ETA: I hate that I have to say this, but can people respond instead of just downvoting? I’m honestly curious as to why this particular post is controversial—or have I missed something?
I often “claim” my downvotes (aka I will post “downvoted” and then give reason.) However, I know that when I do this, I will be downvoted myself. So that is probably one big deterrent to others doing the same.
For one thing, the person you are downvoting will generally retaliate by downvoting you (or so it seems to me, since I tend to get an instant −1 on downvoting comments), and people who disagree with your reason for downvoting will also downvote you.
Also, many people on this site are just a-holes. Sorry.
Common reasons I downvote with no comment: I think the mistake is obvious to most readers (or already mentioned) and there’s little to be gained from teaching the author. I think there’s little insight and much noise—length, unpleasant style, politically disagreeable implications that would be tedious to pick apart (especially in tone rather than content). I judge that jerkishness is impairing comprehension; cutting out the courtesies and using strong words may be defensible, but using insults where explanations would do isn’t.
On the “just a-holes” note (yes, I thought “Is this about me?”): It might be that your threshold for acceptable niceness is unusually high. We have traditions of bluntness and flaw-hunting (mostly from hackers, who correctly consider niceness noise when discussing bugs in X), so we ended up rather mean on average, and very tolerant of meanness. People who want LW to be nicer usually do it by being especially nice, not by especially punishing meanness. I notice you’re on my list of people I should be exceptionally nice to, but not on my list of exceptionally nice people, which is a bad thing if you love Postel’s law. (Which, by Postel’s law, nobody but me has to.) The only LessWronger I think is an asshole is wedrifid, and I think this is one of his good traits.
We have traditions of bluntness and flaw-hunting (mostly from hackers, who correctly consider niceness noise when discussing bugs in X), so we ended up rather mean on average, and very tolerant of meanness.
I think there is a difference between choosing bluntness where niceness would tend to obscure the truth, and choosing between two forms of expression which are equally illuminating but not equally nice. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m using “a-hole” here to mean “One who routinely chooses the less nice variant in the latter situation.”
(This is not a specific reference to you; your comment just happened to provide a good anchor for it.)
I notice you’re on my list of people I should be exceptionally nice to, but not on my list of exceptionally nice people,
Would you mind discussing this with me, because I find it disturbing that I come off as having double-standards, and am interested to know more about where that impression comes from. I personally feel that I do not expect better behaviour from others than I practice, but would like to know (and update my behaviour) if I am wrong about this.
I admit to lowering my level of “niceness” on LW, because I can’t seem to function when I am nice and no one else is. However MY level of being “not nice” means that I don’t spend a lot of time finding ways to word things in the most inoffensive manner. I don’t feel like I am exceptionally rude, and am concerned if I give off that impression.
I also feel like I keep my “punishing meanness” levels to a pretty high standard too: I only “punish” (by downvoting or calling out) what I consider to be extremely rude behavior (ie “I wish you were dead” or “X is crap.”) that is nowhere near the level of “meanness” that I feel like my posts ever get near.
You come off as having single-standards. That is, I think the minimal level of niceness you accept from others is also the minimal level of niceness you practice—you don’t allow wiggle room for others having different standards. I sincerely don’t resent that! My model of nice people in general suggests y’all practice Postel’s law (“Be liberal in what you accept and conservative in what you send”), but I don’t think it’s even consistent to demand that someone follow it.
extremely rude behavior (ie “I wish you were dead” or “X is crap.”)
...I’m never going to live that one down, am I? Let’s just say that there’s an enormous amount of behaviours that I’d describe as “slightly blunter than politeness would allow, for the sake of clarity” and you’d describe as “extremely rude”.
Also, while I’ve accepted the verdict that ” is crap” is extremely rude and I shouldn’t ever say it, I was taken aback at your assertion that it doesn’t contribute anything. Surely “Don’t use this thing for this purpose” is non-empty. By the same token, I’d actually be pretty okay with being told “I wish you were dead” in many contexts. For example, in a discussion of eugenics, I’d be quite fine with a position that implies I should be dead, and would much rather hear it than have others dance around the implication.
Maybe the lesson for you is that many people suck really bad at phrasing things, so you should apply the principle of charity harder and be tolerant if they can’t be both as nice and as clear as you’d have been and choose to sacrifice niceness? The lesson I’ve learned is that I should be more polite in general, more polite to you in particular, look harder for nice phrasings, and spell out implications rather than try to bake them in connotations.
For example, in a discussion of eugenics, I’d be quite fine with a position that implies I should be dead, and would much rather hear it than have others dance around the implication.
I’m fine with positions that imply I should never have been born (although I have yet to hear one that includes me), but I’d feel very differently about one implying that I should be dead!
Many people don’t endorse anything similar to the principle that “any argument for no more of something should explain why there is a perfect amount of that thing or be counted as an argument for less of that thing.”
E.g. thinking arguments that “life extension is bad” generally have no implications regarding killing people were it to become available. So those who say I shouldn’t live to be 200 are not only basically arguing I should (eventually, sooner than I want) be dead, the implication I take is often that I should be killed (in the future).
If someone tells me I should die now, I understand that to mean that my life from this point forward is of negative value to them. If they tell me I should never have been born, I understand that to mean not only that my life from this point forward is of negative value, but also that my life up to this point has been of negative value.
Interesting. I don’t read it as necessarily a judgment of value at all to be told that I should never have been born (things that should not have happened may accidentally have good consequences). Additionally, someone who doesn’t think that I should have been born, but also doesn’t think I should die, will not try to kill me, though they may push policies that will prevent future additions to my salient reference class; someone who thinks I should die could try to make that happen!
For my part, I don’t treat saying things like “I think you should be dead” as particularly predictive of actually trying to kill me. Perhaps I ought to, but I don’t.
If it helps, I didn’t even remember that one of the times I’ve called someone out on “X is crap” was you. So consider it “lived down”.
taken aback at your assertion that it doesn’t contribute anything.
You’re right. How about an assertion that it doesn’t contribute anything that couldn’t be easily rephrased in a much better way? Your example of “Don’t use this thing for this purpose”, especially if followed by a brief explanation, is an order of magnitude better than “X is crap”, and I doubt it took you more than 5 seconds to write.
I often “claim” my downvotes (aka I will post “downvoted” and then give reason.) However, I know that when I do this, I will be downvoted myself. So that is probably one big deterrent to others doing the same.
On the other hand if people agree with your reasons they often upvote it (especially back up towards zero if it dropped negative).
For one thing, the person you are downvoting will generally retaliate by downvoting you (or so it seems to me, since I tend to get an instant −1 on downvoting comments)
I certainly hope so. I would expect that they disagree with your reasons for downvoting or else they would have not made their comment. It would take a particularly insightful explanation for your vote for them to believe that you influencing others toward thinking their contribution is negative is itself a valuable contribution.
Also, many people on this site are just a-holes. Sorry.
For one thing, the person you are downvoting will generally retaliate by downvoting you (or so it seems to me, since I tend to get an instant −1 on downvoting comments)
I certainly hope so. I would expect that they disagree with your reasons for downvoting or else they would have not made their comment. It would take a particularly insightful explanation for your vote for them to believe that you influencing others toward thinking their contribution is negative is itself a valuable contribution.
Do you think that’s a good thing, or just a likely outcome?
Downvoting explanations of downvotes seems like a really bad idea, regardless how you feel about the downvote. It strongly incentives people to not explain themselves, not open themselves up for debates, but just vote and then remove themselves from the discussion.
I don’t see how downvoting explanations and more explicit behavior is helpful for rational discourse in any way.
It strongly incentives people to not explain themselves, not open themselves up for debates, but just vote and then remove themselves from the discussion.
This is exactly the reaction I want to trolls, basic questions outside of dedicated posts, and stupid mistakes. Are downvotes of explanations in those cases also read as an incentive not to post explanations in general?
Speaking for myself, yes. I read it as “don’t engage this topic on this site, period”.
I agree with downvoting (and ignoring) the types of comments you mentioned, but not explanations of such downvotes. The explanations don’t add any noise, so they shouldn’t be punished. (Maybe if they got really excessive, but currently I have the impression that too few downvotes are explained, rather than too many.)
Do you think that’s a good thing, or just a likely outcome?
Comments can serve as calls to action encouraging others to downvote or priming people with a negative or unintended interpretation of a comment—be it yours or that of someone else -that influence is something to be discouraged. This is not the case with all explanations of downvotes but it certainly describes the effect and often intent of the vast majority of “Downvoted because” declarations. Exceptions include explanations that are requested and occasionally reasons that are legitimately surprising or useful. Obviously also an exception is any time when you actually agree they have a point.
I might well consider an explanation of a downvote on a comment of mine to be a valuable contribution, even if I continue to disagree with the thinking behind it. Actually, that’s not uncommon.
If I downvote with comment, it’s usually for a fairly specific problem, and usually one that I expect can be addressed if it’s pointed out; some very clear logical problem that I can throw a link at, for example, or an isolated offensive statement. I may also comment if the post is problematic for a complicated reason that the poster can’t reasonably be expected to figure out, or if its problems are clearly due to ignorance.
Otherwise it’s fairly rare for me to do so; I see downvotes as signaling that I don’t want to read similar posts, and replying to such a post is likely to generate more posts I don’t want to read. This goes double if I think the poster is actually trolling rather than just exhibiting some bias or patch of ignorance. Basically it’s a cost-benefit analysis regarding further conversation; if continuing to reply would generate more heat than light, better to just downvote silently and drive on.
It’s uncommon for me to receive retaliatory downvotes when I do comment, though.
Also, many people on this site are just a-holes. Sorry.
I think it’s more that there are a few a-holes, but they are very prolific (well, that and the same bias that causes us to notice how many red lights we get stopped at but not how many green lights we speed through also focuses our attention on the worst posting behavior).
Explicitly naming names accomplishes nothing except inducing hostility, as it will be taken as a status challenge. Not explicitly naming names, one hopes, leaves everyone re-examining whether their default tone is appropriately calibrated.
I agree with you that naming names can be taken as a status challenge. Of course, this whole topic positions you as an abjudicator of appropriate calibration, which can be taken as a status grab, for the excellent reason that it is one. Not that there’s anything wrong with going for status. All of that notwithstanding, if you prefer to diffuse your assertions of individual inappropriate behavior over an entire community, that’s your privilege.
I care about my status on this site only to the extent that it remains above some minimum required for people not to discount my posts simply because they were written by me.
My interest in this thread is that like Daenerys I think the current norm for discourse is suboptimal, but I think I give greater weight to the possibility of that some of the suboptimal behavior is people defecting by accident; hence the subtle push for occasional recalibration of tone.
Just to be clear: I’m fine with you pushing for a norm that’s optimal for you. Blatantly, if you want to; subtly if you’d rather.
But I don’t agree that the norm you’re pushing is optimal for me, and I consider either of us pushing for the establishment of norms that we’re most comfortable with to be a status-linked social maneuver.
I agree that pretty much all communication does this, yes. Sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly.
As to why… because I see the norm you’re pushing as something pretty close to the cultural baseline of the “friendly” pole of the American mainstream, which I see as willing to trade off precision and accuracy for getting along. You may even be pushing for something even more “get along” optimized than that.
I mostly don’t mind that the rest of my life more or less optimizes for getting along, though I often find it frustrating when it means that certain questions simply can’t ever be asked in the first place, and that certain answers can’t be believed when they’re given because alternative answers are deemed too impolite to say. Still, as I say, I accept it as a fact about my real-life environment. I probably even prefer it, as I acknowledge that optimizing for precision and accuracy at the expense of getting along would be problematic if I could never get away from it, however tired or upset I was.
That said, I value the fact that LW uses a different standard, one that optimizes for accuracy and precision, and therefore efforts to introduce the baseline “get along” standard to LW remove local value for me.
Again, let me stress that I’m not asserting that you ought not make those efforts. If that’s what you want, then by all means push for it. If you are successful, LW will become less valuable to me, but you’re not under any kind of moral obligation to preserve the value of the Internet to me.
But speaking personally, I’d prefer you didn’t insist as you did so that those efforts are actually in my best interests, with the added implication that I can’t recognize my interests as well as you can.
Not explicitly naming names, one hopes, leaves everyone re-examining whether their default tone is appropriately calibrated.
It left me evaluating whether it was me personally that was being called an asshole or others in the community and whether those others are people that deserve the insult or not. Basically I needed to determine whether it was a defection against me, an ally or my tribe in general. Then I had to decide what, if any, was an appropriate, desirable and socially acceptable tit-for-tat response. I decided to mostly ignore him because engaging didn’t seem like it would do much more than giving him a platform from which to gripe more.
Why do you feel it’s correct to interpret it as defection in the first place?
In case you were wondering the translation of this from social-speak to Vulcan is:
Calling people assholes isn’t a defection, therefore you saying—and in particular feeling—that labeling people as assholes is a defection says something personal about you. I am clever and smooth for communicating this rhetorically.
So this too is a defection. Not that I mind—because it is a rather mild defection that is well within the bounds of normal interaction. I mean… it’s not like you called me an asshole or anything. ;)
That is not a correct translation. Calling someone an asshole may or may not be defection. In this case, I’m not sure whether it was. Examining why you feel that it was may be enlightening to me or to you or hopefully both. Defecting by accident is a common flaw, for sure, but interpreting a cooperation as a defection is no less damaging and no less common.
I’m already working on not being an asshole in general, and on not being an asshole to specific people on LW. If someone answers “yes” to that I’ll work harder at being a non-asshole on LW. Or post less. Or try to do one of those for two days then forget about the whole thing.
You haven’t stood out as someone who has been an asshole to me or anyone I didn’t think deserved it in the context, those being the only cases salient enough that I could expect myself to remember.
If you’re already working on it, you’re probably in the clear. Not being an a-hole is a high-effort activity for many of us; in this case I will depart from primitive consquentialism and say that effort counts for something.
Yeah, I do retailate quite commonly (less than 60% retailation ITT though), but I’ve never been an asshole on LW until this thread. Not particularly planning on repeating this, but I’m not sorry at all. Forced civility just doesn’t fit the mood of this topic at all in my eyes.
I often “claim” my downvotes (aka I will post “downvoted” and then give reason.) However, I know that when I do this, I will be downvoted myself. So that is probably one big deterrent to others doing the same.
For one thing, the person you are downvoting will generally retaliate by downvoting you (or so it seems to me, since I tend to get an instant −1 on downvoting comments), and people who disagree with your reason for downvoting will also downvote you.
Also, many people on this site are just a-holes. Sorry.
Common reasons I downvote with no comment: I think the mistake is obvious to most readers (or already mentioned) and there’s little to be gained from teaching the author. I think there’s little insight and much noise—length, unpleasant style, politically disagreeable implications that would be tedious to pick apart (especially in tone rather than content). I judge that jerkishness is impairing comprehension; cutting out the courtesies and using strong words may be defensible, but using insults where explanations would do isn’t.
On the “just a-holes” note (yes, I thought “Is this about me?”): It might be that your threshold for acceptable niceness is unusually high. We have traditions of bluntness and flaw-hunting (mostly from hackers, who correctly consider niceness noise when discussing bugs in X), so we ended up rather mean on average, and very tolerant of meanness. People who want LW to be nicer usually do it by being especially nice, not by especially punishing meanness. I notice you’re on my list of people I should be exceptionally nice to, but not on my list of exceptionally nice people, which is a bad thing if you love Postel’s law. (Which, by Postel’s law, nobody but me has to.) The only LessWronger I think is an asshole is wedrifid, and I think this is one of his good traits.
.
I think there is a difference between choosing bluntness where niceness would tend to obscure the truth, and choosing between two forms of expression which are equally illuminating but not equally nice. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m using “a-hole” here to mean “One who routinely chooses the less nice variant in the latter situation.”
(This is not a specific reference to you; your comment just happened to provide a good anchor for it.)
Of course, if that’s the meaning, then before I judge someone to be an “a-hole” I need to know what they intended to illumine.
Would you mind discussing this with me, because I find it disturbing that I come off as having double-standards, and am interested to know more about where that impression comes from. I personally feel that I do not expect better behaviour from others than I practice, but would like to know (and update my behaviour) if I am wrong about this.
I admit to lowering my level of “niceness” on LW, because I can’t seem to function when I am nice and no one else is. However MY level of being “not nice” means that I don’t spend a lot of time finding ways to word things in the most inoffensive manner. I don’t feel like I am exceptionally rude, and am concerned if I give off that impression.
I also feel like I keep my “punishing meanness” levels to a pretty high standard too: I only “punish” (by downvoting or calling out) what I consider to be extremely rude behavior (ie “I wish you were dead” or “X is crap.”) that is nowhere near the level of “meanness” that I feel like my posts ever get near.
You come off as having single-standards. That is, I think the minimal level of niceness you accept from others is also the minimal level of niceness you practice—you don’t allow wiggle room for others having different standards. I sincerely don’t resent that! My model of nice people in general suggests y’all practice Postel’s law (“Be liberal in what you accept and conservative in what you send”), but I don’t think it’s even consistent to demand that someone follow it.
...I’m never going to live that one down, am I? Let’s just say that there’s an enormous amount of behaviours that I’d describe as “slightly blunter than politeness would allow, for the sake of clarity” and you’d describe as “extremely rude”.
Also, while I’ve accepted the verdict that ” is crap” is extremely rude and I shouldn’t ever say it, I was taken aback at your assertion that it doesn’t contribute anything. Surely “Don’t use this thing for this purpose” is non-empty. By the same token, I’d actually be pretty okay with being told “I wish you were dead” in many contexts. For example, in a discussion of eugenics, I’d be quite fine with a position that implies I should be dead, and would much rather hear it than have others dance around the implication.
Maybe the lesson for you is that many people suck really bad at phrasing things, so you should apply the principle of charity harder and be tolerant if they can’t be both as nice and as clear as you’d have been and choose to sacrifice niceness? The lesson I’ve learned is that I should be more polite in general, more polite to you in particular, look harder for nice phrasings, and spell out implications rather than try to bake them in connotations.
I’m fine with positions that imply I should never have been born (although I have yet to hear one that includes me), but I’d feel very differently about one implying that I should be dead!
Many people don’t endorse anything similar to the principle that “any argument for no more of something should explain why there is a perfect amount of that thing or be counted as an argument for less of that thing.”
E.g. thinking arguments that “life extension is bad” generally have no implications regarding killing people were it to become available. So those who say I shouldn’t live to be 200 are not only basically arguing I should (eventually, sooner than I want) be dead, the implication I take is often that I should be killed (in the future).
Personally, I’d be far more insulted by the suggestion that I should never have been born, than by the suggestion that I should die now.
Why?
If someone tells me I should die now, I understand that to mean that my life from this point forward is of negative value to them. If they tell me I should never have been born, I understand that to mean not only that my life from this point forward is of negative value, but also that my life up to this point has been of negative value.
Interesting. I don’t read it as necessarily a judgment of value at all to be told that I should never have been born (things that should not have happened may accidentally have good consequences). Additionally, someone who doesn’t think that I should have been born, but also doesn’t think I should die, will not try to kill me, though they may push policies that will prevent future additions to my salient reference class; someone who thinks I should die could try to make that happen!
Interesting.
For my part, I don’t treat saying things like “I think you should be dead” as particularly predictive of actually trying to kill me. Perhaps I ought to, but I don’t.
Upvoted, and thank you for the explanation.
If it helps, I didn’t even remember that one of the times I’ve called someone out on “X is crap” was you. So consider it “lived down”.
You’re right. How about an assertion that it doesn’t contribute anything that couldn’t be easily rephrased in a much better way? Your example of “Don’t use this thing for this purpose”, especially if followed by a brief explanation, is an order of magnitude better than “X is crap”, and I doubt it took you more than 5 seconds to write.
.
Correcting for my differing speech patterns across languages and need to speak to stuck-up authorities… probably roughly as much.
On the other hand if people agree with your reasons they often upvote it (especially back up towards zero if it dropped negative).
I certainly hope so. I would expect that they disagree with your reasons for downvoting or else they would have not made their comment. It would take a particularly insightful explanation for your vote for them to believe that you influencing others toward thinking their contribution is negative is itself a valuable contribution.
*arch*
Do you think that’s a good thing, or just a likely outcome?
Downvoting explanations of downvotes seems like a really bad idea, regardless how you feel about the downvote. It strongly incentives people to not explain themselves, not open themselves up for debates, but just vote and then remove themselves from the discussion.
I don’t see how downvoting explanations and more explicit behavior is helpful for rational discourse in any way.
This is exactly the reaction I want to trolls, basic questions outside of dedicated posts, and stupid mistakes. Are downvotes of explanations in those cases also read as an incentive not to post explanations in general?
Speaking for myself, yes. I read it as “don’t engage this topic on this site, period”.
I agree with downvoting (and ignoring) the types of comments you mentioned, but not explanations of such downvotes. The explanations don’t add any noise, so they shouldn’t be punished. (Maybe if they got really excessive, but currently I have the impression that too few downvotes are explained, rather than too many.)
Comments can serve as calls to action encouraging others to downvote or priming people with a negative or unintended interpretation of a comment—be it yours or that of someone else -that influence is something to be discouraged. This is not the case with all explanations of downvotes but it certainly describes the effect and often intent of the vast majority of “Downvoted because” declarations. Exceptions include explanations that are requested and occasionally reasons that are legitimately surprising or useful. Obviously also an exception is any time when you actually agree they have a point.
I might well consider an explanation of a downvote on a comment of mine to be a valuable contribution, even if I continue to disagree with the thinking behind it. Actually, that’s not uncommon.
If I downvote with comment, it’s usually for a fairly specific problem, and usually one that I expect can be addressed if it’s pointed out; some very clear logical problem that I can throw a link at, for example, or an isolated offensive statement. I may also comment if the post is problematic for a complicated reason that the poster can’t reasonably be expected to figure out, or if its problems are clearly due to ignorance.
Otherwise it’s fairly rare for me to do so; I see downvotes as signaling that I don’t want to read similar posts, and replying to such a post is likely to generate more posts I don’t want to read. This goes double if I think the poster is actually trolling rather than just exhibiting some bias or patch of ignorance. Basically it’s a cost-benefit analysis regarding further conversation; if continuing to reply would generate more heat than light, better to just downvote silently and drive on.
It’s uncommon for me to receive retaliatory downvotes when I do comment, though.
I think it’s more that there are a few a-holes, but they are very prolific (well, that and the same bias that causes us to notice how many red lights we get stopped at but not how many green lights we speed through also focuses our attention on the worst posting behavior).
Interesting. Who are the prolific “a-holes”?
Explicitly naming names accomplishes nothing except inducing hostility, as it will be taken as a status challenge. Not explicitly naming names, one hopes, leaves everyone re-examining whether their default tone is appropriately calibrated.
I agree with you that naming names can be taken as a status challenge.
Of course, this whole topic positions you as an abjudicator of appropriate calibration, which can be taken as a status grab, for the excellent reason that it is one. Not that there’s anything wrong with going for status.
All of that notwithstanding, if you prefer to diffuse your assertions of individual inappropriate behavior over an entire community, that’s your privilege.
I care about my status on this site only to the extent that it remains above some minimum required for people not to discount my posts simply because they were written by me.
My interest in this thread is that like Daenerys I think the current norm for discourse is suboptimal, but I think I give greater weight to the possibility of that some of the suboptimal behavior is people defecting by accident; hence the subtle push for occasional recalibration of tone.
There was a subtle push? I must of missed that while I was distracted by the blatant one!
See, it’s working!
Just to be clear: I’m fine with you pushing for a norm that’s optimal for you. Blatantly, if you want to; subtly if you’d rather.
But I don’t agree that the norm you’re pushing is optimal for me, and I consider either of us pushing for the establishment of norms that we’re most comfortable with to be a status-linked social maneuver.
Why? (A sincere question, not a rhetorical one)
I’m not sure how every post doesn’t do this; many posts push to maintain a status-quo, but all posts implicitly favor some set of norms.
I agree that pretty much all communication does this, yes. Sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly.
As to why… because I see the norm you’re pushing as something pretty close to the cultural baseline of the “friendly” pole of the American mainstream, which I see as willing to trade off precision and accuracy for getting along. You may even be pushing for something even more “get along” optimized than that.
I mostly don’t mind that the rest of my life more or less optimizes for getting along, though I often find it frustrating when it means that certain questions simply can’t ever be asked in the first place, and that certain answers can’t be believed when they’re given because alternative answers are deemed too impolite to say. Still, as I say, I accept it as a fact about my real-life environment. I probably even prefer it, as I acknowledge that optimizing for precision and accuracy at the expense of getting along would be problematic if I could never get away from it, however tired or upset I was.
That said, I value the fact that LW uses a different standard, one that optimizes for accuracy and precision, and therefore efforts to introduce the baseline “get along” standard to LW remove local value for me.
Again, let me stress that I’m not asserting that you ought not make those efforts. If that’s what you want, then by all means push for it. If you are successful, LW will become less valuable to me, but you’re not under any kind of moral obligation to preserve the value of the Internet to me.
But speaking personally, I’d prefer you didn’t insist as you did so that those efforts are actually in my best interests, with the added implication that I can’t recognize my interests as well as you can.
It left me evaluating whether it was me personally that was being called an asshole or others in the community and whether those others are people that deserve the insult or not. Basically I needed to determine whether it was a defection against me, an ally or my tribe in general. Then I had to decide what, if any, was an appropriate, desirable and socially acceptable tit-for-tat response. I decided to mostly ignore him because engaging didn’t seem like it would do much more than giving him a platform from which to gripe more.
If it makes you feel better, when I read his post I thought lovingly of you. (I also believe your response was appropriate.)
Why do you feel it’s correct to interpret it as defection in the first place?
In case you were wondering the translation of this from social-speak to Vulcan is:
So this too is a defection. Not that I mind—because it is a rather mild defection that is well within the bounds of normal interaction. I mean… it’s not like you called me an asshole or anything. ;)
That is not a correct translation. Calling someone an asshole may or may not be defection. In this case, I’m not sure whether it was. Examining why you feel that it was may be enlightening to me or to you or hopefully both. Defecting by accident is a common flaw, for sure, but interpreting a cooperation as a defection is no less damaging and no less common.
Am I an asshole?
I’m already working on not being an asshole in general, and on not being an asshole to specific people on LW. If someone answers “yes” to that I’ll work harder at being a non-asshole on LW. Or post less. Or try to do one of those for two days then forget about the whole thing.
You haven’t stood out as someone who has been an asshole to me or anyone I didn’t think deserved it in the context, those being the only cases salient enough that I could expect myself to remember.
If you’re already working on it, you’re probably in the clear. Not being an a-hole is a high-effort activity for many of us; in this case I will depart from primitive consquentialism and say that effort counts for something.
And, equivalently, signalling effectively that you are expending effort counts for something.
Yeah, I do retailate quite commonly (less than 60% retailation ITT though), but I’ve never been an asshole on LW until this thread. Not particularly planning on repeating this, but I’m not sorry at all. Forced civility just doesn’t fit the mood of this topic at all in my eyes.