tentative start to that possibly-necessary conversation (to be disregarded if the “No” option is taken).
The difference between adjudicating the social legitimacy of objections in the comment section, and inclusion in the Best-of-2018 compilation, doesn’t seem that relevant to me—does it seem so to you? Or am I missing something else?
Well, perhaps you are. As far as the “social legitimacy of objections in the comment section” goes, if we ban certain sorts of comments (along the lines discussed in the threads you linked), then we’ve crippled our own ability to have epistemically productive conversations, and generally speaking this sort of thing is a serious wound against the epistemic health of the community.
Does this apply to inclusion in a “Best Of” compilation? It’s not clear to me whether it does or does not. By compiling the list, we are saying: “here is the best work done on Less Wrong in [time period]”. But to whom are we saying this? To ourselves, so to speak? Is this for internal consumption—as a guideline for future work, collectively decided on, and meant to be considered as a standard or bar to meet, by us, and anyone who joins us in the future? Or, is this meant for external consumption—a way of saying to others, “see what we have accomplished, and be impressed”, and also “here are the fruits of our labors; take them and make use of them”? Or something else? Or some combination of the above?
What, in other words, is the purpose of compiling this list? (And it does no good, please note, to reply that “well, it’s to report the truth, isn’t it, since in fact there are some posts which are the best posts, and we had better be truthful about which ones they are!”. Out of many possible facts about the corpus of all material published on Less Wrong to date, we choose to report this particular fact—that as a result of such-and-such a procedure, meant to compile a list chosen ostensibly on the basis of such-and-such a supposed set of criteria, we have here the following set of such a number of posts… and so on, in all the particulars—that cannot be motivated merely by a generalized principle of “discern and report the truth”. There are too many bits of selection from among a myriad of possibilities!) Tell me the purpose, and I will say whether it is good or bad to exclude an author’s work on any given basis.
The “social legitimacy” argument is entirely based in “if we don’t hold to these epistemic standards, we are destroying our very purpose, i.e., truth-seeking”. The “inclusion in a ‘Best Of’ list” argument cannot be justified in this way.
I ended up deciding to reply to this over on my shortform. (I’d kinda prefer this meta conversation to happen somewhere other than this post, so that discussion on this post can focus on the merits of the OP)
The reply focuses directly on the “who is the target audience” question without getting into the broader questions here, which I agree are all important but require more careful nuance than I have bandwidth for at this moment.
Despite my general stance in favor of free speech and open discussion, I don’t necessarily disagree with this; in this case it seems like reputational concerns are, indeed, worth considering.
However, separately from whether this essay is included in the collection, I think that this is something that it’s worth it for us to discuss, here on Less Wrong:
Veiled attempt or not, does the content of this essay have any bearing on the author’s moral transgressions? If yes—in what way? Are there, in fact, serious problems with the perspective and the analysis presented in this essay? (Note: I upvoted the essay; if there are implications or consequences of its analysis that I’ve overlooked, I would very much like to be shown what they are.)
In short: if such an accusation might conceivably be made, it would behoove us to give it serious thought and discussion.
Reputation is a two-place function. Do we really care about impressing people who don’t understand the concept of “Endorsement of the text of a specific blog post does not constitute endorsement of anything else about the author”?
Suppose Francis commits a moral transgression. Community members propose that Francis be ostracized for the safety of the community. Francis says, “But others are guilty of just as much of the transgressive behavior as I—you’re just scapegoating me because I have a narrower affordance width. Have you read the post about affordance widths?—it was nominated for the Best-of-2018 collection!”
In this hypothetical scenario, community members are probably going to be pretty suspicious that Francis is just trying to use the “affordance widths” concept to evade punishment—it’s the sort of thing a guilty man has an incentive to say even if it’s false. A few might go even further, and point out that the very concept of affordance widths is something a guilty man has an incentive to invent, even if it’s not useful. (Although, obviously, the questions of whether others besides Francis are also guilty, and whether the concept of affordance widths is useful, need to be judged on their own merits.)
I don’t know; do we? The question, I think, is: at whom is this “Best Of” collection aimed? Who’s the target audience, who are the expected audiences, etc.? I don’t know the answers to that—presumably the LW team do. Clearly, though, there exist plausible answers to these questions in the context of which the answer to your question is “yes, we do”. Do you disagree? (LW team folks—care to weigh in on the question of target audience?)
I see, yes, this is a fair point.
I think I’m logically required to? Earlier this year, you defended my work on the grounds that it’s wrong to
(The ellipsis snips out a clause specifying the subject matter of “abstract epistemology and Bayesian inference”, but a subsequent comment broadens the scope to “or any on-topic claims”.)
If I take this literally as a specification of the real rule, then I don’t see why it wouldn’t apply even when the alleged sinister context is a pattern of sexual abuse with multiple witnesses. The difference between adjudicating the social legitimacy of objections in the comment section, and inclusion in the Best-of-2018 compilation, doesn’t seem that relevant to me—does it seem so to you? Or am I missing something else?
I feel slightly awkward pointing this out, because the observation that my work has benefitted from the same kind of procedural consideration that might also benefit the work of someone who has committed serious crimes, might cause someone using vague pattern-matching rather than actually paying attention to cast doubt on my moral character. But I have a general policy of refusing to care about impressing people who don’t understand the concept of “Procedural rules defend both wholly innocent people, and people who are guilty of other crimes not governed by the particular rule in question.”
Without disagreeing with anything you say in this comment, let me note that the question I was asking was a narrow one, concerning only the matter of whether ‘we’ (by which I took you to mean: “the Less Wrong community”) do, or do not, care about impressing (or, more generally, care about our reputation with) unspecified people, or groups thereof, outside said Less Wrong community, who lack certain epistemic skills or norms.
Now, if the answer to this question is a flat “No”, then we are done here and nothing more needs to be said; all my earlier comments (to which you allude) apply, all your comments also apply, and in general we know where we stand.
However, supposing that the answer is instead (a suitably qualified) “Yes”, then there’s a conversation to be had.
That narrow point having been made, here’s a tentative start to that possibly-necessary conversation (to be disregarded if the “No” option is taken).
Well, perhaps you are. As far as the “social legitimacy of objections in the comment section” goes, if we ban certain sorts of comments (along the lines discussed in the threads you linked), then we’ve crippled our own ability to have epistemically productive conversations, and generally speaking this sort of thing is a serious wound against the epistemic health of the community.
Does this apply to inclusion in a “Best Of” compilation? It’s not clear to me whether it does or does not. By compiling the list, we are saying: “here is the best work done on Less Wrong in [time period]”. But to whom are we saying this? To ourselves, so to speak? Is this for internal consumption—as a guideline for future work, collectively decided on, and meant to be considered as a standard or bar to meet, by us, and anyone who joins us in the future? Or, is this meant for external consumption—a way of saying to others, “see what we have accomplished, and be impressed”, and also “here are the fruits of our labors; take them and make use of them”? Or something else? Or some combination of the above?
What, in other words, is the purpose of compiling this list? (And it does no good, please note, to reply that “well, it’s to report the truth, isn’t it, since in fact there are some posts which are the best posts, and we had better be truthful about which ones they are!”. Out of many possible facts about the corpus of all material published on Less Wrong to date, we choose to report this particular fact—that as a result of such-and-such a procedure, meant to compile a list chosen ostensibly on the basis of such-and-such a supposed set of criteria, we have here the following set of such a number of posts… and so on, in all the particulars—that cannot be motivated merely by a generalized principle of “discern and report the truth”. There are too many bits of selection from among a myriad of possibilities!) Tell me the purpose, and I will say whether it is good or bad to exclude an author’s work on any given basis.
The “social legitimacy” argument is entirely based in “if we don’t hold to these epistemic standards, we are destroying our very purpose, i.e., truth-seeking”. The “inclusion in a ‘Best Of’ list” argument cannot be justified in this way.
I ended up deciding to reply to this over on my shortform. (I’d kinda prefer this meta conversation to happen somewhere other than this post, so that discussion on this post can focus on the merits of the OP)
The reply focuses directly on the “who is the target audience” question without getting into the broader questions here, which I agree are all important but require more careful nuance than I have bandwidth for at this moment.