I still don’t follow what you’re actually advocating, though, or what specific thing you’re criticizing. Would you mind explaining to me like I’m five? Or, like, boiling it down into the kinds of short, concrete statements from which one could construct a symbolic logic argument?
I skimmed some of Crick and read some commentary on him, and Crick seems to take the Hobbesian “politics as a necessary compromise” viewpoint. (I wasn’t convinced by his definition of the word politics, which seemed not to point at what I would point at as politics.)
My best guess: I think they’re arguing not that immature discourse is okay, but that we need to be more polite toward people’s views in general for political reasons, as long as the people are acting somewhat in good faith (I suspect they think that you’re not being sufficiently polite toward those you’re trying to throw out of the overton window). As a result, we need to engage less in harsh criticism when it might be seen as threatening.
That being said, I also suspect that Duncan would agree that we need to be charitable. I suspect the actual disagreement is whether the behavior of the critics Duncan is replying to are actually the sort of behavior we want/need to accept in our community.
(Personally, I think we need to be more willing to do real-life experiments, even if they risk going somewhat wrong. And I think some of the tumblr criticism definitely fell out of what I would want in the overton window. So I’m okay with Duncan’s paranthetical, though it would have been nicer if it was more explicit who it was responding to.)
I suspect they think that you’re not being sufficiently polite toward those you’re trying to throw out of the overton window
Actually, what I would say here is that “politeness” itself (and that’s actually a pretty misleading term since we’re dealing with fairly important issues of morality and ethics, not just shallow etiquette—but whatever, let’s go with it) entails that we should seek a clear understanding of what attitudes we’re throwing out of the Overton window, and why, or out of what sort of specific concerns. There’s nothing wrong whatsoever with considering “harsh criticism [that] might be seen as threatening” as being outside the Overton window, but whereas this makes a lot of sense when dealing with real-world based efforts like the Dragon Army group, or the various “rationalist Baugruppes” that seem to be springing up in some places, it feels quite silly to let the same attitude infect our response to “criticism” of Less Wrong as an online site, or of LessWrong 2 for that matter, or even of the “rationalist” community not as an actual community that might be physically manifested in some place, but as a general shared mindset.
When we say that “the behavior of the critics Duncan is replying to are [not] the sort of behavior we want/need to accept in our community”, what do we actually mean by “behavior” and “community” here? Are we actually pointing out the real-world concerns inherent in “criticizing” an effort like Dragon Army in a harsh, unpolite and perhaps even threatening (if perhaps only in a political sense, such as by ‘threatening’ a loss of valued real-world allies!) way? Or are we using these terms in a metaphorical sense that could in some sense encompass everything we might “do” on the Internet as folks with a rationalist mindset? I see the very fact that it’s not really “explicit who (or what) [we’re] responding to” as a problem that needs to be addressed in some way, at least wrt. its broadest plausible implications—even though I definitely understand the political benefits of understating such things!
I still don’t follow what you’re actually advocating, though, or what specific thing you’re criticizing. Would you mind explaining to me like I’m five? Or, like, boiling it down into the kinds of short, concrete statements from which one could construct a symbolic logic argument?
I skimmed some of Crick and read some commentary on him, and Crick seems to take the Hobbesian “politics as a necessary compromise” viewpoint. (I wasn’t convinced by his definition of the word politics, which seemed not to point at what I would point at as politics.)
My best guess: I think they’re arguing not that immature discourse is okay, but that we need to be more polite toward people’s views in general for political reasons, as long as the people are acting somewhat in good faith (I suspect they think that you’re not being sufficiently polite toward those you’re trying to throw out of the overton window). As a result, we need to engage less in harsh criticism when it might be seen as threatening.
That being said, I also suspect that Duncan would agree that we need to be charitable. I suspect the actual disagreement is whether the behavior of the critics Duncan is replying to are actually the sort of behavior we want/need to accept in our community.
(Personally, I think we need to be more willing to do real-life experiments, even if they risk going somewhat wrong. And I think some of the tumblr criticism definitely fell out of what I would want in the overton window. So I’m okay with Duncan’s paranthetical, though it would have been nicer if it was more explicit who it was responding to.)
Actually, what I would say here is that “politeness” itself (and that’s actually a pretty misleading term since we’re dealing with fairly important issues of morality and ethics, not just shallow etiquette—but whatever, let’s go with it) entails that we should seek a clear understanding of what attitudes we’re throwing out of the Overton window, and why, or out of what sort of specific concerns. There’s nothing wrong whatsoever with considering “harsh criticism [that] might be seen as threatening” as being outside the Overton window, but whereas this makes a lot of sense when dealing with real-world based efforts like the Dragon Army group, or the various “rationalist Baugruppes” that seem to be springing up in some places, it feels quite silly to let the same attitude infect our response to “criticism” of Less Wrong as an online site, or of LessWrong 2 for that matter, or even of the “rationalist” community not as an actual community that might be physically manifested in some place, but as a general shared mindset.
When we say that “the behavior of the critics Duncan is replying to are [not] the sort of behavior we want/need to accept in our community”, what do we actually mean by “behavior” and “community” here? Are we actually pointing out the real-world concerns inherent in “criticizing” an effort like Dragon Army in a harsh, unpolite and perhaps even threatening (if perhaps only in a political sense, such as by ‘threatening’ a loss of valued real-world allies!) way? Or are we using these terms in a metaphorical sense that could in some sense encompass everything we might “do” on the Internet as folks with a rationalist mindset? I see the very fact that it’s not really “explicit who (or what) [we’re] responding to” as a problem that needs to be addressed in some way, at least wrt. its broadest plausible implications—even though I definitely understand the political benefits of understating such things!