Death by a thousand cuts and “proportionate”(?) response
A way this all feels relevant to current disputes with Duncan is that thing that is frustrating about Said is not any individual comment, but an overall pattern that doesn’t emerge as extremely costly until you see the whole thing. (i.e. if there’s a spectrum of how bad behavior is, from 0-10, and things that are a “3” are considered bad enough to punish, someone who’s doing things that are bad at a “2.5″ or “2.9” level don’t quite feel worth reacting to. But if someone does them a lot it actually adds up to being pretty bad.
If you point this out, people mostly shrug and move on with their day. So, to point it out in a way that people actually listen to, you have to do something that looks disproportionate if you’re just paying attention to the current situation. And, also, the people who care strongly enough to see that through tend to be in an extra-triggered/frustrated state, which means they’re not at their best when they’re dong it.
I think Duncan’s response looks very out-of-proportion. I think Duncan’s response is out of proportion to some degree (see Vaniver thread for some reasons why. I have some more reasons I plan to write about).
But I do think there is a correct thing that Duncan was noting/reacting to, which is that actually yeah, the current situation with Said does feel bad enough that something should change, and it indeed the mods hadn’t been intervening on it because it didn’t quite feel like a priority.
I liked Vaniver’s description of Duncan’s comments/posts as making a bet that Said was in fact obviously banworthy or worthy of significant mod action, and that there was a smoking gun to that effect, and if this was true then Duncan would be largely vindicated-in-retrospect.
I’ll lay out some more thinking as to why, but, my current gut feeling + somewhat considered opinion is that “Duncan is somewhat vindicated, but not maximally, and there are some things about his approach I probably judge him for.”
Personally, the thing I think should change with Said is that we need more of him, preferably a dozen more people doing the same thing. If there were a competing site run according to Said’s norms, it would be much better for pursuing the art of rationality than modern LessWrong is; disagreeable challenges to question-framing and social moves are desperately necessary to keep discussion norms truth-tracking rather than convenience-tracking.
But this is not an argument I expect to be able to win without actually trying the experiment. And even then I would expect at least five years would be required to get unambiguous results.
It would definitely be an interesting experiment. Different people would make different predictions about its outcome, but that’s exactly what the experiments are good for.
(My bet would be that the participants would only discuss “safe” topics, such as math and programming.)
Death by a thousand cuts and “proportionate”(?) response
A way this all feels relevant to current disputes with Duncan is that thing that is frustrating about Said is not any individual comment, but an overall pattern that doesn’t emerge as extremely costly until you see the whole thing. (i.e. if there’s a spectrum of how bad behavior is, from 0-10, and things that are a “3” are considered bad enough to punish, someone who’s doing things that are bad at a “2.5″ or “2.9” level don’t quite feel worth reacting to. But if someone does them a lot it actually adds up to being pretty bad.
If you point this out, people mostly shrug and move on with their day. So, to point it out in a way that people actually listen to, you have to do something that looks disproportionate if you’re just paying attention to the current situation. And, also, the people who care strongly enough to see that through tend to be in an extra-triggered/frustrated state, which means they’re not at their best when they’re dong it.
I think Duncan’s response looks very out-of-proportion. I think Duncan’s response is out of proportion to some degree (see Vaniver thread for some reasons why. I have some more reasons I plan to write about).
But I do think there is a correct thing that Duncan was noting/reacting to, which is that actually yeah, the current situation with Said does feel bad enough that something should change, and it indeed the mods hadn’t been intervening on it because it didn’t quite feel like a priority.
I liked Vaniver’s description of Duncan’s comments/posts as making a bet that Said was in fact obviously banworthy or worthy of significant mod action, and that there was a smoking gun to that effect, and if this was true then Duncan would be largely vindicated-in-retrospect.
I’ll lay out some more thinking as to why, but, my current gut feeling + somewhat considered opinion is that “Duncan is somewhat vindicated, but not maximally, and there are some things about his approach I probably judge him for.”
Personally, the thing I think should change with Said is that we need more of him, preferably a dozen more people doing the same thing. If there were a competing site run according to Said’s norms, it would be much better for pursuing the art of rationality than modern LessWrong is; disagreeable challenges to question-framing and social moves are desperately necessary to keep discussion norms truth-tracking rather than convenience-tracking.
But this is not an argument I expect to be able to win without actually trying the experiment. And even then I would expect at least five years would be required to get unambiguous results.
It would definitely be an interesting experiment. Different people would make different predictions about its outcome, but that’s exactly what the experiments are good for.
(My bet would be that the participants would only discuss “safe” topics, such as math and programming.)