Do I understand you correctly as saying that the problem, specifically, is… that people reading my comments might, or do, get a mistaken impression that there exists on Less Wrong some sort of social norm which holds that authors have a social obligation to respond to comments on their posts?
Basically yes, although I note I said a lot of other words here that were all fairly important, including the links back to previous comments. For example, it’s important that I think you are factually incorrect about there being “normatively correct general principles” that people who don’t engage with your comments “should be interpreted as ignorant”.
I think my actual crux “somehow, at the end of the day, people feel comfortable ignoring and/or downvoting your comments if they don’t think they’ll be productive to engage with.”
I believe “Said’s commenting style actively pushes against this in a norm-enforcing-feeling way”, but, as noted in the post, I’m still kind of confused about that (and I’ll say explicitly here: I am still not sure I’ve named the exact problem). I said a whole lot of words about various problems and caveats and how they fit together and I don’t think you can simplify it down to “the problem is X”. I said at the end, a major crux is “Said can adhere to the spirit of ‘“don’t imply people have an obligation to engage with your comments’,” where “spirit” is doing some important work of indicating the problem is fuzzy.
We’ve given you a ton of feedback about this over 5-6 years. I’m happy to talk or answer questions for a couple more days if the questions look like they’re aimed at ‘actually figure out how to comply with the spirit of the request’, but not more discussion of ‘is there a problem here from the moderator’s perspective?’.
I understand (and respect) that you think the moderators are wrong in several deep ways here, and I do honestly think it’s good/better for you to stick around with a generator of thoughts and criticism that’s somewhat uncorrelated with the site admin judgment” (but not free-reign to rehash it out in subtle conflict in other people’s comment sections)
I’m open (in the longterm) to arguments about whether our entire moderation policy is flawed, but that’s outside the scope of this moderation decision and you should argue about that in top-level posts and/or in posts by Zack/etc if it’s important to you)[random note that is probably implied but I want to make explicit: “enforcing standards that the LW community hasn’t collectively opted into in other people’s threads” is also essentially the criticism I’d make of many past comments of Duncans, although he goes about it in a pretty different way]
Basically yes, although I note I said a lot of other words here that were all fairly important, including the links back to previous comments. For example, it’s important that I think you are factually incorrect about there being “normatively correct general principles” that people who don’t engage with your comments “should be interpreted as ignorant”.
Well, no doubt most or all of what you wrote was important, but by “important” do you specifically mean “forms part of the description of what you take to be ‘the problem’, which this moderation action is attempting to solve”?
For example, as far as the “normatively correct general principles” thing goes—alright, so you think I’m factually incorrect about this particular thing I said once.[1] Let’s take for granted that I disagree. Well, and is that… a moderation-worthy offense? To disagree (with the mods? with the consensus—established how?—of Less Wrong? with anyone?) about what is essentially a philosophical claim? Are you suggesting that your correctness on this is so obvious that disagreeing can only constitute either some sort of bad faith, or blameworthy ignorance? That hardly seems true!
Or, take the links. One of them is clearly meant to be an example of the thing you described (and which I quoted). The others… don’t seem to be.[2] Are they just examples of things where you disagree with me? Again, fine and well, but is “being (allegedly) wrong about some non-obvious philosophical point” a moderation-worthy offense…? How do these other links fit into a description of what problem you’re solving?
And, perhaps just as importantly… how does any of this fit into… well, anything that has happened recently? All of your links are to discussions that took place three years ago. What is the connection of any of that to recent events? Are you suggesting that I have recently written comments that would give people the impression that Less Wrong has a social norm that imputes on post authors an obligation to respond to comments on their posts?
I ask these things not because I want to persuade you that there isn’t a problem, per se (I think there are many problems but of course my opinion differs from yours about what they are)—but, rather, because I can hardly comply with the rules, either in letter or in spirit or in any other way, when I don’t know what the rules are. From my perspective, what I seem to see the mods doing is the equivalent of the police stopping a person who’s walking down the street, saying “we’re taking you in for speeding”, and, in response to the confused citizen’s protests, explaining that he got a speeding ticket three years ago, and now they’re arresting him for exceeding the speed limit. Is this a long-delayed punishment? Is there a more recent offense? Is there some other reason for the arrest? Or what?
I think my actual crux “somehow, at the end of the day, people feel comfortable ignoring and/or downvoting your comments if they don’t think they’ll be productive to engage with.”
I think that people should feel comfortable ignoring and/or downvoting anyone’s comments if they don’t think engagement will be productive! Certainly I should not be any sort of exception to this. (Why in the world would I be? Of course you should engage only if you have some expectation that engaging will be productive, and not otherwise!)
If I write a comment and you think it is a bad comment (useless, obviously wrong, etc.), by all means downvote and ignore. Why not? And if I write another comment that says “you have an obligation to reply!”—I wouldn’t say that, because I don’t think that, but let’s say that I did—downvote and ignore that comment, too! Do this no matter who the commenter is!
Anyhow, if the problem really is essentially as I’ve summarized it, plus or minus some nuances and elaborations, then:
I really don’t see what any recent event have to do with anything, or how the rate limit solves it, or… really, this entire situation perplexes me, from that perspective. But,
If the worry is that other Less Wrong participants might get the wrong idea about site norms from my comments, then let me assure you that my comments certainly shouldn’t be taken to imply that said norms are anything other than what the moderators say they are. If anyone gets any other impression from my comments, that can only be a misunderstanding. I solemnly promise that if anyone questions me on this point (i.e., asks whether I am claiming the existence of some norms which the moderators have disclaimed), I will, in response, clearly reaffirm this view. (I encourage anyone, moderators or otherwise, to link to this comment in answer to any commenters or authors who seem at all confused on this point.)
Actually, you somewhat misconstrue the comment, by taking it out of context. That’s perhaps not too important, but worth noting. In any case, it’s a comment I wrote three years ago, in the middle of a long discussion, and as part of a longer and offhandedly-written description, spread over a number of comments, of my view—and which, moreover, takes its phrasing directly from the comment it was a reply to. These are hardly ideal conditions for expressing nuances of meaning. My view is that, when writing comments like this in the middle of a long discussion, it is neither necessary nor desirable to agonize over whether the phrasing and formulation is ideal, because anyone who disagrees or misunderstands can just reply to indicate that, and the confusion or disagreement can be hammered out in the replies. (And this is largely what happened in the given case.[3])
In particular, I can’t help but note that you link to a sub-thread which begins with me saying “This comment is a tangent, and I haven’t decided yet if it’s relevant to my main points or just incidental—”, i.e., where I pretty clearly signal that engagement isn’t necessarily critical, as far as the main discussion goes.
Perhaps you missed it, but I did write a comment in that discussion where I very explicitly wrote that “I’m not saying that there’s a specific obligation for a post author to post a reply comment, using the Less Wrong forum software, directly to any given comment along the lines I describe”. Was that comment, despite my efforts, somehow unclear? That’s possible! These things happen. But is that a moderation-worth offense…?
For example, as far as the “normatively correct general principles” thing goes—alright, so you think I’m factually incorrect about this particular thing I said once.[1] Let’s take for granted that I disagree. Well, and is that… a moderation-worthy offense? To disagree (with the mods? with the consensus—established how?—of Less Wrong? with anyone?) about what is essentially a philosophical claim? Are you suggesting that your correctness on this is so obvious that disagreeing can only constitute either some sort of bad faith, or blameworthy ignorance? That hardly seems true!
The philosophical disagreement is related-to but not itself the thing I believe Ray is saying is bad. The claim I understand Ray to be making is that he believes you gave a false account of the site-wide norms about what users are obligated to do, and that this is reflective of you otherwise implicitly enforcing such a norm many times that you comment on posts. Enforcing norms on behalf of a space that you don’t have buy-in for and that the space would reject tricks people into wasting their time and energy trying to be good citizens of the space in a way that isn’t helping and isn’t being asked of them.
If you did so, I think that behavior ought to be clearly punished in some way. I think this regardless of whether you earnestly believed that an obligation-to-reply-to-comments was a site-wide norm, and also regardless of whether you were fully aware that you were doing so. I think it’s often correct to issue a blanket punishment of a costly behavior even on the occasions that it is done unknowingly, to ensure that there is a consistent incentive against the behavior — similar to how it is typically illegal to commit a crime even if you aren’t aware what you did was a crime.
The claim I understand Ray to be making is that he believes you gave a false account of the site-wide norms about what users are obligated to do
Is that really the claim? I must object to it, if that’s so. I don’t think I’ve ever made any false claims about what social norms obtain on Less Wrong (and to the extent that some of my comments were interpreted that way, I was quick to clearly correct that misinterpretation).
Certainly the “normatively correct general principles” comment didn’t contain any such false claims. (And Raemon does not seem to be claiming otherwise.) So, the question remains: what exactly is the relevance of the philosophical disagreement? How is it connected to any purported violations of site rules or norms or anything?
… and that this is reflective of you otherwise implicitly enforcing such a norm many times that you comment on posts
I am not sure what this means. I am not a moderator, so it’s not clear to me how I can enforce any norm. (I can exemplify conformance to a norm, of course, but that, in this case, would be me replying to comments on my posts, which is not what we’re talking about here. And I can encourage or even demand conformance to some falsely-claimed norm. But for me to enforce anything seems impossible as a purely technical matter.)
If you did so, I think that behavior ought to be clearly punished in some way.
Indeed, if I had done this, then some censure would be warranted. (Now, personally, I would expect that such censure would start with a comment from a moderator, saying something like: “<name of my interlocutor>, to be clear, Said is wrong about what the site’s rules and norms are; there is no obligation to respond to commenters. Said, please refrain from misleading other users about this.” Then subsequent occurrences of comments which were similarly misleading might receive some more substantive punishment, etc. That’s just my own, though I think a fairly reasonable, view of how this sort of moderation challenge should be approached.)
But I think that, taking the totality of my comments in the linked thread, it is difficult to support the claim that I somehow made false claims about site rules or norms. It seems to me that I was fairly clearly talking about general principles—about epistemology, not community organization.
Now, perhaps you think that I did not, in fact, make my meaning clear enough? Well, as I’ve said, these things do happen. Certainly it seems to me like step one to rectify the problem, such as it is, would be just to make a clear ex cathedra statement about what the rules and norms actually are. That mitigates any supposed damage. (Was this done? I don’t recall that it was. But perhaps I missed it.) Then there can be talk of punishment.[1]
But, of course, there already was a moderation warning issued for the incident in question. Which brings us back to the question of what it has to do with the current situation (and to my “arrest for a speeding ticket issued three years ago” analogy).
P.S.:
I think this regardless of whether you earnestly believed that an obligation-to-reply-to-comments was a site-wide norm
To be maximally clear: I neither believed nor (as far as I can recall) claimed this.
Although it seems to me that to speak in terms of “punishment”, when the offense (even taking as given that the offense took place at all) is something so essentially innocent as accidentally mis-characterizing an informal community norm, is, quite frankly, bizarrely harsh. I don’t think that I’ve ever participated in any other forum with such a stringent approach to moderation.
For a quick answer connecting the dots between “What does the recent Duncan/Said conflict have to do with Said’s past behavior,” I think your behavior in the various you/Duncan threads was bad in basically the same way we gave you a mod warning about 5 years ago, and also similar to a preliminary warning we gave you 6 years ago (in intercom, which ended in us deciding to take no action ath the time)
(i.e. some flavor of aggressiveness/insultingness, along with demanding more work from others than you were bringing yourself).
As I said, I cut you some slack for it because of some patterns Duncan brought to the table, but not that much slack.
The previous mod warning said “we’d ban you for a month if you did it again”, I don’t really feel great about that since over the past 5 years there’s been various comments that flirted with the same behavior and the cost of evaluating it each time is pretty high.
If the worry is that other Less Wrong participants might get the wrong idea about site norms from my comments, then let me assure you that my comments certainly shouldn’t be taken to imply that said norms are anything other than what the moderators say they are. If anyone gets any other impression from my comments, that can only be a misunderstanding. I solemnly promise that if anyone questions me on this point (i.e., asks whether I am claiming the existence of some norms which the moderators have disclaimed), I will, in response, clearly reaffirm this view. (I encourage anyone, moderators or otherwise, to link to this comment in answer to any commenters or authors who seem at all confused on this point.)
I will think on whether this changes anything for me. I do think it’s helpful, offhand I don’t feel that it completely (or obviously more than 50%) solves the problem, but, I do appreciate it and will think on it.
… bad in basically the same way we gave you a mod warning about 5 years ago …
I wonder if you find this comment by Benquo (i.e., the author of the post in question; note that this comment was written just months after that post) relevant, in any way, to your views on the matter?
Yeah I do find that comment/concept important. I think I basically already counting that class of thing in the list of positive things I’d mentioned elsethread, but yes, I am grateful to you for that. (Benquo being one to say it in that context is a bit more evidence of it’s weight which I had missed before, but I do think I was already weighting the concept approximately the right amount for the right reasons. Partly from having already generally updated on some parts of the Benquo worldview)
Please note, my point in linking that comment wasn’t to suggest that the things Benquo wrote are necessarily true and that the purported truth of those assertions, in itself, bears on the current situation. (Certainly I do agree with what he wrote—but then, I would, wouldn’t I?)
Rather, I was making a meta-level point. Namely: your thesis is that there is some behavior on my part which is bad, and that what makes it bad is that it makes post authors feel… bad in some way (“attacked”? “annoyed”? “discouraged”? I couldn’t say what the right adjective is, here), and that as a consequence, they stop posting on Less Wrong. And as the primary example of this purported bad behavior, you linked the discussion in the comments of the “Zetetic Explanation” post by Benquo (which resulted in the mod warning you noted).
But the comment which I linked has Benquo writing, mere months afterward, that the sort of critique/objection/commentary which I write (including the sort which I wrote in response to his aforesaid post) is “helpful and important”, “very important to the success of an epistemic community”, etc. (Which, I must note, is tremendously to Benquo’s credit. I have the greatest respect for anyone who can view, and treat, their sometime critics in such a fair-minded way.)
This seems like very much the opposite of leaving Less Wrong as a result of my commenting style.
It seems to me that when the prime example you provide of my participation in discussions on Less Wrong purportedly being the sort of thing that drive authors away, actually turns out to be an example of exactly the opposite—of an author (whose post I criticized, in somewhat harsh terms) fairly soon (months) thereafter saying that my critical comments are good and important to the community and that I should continue…
… well, then regardless of whether you agree with the author in question about whether or not my comments are good/important/whatever, the fact that he holds this view casts very serious doubt on your thesis. Wouldn’t you agree?
(And this, note, is an author who has written many posts, many of them quite highly upvoted, and whose writings I have often seen cited in all sorts of significant discussions, i.e., one who has contributed substantially to Less Wrong.)
The reason it’s not additional evidence to me is that I, too, find value in the comments you write for the reasons Benquo states, despite also finding them annoying at the time. So, Benquo’s response here seems like an additional instance of my viewpoint here, rather than a counterexample. (though I’m not claiming Benquo agrees with me on everything on this domain)
… well, then regardless of whether you agree with the author in question about whether or not my comments are good/important/whatever, the fact that he holds this view casts very serious doubt on your thesis. Wouldn’t you agree?
Said is asking Ray, not me, but I strongly disagree.
Point 1 is that a black raven is not strong evidence against white ravens. (Said knows this, I think.)
Point 2 is that a behavior which displeases many authors can still be pleasant or valuable to some authors. (Said knows this, I think.)
Point 3 is that benquo’s view on even that specific comment is not the only author-view that matters; benquo eventually being like “this critical feedback was great” does not mean that other authors watching the interaction at the time did not feel “ugh, I sure don’t want to write a post and have to deal with comments like this one.” (Said knows this, I think.)
(Notably, benquo once publicly stated that he suspected a rough interaction would likely have gone much better under Duncan moderation norms specifically; if we’re updating on benquo’s endorsements then it comes out to “both sets of norms useful,” presumably for different things.)
I’d say it casts mild doubt on the thesis, at best, and that the most likely resolution is that Ray ends up feeling something like “yeah, fair, this did not turn out to be the best example,” not “oh snap, you’re right, turns out it was all a house of cards.”
(This will be my only comment in this chain, so as to avoid repeating past cycles.)
Point 1 is that a black raven is not strong evidence against white ravens. (Said knows this, I think.)
A black raven is, indeed, not strong evidence against white ravens. But that’s not quite the right analogy. The more accurate analogy would go somewhat like this:
Alice: White ravens exist! Bob: Yeah? For real? Where, can I see? Alice (looking around and then pointing): Right… there! That one! Bob (peering at the bird in question): But… that raven is actually black? Like, it’s definitely black and not white at all.
Now not only is Bob (once again, as he was at the start) in the position of having exactly zero examples of white ravens (Alice’s one purported example having been revealed to be not an example at all), but—and perhaps even more importantly!—Bob has reason to doubt not only Alice’s possession of any examples of her claim (of white ravens existing), but her very ability to correctly perceive what color any given raven is.
Now if Alice says “Well, I’ve seen a lot of white ravens, though”, Bob might quite reasonably reply: “Have you, though? Really? Because you just said that that raven was white, and it is definitely, totally black.” What’s more, not only Bob but also Alice herself ought rightly to significantly downgrade her confidence in her belief in white ravens (by a degree commensurate with how big a role her own supposed observations of white ravens have played in forming that belief).
Point 2 is that a behavior which displeases many authors can still be pleasant or valuable to some authors. (Said knows this, I think.)
Just so. But, once again, we must make our analysis more specific and more precise in order for it to be useful. There are two points to make in response to this.
First is what I said above: the point is not just that the commenting style/approach in question is valuable to some authors (although even that, by itself, is surely important!), but that it turns out to be valuable specifically to the author who served as an—indeed, as the—example of said commenting style/approach being bad. This calls into question not just the thesis that said approach is bad in general, but also the weight of any purported evidence of the approach’s badness, which comes from the same source as the now-controverted claim that it was bad for that specific author.
Second is that not all authors are equal.
Suppose, for example, that dozens of well-respected and highly valued authors all turned out to condemn my commenting style and my contributions, while those who showed up to defend me were all cranks, trolls, and troublemakers. It would still be true, then, to say that “my comments are valuable to some authors but displease others”, but of course the views of the “some” would be, in any reasonable weighting, vastly and overwhelmingly outweighed by the views of the “others”.
But that, of course, is clearly not what’s happening. And the fact that Benquo is certainly not some crank or troll or troublemaker, but a justly respected and valued contributor, is therefore quite relevant.
Point 3 is that benquo’s view on even that specific comment is not the only author-view that matters; benquo eventually being like “this critical feedback was great” does not mean that other authors watching the interaction at the time did not feel “ugh, I sure don’t want to write a post and have to deal with comments like this one.” (Said knows this, I think.)
First, for clarity, let me note that we are not talking (and Benquo was not talking) about a single specific comment, but many comments—indeed, an entire approach to commenting and forum participation. But that is a detail.
It’s true that Benquo’s own views on the matter aren’t the only relevant ones. But they surely are the most relevant. (Indeed, it’s hard to see how one could claim otherwise.)
And as far as “audience reactions” (so to speak) go, it seems to me that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Indeed, some authors (or potential authors) reading the interaction might have had the reaction you describe. But others could have had the opposite reaction. (And, judging by the comments in that discussion thread—as well as many other comments over the years—others in fact did have the opposite reaction, when reading that discussion and numerous others in which I’ve taken part.) What’s more, it is even possible (and, I think, not at all implausible) that some authors read Benquo’s months-later comment and thought “you know, he’s right”.
(Notably, benquo once publicly stated that he suspected a rough interaction would likely have gone much better under Duncan moderation norms specifically; if we’re updating on benquo’s endorsements then it comes out to “both sets of norms useful,” presumably for different things.)
Well, as I said in the grandparent comment, updating on Benquo’s endorsement is exactly what I was not suggesting that we do. (Not that I am suggesting the opposite—not updating on his endorsement—either. I am only saying that this was not my intended meaning.)
Still, I don’t think that what you say about “both sets of norms useful” is implausible. (I do not, after all, take exception to all of your preferred norms—quite the contrary! Most of them are good. And an argument can be made that even the ones to which I object have their place. Such an argument would have to actually be made, and convincingly, for me to believe it—but that it could be made, seems to me not to be entirely out of the question.)
I’d say it casts mild doubt on the thesis, at best, and that the most likely resolution is that Ray ends up feeling something like “yeah, fair, this did not turn out to be the best example,” not “oh snap, you’re right, turns out it was all a house of cards.”
Well, as I’ve written, to the extent that the convincingness of an argument for some claim rests on examples (especially if it’s just one example), the purported example(s) turning out to be no such thing does, indeed, undermine the whole argument. (Especially—as I note above—insofar as that outcome also casts doubt on whatever process resulted in us believing that raven to have been white in the first place.)
Basically yes, although I note I said a lot of other words here that were all fairly important, including the links back to previous comments. For example, it’s important that I think you are factually incorrect about there being “normatively correct general principles” that people who don’t engage with your comments “should be interpreted as ignorant”.
(While I recall you explicitly disclaiming such an obligation in some other recent comments… if you don’t think there is some kind of social norm about this, why did you previously use phrasing like “there is always such an obligation” and “Then they shouldn’t post on a discussion forum, should they? What is the point of posting here, if you’re not going to engage with commenters?”. Even if you think most of your comments don’t have the described effect, I think the linked comment straightforwardly implies a social norm. And I think the attitude in that comment shines through in many of your other comments)
I think my actual crux “somehow, at the end of the day, people feel comfortable ignoring and/or downvoting your comments if they don’t think they’ll be productive to engage with.”
I believe “Said’s commenting style actively pushes against this in a norm-enforcing-feeling way”, but, as noted in the post, I’m still kind of confused about that (and I’ll say explicitly here: I am still not sure I’ve named the exact problem). I said a whole lot of words about various problems and caveats and how they fit together and I don’t think you can simplify it down to “the problem is X”. I said at the end, a major crux is “Said can adhere to the spirit of ‘“don’t imply people have an obligation to engage with your comments’,” where “spirit” is doing some important work of indicating the problem is fuzzy.
We’ve given you a ton of feedback about this over 5-6 years. I’m happy to talk or answer questions for a couple more days if the questions look like they’re aimed at ‘actually figure out how to comply with the spirit of the request’, but not more discussion of ‘is there a problem here from the moderator’s perspective?’.
I understand (and respect) that you think the moderators are wrong in several deep ways here, and I do honestly think it’s good/better for you to stick around with a generator of thoughts and criticism that’s somewhat uncorrelated with the site admin judgment” (but not free-reign to rehash it out in subtle conflict in other people’s comment sections)
I’m open (in the longterm) to arguments about whether our entire moderation policy is flawed, but that’s outside the scope of this moderation decision and you should argue about that in top-level posts and/or in posts by Zack/etc if it’s important to you)[random note that is probably implied but I want to make explicit: “enforcing standards that the LW community hasn’t collectively opted into in other people’s threads” is also essentially the criticism I’d make of many past comments of Duncans, although he goes about it in a pretty different way]
Well, no doubt most or all of what you wrote was important, but by “important” do you specifically mean “forms part of the description of what you take to be ‘the problem’, which this moderation action is attempting to solve”?
For example, as far as the “normatively correct general principles” thing goes—alright, so you think I’m factually incorrect about this particular thing I said once.[1] Let’s take for granted that I disagree. Well, and is that… a moderation-worthy offense? To disagree (with the mods? with the consensus—established how?—of Less Wrong? with anyone?) about what is essentially a philosophical claim? Are you suggesting that your correctness on this is so obvious that disagreeing can only constitute either some sort of bad faith, or blameworthy ignorance? That hardly seems true!
Or, take the links. One of them is clearly meant to be an example of the thing you described (and which I quoted). The others… don’t seem to be.[2] Are they just examples of things where you disagree with me? Again, fine and well, but is “being (allegedly) wrong about some non-obvious philosophical point” a moderation-worthy offense…? How do these other links fit into a description of what problem you’re solving?
And, perhaps just as importantly… how does any of this fit into… well, anything that has happened recently? All of your links are to discussions that took place three years ago. What is the connection of any of that to recent events? Are you suggesting that I have recently written comments that would give people the impression that Less Wrong has a social norm that imputes on post authors an obligation to respond to comments on their posts?
I ask these things not because I want to persuade you that there isn’t a problem, per se (I think there are many problems but of course my opinion differs from yours about what they are)—but, rather, because I can hardly comply with the rules, either in letter or in spirit or in any other way, when I don’t know what the rules are. From my perspective, what I seem to see the mods doing is the equivalent of the police stopping a person who’s walking down the street, saying “we’re taking you in for speeding”, and, in response to the confused citizen’s protests, explaining that he got a speeding ticket three years ago, and now they’re arresting him for exceeding the speed limit. Is this a long-delayed punishment? Is there a more recent offense? Is there some other reason for the arrest? Or what?
I think that people should feel comfortable ignoring and/or downvoting anyone’s comments if they don’t think engagement will be productive! Certainly I should not be any sort of exception to this. (Why in the world would I be? Of course you should engage only if you have some expectation that engaging will be productive, and not otherwise!)
If I write a comment and you think it is a bad comment (useless, obviously wrong, etc.), by all means downvote and ignore. Why not? And if I write another comment that says “you have an obligation to reply!”—I wouldn’t say that, because I don’t think that, but let’s say that I did—downvote and ignore that comment, too! Do this no matter who the commenter is!
Anyhow, if the problem really is essentially as I’ve summarized it, plus or minus some nuances and elaborations, then:
I really don’t see what any recent event have to do with anything, or how the rate limit solves it, or… really, this entire situation perplexes me, from that perspective. But,
If the worry is that other Less Wrong participants might get the wrong idea about site norms from my comments, then let me assure you that my comments certainly shouldn’t be taken to imply that said norms are anything other than what the moderators say they are. If anyone gets any other impression from my comments, that can only be a misunderstanding. I solemnly promise that if anyone questions me on this point (i.e., asks whether I am claiming the existence of some norms which the moderators have disclaimed), I will, in response, clearly reaffirm this view. (I encourage anyone, moderators or otherwise, to link to this comment in answer to any commenters or authors who seem at all confused on this point.)
Is that… I mean, does that solve the problem…?
Actually, you somewhat misconstrue the comment, by taking it out of context. That’s perhaps not too important, but worth noting. In any case, it’s a comment I wrote three years ago, in the middle of a long discussion, and as part of a longer and offhandedly-written description, spread over a number of comments, of my view—and which, moreover, takes its phrasing directly from the comment it was a reply to. These are hardly ideal conditions for expressing nuances of meaning. My view is that, when writing comments like this in the middle of a long discussion, it is neither necessary nor desirable to agonize over whether the phrasing and formulation is ideal, because anyone who disagrees or misunderstands can just reply to indicate that, and the confusion or disagreement can be hammered out in the replies. (And this is largely what happened in the given case.[3])
In particular, I can’t help but note that you link to a sub-thread which begins with me saying “This comment is a tangent, and I haven’t decided yet if it’s relevant to my main points or just incidental—”, i.e., where I pretty clearly signal that engagement isn’t necessarily critical, as far as the main discussion goes.
Perhaps you missed it, but I did write a comment in that discussion where I very explicitly wrote that “I’m not saying that there’s a specific obligation for a post author to post a reply comment, using the Less Wrong forum software, directly to any given comment along the lines I describe”. Was that comment, despite my efforts, somehow unclear? That’s possible! These things happen. But is that a moderation-worth offense…?
The philosophical disagreement is related-to but not itself the thing I believe Ray is saying is bad. The claim I understand Ray to be making is that he believes you gave a false account of the site-wide norms about what users are obligated to do, and that this is reflective of you otherwise implicitly enforcing such a norm many times that you comment on posts. Enforcing norms on behalf of a space that you don’t have buy-in for and that the space would reject tricks people into wasting their time and energy trying to be good citizens of the space in a way that isn’t helping and isn’t being asked of them.
If you did so, I think that behavior ought to be clearly punished in some way. I think this regardless of whether you earnestly believed that an obligation-to-reply-to-comments was a site-wide norm, and also regardless of whether you were fully aware that you were doing so. I think it’s often correct to issue a blanket punishment of a costly behavior even on the occasions that it is done unknowingly, to ensure that there is a consistent incentive against the behavior — similar to how it is typically illegal to commit a crime even if you aren’t aware what you did was a crime.
Is that really the claim? I must object to it, if that’s so. I don’t think I’ve ever made any false claims about what social norms obtain on Less Wrong (and to the extent that some of my comments were interpreted that way, I was quick to clearly correct that misinterpretation).
Certainly the “normatively correct general principles” comment didn’t contain any such false claims. (And Raemon does not seem to be claiming otherwise.) So, the question remains: what exactly is the relevance of the philosophical disagreement? How is it connected to any purported violations of site rules or norms or anything?
I am not sure what this means. I am not a moderator, so it’s not clear to me how I can enforce any norm. (I can exemplify conformance to a norm, of course, but that, in this case, would be me replying to comments on my posts, which is not what we’re talking about here. And I can encourage or even demand conformance to some falsely-claimed norm. But for me to enforce anything seems impossible as a purely technical matter.)
Indeed, if I had done this, then some censure would be warranted. (Now, personally, I would expect that such censure would start with a comment from a moderator, saying something like: “<name of my interlocutor>, to be clear, Said is wrong about what the site’s rules and norms are; there is no obligation to respond to commenters. Said, please refrain from misleading other users about this.” Then subsequent occurrences of comments which were similarly misleading might receive some more substantive punishment, etc. That’s just my own, though I think a fairly reasonable, view of how this sort of moderation challenge should be approached.)
But I think that, taking the totality of my comments in the linked thread, it is difficult to support the claim that I somehow made false claims about site rules or norms. It seems to me that I was fairly clearly talking about general principles—about epistemology, not community organization.
Now, perhaps you think that I did not, in fact, make my meaning clear enough? Well, as I’ve said, these things do happen. Certainly it seems to me like step one to rectify the problem, such as it is, would be just to make a clear ex cathedra statement about what the rules and norms actually are. That mitigates any supposed damage. (Was this done? I don’t recall that it was. But perhaps I missed it.) Then there can be talk of punishment.[1]
But, of course, there already was a moderation warning issued for the incident in question. Which brings us back to the question of what it has to do with the current situation (and to my “arrest for a speeding ticket issued three years ago” analogy).
P.S.:
To be maximally clear: I neither believed nor (as far as I can recall) claimed this.
Although it seems to me that to speak in terms of “punishment”, when the offense (even taking as given that the offense took place at all) is something so essentially innocent as accidentally mis-characterizing an informal community norm, is, quite frankly, bizarrely harsh. I don’t think that I’ve ever participated in any other forum with such a stringent approach to moderation.
For a quick answer connecting the dots between “What does the recent Duncan/Said conflict have to do with Said’s past behavior,” I think your behavior in the various you/Duncan threads was bad in basically the same way we gave you a mod warning about 5 years ago, and also similar to a preliminary warning we gave you 6 years ago (in intercom, which ended in us deciding to take no action ath the time)
(i.e. some flavor of aggressiveness/insultingness, along with demanding more work from others than you were bringing yourself).
As I said, I cut you some slack for it because of some patterns Duncan brought to the table, but not that much slack.
The previous mod warning said “we’d ban you for a month if you did it again”, I don’t really feel great about that since over the past 5 years there’s been various comments that flirted with the same behavior and the cost of evaluating it each time is pretty high.
I will think on whether this changes anything for me. I do think it’s helpful, offhand I don’t feel that it completely (or obviously more than 50%) solves the problem, but, I do appreciate it and will think on it.
I wonder if you find this comment by Benquo (i.e., the author of the post in question; note that this comment was written just months after that post) relevant, in any way, to your views on the matter?
Yeah I do find that comment/concept important. I think I basically already counting that class of thing in the list of positive things I’d mentioned elsethread, but yes, I am grateful to you for that. (Benquo being one to say it in that context is a bit more evidence of it’s weight which I had missed before, but I do think I was already weighting the concept approximately the right amount for the right reasons. Partly from having already generally updated on some parts of the Benquo worldview)
Please note, my point in linking that comment wasn’t to suggest that the things Benquo wrote are necessarily true and that the purported truth of those assertions, in itself, bears on the current situation. (Certainly I do agree with what he wrote—but then, I would, wouldn’t I?)
Rather, I was making a meta-level point. Namely: your thesis is that there is some behavior on my part which is bad, and that what makes it bad is that it makes post authors feel… bad in some way (“attacked”? “annoyed”? “discouraged”? I couldn’t say what the right adjective is, here), and that as a consequence, they stop posting on Less Wrong. And as the primary example of this purported bad behavior, you linked the discussion in the comments of the “Zetetic Explanation” post by Benquo (which resulted in the mod warning you noted).
But the comment which I linked has Benquo writing, mere months afterward, that the sort of critique/objection/commentary which I write (including the sort which I wrote in response to his aforesaid post) is “helpful and important”, “very important to the success of an epistemic community”, etc. (Which, I must note, is tremendously to Benquo’s credit. I have the greatest respect for anyone who can view, and treat, their sometime critics in such a fair-minded way.)
This seems like very much the opposite of leaving Less Wrong as a result of my commenting style.
It seems to me that when the prime example you provide of my participation in discussions on Less Wrong purportedly being the sort of thing that drive authors away, actually turns out to be an example of exactly the opposite—of an author (whose post I criticized, in somewhat harsh terms) fairly soon (months) thereafter saying that my critical comments are good and important to the community and that I should continue…
… well, then regardless of whether you agree with the author in question about whether or not my comments are good/important/whatever, the fact that he holds this view casts very serious doubt on your thesis. Wouldn’t you agree?
(And this, note, is an author who has written many posts, many of them quite highly upvoted, and whose writings I have often seen cited in all sorts of significant discussions, i.e., one who has contributed substantially to Less Wrong.)
The reason it’s not additional evidence to me is that I, too, find value in the comments you write for the reasons Benquo states, despite also finding them annoying at the time. So, Benquo’s response here seems like an additional instance of my viewpoint here, rather than a counterexample. (though I’m not claiming Benquo agrees with me on everything on this domain)
Said is asking Ray, not me, but I strongly disagree.
Point 1 is that a black raven is not strong evidence against white ravens. (Said knows this, I think.)
Point 2 is that a behavior which displeases many authors can still be pleasant or valuable to some authors. (Said knows this, I think.)
Point 3 is that benquo’s view on even that specific comment is not the only author-view that matters; benquo eventually being like “this critical feedback was great” does not mean that other authors watching the interaction at the time did not feel “ugh, I sure don’t want to write a post and have to deal with comments like this one.” (Said knows this, I think.)
(Notably, benquo once publicly stated that he suspected a rough interaction would likely have gone much better under Duncan moderation norms specifically; if we’re updating on benquo’s endorsements then it comes out to “both sets of norms useful,” presumably for different things.)
I’d say it casts mild doubt on the thesis, at best, and that the most likely resolution is that Ray ends up feeling something like “yeah, fair, this did not turn out to be the best example,” not “oh snap, you’re right, turns out it was all a house of cards.”
(This will be my only comment in this chain, so as to avoid repeating past cycles.)
A black raven is, indeed, not strong evidence against white ravens. But that’s not quite the right analogy. The more accurate analogy would go somewhat like this:
Alice: White ravens exist!
Bob: Yeah? For real? Where, can I see?
Alice (looking around and then pointing): Right… there! That one!
Bob (peering at the bird in question): But… that raven is actually black? Like, it’s definitely black and not white at all.
Now not only is Bob (once again, as he was at the start) in the position of having exactly zero examples of white ravens (Alice’s one purported example having been revealed to be not an example at all), but—and perhaps even more importantly!—Bob has reason to doubt not only Alice’s possession of any examples of her claim (of white ravens existing), but her very ability to correctly perceive what color any given raven is.
Now if Alice says “Well, I’ve seen a lot of white ravens, though”, Bob might quite reasonably reply: “Have you, though? Really? Because you just said that that raven was white, and it is definitely, totally black.” What’s more, not only Bob but also Alice herself ought rightly to significantly downgrade her confidence in her belief in white ravens (by a degree commensurate with how big a role her own supposed observations of white ravens have played in forming that belief).
Just so. But, once again, we must make our analysis more specific and more precise in order for it to be useful. There are two points to make in response to this.
First is what I said above: the point is not just that the commenting style/approach in question is valuable to some authors (although even that, by itself, is surely important!), but that it turns out to be valuable specifically to the author who served as an—indeed, as the—example of said commenting style/approach being bad. This calls into question not just the thesis that said approach is bad in general, but also the weight of any purported evidence of the approach’s badness, which comes from the same source as the now-controverted claim that it was bad for that specific author.
Second is that not all authors are equal.
Suppose, for example, that dozens of well-respected and highly valued authors all turned out to condemn my commenting style and my contributions, while those who showed up to defend me were all cranks, trolls, and troublemakers. It would still be true, then, to say that “my comments are valuable to some authors but displease others”, but of course the views of the “some” would be, in any reasonable weighting, vastly and overwhelmingly outweighed by the views of the “others”.
But that, of course, is clearly not what’s happening. And the fact that Benquo is certainly not some crank or troll or troublemaker, but a justly respected and valued contributor, is therefore quite relevant.
First, for clarity, let me note that we are not talking (and Benquo was not talking) about a single specific comment, but many comments—indeed, an entire approach to commenting and forum participation. But that is a detail.
It’s true that Benquo’s own views on the matter aren’t the only relevant ones. But they surely are the most relevant. (Indeed, it’s hard to see how one could claim otherwise.)
And as far as “audience reactions” (so to speak) go, it seems to me that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Indeed, some authors (or potential authors) reading the interaction might have had the reaction you describe. But others could have had the opposite reaction. (And, judging by the comments in that discussion thread—as well as many other comments over the years—others in fact did have the opposite reaction, when reading that discussion and numerous others in which I’ve taken part.) What’s more, it is even possible (and, I think, not at all implausible) that some authors read Benquo’s months-later comment and thought “you know, he’s right”.
Well, as I said in the grandparent comment, updating on Benquo’s endorsement is exactly what I was not suggesting that we do. (Not that I am suggesting the opposite—not updating on his endorsement—either. I am only saying that this was not my intended meaning.)
Still, I don’t think that what you say about “both sets of norms useful” is implausible. (I do not, after all, take exception to all of your preferred norms—quite the contrary! Most of them are good. And an argument can be made that even the ones to which I object have their place. Such an argument would have to actually be made, and convincingly, for me to believe it—but that it could be made, seems to me not to be entirely out of the question.)
Well, as I’ve written, to the extent that the convincingness of an argument for some claim rests on examples (especially if it’s just one example), the purported example(s) turning out to be no such thing does, indeed, undermine the whole argument. (Especially—as I note above—insofar as that outcome also casts doubt on whatever process resulted in us believing that raven to have been white in the first place.)