Passive aggressive? Obnoxious? WHAT? I gave an example of the kind so that whatever conversation wouldn’t be derailed by “Where are your links?” demands.
The implied point seems to be some sort of claim that the type of statement had not been made in the thread up to that point. Rather than asserting that explicitly or even just upvoting lessdazed’s remark you made it harder for people to wade through this conversation.
This is the second time you have leveled that charge at me inappropriately in the last few days.
Most humans will generally not be very good evaluators of whether their comments contribute well to signal/noise issues. So the assertion that they are inappropriate isn’t that helpful. Although the fact that your earlier comment where I did make that remark is currently at +2 tentatively suggests that more people than not disagree with my assessment in that context. In that context, it does strongly look like you were using inflammatory language whether or not you realized that it would be so.
I can only assume it is personal (and passive aggressive) because otherwise it makes no sense.
It isn’t personal. Until you pointed it out I didn’t even remember that my other comment in the context of the SMBC cartoon was to you. I suppose it could have been occurring in some sort of back of my mind, but I don’t think so. Also, I don’t think there’s anything that passive aggressive about those sorts of remarks, I’d consider my comments to be missing the “passive” bit and being pretty aggressive statements of noting when things are not helpful for rational discussion here.
But if you want even more blunt I can do so: You are coming across as a dick. Your earlier “pussy” remark made you come across as a sexist dick. When one is having a conversation about a controversial issue involving sex and gender issues it is generally a good idea to not come across as a sexist dick because it will a) emotionally inflame people who don’t agree with you and make them less likely to listen to you and b) turn away from Less Wrong people who might otherwise be interested in seeing what Less Wrong is about.
In general, calm interaction is better than hot interaction. Explicitly stated points are better than implicit and vague points. Polite statements are better than uncivil statements. I’ve been repeatedly tempted to go through most of this thread and just downvote everyone for making Less Wrong resemble the areas of the internet I try to avoid. It is very clear that the issues being touched on here are mindkillers for many people, and that the karma scores involved reflect to a large extent which mindkilled tribalistic groups happen to have more people around here not in any substantial way a reflection of the arguments (except to a very weak level). None of these are good things. You are, along with other people, acting in a way that makes these problems more, not less extreme. None of this is good if one is trying to actually have rational dialogue.
You are coming across as a dick. Your earlier “pussy” remark made you come across as a sexist dick.
It just occurred to me now and I don’t believe I missed the irony when reading the first time. I don’t want to imply I consider this to be particularly offensive (well, except the part where you called me a dick) but do you realize that you called me a dick both earlier (about something unrelated) and also here because I used a word for genitalia as a negative descriptor?
Yes, I did realize that. (Although note that I didn’t say you are a dick, I said you were coming across as a dick. These aren’t the same thing.) Two issues guided that word choice: First, it was an attempt (possibly a poor one) to speak in a language closer to the sort you were using so the point might come across better. Second, in this particular context, the relevant point is that in a highly male environment you were using a negative term for the genitalia of the other gender. That said, neither of these were probably very good arguments. While one could potentially argue that in our society “dick” is more gender neutral as an negative term than “pussy”, that argument seems to be more of a rationalization than a genuinely useful argument. I suspect that there may have also been some degree of priming occurring given that I had earlier today had a conversation with a female homo sapiens who expressed disinterest in Less Wrong because it “looked like a sausage-fest” (and also apparently that this thread as well as some of the other relationship related threads were “creepy”). Some amount of Phil Plait’s speech was also floating around. But even that is an explanation more than a good reason. So I’ll just say that I was aware of what I was doing, made a conscious decision to do so, but in retrospect had poor reasons for doing it.
It should also mention that judgement about whether something is subject to to Rule 1 interpretation should be particularly suspect. Recursive inclusiveness is implicit. For this reason It is also a charge nearly impossible to defend oneself from directly.
The implied point seems to be some sort of claim that the type of statement had not been made in the thread up to that point.
That wasn’t the point at all, as far as I can tell. The point seemed to be that wedrifid was volunteering to be a representative of the point of view in question (while engaging in some nonverbal humor of the sort that is only possible in online forums).
Your [wedrifid’s] earlier “pussy” remark made you come across as a sexist dick.
Did you forget to update on the new information that was provided?
That wasn’t the point at all, as far as I can tell.
Yes, I think reasonable individuals can read the statement differently. I suspect that my reading was on the more negative end of the spectrum, and I do have to wonder what primed me to think of it, and I don’t have a good explanation for that. That said, it doesn’t seem like an unreasonable interpretation. It seems that the difficulty of reading what other humans mean in a text medium is really quite difficult. While this is a known fact, I apparently don’t compensate for it as well as I should. That said, I suspect that I am very likely not the only person who read the comment in the way I read it.
Did you forget to update on the new information that was provided to you?
No. I did update, but see elsewhere in this subthread where I discussed the relevance of that remark.
I downvoted that comment for confusing levels, not for inappropriate language. Maybe other downvotes are attributable to that problem with it. Maybe upvotes are in spite of the language. Hard to tell.
That’s a good point. I’m making a bad assumption that other humans will focus on the same issues in a comment that I will especially when it is long and contains a variety of different points.
Note: JoshuaZ must have caught the comment before I removed the part replying to ‘signal to noise’ (and the second two quotes are selected from that part). While I would stand by everything I said there would accomplish anything useful. I did not wish to edit the history of the conversation to distort the flow or to leave the parent making no sense—more to prevent the conversation altogether.
You are coming across as a dick. Your earlier “pussy” remark made you come across as a sexist dick.
I had hoped the reply to you by komponisto would have resolved that feeling for you. It came with a wikipedia link!
I had hoped the reply to you by komponisto would have resolved that feeling for you. It came with a wikipedia link!
Komponisto’s comment there and the ensuing discussion was etymologically fascinating. I doubt the vast majority of readers were already aware of the relevant etymology (indeed, you were unaware of the etymology). Remember, rationalists should win. If something has a connotation that is likely to be extremely distracting and trigger strong emotional reactions, then using the excuse that a sufficiently intelligent, educated and rational reader would not have that reaction is not helpful.
I think, incidentally, that one of the issues that may be occurring in our disagreement of how your remarks contributed to the signal/noise is what constitutes signal and noise. In particular, it is possible that I’m using a broader notion of what information is being conveyed in some sense, so I consider emotional triggers to be noise even if they aren’t denotatively part of a message.
The implied point seems to be some sort of claim that the type of statement had not been made in the thread up to that point. Rather than asserting that explicitly or even just upvoting lessdazed’s remark you made it harder for people to wade through this conversation.
Most humans will generally not be very good evaluators of whether their comments contribute well to signal/noise issues. So the assertion that they are inappropriate isn’t that helpful. Although the fact that your earlier comment where I did make that remark is currently at +2 tentatively suggests that more people than not disagree with my assessment in that context. In that context, it does strongly look like you were using inflammatory language whether or not you realized that it would be so.
It isn’t personal. Until you pointed it out I didn’t even remember that my other comment in the context of the SMBC cartoon was to you. I suppose it could have been occurring in some sort of back of my mind, but I don’t think so. Also, I don’t think there’s anything that passive aggressive about those sorts of remarks, I’d consider my comments to be missing the “passive” bit and being pretty aggressive statements of noting when things are not helpful for rational discussion here.
But if you want even more blunt I can do so: You are coming across as a dick. Your earlier “pussy” remark made you come across as a sexist dick. When one is having a conversation about a controversial issue involving sex and gender issues it is generally a good idea to not come across as a sexist dick because it will a) emotionally inflame people who don’t agree with you and make them less likely to listen to you and b) turn away from Less Wrong people who might otherwise be interested in seeing what Less Wrong is about.
In general, calm interaction is better than hot interaction. Explicitly stated points are better than implicit and vague points. Polite statements are better than uncivil statements. I’ve been repeatedly tempted to go through most of this thread and just downvote everyone for making Less Wrong resemble the areas of the internet I try to avoid. It is very clear that the issues being touched on here are mindkillers for many people, and that the karma scores involved reflect to a large extent which mindkilled tribalistic groups happen to have more people around here not in any substantial way a reflection of the arguments (except to a very weak level). None of these are good things. You are, along with other people, acting in a way that makes these problems more, not less extreme. None of this is good if one is trying to actually have rational dialogue.
It just occurred to me now and I don’t believe I missed the irony when reading the first time. I don’t want to imply I consider this to be particularly offensive (well, except the part where you called me a dick) but do you realize that you called me a dick both earlier (about something unrelated) and also here because I used a word for genitalia as a negative descriptor?
Yes, I did realize that. (Although note that I didn’t say you are a dick, I said you were coming across as a dick. These aren’t the same thing.) Two issues guided that word choice: First, it was an attempt (possibly a poor one) to speak in a language closer to the sort you were using so the point might come across better. Second, in this particular context, the relevant point is that in a highly male environment you were using a negative term for the genitalia of the other gender. That said, neither of these were probably very good arguments. While one could potentially argue that in our society “dick” is more gender neutral as an negative term than “pussy”, that argument seems to be more of a rationalization than a genuinely useful argument. I suspect that there may have also been some degree of priming occurring given that I had earlier today had a conversation with a female homo sapiens who expressed disinterest in Less Wrong because it “looked like a sausage-fest” (and also apparently that this thread as well as some of the other relationship related threads were “creepy”). Some amount of Phil Plait’s speech was also floating around. But even that is an explanation more than a good reason. So I’ll just say that I was aware of what I was doing, made a conscious decision to do so, but in retrospect had poor reasons for doing it.
Given that wedrifid said this less than a day ago:
That’s priming.
Rule 1 was incomplete. Judgments that things are of equal value are obviously suspect as well.
It should also mention that judgement about whether something is subject to to Rule 1 interpretation should be particularly suspect. Recursive inclusiveness is implicit. For this reason It is also a charge nearly impossible to defend oneself from directly.
If “pussy” is a sexist slur, isn’t “dick”, also?
It should be, but compared to women, most men are relatively less offended at the slur. Double standards; go figure.
That wasn’t the point at all, as far as I can tell. The point seemed to be that wedrifid was volunteering to be a representative of the point of view in question (while engaging in some nonverbal humor of the sort that is only possible in online forums).
Did you forget to update on the new information that was provided?
EDIT: I seem to have missed this.
Yes, I think reasonable individuals can read the statement differently. I suspect that my reading was on the more negative end of the spectrum, and I do have to wonder what primed me to think of it, and I don’t have a good explanation for that. That said, it doesn’t seem like an unreasonable interpretation. It seems that the difficulty of reading what other humans mean in a text medium is really quite difficult. While this is a known fact, I apparently don’t compensate for it as well as I should. That said, I suspect that I am very likely not the only person who read the comment in the way I read it.
No. I did update, but see elsewhere in this subthread where I discussed the relevance of that remark.
I downvoted that comment for confusing levels, not for inappropriate language. Maybe other downvotes are attributable to that problem with it. Maybe upvotes are in spite of the language. Hard to tell.
That’s a good point. I’m making a bad assumption that other humans will focus on the same issues in a comment that I will especially when it is long and contains a variety of different points.
Note: JoshuaZ must have caught the comment before I removed the part replying to ‘signal to noise’ (and the second two quotes are selected from that part). While I would stand by everything I said there would accomplish anything useful. I did not wish to edit the history of the conversation to distort the flow or to leave the parent making no sense—more to prevent the conversation altogether.
I had hoped the reply to you by komponisto would have resolved that feeling for you. It came with a wikipedia link!
Komponisto’s comment there and the ensuing discussion was etymologically fascinating. I doubt the vast majority of readers were already aware of the relevant etymology (indeed, you were unaware of the etymology). Remember, rationalists should win. If something has a connotation that is likely to be extremely distracting and trigger strong emotional reactions, then using the excuse that a sufficiently intelligent, educated and rational reader would not have that reaction is not helpful.
I think, incidentally, that one of the issues that may be occurring in our disagreement of how your remarks contributed to the signal/noise is what constitutes signal and noise. In particular, it is possible that I’m using a broader notion of what information is being conveyed in some sense, so I consider emotional triggers to be noise even if they aren’t denotatively part of a message.