Perhaps I would know better to avoid that if I was more exposed to US culture, but I am originally from Europe and I tend to abhor political wars for their vacuousness, so perhaps I’m using words in ways that reminisce of politics inadvertently.
To remove the word “politics” from my description: You seem very sure of yourself, to the point where it seems you are not taking uncertainty into account where you should be. The views you express seem to be statements about the world, as if they were facts, when discussing things like utilitarian value of certain actions, when there are competing views on the topic, and you do a disservice to the discussion by failing to mention or explain why your opinions are better than the competing theories, or even acknowledging that they are opinions.
You don’t provide the evidence; you provide a statement of “fact” in isolation, sometimes going so far as to claim special knowledge and ask the audience to do things you know very well are not going to make for an easy or quick discussion (like, “Go spend a few years in Africa.”) I found that my alarms deactivated for your response to my comment that we think probabilistically, because the claims were testable and better labeled.
I was also moved by these concerns, and find comments sharing these general traits to degrade norms of discussion (e.g. clarity, use of evidence, distinguishing between normative and descriptive claims).
Perhaps I would know better to avoid that if I was more exposed to US culture, but I am originally from Europe and I tend to abhor political wars for their vacuousness, so perhaps I’m using words in ways that reminisce of politics inadvertently.
To remove the word “politics” from my description: You seem very sure of yourself, to the point where it seems you are not taking uncertainty into account where you should be. The views you express seem to be statements about the world, as if they were facts, when discussing things like utilitarian value of certain actions, when there are competing views on the topic, and you do a disservice to the discussion by failing to mention or explain why your opinions are better than the competing theories, or even acknowledging that they are opinions.
You don’t provide the evidence; you provide a statement of “fact” in isolation, sometimes going so far as to claim special knowledge and ask the audience to do things you know very well are not going to make for an easy or quick discussion (like, “Go spend a few years in Africa.”) I found that my alarms deactivated for your response to my comment that we think probabilistically, because the claims were testable and better labeled.
Points taken, thank you.
I was also moved by these concerns, and find comments sharing these general traits to degrade norms of discussion (e.g. clarity, use of evidence, distinguishing between normative and descriptive claims).
Perhaps we need a post setting out these norms clearly, so we can point newcomers to it?
I would very much welcome “a brief guide on how to get taken seriously by the LW community.”
A wiki entry would probably be the appropriate solution.
As with most things, it should probably be a top-level article first and a wiki entry second...