Yes, caring too much about not offending people means that people do not call out bullshit.
However, are rude environments more rational? Or do they just have different ways of optimizing for something other than truth? -- Just guessing here, but maybe disagreeable people derive too much pleasure from disagreeing with someone, or offending someone, so their debates skew that way. (How many “harsh truths” are not true at all; they are just popular because offend someone?)
(When I tried to think about examples, I thought I found one: military. No one cares about the feelings of their subordinates, and yet things get done. However, people in the military care about not offending their superiors. So, probably not a convincing example for either side of the argument.)
I’m sure there is an amount of rudeness which generates more optimization-away-from-truth than it prevents. I’m less sure that this is a level of rudeness achievable in actual human societies. And for whether LW could attain that level of rudeness within five years even if it started pushing for rudeness as normative immediately and never touched the brakes—well, I’m pretty sure it couldn’t. You’d need to replace most of the mod team (stereotypically, with New Yorkers, which TBF seems both feasible and plausibly effective) to get that to actually stick, probably, and it’d still be a large ship turning slowly.
A monoculture is generally bad, so having a diversity of permitted conduct is probably a good idea regardless. That’s extremely hard to measure, so as a proxy, ensuring there are people representing both extremes who are prolific and part of most important conversations will do well enough.
I am probably just saying the obvious here, but a rude environment is not only one where people say true things rudely, but also where people say false things rudely.
So when we imagine the interactions that happen there, it is not just “someone says the truth, ignoring the social consequences” which many people would approve, but also “someone tries to explain something complicated, and people not only respond by misunderstanding and making fallacies, but they are also assholes about it” where many people would be tempted to say ‘fuck this’ and walk away. So the website would gravitate towards a monoculture anyway.
(I wanted to give theMotte as an example of a place that is further in that direction and the quality seems to be lower… but I just noticed that the place is effectively dead.)
a rude environment is not only one where people say true things rudely, but also where people say false things rudely
The concern is with requiring the kind of politeness that induces substantive self-censorship. This reduces efficiency of communicating dissenting observations, sometimes drastically. This favors beliefs/arguments that fit the reigning vibe.
The problems with (tolerating) rudeness don’t seem as asymmetric, it’s a problem across the board, as you say. It’s a price to consider for getting rid of the asymmetry of over-the-top substantive-self-censorship-inducing politeness.
The Motte has its own site now. (I agree the quality is lower than LW, or at least it was several months ago and that’s part of why I stopped reading. Though idk if I’d attribute that to rudeness.)
(When I tried to think about examples, I thought I found one: military. No one cares about the feelings of their subordinates, and yet things get done. However, people in the military care about not offending their superiors. So, probably not a convincing example for either side of the argument.)
There’s another example, frats.
Even though the older frat members harass their subordinates via hazing rituals and so on, the new members wouldn’t stick around if they genuinely thought the older members were disagreeable people out to get them.
Yes, caring too much about not offending people means that people do not call out bullshit.
However, are rude environments more rational? Or do they just have different ways of optimizing for something other than truth? -- Just guessing here, but maybe disagreeable people derive too much pleasure from disagreeing with someone, or offending someone, so their debates skew that way. (How many “harsh truths” are not true at all; they are just popular because offend someone?)
(When I tried to think about examples, I thought I found one: military. No one cares about the feelings of their subordinates, and yet things get done. However, people in the military care about not offending their superiors. So, probably not a convincing example for either side of the argument.)
I’m sure there is an amount of rudeness which generates more optimization-away-from-truth than it prevents. I’m less sure that this is a level of rudeness achievable in actual human societies. And for whether LW could attain that level of rudeness within five years even if it started pushing for rudeness as normative immediately and never touched the brakes—well, I’m pretty sure it couldn’t. You’d need to replace most of the mod team (stereotypically, with New Yorkers, which TBF seems both feasible and plausibly effective) to get that to actually stick, probably, and it’d still be a large ship turning slowly.
A monoculture is generally bad, so having a diversity of permitted conduct is probably a good idea regardless. That’s extremely hard to measure, so as a proxy, ensuring there are people representing both extremes who are prolific and part of most important conversations will do well enough.
I am probably just saying the obvious here, but a rude environment is not only one where people say true things rudely, but also where people say false things rudely.
So when we imagine the interactions that happen there, it is not just “someone says the truth, ignoring the social consequences” which many people would approve, but also “someone tries to explain something complicated, and people not only respond by misunderstanding and making fallacies, but they are also assholes about it” where many people would be tempted to say ‘fuck this’ and walk away. So the website would gravitate towards a monoculture anyway.
(I wanted to give theMotte as an example of a place that is further in that direction and the quality seems to be lower… but I just noticed that the place is effectively dead.)
The concern is with requiring the kind of politeness that induces substantive self-censorship. This reduces efficiency of communicating dissenting observations, sometimes drastically. This favors beliefs/arguments that fit the reigning vibe.
The problems with (tolerating) rudeness don’t seem as asymmetric, it’s a problem across the board, as you say. It’s a price to consider for getting rid of the asymmetry of over-the-top substantive-self-censorship-inducing politeness.
The Motte has its own site now. (I agree the quality is lower than LW, or at least it was several months ago and that’s part of why I stopped reading. Though idk if I’d attribute that to rudeness.)
I do not think that is the usual result.
There’s another example, frats.
Even though the older frat members harass their subordinates via hazing rituals and so on, the new members wouldn’t stick around if they genuinely thought the older members were disagreeable people out to get them.