Like escalation makes a conflict more acute, de-escalation settles it. Even otherwise uninvolved parties could plot either, there is no implication of absence of de-escalation being escalation. Certainly one party could de-escalate a conflict that the other escalates.
The harder and more relevant question is whether some of these heuristics have the desired effect, and which ones are effective when. I think only awareness of the objective of de-escalation could apply these in a sensible way, specific rules (less detailed than a book-length intuition-distilling treatise) won’t work efficiently (that is, without sacrificing valuable outcomes).
I don’t think I disagree with anything you say in particular, not exactly, but I really am not sure that I have any sense of what the category boundaries of this “de-escalation” are supposed to be, or what the predicate for it would look like. (Clearly the naive connotation isn’t right, which is fine—although maybe it suggests a different choice of term? or not, I don’t really know—but I’m not sure where else to look for the answers.)
Maybe this question: what exactly is “the desired effect”? Is it “avoid conflict”? “Avoid unnecessary conflict”? “Avoid false appearance of conflict”? “Avoid misunderstanding”? Something else?
Acute conflict here is things like moderators agonizing over what to do, top-level posts lobbying site-wide policy changes, rumors being gathered and weaponized. Escalation is interventions that target the outcome of there being an acute conflict (in the sense of optimization, so not necessarily intentionally). De-escalation is interventions that similarly target the outcome of absence of acute conflict.
In some situations acute conflict could be useful, a Schelling point for change (time to publish relevant essays, which might be heard more vividly as part of this event). If it’s not useful, I think de-escalation is the way, with absence of acute conflict as the desired effect.
(De-escalation is not even centrally avoidance of individual instances of conflict. I think it’s more important what the popular perception of one’s intentions/objectives/attitudes is, and to prevent formation of grudges. Mostly not bothering those who probably have grudges. This more robustly targets absence of acute conflict, making some isolated incidents irrelevant.)
Acute conflict here is things like moderators agonizing over what to do, top-level posts lobbying site-wide policy changes, rumors being gathered and weaponized. Escalation is interventions that target the outcome of there being an acute conflict (in the sense of optimization, so not necessarily intentionally). De-escalation is interventions that similarly target the outcome of absence of acute conflict.
Is this really anything like a natural category, though?
Like… obviously, “moderators agonizing over what to do, top-level posts lobbying site-wide policy changes, rumors being gathered and weaponized” are things that happen. But once you say “not necessarily intentionally” in your definitions of “escalation” and “de-escalation”, aren’t you left with “whatever actions happen to increase the chance of their being an acute conflict” (and similar “decrease” for “de-escalation”)? But what actions have these effects clearly depends heavily on all sorts of situational factors, identities and relationships of the participants, the subject matter of the conversation, etc., etc., such that “what specific actions will, as it will turn out, have contributed to increasing/decreasing the chance of conflict in particular situation X” is… well, I don’t want to say “not knowable”, but certainly knowing such a thing is, so to speak, “interpersonal-interaction-complete”.
What can really be said about how to avoid “acute conflict” that isn’t going to have components like “don’t discuss such-and-such topics; don’t get into such-and-such conversations if people with such-and-such social positions in your environment have such-and-such views; etc.”?
Or is that in fact the sort of thing you had in mind?
I guess my question is: do you envision the concrete recommendations for what you call “de-escalation” or “avoiding acute conflict” to concern mainly “how to say it”, and to be separable from “what to say” and “whom to say it to”? It seems to me that such things mostly aren’t separable. Or am I misunderstanding?
(Certainly “not bothering those who probably have grudges” is basically sensible as a general rule, but I’ve found that it doesn’t go very far, simply because grudges don’t develop randomly and in isolation from everything else; so whatever it was that caused the grudge, is likely to prevent “don’t bother person with grudge” from being very applicable or effective.)
What would any of what you’re alluding to look like, more concretely…?
(Of course I also object to the term “de-escalation” here, due to the implication of “escalation”, but maybe that’s beside the point.)
Like escalation makes a conflict more acute, de-escalation settles it. Even otherwise uninvolved parties could plot either, there is no implication of absence of de-escalation being escalation. Certainly one party could de-escalate a conflict that the other escalates.
Some examples are two comments up, as well as your list of things that don’t work. Another move not mentioned so far is deciding to exit certain conversations.
The harder and more relevant question is whether some of these heuristics have the desired effect, and which ones are effective when. I think only awareness of the objective of de-escalation could apply these in a sensible way, specific rules (less detailed than a book-length intuition-distilling treatise) won’t work efficiently (that is, without sacrificing valuable outcomes).
I don’t think I disagree with anything you say in particular, not exactly, but I really am not sure that I have any sense of what the category boundaries of this “de-escalation” are supposed to be, or what the predicate for it would look like. (Clearly the naive connotation isn’t right, which is fine—although maybe it suggests a different choice of term? or not, I don’t really know—but I’m not sure where else to look for the answers.)
Maybe this question: what exactly is “the desired effect”? Is it “avoid conflict”? “Avoid unnecessary conflict”? “Avoid false appearance of conflict”? “Avoid misunderstanding”? Something else?
Acute conflict here is things like moderators agonizing over what to do, top-level posts lobbying site-wide policy changes, rumors being gathered and weaponized. Escalation is interventions that target the outcome of there being an acute conflict (in the sense of optimization, so not necessarily intentionally). De-escalation is interventions that similarly target the outcome of absence of acute conflict.
In some situations acute conflict could be useful, a Schelling point for change (time to publish relevant essays, which might be heard more vividly as part of this event). If it’s not useful, I think de-escalation is the way, with absence of acute conflict as the desired effect.
(De-escalation is not even centrally avoidance of individual instances of conflict. I think it’s more important what the popular perception of one’s intentions/objectives/attitudes is, and to prevent formation of grudges. Mostly not bothering those who probably have grudges. This more robustly targets absence of acute conflict, making some isolated incidents irrelevant.)
Is this really anything like a natural category, though?
Like… obviously, “moderators agonizing over what to do, top-level posts lobbying site-wide policy changes, rumors being gathered and weaponized” are things that happen. But once you say “not necessarily intentionally” in your definitions of “escalation” and “de-escalation”, aren’t you left with “whatever actions happen to increase the chance of their being an acute conflict” (and similar “decrease” for “de-escalation”)? But what actions have these effects clearly depends heavily on all sorts of situational factors, identities and relationships of the participants, the subject matter of the conversation, etc., etc., such that “what specific actions will, as it will turn out, have contributed to increasing/decreasing the chance of conflict in particular situation X” is… well, I don’t want to say “not knowable”, but certainly knowing such a thing is, so to speak, “interpersonal-interaction-complete”.
What can really be said about how to avoid “acute conflict” that isn’t going to have components like “don’t discuss such-and-such topics; don’t get into such-and-such conversations if people with such-and-such social positions in your environment have such-and-such views; etc.”?
Or is that in fact the sort of thing you had in mind?
I guess my question is: do you envision the concrete recommendations for what you call “de-escalation” or “avoiding acute conflict” to concern mainly “how to say it”, and to be separable from “what to say” and “whom to say it to”? It seems to me that such things mostly aren’t separable. Or am I misunderstanding?
(Certainly “not bothering those who probably have grudges” is basically sensible as a general rule, but I’ve found that it doesn’t go very far, simply because grudges don’t develop randomly and in isolation from everything else; so whatever it was that caused the grudge, is likely to prevent “don’t bother person with grudge” from being very applicable or effective.)