I want to reinforce the norm of pointing out fucky dynamics when they occur...
Calling this subthread part of a fucky dynamic is begging the question a bit, I think.
If I post something that’s wrong, I’ll get a lot of replies pushing back. It’ll be hard for me to write persuasive responses, since I’ll have to work around the holes in my post and won’t be able to engage the strongest counterarguments directly. I’ll face the exact quadrilemma you quoted, and if I don’t admit my mistake, it’ll be unpleasant for me! But, there’s nothing fucky happening: that’s just how it goes when you’re wrong in a place where lots of bored people can see.
When the replies are arrant, bad faith nonsense, it becomes fucky. But the structure is the same either way: if you were reading a thread you knew nothing about on an object level, you wouldn’t be able to tell whether you were looking at a good dynamic or a bad one.
So, calling this “fucky” is calling JenniferRM’s post “bullshit”. Maybe that’s your model of JenniferRM’s post, in which case I guess I just wasted your time, sorry about that. If not, I hope this was a helpful refinement.
(My sense is that dxu is not referring to JenniferRM’s post, so much as the broader dynamic of how disagreement and engagement unfold, and what incentives that creates.)
Fair enough! My claim is that you zoomed out too far: the quadrilemma you quoted is neither good nor evil, and it occurs in both healthy threads and unhealthy ones.
(Which means that, if you want to have a norm about calling out fucky dynamics, you also need a norm in which people can call each others’ posts “bullshit” without getting too worked up or disrupting the overall social order. I’ve been in communities that worked that way but it seemed to just be a founder effect, I’m not sure how you’d create that norm in a group with a strong existing culture).
It’s often useful to have possibly false things pointed out to keep them in mind as hypotheses or even raw material for new hypotheses. When these things are confidently asserted as obviously correct, or given irredeemably faulty justifications, that doesn’t diminish their value in this respect, it just creates a separate problem.
A healthy framing for this activity is to explain theories without claiming their truth or relevance. Here, judging what’s true acts as a “solution” for the problem, while understanding available theories of what might plausibly be true is the phase of discussing the problem. So when others do propose solutions, do claim what’s true, a useful process is to ignore that aspect at first.
Only once there is saturation, and more claims don’t help new hypotheses to become thinkable, only then this becomes counterproductive and possibly mostly manipulation of popular opinion.
Calling this subthread part of a fucky dynamic is begging the question a bit, I think.
If I post something that’s wrong, I’ll get a lot of replies pushing back. It’ll be hard for me to write persuasive responses, since I’ll have to work around the holes in my post and won’t be able to engage the strongest counterarguments directly. I’ll face the exact quadrilemma you quoted, and if I don’t admit my mistake, it’ll be unpleasant for me! But, there’s nothing fucky happening: that’s just how it goes when you’re wrong in a place where lots of bored people can see.
When the replies are arrant, bad faith nonsense, it becomes fucky. But the structure is the same either way: if you were reading a thread you knew nothing about on an object level, you wouldn’t be able to tell whether you were looking at a good dynamic or a bad one.
So, calling this “fucky” is calling JenniferRM’s post “bullshit”. Maybe that’s your model of JenniferRM’s post, in which case I guess I just wasted your time, sorry about that. If not, I hope this was a helpful refinement.
(My sense is that dxu is not referring to JenniferRM’s post, so much as the broader dynamic of how disagreement and engagement unfold, and what incentives that creates.)
Endorsed.
Fair enough! My claim is that you zoomed out too far: the quadrilemma you quoted is neither good nor evil, and it occurs in both healthy threads and unhealthy ones.
(Which means that, if you want to have a norm about calling out fucky dynamics, you also need a norm in which people can call each others’ posts “bullshit” without getting too worked up or disrupting the overall social order. I’ve been in communities that worked that way but it seemed to just be a founder effect, I’m not sure how you’d create that norm in a group with a strong existing culture).
It’s often useful to have possibly false things pointed out to keep them in mind as hypotheses or even raw material for new hypotheses. When these things are confidently asserted as obviously correct, or given irredeemably faulty justifications, that doesn’t diminish their value in this respect, it just creates a separate problem.
A healthy framing for this activity is to explain theories without claiming their truth or relevance. Here, judging what’s true acts as a “solution” for the problem, while understanding available theories of what might plausibly be true is the phase of discussing the problem. So when others do propose solutions, do claim what’s true, a useful process is to ignore that aspect at first.
Only once there is saturation, and more claims don’t help new hypotheses to become thinkable, only then this becomes counterproductive and possibly mostly manipulation of popular opinion.