I suspect that Said is really bad at predicting which of his comments will be perceived as rude.
If I had to give him a rule of thumb, it would probably be like this: “Those that are very short, only one or two lines, but demand an answer that requires a lot of thinking or writing. That feels like entitlement to make others spend orders of magnitude more effort than you did. Even if from the Spock-rational perspective this makes perfect sense (asking someone to provide specific examples to their theory can benefit everyone who finds the theory interesting; and why write a long comment when a short one says the same thing), the feeling of rudeness is still there, especially if you do this repeatedly enough that people associate this thing with your name. Even if it feels inefficient, try to expand your comments to at least five lines. For example, provide your own best guess, or a counter-example. Showing the effort is the thing that matters, but too short length is a proxy for low effort.” This sounds susceptible to Goodharting, but who knows...
Why waste time say lot word, when few word do trick?
The bottom line (and I apologize for being blunt, because it’s clear that you’re saying this in good faith and with good intentions) is that this isn’t a case of “Gosh, if only I had known this one weird trick! But now I do, and all is well henceforth”. The problem (however we construe it and whomever we blame for it) is much deeper than that. It has to do with structural concerns and principled commitments. It won’t be solved by padding my comments to some word count.
I also tend to write concisely. A trick I often use is writing statements instead of questions. I feel statements are less imposing, since they lack the same level of implicit demand that they be responded to.
Hmm, it’s an interesting tactic, certainly. I’m not sure that it’s applicable in all cases, but it’s interesting. Perhaps you might point to some examples of how it’s best applied?
“Perhaps you might point to some examples of how it’s best applied?” ⇒ “I’d be curious to read some examples of how it’s best applied.”
By changing from a question to a statement, the request for information is transferred from a single person [me] to anyone reading the comment thread. This results in a diffusion of responsibility, which reduces the implicit imposition placed on the original parent.
Another advantage of using statements instead of questions is that they tend to direct me toward positive claims, instead of just making demands for rigor. This avoids some of the more annoyingly asymmetric aspects of Socratic dialogue.
“Perhaps you might point to some examples of how it’s best applied?” ⇒ “I’d be curious to read some examples of how it’s best applied.”
The request can be fulfilled by anyone either way, though. There doesn’t seem to me to be any difference, in that regard.
Another advantage of using statements instead of questions is that they tend to direct me toward positive claims, instead of just making demands for rigor. This avoids some of the more annoying aspects of Socratic dialogue.
Hmm. I’m afraid I find the linked essay somewhat hard to make sense of.
But, in any case, I’ll give your comments some thought, thanks.
Clearly, we have different preferences for what a good comment should look like. I am curious, is there a website where your preferred style is the norm? I would like to see how it works in practice.
(I realize that my request may not make sense; websites have different styles of comments. But if there is a website that feels more compatible with your preferences, I’d like to update my model.)
Not completely. Of course some websites approach it, from different directions. Current Less Wrong approaches it from one direction, old Less Wrong from a slightly different direction (and gets closest, I’d say), Data Secrets Lox from another.
It still seems to me that my “less social-attack-y” rewrite of one of your comments, in that thread, does feel less social-attack-y. You said then that you had no idea why it would be so.
If that’s still the case—and if you meant something like “I dispute that it is less social-attack-y” rather than “I acknowledge that it is less social-attack-y but I have no idea why”—then I think this lends credence to Villiam’s idea that you’re bad at perceiving which of your comments will be perceived as rude.
(And I think our other exchange from this thread is more evidence. You said a thing would not be perceived as insulting, I said I would perceive it as insulting, and you replied that it shouldn’t be perceived that way. But of course what should be and what is are two different things, and it seems to me that you’re less capable of tracking that distinction in this domain than in others.)
The comment I’m replying to doesn’t explicitly say that Villiam’s wrong here. It’s consistent with you thinking any of
I’m quite capable of predicting it, I just have principled reasons not to take it into account.
I’m indeed bad at predicting it, but that’s fine because I have principled reasons not to take it into account anyway.
I have no idea how good I am at predicting it, but that’s fine because etc.
But it gives the impression, to me, more of the former than the latter two.
And (supposing I’m right so far, which I may not be) I don’t think it would be surprising, if [your overestimate of your skills] turns out to be a crux as to [your principles generating the kind of comment you write]. That is, if the same principles would generate comments less-perceived-as-rude, if you were indeed better at predicting which of your comments would be perceived as rude.
(e: I should say that I wrote this comment before seeing the verdict. Dunno if I’d have written it differently, if I’d seen it.)
Why waste time say lot word, when few word do trick?
Look, we covered this already. We covered the “effort” part, we covered the “Goodharting” part, we covered the “add boilerplate” part, we covered the “exchange of demands” part. It’s all been done.
The bottom line (and I apologize for being blunt, because it’s clear that you’re saying this in good faith and with good intentions) is that this isn’t a case of “Gosh, if only I had known this one weird trick! But now I do, and all is well henceforth”. The problem (however we construe it and whomever we blame for it) is much deeper than that. It has to do with structural concerns and principled commitments. It won’t be solved by padding my comments to some word count.
I also tend to write concisely. A trick I often use is writing statements instead of questions. I feel statements are less imposing, since they lack the same level of implicit demand that they be responded to.
Hmm, it’s an interesting tactic, certainly. I’m not sure that it’s applicable in all cases, but it’s interesting. Perhaps you might point to some examples of how it’s best applied?
“Perhaps you might point to some examples of how it’s best applied?” ⇒ “I’d be curious to read some examples of how it’s best applied.”
By changing from a question to a statement, the request for information is transferred from a single person [me] to anyone reading the comment thread. This results in a diffusion of responsibility, which reduces the implicit imposition placed on the original parent.
Another advantage of using statements instead of questions is that they tend to direct me toward positive claims, instead of just making demands for rigor. This avoids some of the more annoyingly asymmetric aspects of Socratic dialogue.
The request can be fulfilled by anyone either way, though. There doesn’t seem to me to be any difference, in that regard.
Hmm. I’m afraid I find the linked essay somewhat hard to make sense of.
But, in any case, I’ll give your comments some thought, thanks.
Clearly, we have different preferences for what a good comment should look like. I am curious, is there a website where your preferred style is the norm? I would like to see how it works in practice.
(I realize that my request may not make sense; websites have different styles of comments. But if there is a website that feels more compatible with your preferences, I’d like to update my model.)
Not completely. Of course some websites approach it, from different directions. Current Less Wrong approaches it from one direction, old Less Wrong from a slightly different direction (and gets closest, I’d say), Data Secrets Lox from another.
It still seems to me that my “less social-attack-y” rewrite of one of your comments, in that thread, does feel less social-attack-y. You said then that you had no idea why it would be so.
If that’s still the case—and if you meant something like “I dispute that it is less social-attack-y” rather than “I acknowledge that it is less social-attack-y but I have no idea why”—then I think this lends credence to Villiam’s idea that you’re bad at perceiving which of your comments will be perceived as rude.
(And I think our other exchange from this thread is more evidence. You said a thing would not be perceived as insulting, I said I would perceive it as insulting, and you replied that it shouldn’t be perceived that way. But of course what should be and what is are two different things, and it seems to me that you’re less capable of tracking that distinction in this domain than in others.)
The comment I’m replying to doesn’t explicitly say that Villiam’s wrong here. It’s consistent with you thinking any of
I’m quite capable of predicting it, I just have principled reasons not to take it into account.
I’m indeed bad at predicting it, but that’s fine because I have principled reasons not to take it into account anyway.
I have no idea how good I am at predicting it, but that’s fine because etc.
But it gives the impression, to me, more of the former than the latter two.
And (supposing I’m right so far, which I may not be) I don’t think it would be surprising, if [your overestimate of your skills] turns out to be a crux as to [your principles generating the kind of comment you write]. That is, if the same principles would generate comments less-perceived-as-rude, if you were indeed better at predicting which of your comments would be perceived as rude.
(e: I should say that I wrote this comment before seeing the verdict. Dunno if I’d have written it differently, if I’d seen it.)