I may be in the minority in this respect, but I like it when Less Wrong is in crisis. The LW community is sophisticated enough to (mostly) avoid affective spirals, which means it produces more and better thought in response to a crisis. I believe that, e.g., the practice of going to the profile of a user you don’t like and downvoting every comment, regardless of content, undermines Less Wrong more than any crisis has or will.
Furthermore, I think the crisis paradigm is what a community of developing rationalists ought to look like. The conceit of students passively absorbing wisdom at the feet of an enlightened teacher is far from the mark. How many people can you think of, who mastered any subject by learning in this way?
That said… both “sides” of the gender crisis are repeating themselves, which strongly suggests they have nothing new to say. So I say Eliezer is right. If you can’t understand the other side’s perspective by now—if you still have no basis for agreement after all this discussion—you need to acknowledge that you have a blind spot here and either re-read with the intent to understand rather than refute, or just avoid talking about it.
I may be in the minority in this respect, but I like it when Less Wrong is in crisis. The LW community is sophisticated enough to (mostly) avoid affective spirals, which means it produces more and better thought in response to a crisis. I believe that, e.g., the practice of going to the profile of a user you don’t like and downvoting every comment, regardless of content, undermines Less Wrong more than any crisis has or will.
Furthermore, I think the crisis paradigm is what a community of developing rationalists ought to look like. The conceit of students passively absorbing wisdom at the feet of an enlightened teacher is far from the mark. How many people can you think of, who mastered any subject by learning in this way?
That said… both “sides” of the gender crisis are repeating themselves, which strongly suggests they have nothing new to say. So I say Eliezer is right. If you can’t understand the other side’s perspective by now—if you still have no basis for agreement after all this discussion—you need to acknowledge that you have a blind spot here and either re-read with the intent to understand rather than refute, or just avoid talking about it.
you need to do some formatting on that link. looks like your (] got switched around.
Thanks for the heads-up. Fixed.