This does sound reasonable. I had some thoughts I was planning to write up later on “when are Demon Threads in fact a useful tool you should use on purpose?” (partly because not acknowledging that would be dishonest, and partly because it’s actually useful, and partly to highlight that I think most situations are not useful much of the time)
Quick thoughts for now:
My goal with this post is to move towards a world where we successively prevent demon threads in the first place, not one where we try to stop them or unilaterally disarm after the fact. This is only possible in places with some minimum threshold of… well, I’ll just call it “civility”. I think LW can be such a place (and probably you can carve out sections of FB/tumblr to be that, with more effort).
Note that in my suggested-solution-comment, the ideal execution is to double-crux on the issue before it explodes, and then do a joint-post that explains whatever you were able to agree on and/or how to constructively discuss the issue further.
I think the second best solution is, after the seed has exploded into a thread, find the people who are the loudest/highest-profile (or highest-profile-who-are-in-the-stratosphere-of-people-who’d-listen-to-you), double crux with them, and then do a collective effortpost.
I think one of the most useful things demon threads offer in a Civil World is a threat that you will escalate to them, and cause a major bruhaha. If you do so, everyone has to spend a much of time, and the overton window moves only slightly. So just like politics can be cheaper/more efficient than war, a single cooperative effort by people on opposite sides of a dispute might be cheaper/more efficient than a giant controversy (as well as preserving a status quo where people try earnestly to seek truth / not think tribally, which there is tremendous value to)
I do want to acknowledge—resolving disputes about the overton window needs to happen somehow in Civil World.
I think at least some of those disputes can dissolve in an Archipelago-esque lens.
I think a lot of things-that-cause-demon-threads are actually just pointless. (i.e. demon threads about economic policy seem less useful than demon threads about social norms, since the latter actually affect your social group. The former are only useful for tribal signaling, which is probably also important but I think can probably be refactored a bit).
(Man, I’m not happy with the connotations of “Civil World”, in particular because I’m the one who linked to Civility is Never Neutral at the beginning. Not sure what else to call it. “Rational World” feels, well, differently loaded. “Idealized/Platonic Rational World?”)
This does sound reasonable. I had some thoughts I was planning to write up later on “when are Demon Threads in fact a useful tool you should use on purpose?” (partly because not acknowledging that would be dishonest, and partly because it’s actually useful, and partly to highlight that I think most situations are not useful much of the time)
Quick thoughts for now:
My goal with this post is to move towards a world where we successively prevent demon threads in the first place, not one where we try to stop them or unilaterally disarm after the fact. This is only possible in places with some minimum threshold of… well, I’ll just call it “civility”. I think LW can be such a place (and probably you can carve out sections of FB/tumblr to be that, with more effort).
Note that in my suggested-solution-comment, the ideal execution is to double-crux on the issue before it explodes, and then do a joint-post that explains whatever you were able to agree on and/or how to constructively discuss the issue further.
I think the second best solution is, after the seed has exploded into a thread, find the people who are the loudest/highest-profile (or highest-profile-who-are-in-the-stratosphere-of-people-who’d-listen-to-you), double crux with them, and then do a collective effortpost.
I think one of the most useful things demon threads offer in a Civil World is a threat that you will escalate to them, and cause a major bruhaha. If you do so, everyone has to spend a much of time, and the overton window moves only slightly. So just like politics can be cheaper/more efficient than war, a single cooperative effort by people on opposite sides of a dispute might be cheaper/more efficient than a giant controversy (as well as preserving a status quo where people try earnestly to seek truth / not think tribally, which there is tremendous value to)
I do want to acknowledge—resolving disputes about the overton window needs to happen somehow in Civil World.
I think at least some of those disputes can dissolve in an Archipelago-esque lens.
I think a lot of things-that-cause-demon-threads are actually just pointless. (i.e. demon threads about economic policy seem less useful than demon threads about social norms, since the latter actually affect your social group. The former are only useful for tribal signaling, which is probably also important but I think can probably be refactored a bit).
(Man, I’m not happy with the connotations of “Civil World”, in particular because I’m the one who linked to Civility is Never Neutral at the beginning. Not sure what else to call it. “Rational World” feels, well, differently loaded. “Idealized/Platonic Rational World?”)