Related to my reply to PhoenixFriend (in the parent comment), but hopping meta from it:
I have a question for whoever out there thinks they know how the etiquette of this kind of conversation should go. I had a first draft of my reply to PhoenixFriend, where I … basically tried to err on the side of being welcoming, looking for and affirming the elements of truth I could hear in what PhoenixFriend had written, and sort of emphasizing those elements more than my also-real disagreements. I ran it by a CFAR colleague at my colleague’s request, who said something like “look, I think your reply is pretty misleading; you should be louder and clearer about the ways your best guess about what happened differed from what’s described in PhoenixFriend’s comment. Especially since I and others at CFAR have our names on the organization too, so if you phrase things in ways that’ll cause strangers who’re skim-reading to guess that things at CFAR were worse than they were, you’ll inaccurately and unjustly mess with other peoples’ reputations too.” (Paraphrased.)
So then I went back and made my comments more disagreeable and full of details about where my and PhoenixFriend’s models differ. (Though probably still less than the amount that would’ve fully addressed my colleague’s complaints.)
This… seems better in that it addresses my colleague’s pretty reasonable desire, but worse in that it is not welcoming to someone who is trying to share info and is probably finding that hard. I am curious if anyone has good thoughts on how this sort of etiquette should go, if we want to have an illuminating, get-it-all-out-there, non-misleading conversation.
Part of why I’m worried, is it seems to me pretty easy for people who basically think the existing organizations are good, and also that mainstream workplaces are non-damaging and so on, to upvote/downvote each new datum based on those priors plus a (sane and sensible) desire to avoid hurting others’ feelings and reputations without due cause, etc., in ways that despite their reasonability may make it hard for real and needed conversations that are contrary to our current patterns of seeing to get started.
For example, I think PhoenixFriend indeed saw some real things at CFAR that many of those downvoting their comment did not see and mistakenly wouldn’t expect to see, but that also many of the details of PhoenixFriend’s comment are off, partly maybe because they were mis-generalizing from their experiences and partly because it’s hard to name things exactly (especially to people who have a bit of an incentive to mishear.)
(Also, to try briefly and poorly to spell out why I’m rooting for a “get it all out on the table” conversation, and not just a more limited “hear and acknowledge the mostly blatant/known harms, correct those where possible, and leave the rest of our reputation intact” conversation: basically, I think there’s a bunch of built-up “technical debt”, in the form of confusion and mistrust and trying-not-to-talk-about-particular-things-because-others-will-form-“unreasonable”-conflusions-if-we-do and who-knows-why-we-do-that-but-we-do-so-there’s-probably-a-reason, that I’m hoping gets cleared out by the long and IMO relatively high-quality and contentful conversation that’s been happening so far. I want more of that if we can get it. I want culture and groups to be able to build around here without building on top of technical debt. I also want information about how organizations do/don’t work well, and, in terms of means of acquiring this information, I much prefer bad-looking conversations on LW to wasting another five years doing it wrong.)
Personally I am not much trying to maintain the privacy of my own mind at this point,
This sounds like an extreme and surprising statement. I wrote out some clarifying questions like “what do you mean by privacy here”, but maybe it’d be better to just say:
I think it strikes me funny because it sounds sort of like a PR statement. And it sounds like a statement that could set up a sort of “iterations of the Matrix”-like effect. Where, you say “ok now I want to clear out all the miasma, for real”, and then you and your collaborators do a pretty good job at that; but also, something’s been lost or never gained, namely the logical common knowledge that there’s probably-ongoing, probably difficult to see dynamics that give rise to the miasma of {ungrounded shared narrative, information cascades, collective blindspots, deferrals, circular deferrals, misplaced/miscalibrated trust, etc. ??}. In other words, since these things happened in a context where you and your collaborators were already using reflection, introspection, reasoning, communication, etc., we learn that the ongoing accumulation of miasma is a more permanent state of affairs, and this should be common knowledge. Common knowledge would for example help with people being able to bring up information about these dynamics, and expect their information to be put to good use.
(I notice an analogy between iterations of the Matrix and economic boom-bust cycles.)
“get it all out on the table” conversation
“technical debt” [...] I’m hoping gets cleared out
These statements also seem to imply a framing that potentially has the (presumably unintentional) effect of subtly undermining the common knowledge of ongoing miasma-or-whatever. Like, it sort of directs attention to the content but not the generator, or something; like, one could go through all the “stuff” and then one would be done.
This sounds like an extreme and surprising statement.
Well, maybe I phrased it poorly; I don’t think what I’m doing is extreme; “much” is doing a bunch of work in my “I am not much trying to...” sentence.
I mean, there’s plenty I don’t want to share, like a normal person. I have confidential info of other peoples that I’m committed to not sharing, and plenty of my own stuff that I am private about for whatever reason. But in terms of rough structural properties of my mind, or most of my beliefs, I’m not much trying for privacy. Like when I imagine being in a context where a bunch of circling is happening or something (circling allows silence/ignoring questions/etc..; still, people sometimes complain that facial expressions leak through and they don’t know how to avoid it), I’m not personally like “I need my privacy though.” And I’ve updated some toward sharing more compared to what I used to do.
Ok, thanks for clarifying. (To reiterate my later point, since it sounds like you’re considering the “narrative pyramid schemes” hypothesis: I think there is not common knowledge that narrative pyramid schemes happen, and that common knowledge might help people continuously and across contexts share more information, especially information that is pulling against the pyramid schemes, by giving them more of a true expectation that they’ll be heard by a something-maximizing person rather than a narrative-executer).
I have concrete thoughts about the specific etiquette of such conversations (they’re not off the cuff; I’ve been thinking more-or-less continuously about this sort of thing for about eight years now).
However, I’m going to hold off for a bit because:
a) Like Anna, I was a part of the dynamics surrounding PhoenixFriend’s experience, and so I don’t want to seize the reins
b) I’ve also had a hard time coordinating with Anna on conversational norms and practices, both while at CFAR and recently
… so I sort of want to not-pretend-I-don’t-have-models-and-opinions-here (I do) but also do something like “wait several days and let other people propose things first” or “wait until directly asked, having made it clear that I have thoughts if people want them” or something.
Related to my reply to PhoenixFriend (in the parent comment), but hopping meta from it:
I have a question for whoever out there thinks they know how the etiquette of this kind of conversation should go. I had a first draft of my reply to PhoenixFriend, where I … basically tried to err on the side of being welcoming, looking for and affirming the elements of truth I could hear in what PhoenixFriend had written, and sort of emphasizing those elements more than my also-real disagreements. I ran it by a CFAR colleague at my colleague’s request, who said something like “look, I think your reply is pretty misleading; you should be louder and clearer about the ways your best guess about what happened differed from what’s described in PhoenixFriend’s comment. Especially since I and others at CFAR have our names on the organization too, so if you phrase things in ways that’ll cause strangers who’re skim-reading to guess that things at CFAR were worse than they were, you’ll inaccurately and unjustly mess with other peoples’ reputations too.” (Paraphrased.)
So then I went back and made my comments more disagreeable and full of details about where my and PhoenixFriend’s models differ. (Though probably still less than the amount that would’ve fully addressed my colleague’s complaints.)
This… seems better in that it addresses my colleague’s pretty reasonable desire, but worse in that it is not welcoming to someone who is trying to share info and is probably finding that hard. I am curious if anyone has good thoughts on how this sort of etiquette should go, if we want to have an illuminating, get-it-all-out-there, non-misleading conversation.
Part of why I’m worried, is it seems to me pretty easy for people who basically think the existing organizations are good, and also that mainstream workplaces are non-damaging and so on, to upvote/downvote each new datum based on those priors plus a (sane and sensible) desire to avoid hurting others’ feelings and reputations without due cause, etc., in ways that despite their reasonability may make it hard for real and needed conversations that are contrary to our current patterns of seeing to get started.
For example, I think PhoenixFriend indeed saw some real things at CFAR that many of those downvoting their comment did not see and mistakenly wouldn’t expect to see, but that also many of the details of PhoenixFriend’s comment are off, partly maybe because they were mis-generalizing from their experiences and partly because it’s hard to name things exactly (especially to people who have a bit of an incentive to mishear.)
(Also, to try briefly and poorly to spell out why I’m rooting for a “get it all out on the table” conversation, and not just a more limited “hear and acknowledge the mostly blatant/known harms, correct those where possible, and leave the rest of our reputation intact” conversation: basically, I think there’s a bunch of built-up “technical debt”, in the form of confusion and mistrust and trying-not-to-talk-about-particular-things-because-others-will-form-“unreasonable”-conflusions-if-we-do and who-knows-why-we-do-that-but-we-do-so-there’s-probably-a-reason, that I’m hoping gets cleared out by the long and IMO relatively high-quality and contentful conversation that’s been happening so far. I want more of that if we can get it. I want culture and groups to be able to build around here without building on top of technical debt. I also want information about how organizations do/don’t work well, and, in terms of means of acquiring this information, I much prefer bad-looking conversations on LW to wasting another five years doing it wrong.)
This sounds like an extreme and surprising statement. I wrote out some clarifying questions like “what do you mean by privacy here”, but maybe it’d be better to just say:
I think it strikes me funny because it sounds sort of like a PR statement. And it sounds like a statement that could set up a sort of “iterations of the Matrix”-like effect. Where, you say “ok now I want to clear out all the miasma, for real”, and then you and your collaborators do a pretty good job at that; but also, something’s been lost or never gained, namely the logical common knowledge that there’s probably-ongoing, probably difficult to see dynamics that give rise to the miasma of {ungrounded shared narrative, information cascades, collective blindspots, deferrals, circular deferrals, misplaced/miscalibrated trust, etc. ??}. In other words, since these things happened in a context where you and your collaborators were already using reflection, introspection, reasoning, communication, etc., we learn that the ongoing accumulation of miasma is a more permanent state of affairs, and this should be common knowledge. Common knowledge would for example help with people being able to bring up information about these dynamics, and expect their information to be put to good use.
(I notice an analogy between iterations of the Matrix and economic boom-bust cycles.)
These statements also seem to imply a framing that potentially has the (presumably unintentional) effect of subtly undermining the common knowledge of ongoing miasma-or-whatever. Like, it sort of directs attention to the content but not the generator, or something; like, one could go through all the “stuff” and then one would be done.
Well, maybe I phrased it poorly; I don’t think what I’m doing is extreme; “much” is doing a bunch of work in my “I am not much trying to...” sentence.
I mean, there’s plenty I don’t want to share, like a normal person. I have confidential info of other peoples that I’m committed to not sharing, and plenty of my own stuff that I am private about for whatever reason. But in terms of rough structural properties of my mind, or most of my beliefs, I’m not much trying for privacy. Like when I imagine being in a context where a bunch of circling is happening or something (circling allows silence/ignoring questions/etc..; still, people sometimes complain that facial expressions leak through and they don’t know how to avoid it), I’m not personally like “I need my privacy though.” And I’ve updated some toward sharing more compared to what I used to do.
Ok, thanks for clarifying. (To reiterate my later point, since it sounds like you’re considering the “narrative pyramid schemes” hypothesis: I think there is not common knowledge that narrative pyramid schemes happen, and that common knowledge might help people continuously and across contexts share more information, especially information that is pulling against the pyramid schemes, by giving them more of a true expectation that they’ll be heard by a something-maximizing person rather than a narrative-executer).
I have concrete thoughts about the specific etiquette of such conversations (they’re not off the cuff; I’ve been thinking more-or-less continuously about this sort of thing for about eight years now).
However, I’m going to hold off for a bit because:
a) Like Anna, I was a part of the dynamics surrounding PhoenixFriend’s experience, and so I don’t want to seize the reins
b) I’ve also had a hard time coordinating with Anna on conversational norms and practices, both while at CFAR and recently
… so I sort of want to not-pretend-I-don’t-have-models-and-opinions-here (I do) but also do something like “wait several days and let other people propose things first” or “wait until directly asked, having made it clear that I have thoughts if people want them” or something.
link to the essay if/when you write it?