My model of the problem boils down to a few basic factors:
Attention competition prompts speed and rewards some degree of imprecision and controversy with more engagement.
It is difficult to comply with many costly norms and to have significant output/win attention competitions.
There is debate over which norms should be enforced, and while getting the norms combination right is positive-sum overall, different norms favor different personalities in competition.
Just purging the norm breakers can create substantial groupthink if the norm breakers disproportionately express neglected ideas or comply with other neglected and costly but valuable norms.
It is costly for 3rd parties to adjudicate and intervene precisely in conflicts involving attention competition, since they are inherently costly to sort out.
General recommendations/thoughts:
Slow the pace of conversation, perhaps through mod rate limits on comment length and frequency or temporary bans. This seems like a proportional response to argument spam and attention competition, and would seem to push toward better engagement incentives without inducing groupthink from overzealous censorship.
If entangled in comment conflict yourself, aim to write more carefully, clearly, and in a condensed manner that is more inherently robust against adversarial misinterpretation. If the other side doesn’t reciprocate, make your effort explicit to reduce the social cost of unilaterally not responding quickly (e.g. leaving a friendly temporary comment about responding later when you get time to convey your thoughts clearly).
To the degree possible, reset and focus on conversations going forward, not publicly adjudicating who screwed-up what in prior convos. While it is valuable to set norms, those who are intertwined in conflict and stand to competitively benefit from the selective enforcement of the norms they favor are inherently not credible as sources of good norm sets.
In general we should be aiming for positive-sum and honest incentives, while economizing in how we patch exploits in the norms that are promoted and enforced. Attention competition makes this inherently hard, thus it makes sense to attack the dynamic itself.
My model of the problem boils down to a few basic factors:
Attention competition prompts speed and rewards some degree of imprecision and controversy with more engagement.
It is difficult to comply with many costly norms and to have significant output/win attention competitions.
There is debate over which norms should be enforced, and while getting the norms combination right is positive-sum overall, different norms favor different personalities in competition.
Just purging the norm breakers can create substantial groupthink if the norm breakers disproportionately express neglected ideas or comply with other neglected and costly but valuable norms.
It is costly for 3rd parties to adjudicate and intervene precisely in conflicts involving attention competition, since they are inherently costly to sort out.
General recommendations/thoughts:
Slow the pace of conversation, perhaps through mod rate limits on comment length and frequency or temporary bans. This seems like a proportional response to argument spam and attention competition, and would seem to push toward better engagement incentives without inducing groupthink from overzealous censorship.
If entangled in comment conflict yourself, aim to write more carefully, clearly, and in a condensed manner that is more inherently robust against adversarial misinterpretation. If the other side doesn’t reciprocate, make your effort explicit to reduce the social cost of unilaterally not responding quickly (e.g. leaving a friendly temporary comment about responding later when you get time to convey your thoughts clearly).
To the degree possible, reset and focus on conversations going forward, not publicly adjudicating who screwed-up what in prior convos. While it is valuable to set norms, those who are intertwined in conflict and stand to competitively benefit from the selective enforcement of the norms they favor are inherently not credible as sources of good norm sets.
In general we should be aiming for positive-sum and honest incentives, while economizing in how we patch exploits in the norms that are promoted and enforced. Attention competition makes this inherently hard, thus it makes sense to attack the dynamic itself.