I think I understand your point about overconfidence. I had thought of the post for a day or two but I wrote it in one go, so I probably didn’t end up expressing myself as well as I could have. I had originally intended to include a disclaimer in my post, but for reasons that now seem obscure I left it out. When making as strong, generalizing statements as I did, the ambiguity of statements should be minimized a lot more thoroughly than I did.
So, to explain myself a little bit better: I don’t hold the opinion that what I called “bullshit” is common enough here to make it, in itself, a “failing of this community”. The “bullshit” was, after all, limited only to certain threads and to certain individuals. What I’m lamenting and attributing to the whole community is a failure to react to the “bullshit” properly. Of course, that’s a sweeping generalization in itself—certainly not everyone here failed to react in what I consider a proper way. But the widest consensus in the multitude of opinions seemed to be that the reaction might be hypersensitivity, and that the “bullshit” should be discouraged only because it offends and excludes people (and not because it offends and excludes people for irrational reasons).
And as for overconfidence about my assessment of the “bullshit” itself, I don’t really want to argue about that. Any more than I’d want to argue with people who think atheists should be excluded from public office. (Can you imagine an alternate LW in which the general consensus was that’s a reasonable, though extreme, position to take? That might give an only slightly exaggerated example of how bizarrely out of place I considered the gender debate to be.) If pressed, I will naturally agree to defend my statements. But I wouldn’t really want to have to, and restarting the debate isn’t probably in anyone else’s best interests either. So, I’ll just have to leave the matter as something that, in my perspective, lessens appreciation for the level of discourse here in quite a disturbing way. Still, that doesn’t mean that LW wouldn’t get the best marks from me as far as the rationality of internet communities I know is considered, or that a lowered single value for “the level of discourse” lessened my perception of the value of other contributions here.
Now the latest top-level post about critiquing Bayesianism look quite interesting, I think I’d like to take a closer look at that...
I think I understand your point about overconfidence. I had thought of the post for a day or two but I wrote it in one go, so I probably didn’t end up expressing myself as well as I could have. I had originally intended to include a disclaimer in my post, but for reasons that now seem obscure I left it out. When making as strong, generalizing statements as I did, the ambiguity of statements should be minimized a lot more thoroughly than I did.
So, to explain myself a little bit better: I don’t hold the opinion that what I called “bullshit” is common enough here to make it, in itself, a “failing of this community”. The “bullshit” was, after all, limited only to certain threads and to certain individuals. What I’m lamenting and attributing to the whole community is a failure to react to the “bullshit” properly. Of course, that’s a sweeping generalization in itself—certainly not everyone here failed to react in what I consider a proper way. But the widest consensus in the multitude of opinions seemed to be that the reaction might be hypersensitivity, and that the “bullshit” should be discouraged only because it offends and excludes people (and not because it offends and excludes people for irrational reasons).
And as for overconfidence about my assessment of the “bullshit” itself, I don’t really want to argue about that. Any more than I’d want to argue with people who think atheists should be excluded from public office. (Can you imagine an alternate LW in which the general consensus was that’s a reasonable, though extreme, position to take? That might give an only slightly exaggerated example of how bizarrely out of place I considered the gender debate to be.) If pressed, I will naturally agree to defend my statements. But I wouldn’t really want to have to, and restarting the debate isn’t probably in anyone else’s best interests either. So, I’ll just have to leave the matter as something that, in my perspective, lessens appreciation for the level of discourse here in quite a disturbing way. Still, that doesn’t mean that LW wouldn’t get the best marks from me as far as the rationality of internet communities I know is considered, or that a lowered single value for “the level of discourse” lessened my perception of the value of other contributions here.
Now the latest top-level post about critiquing Bayesianism look quite interesting, I think I’d like to take a closer look at that...