your continued statements on this thread that you’ve done nothing wrong.
This is literally false; it is objectively the case that no such statement exists. Here are allthecommentsI’veleftonthisthread up to this point, none of which says or strongly implies “I’ve done nothing wrong.” Some of them note that behavior that might seem disproportionate has additional causes upstream of it, that other people seem to me to be discounting, but that’s not the same as me saying “I’ve done nothing wrong.”
This is part of the problem. The actual words matter. The actual facts matter. If you inject into someone’s words whatever you feel like, regardless of whether it’s there or not, you can believe all sorts of things about e.g. their intentions or character.
LessWrong is becoming a place where people don’t care to attend to stuff like “what was actually said,” and that is something I find alienating, and am trying to pump against.
(My actual problem is less “this stuff appears in comments,” which it always has, and more “it feels like it gets upvoted to the top more frequently these days,” i.e. like the median user cares less than the median user of days past. I don’t feel threatened by random strawmanning or random uncharitableness; I feel threatened when it’s popular.)
But escalating to arbitrary levels of nuance makes communication infeasible, robustness to some fuzziness on the facts and their descriptions is crucial. When particular distinctions matter, it’s worth highlighting. Highlighting consumes a limited resource, the economy of allocating importance to particular distinctions.
The threat of pointing to many distinction as something that had to be attended imposes a minimum cost on all such distinctions, it’s costs across the board.
I agree that escalating to arbitrary levels of nuance makes communication infeasible, and that you can and should only highlight the relevant and necessary distinctions.
I think “someone just outright said I’d repeatedly said stuff I hadn’t” falls above the line, though.
I note that in none of them did you take any part of the responsibility for escalating the disagreement to its current level of toxicity.
You have instead pointed out Said’s actions, and Said’s behavior, and the moderators lack of action, and how people “skim social points off the top”, etc.
Anonymousaisafety, with respect, and acknowledging there’s a bit of the pot calling the kettle black intrinsic in my comment here, I think your comments in this thread are also functioning to escalate the conflict, as was clone of saturn’s top-level comment.
The things your comments are doing that seem to me escalatory include making an initially inaccurate criticism of Duncan (“your continued statements on this thread that you’ve done nothing wrong”), followed by a renewed criticism of Duncan that doesn’t contain even a brief acknowledgement or apology for the original inaccuracy. Those are small relational skills that can be immensely helpful in dealing with a conflict smoothly.
None of that has any bearing on the truth-value of your critical claims—it just bears on the manner and context in which you’re expressing them.
I think it is possible and desirable to address this conflict in a net-de-escalatory manner. The people best positioned to do so are the people who don’t feel themselves to be embroiled in a conflict with Duncan or Said, or who can take genuine emotional distance from any such conflict.
You’re an anonymous commenter who’s been here for a year sniping from the sidelines who has shown that they’re willing to misrepresent comments that are literally visible on this same page, and then, when I point that out, ignore it completely and reiterate your beef. I think Ray wants me to say “strong downvote and I won’t engage any further.”
This is literally false; it is objectively the case that no such statement exists. Here are all the comments I’ve left on this thread up to this point, none of which says or strongly implies “I’ve done nothing wrong.” Some of them note that behavior that might seem disproportionate has additional causes upstream of it, that other people seem to me to be discounting, but that’s not the same as me saying “I’ve done nothing wrong.”
This is part of the problem. The actual words matter. The actual facts matter. If you inject into someone’s words whatever you feel like, regardless of whether it’s there or not, you can believe all sorts of things about e.g. their intentions or character.
LessWrong is becoming a place where people don’t care to attend to stuff like “what was actually said,” and that is something I find alienating, and am trying to pump against.
(My actual problem is less “this stuff appears in comments,” which it always has, and more “it feels like it gets upvoted to the top more frequently these days,” i.e. like the median user cares less than the median user of days past. I don’t feel threatened by random strawmanning or random uncharitableness; I feel threatened when it’s popular.)
But escalating to arbitrary levels of nuance makes communication infeasible, robustness to some fuzziness on the facts and their descriptions is crucial. When particular distinctions matter, it’s worth highlighting. Highlighting consumes a limited resource, the economy of allocating importance to particular distinctions.
The threat of pointing to many distinction as something that had to be attended imposes a minimum cost on all such distinctions, it’s costs across the board.
I agree that escalating to arbitrary levels of nuance makes communication infeasible, and that you can and should only highlight the relevant and necessary distinctions.
I think “someone just outright said I’d repeatedly said stuff I hadn’t” falls above the line, though.
Yes, I have read your posts.
I note that in none of them did you take any part of the responsibility for escalating the disagreement to its current level of toxicity.
You have instead pointed out Said’s actions, and Said’s behavior, and the moderators lack of action, and how people “skim social points off the top”, etc.
Anonymousaisafety, with respect, and acknowledging there’s a bit of the pot calling the kettle black intrinsic in my comment here, I think your comments in this thread are also functioning to escalate the conflict, as was clone of saturn’s top-level comment.
The things your comments are doing that seem to me escalatory include making an initially inaccurate criticism of Duncan (“your continued statements on this thread that you’ve done nothing wrong”), followed by a renewed criticism of Duncan that doesn’t contain even a brief acknowledgement or apology for the original inaccuracy. Those are small relational skills that can be immensely helpful in dealing with a conflict smoothly.
None of that has any bearing on the truth-value of your critical claims—it just bears on the manner and context in which you’re expressing them.
I think it is possible and desirable to address this conflict in a net-de-escalatory manner. The people best positioned to do so are the people who don’t feel themselves to be embroiled in a conflict with Duncan or Said, or who can take genuine emotional distance from any such conflict.
*shrug
You’re an anonymous commenter who’s been here for a year sniping from the sidelines who has shown that they’re willing to misrepresent comments that are literally visible on this same page, and then, when I point that out, ignore it completely and reiterate your beef. I think Ray wants me to say “strong downvote and I won’t engage any further.”