What metaconversations have you experienced in your closest relationships and/or elsewhere that you think LessWrong would benefit from discussing?
How do you turn the metaconversations into actionable, implemented, and solved advice? Rather than such conversations well...becoming very navel gazing and meta circle jerk-y?
I imagine it’s much easier making such conversations bear fruit and pay rent in the context of close personal relationships because there should be a more visceral “this isn’t working” type of feeling fairly immediately, yes? Whereas in an online, usually loosely connected social environment I imagine the visceral and immediate feelings of “this doesn’t work” probably don’t arise as much, or at least not quickly. This is me speculating, what do you think?
I’ll second the “posting lots of questions” being more catalyzing and accessible feeling than regular posts. I still don’t comment too much nor write as much as I’d like, but whenever I see someone post a question post that seems to generate more discussion with people who’s names I don’t recognize than other types of posts. And seem more accessible.
Anecdote: I comment way more on metaconversation and community norms / culture types of posts than I do ideas focused and other kinds of posts. Not 100% certain why, might have to do with issues concerning people, group and community norms, culture, etc. feeling more accessible and interesting to me whereas pure ideas just...eh are less interesting to me usually. I like people a lot and seem to get more interested in something based on the impact that thing has on people. Probably is why I find X risks, AI Safety, and other such things to be very important and good and have read a good bit about such things, but whenever I try to dig into the weeds of the ideas and grok the technical idea aspects of those things...well that’s a lot less interesting to me. Anyway, this was an aside. Helpful to me though.
Adam Zerner’s recent question is a good example of a “this isn’t working” followed by analysis of the causes. Emotion is often a motivator for meta conversation in offline relationships. In online settings like LW, we might tend to start by imagining what sort of interactions we think are possible and missing, and then inferring the reason for their absence and experimenting with solutions.
Keeping those analyses general and succinct seems like the right way to go. I wouldn’t want to have a public discussion about my feelings about a specific other blogger. But trying to find explanations for general behavior online seems like world modeling, not navel gazing.
I agree re Adam’s question being a good example of the case, and not at all navel gazing.
My worry about navel gazing is motivated by some personal baggage, anxiety about what’s worth spending time on, and some anecdotal experiences where it seemed like metaconversations were not effective in doing anything and took a ton of time and energy, then nothing happened from them. Focusing on ”...trying to find explanations for general behavior online...” definitely is helpful world modeling that can provide useful insights and instigate changes in behavior in response to those insights.
I like how you only used the word meta conversation in your comment a single time and tabooed it otherwise, instead offering more specific and actionable commentary / insights about the issues of online discussions and how to align those with what people want out of the site + discussions.
Taking an Oath of Reply like you wrote is a good idea, and I’ll start doing that for my own posts or on discussions / comment threads too.
“In online settings like LW, we might tend to start by imagining what sort of interactions we think are possible and missing, and then inferring the reason for their absence and experimenting with solutions.”
This would make a really good question, if it hasn’t already been asked recently I’ll go make that post and reference this discussion, post, and other relevant things.
What metaconversations have you experienced in your closest relationships and/or elsewhere that you think LessWrong would benefit from discussing?
How do you turn the metaconversations into actionable, implemented, and solved advice? Rather than such conversations well...becoming very navel gazing and meta circle jerk-y?
I imagine it’s much easier making such conversations bear fruit and pay rent in the context of close personal relationships because there should be a more visceral “this isn’t working” type of feeling fairly immediately, yes? Whereas in an online, usually loosely connected social environment I imagine the visceral and immediate feelings of “this doesn’t work” probably don’t arise as much, or at least not quickly. This is me speculating, what do you think?
I’ll second the “posting lots of questions” being more catalyzing and accessible feeling than regular posts. I still don’t comment too much nor write as much as I’d like, but whenever I see someone post a question post that seems to generate more discussion with people who’s names I don’t recognize than other types of posts. And seem more accessible.
Anecdote: I comment way more on metaconversation and community norms / culture types of posts than I do ideas focused and other kinds of posts. Not 100% certain why, might have to do with issues concerning people, group and community norms, culture, etc. feeling more accessible and interesting to me whereas pure ideas just...eh are less interesting to me usually. I like people a lot and seem to get more interested in something based on the impact that thing has on people. Probably is why I find X risks, AI Safety, and other such things to be very important and good and have read a good bit about such things, but whenever I try to dig into the weeds of the ideas and grok the technical idea aspects of those things...well that’s a lot less interesting to me. Anyway, this was an aside. Helpful to me though.
Adam Zerner’s recent question is a good example of a “this isn’t working” followed by analysis of the causes. Emotion is often a motivator for meta conversation in offline relationships. In online settings like LW, we might tend to start by imagining what sort of interactions we think are possible and missing, and then inferring the reason for their absence and experimenting with solutions.
Keeping those analyses general and succinct seems like the right way to go. I wouldn’t want to have a public discussion about my feelings about a specific other blogger. But trying to find explanations for general behavior online seems like world modeling, not navel gazing.
I agree re Adam’s question being a good example of the case, and not at all navel gazing.
My worry about navel gazing is motivated by some personal baggage, anxiety about what’s worth spending time on, and some anecdotal experiences where it seemed like metaconversations were not effective in doing anything and took a ton of time and energy, then nothing happened from them. Focusing on ”...trying to find explanations for general behavior online...” definitely is helpful world modeling that can provide useful insights and instigate changes in behavior in response to those insights.
I like how you only used the word meta conversation in your comment a single time and tabooed it otherwise, instead offering more specific and actionable commentary / insights about the issues of online discussions and how to align those with what people want out of the site + discussions.
Taking an Oath of Reply like you wrote is a good idea, and I’ll start doing that for my own posts or on discussions / comment threads too.
“In online settings like LW, we might tend to start by imagining what sort of interactions we think are possible and missing, and then inferring the reason for their absence and experimenting with solutions.”
This would make a really good question, if it hasn’t already been asked recently I’ll go make that post and reference this discussion, post, and other relevant things.