I think I’m fairly uncomfortable with some of the language in this post being on LessWrong as such. It seems from the other comments that some people find some of the information useful, which is a positive signal. However, there are 36 votes on this, with a net of +12, which is a pretty mixed signal. My impression is that few of the negative voters gave descriptive comments.
I think with any intense language the issue isn’t only “Is this effective language to convey the point without upsetting an ideal reader”, but also something like, “Given that there is a wide variety of readers, are we sufficiently sure that this will generally not needlessly offend or upset many of them, especially in ways that could easily be improved upon?”
I could imagine casual readers quickly looking at this and assuming it’s related to the PUA community or similar groups that have some sketchy connotations.
This presents two challenges. First, anyone who makes this inference may also assume that other writers on LessWrong share similar beliefs to what they think this kind of writing signals to them. Second, it may attract other writing that may be quite bad in ways we definitely don’t want.
I would suggest that in the future, posts either don’t use such dramatic language here, or in the very least just done as link posts.
I’d be curious if others have takes on this issue; it’s definitely possible my intuitions are off here.
Not offering a general opinion here right now, but I want to briefly respond to the particular phrasing of:
“Given that there is a wide variety of readers, are we sufficiently sure that this will not needlessly offend or upset some of them?”
As stated, this is far too costly of a standard. This is the internet, where an incredible magnitude of people can see your content, all with very idiosyncratic feelings and life stories, and the amount of work required to ensure zero readers will feel offended or upset is overwhelming and silencing.
Did you interpret me to say, “One should be sure that zero readers will feel offended?” I think that would clearly be incorrect. My point was that there are cases where one may believe that a bunch of readers may be offended, with relatively little cost to change things to make that not the case.
For instance, one could make lots of points that use alarmist language to poison the well, where the language is technically correct, but very predictably misunderstood.
I think there is obviously some line. I imagine you would as well. It’s not clear to me where that line is. I was trying to flag that I think some of the language in this post may have crossed it.
Apologies if my phrasing was misunderstood. I’ll try changing that to be more precise.
I cross-post everything I write on Putanumonit to LW by default, which I understood to be the intention of “personal blogposts”. I didn’t write this for LW. If anyone on the mod team told me that this would be better as a link post or off LW entirely, not because it’s bad but because it’s not aligned with LW’s reputation, I’ll be happy to comply.
I could imagine casual readers quickly looking at this and assuming it’s related to the PUA community
With that said, my personal opinion is that LW shouldn’t cater to people who form opinions on things before reading them and we should discourage them from hanging out here.
For what it’s worth, I predict that this would have gotten more upvotes here at least with different language, though I realize this was not made primarily for LW.
my personal opinion is that LW shouldn’t cater to people who form opinions on things before reading them and we should discourage them from hanging out here.
I think this is a complicated issue. I could appreciate where it’s coming from and could definitely imagine things going too far in either direction. I imagine that both of us would agree it’s a complicated issue, and that there’s probably some line somewhere, though we may of course disagree on where specifically it is.
A literal-ish interpretation of your phrase there is difficult for me to interpret. I feel like I start with priors on things all the time. Like, if I know an article comes from The NYTimes vs. The Daily Stormer, that snippet of data itself would give me what seems like useful data. There’s a ton of stuff online I choose not to read because it seems to be from sources I can’t trust for reasons of source, or a quick read of headline.
I was thinking of people who write comments without reading the post, which pollutes the conversation. Or people who form broad opinions about a writer or a blog without reading. I deal with those people all day every day on Twitter and in the blog comments.
I didn’t mean people deciding what to read based on the title. Of course everyone does that! Someone seeing ‘Go F*** Someone’ may assume that the post will be somewhat vulgar, and will talk about sex. Both things are true. People not interested in vulgar writing about sex shouldn’t read it. If I titled it ‘A Consideration of Narcissism as it Affects the Formation of Long Term Bonds’ that would actually be more misleading, since people would not expect it to be a vulgar post about sex and will get upset.
I would guess that one reason why you had a strong reaction, and/or why several people upvoted you so quickly, was because you/they were worried that my post would be understood by some as “censorship=good” or “LessWrong needs way more policing”.
If so, I think that’s a great point! It’s similar to my original point!
Things get misunderstood all the time.
I tried my best to make my post understandable. I tried my best to condition it so that people wouldn’t misinterpret or overinterpret it. But then my post was misunderstood (from what I can tell, unless I’m seriously misunderstanding Ben here) literally happened within 30 minutes.
My attempt provably failed. I’ll try harder next time.
I think I’m fairly uncomfortable with some of the language in this post being on LessWrong as such. It seems from the other comments that some people find some of the information useful, which is a positive signal. However, there are 36 votes on this, with a net of +12, which is a pretty mixed signal. My impression is that few of the negative voters gave descriptive comments.
I think with any intense language the issue isn’t only “Is this effective language to convey the point without upsetting an ideal reader”, but also something like, “Given that there is a wide variety of readers, are we sufficiently sure that this will generally not needlessly offend or upset many of them, especially in ways that could easily be improved upon?”
I could imagine casual readers quickly looking at this and assuming it’s related to the PUA community or similar groups that have some sketchy connotations.
This presents two challenges. First, anyone who makes this inference may also assume that other writers on LessWrong share similar beliefs to what they think this kind of writing signals to them. Second, it may attract other writing that may be quite bad in ways we definitely don’t want.
I would suggest that in the future, posts either don’t use such dramatic language here, or in the very least just done as link posts.
I’d be curious if others have takes on this issue; it’s definitely possible my intuitions are off here.
Not offering a general opinion here right now, but I want to briefly respond to the particular phrasing of:
As stated, this is far too costly of a standard. This is the internet, where an incredible magnitude of people can see your content, all with very idiosyncratic feelings and life stories, and the amount of work required to ensure zero readers will feel offended or upset is overwhelming and silencing.
Did you interpret me to say, “One should be sure that zero readers will feel offended?” I think that would clearly be incorrect. My point was that there are cases where one may believe that a bunch of readers may be offended, with relatively little cost to change things to make that not the case.
For instance, one could make lots of points that use alarmist language to poison the well, where the language is technically correct, but very predictably misunderstood.
I think there is obviously some line. I imagine you would as well. It’s not clear to me where that line is. I was trying to flag that I think some of the language in this post may have crossed it.
Apologies if my phrasing was misunderstood. I’ll try changing that to be more precise.
I understand your concerns.
I cross-post everything I write on Putanumonit to LW by default, which I understood to be the intention of “personal blogposts”. I didn’t write this for LW. If anyone on the mod team told me that this would be better as a link post or off LW entirely, not because it’s bad but because it’s not aligned with LW’s reputation, I’ll be happy to comply.
With that said, my personal opinion is that LW shouldn’t cater to people who form opinions on things before reading them and we should discourage them from hanging out here.
Thanks for the response!
For what it’s worth, I predict that this would have gotten more upvotes here at least with different language, though I realize this was not made primarily for LW.
I think this is a complicated issue. I could appreciate where it’s coming from and could definitely imagine things going too far in either direction. I imagine that both of us would agree it’s a complicated issue, and that there’s probably some line somewhere, though we may of course disagree on where specifically it is.
A literal-ish interpretation of your phrase there is difficult for me to interpret. I feel like I start with priors on things all the time. Like, if I know an article comes from The NYTimes vs. The Daily Stormer, that snippet of data itself would give me what seems like useful data. There’s a ton of stuff online I choose not to read because it seems to be from sources I can’t trust for reasons of source, or a quick read of headline.
I was thinking of people who write comments without reading the post, which pollutes the conversation. Or people who form broad opinions about a writer or a blog without reading. I deal with those people all day every day on Twitter and in the blog comments.
I didn’t mean people deciding what to read based on the title. Of course everyone does that! Someone seeing ‘Go F*** Someone’ may assume that the post will be somewhat vulgar, and will talk about sex. Both things are true. People not interested in vulgar writing about sex shouldn’t read it. If I titled it ‘A Consideration of Narcissism as it Affects the Formation of Long Term Bonds’ that would actually be more misleading, since people would not expect it to be a vulgar post about sex and will get upset.
A bit more thinking;
I would guess that one reason why you had a strong reaction, and/or why several people upvoted you so quickly, was because you/they were worried that my post would be understood by some as “censorship=good” or “LessWrong needs way more policing”.
If so, I think that’s a great point! It’s similar to my original point!
Things get misunderstood all the time.
I tried my best to make my post understandable. I tried my best to condition it so that people wouldn’t misinterpret or overinterpret it. But then my post was misunderstood (from what I can tell, unless I’m seriously misunderstanding Ben here) literally happened within 30 minutes.
My attempt provably failed. I’ll try harder next time.