I was also confused about what you meant by epistemic hygiene when finishing the essays.
In part, this is because a major claim of the OP is “LessWrong has a canon; there’s an essay for each of the core things (like strawmanning, or double cruxing, or stag hunts).” I didn’t set out to describe and define epistemic hygiene within the essay, because one of my foundational assumptions is “this work has already been done; we’re just not holding each other to the available existing standards found in all the highly upvoted common memes.”
It is hopefully clear that when I say this here, in this way, that it is not a trap for you.
This is evidence I wasn’t sufficiently clear. The “trap” I was referring to was the bulleted dynamic, whereby I either cede the argument or have to put forth infinite effort. I agree that it wasn’t at all likely deliberately set by Jennifer, but also there are ways to avoid accidentally setting such traps, such as not strawmanning your conversational partner.
(Strawmanning being, basically, redefining what they’re saying in the eyes of the audience. Which they then either tacitly accept or have to actively overturn.)
I think that, in the context of an essay specifically highlighting “people on this site often behave in ways that make it harder to think,” doing a bunch of the stuff Jennifer did is reasonably less forgivable than usual. It’s one thing to, I dunno, use coarse and foul language; it’s another thing to use it in response to somebody who’s just asked that we maybe swear a little less. Especially if the locale for the discussion is named LessSwearing (i.e. the person isn’t randomly bidding for the adoption of some out-of-the-blue standard).
Your comment struck me is very high heat; that heat reflects a particular perspective. I don’t know exactly what that perspective is, but it seems to me that you saw jessica’s comments as threats.
Yes. I do not think it was a genuine attempt to engage or converge with me (the way that Said, Elizabeth, johnswentsworth, supposedlyfun, and even agrippa were clearly doing or willing to do), so much as an attempt to condescend, lecture, and belittle, and the crowd of upvotes seemed to indicate either general endorsement of those actions, or a belief that it’s fine/doesn’t matter/isn’t a dealbreaker. This impression has not shifted much on rereads, and is reminiscent of exactly the prior experiences on LW that caused me to feel the need to write the OP in the first place.
Did you find my response nonthreatening?
Yes.
Do you feel a difference in reaction to my stating confusion at epistemic hygiene and jessica stating confusion at that point?
Yes.
Was my description of how I was trying to change your perspective as I was trying to change your perspective trust-increasing? (I am somewhat concerned that it will be perceived as manipulative)
It was trust-increasing and felt cooperative throughout.
Do you find my characterization of your perspective, where Jennifer’s comment is/was a threat, accurate?
For the most part, yes.
Is a more collaborative perspective available to you at this moment?
I’m not quite sure what you’re asking, here. I can certainly access a desire to collaborate that is zero percent contingent on agreement with my claims.
If it is, do you find it changes your emotional reaction to Jennifer’s comment?
No, or at least not yet. supposedlyfun, for example, seems at least as “hostile” as Jennifer on the level of agreement, but at least bothered to cut out paragraphs they estimated would be likely to be triggering, and mention that fact. That’s a costly signal of “look, I’m really trying to establish a handshake, here,” and it engendered substantial desire to reciprocate. You, too, are making such costly signals. If Jennifer chose to, that would reframe things somewhat, but in Jennifer’s second comment there was a lot of doubling down.
Do you feel that your comment was high heat?
Yes.
If so, what goals did the high heat accomplish for you?
This presupposes that it was … sufficiently strategic, or something?
Goals that were not necessarily well-achieved by the reply:
Putting object-level critique in a public place, so the norm violations didn’t go unnoticed (I’m not confident anyone else would have objected to the objectionable stuff)
Demonstrating that at least one person will in fact push back if someone does the epistemically sloppy bullying thing (I regularly receive messages thanking me for this service)
And, do you believe they were worth the costs?
I don’t actively believe this, no. It seems like it could still go either way. I would be slightly more surprised by it turning out worth it, than by it turning out not worth it.
This is an example of the illusion of transparency issue. Many salient interpretations of what this means (informed by the popularposts on the topic, that are actually not explicitly on this topic) motivate actions that I consider deleterious overall, like punishing half-baked/wild/probably-wrong hypotheses or things that are not obsequiously disclaimed as such, in a way that’s insensitive to the actual level of danger of being misleading. A more salient cost is nonsense hogging attention, but that doesn’t distinguish it from well-reasoned clear points that don’t add insight hogging attention.
The actually serious problem is when this is a symptom of not distinguishing epistemic status of ideas on part of the author, but then it’s not at all clear that punishing publication of such thoughts helps the author fix the problem. The personal skill of tagging epistemic status of ideas in one’s own mind correctly is what I think of as epistemic hygiene, but I don’t expect this to be canon, and I’m not sure that there is no serious disagreement on this point with people who also thought about this. For one, the interpretation I have doesn’t specify community norms, and I don’t know what epistemic-hygiene-the-norm should be.
In part, this is because a major claim of the OP is “LessWrong has a canon; there’s an essay for each of the core things (like strawmanning, or double cruxing, or stag hunts).” I didn’t set out to describe and define epistemic hygiene within the essay, because one of my foundational assumptions is “this work has already been done; we’re just not holding each other to the available existing standards found in all the highly upvoted common memes.”
This is evidence I wasn’t sufficiently clear. The “trap” I was referring to was the bulleted dynamic, whereby I either cede the argument or have to put forth infinite effort. I agree that it wasn’t at all likely deliberately set by Jennifer, but also there are ways to avoid accidentally setting such traps, such as not strawmanning your conversational partner.
(Strawmanning being, basically, redefining what they’re saying in the eyes of the audience. Which they then either tacitly accept or have to actively overturn.)
I think that, in the context of an essay specifically highlighting “people on this site often behave in ways that make it harder to think,” doing a bunch of the stuff Jennifer did is reasonably less forgivable than usual. It’s one thing to, I dunno, use coarse and foul language; it’s another thing to use it in response to somebody who’s just asked that we maybe swear a little less. Especially if the locale for the discussion is named LessSwearing (i.e. the person isn’t randomly bidding for the adoption of some out-of-the-blue standard).
Yes. I do not think it was a genuine attempt to engage or converge with me (the way that Said, Elizabeth, johnswentsworth, supposedlyfun, and even agrippa were clearly doing or willing to do), so much as an attempt to condescend, lecture, and belittle, and the crowd of upvotes seemed to indicate either general endorsement of those actions, or a belief that it’s fine/doesn’t matter/isn’t a dealbreaker. This impression has not shifted much on rereads, and is reminiscent of exactly the prior experiences on LW that caused me to feel the need to write the OP in the first place.
Yes.
Yes.
It was trust-increasing and felt cooperative throughout.
For the most part, yes.
I’m not quite sure what you’re asking, here. I can certainly access a desire to collaborate that is zero percent contingent on agreement with my claims.
No, or at least not yet. supposedlyfun, for example, seems at least as “hostile” as Jennifer on the level of agreement, but at least bothered to cut out paragraphs they estimated would be likely to be triggering, and mention that fact. That’s a costly signal of “look, I’m really trying to establish a handshake, here,” and it engendered substantial desire to reciprocate. You, too, are making such costly signals. If Jennifer chose to, that would reframe things somewhat, but in Jennifer’s second comment there was a lot of doubling down.
Yes.
This presupposes that it was … sufficiently strategic, or something?
Goals that were not necessarily well-achieved by the reply:
Putting object-level critique in a public place, so the norm violations didn’t go unnoticed (I’m not confident anyone else would have objected to the objectionable stuff)
Demonstrating that at least one person will in fact push back if someone does the epistemically sloppy bullying thing (I regularly receive messages thanking me for this service)
I don’t actively believe this, no. It seems like it could still go either way. I would be slightly more surprised by it turning out worth it, than by it turning out not worth it.
Yes.
This is an example of the illusion of transparency issue. Many salient interpretations of what this means (informed by the popular posts on the topic, that are actually not explicitly on this topic) motivate actions that I consider deleterious overall, like punishing half-baked/wild/probably-wrong hypotheses or things that are not obsequiously disclaimed as such, in a way that’s insensitive to the actual level of danger of being misleading. A more salient cost is nonsense hogging attention, but that doesn’t distinguish it from well-reasoned clear points that don’t add insight hogging attention.
The actually serious problem is when this is a symptom of not distinguishing epistemic status of ideas on part of the author, but then it’s not at all clear that punishing publication of such thoughts helps the author fix the problem. The personal skill of tagging epistemic status of ideas in one’s own mind correctly is what I think of as epistemic hygiene, but I don’t expect this to be canon, and I’m not sure that there is no serious disagreement on this point with people who also thought about this. For one, the interpretation I have doesn’t specify community norms, and I don’t know what epistemic-hygiene-the-norm should be.