Nancy, I support Scott’s (Yvain’s) approach. Just say you are a dictator and ban at a whim (or perhaps ban “virtue-ethically” rather than “deontologically”—“we don’t want your type around here.”) Publishing rules just invites people to bend them.
Voting for a new CEO is dramatically more effective than the board trying to micromanage the current CEO with rules. Find a reasonable person and let them be flexibly reasonable.
That only works if there is a mechanism for getting rid of CEOs who abuse their power. See comment above. Also note, that the victims of said abuse are generally not in a position to defend themselves.
In Eliezer’s post about gardens dying through pacifism, he says that in online gardens, you should either trust he moderators, or garden. A place where moderators get really worried about who to moderate is a place where trolls get in.
I was asked if I wanted to be moderator. There is no policy requiring me to only ban for formal reasons. The idea that people shouldn’t be banned for content is somewhat popular and I tried following it, but it has since occurred to me that the places I’ve seen with no banning for content end up being a flavor of right-wing hostile that I don’t like. We’ll see how that plays out here.
I was patient with advancedatheist for a while, but he really doesn’t like women, and shows it. Before I banned him, I decided that it was worth my ceasing to be moderator.
I hope I can notice it if any poster is that contemptuous of any demographic—and if I fail to notice it, I have no doubt that I will be seeing complaints to draw it to my attention. While I’m here, I will not tolerate a pattern of such behavior, though I’m planning to be better about warnings.
I’ve seen concerns about LW turning into an echo chamber, but there’s a tremendous amount to disagree about even if complaining about demographic groups is taken off the table. Also, an echo chamber in the sense of everyone agreeing with each other isn’t the only way things can go wrong. You can also get very low information density because people are attacking each other repetitively..
I was one of those who said they didn’t approve of banning for content. I don’t know how others would take that, but I was referring to conceptual content; I think regularly showing hostility or contempt could definitely merit banning, but that is not an issue of conceptual content. Even if someone makes comparative statements about demographic groups, e.g. “Irish drink more alcohol on average than Romanians” (not that I know if that’s true or not), that does not necessarily show any contempt for anyone. That is more a question of attitude, although perhaps you could infer that someone has such an attitude if he makes obviously false statements of that kind on a frequent basis.
I’m dubious that that constitutes abusing her power; AdvancedAtheist was highly and consistently downvoted for a long period of time before being banned.
If we’re doing the virtue ethical banning, then as long as we agree that the people in question deserved a ban, the specific reasons given for the ban aren’t very important. The moderator may be reacting to a pattern that’s clearly ban-worthy, but nonetheless hard to verbalize exactly, and thus misreport their real reason. Verbal reporting is hard.
If we’re doing the virtue ethical banning, then as long as we agree that the people in question deserved a ban, the specific reasons given for the ban aren’t very important.
Yes, they are. They set the percedent for which other users get banned.
That’s a big problem. By the verbal standard that Nancy used for banning advancedatheist, I and lots of people here are in danger of being banned. I just argued on SSC that it could be preferable for a country to limit how many refugees it takes in when they are fleeing the Holocaust, thus leaving the remaining ones to die horribly (if the country has taken in as many refugees as it can accommodate, this becomes a case of torture versus dust specks).
Of course, that would extend to banning people for supporting standard torture versus dust specks too.
It’s an important part of rational discussion that we be able to say things that pattern-match to promoting horrible ideas.
There should be a difference between people who post the same controversial opinions over and over again like a broken record and people who write about a wide variety of topics and sometimes post controversial things, e.g. people like you. The latter should be allowed much more and they should not be banned even for the most extreme opinions, because they have a controversial idea because that’s where their reasoning led them to, and not because they simply want to promote their popular pet idea here.
The moderator may be reacting to a pattern that’s clearly ban-worthy, but nonetheless hard to verbalize exactly, and thus misreport their real reason. Verbal reporting is hard.
This. If I read the ban announcement legalistically, I disagree with it. But if I read the offending post, together with multiple users’ assurances that AA’s posts were basically all like that—I don’t want that in my garden.
I think there’s been enough time and enough posts that Nancy could have figured out that she misreported her reason and said so, if that was in fact the case.
I haven’t answered your objections to my style of moderation, but it isn’t because I haven’t been thinking about them. Unfortunately, I don’t think I can manage the sort of clear boundaries I think you prefer.
The good news is that I’m extremely unlikely to want to ban you. You have a civil approach, and part of what gets people banned is lowering the tone or if you prefer, being a pain in the ass.
The hard thing is that there doesn’t seem to be a good way to discuss the emotional effects of statements—the only way to evaluate emotional effects is by what people say those emotional effects are, and in addition to whether you trust what people say about their emotions, language is ambiguous that there are frequently alternate interpretations, especially when the underlying question is how much of a welcome people feel in a venue. It might be more efficient to say that claims about emotional effect are entangled with implied claims about who’s in charge and who matters.
The bad news is that I’m not at all sure I can formalize this, though my net gain in karma in this discussion suggests that I have an accurate sense of what LW is, even if it’s possible that LW could be improved with a more open attitude about abhorrent viewpoints. (I don’t think it would be an improvement, I’m just saying I acknowledge it’s theoretically possible.)
Just getting a clearer idea of what is abhorrent and what isn’t might help, but I really do think part of the problem is tone. There are policies which are vile no matter how abstractly and politely they’re expressed (for example, slavery on a grand scale), but the amount of hatred added to policy adds an emotional sting.
(EDIT: In case you don’t know, username2 is an anonymous account that anyone can use, created after some jerk changed the password to the Username account formerly used for that purpose.)
I’m well aware. It is therefore even more problematic if this account is abused—note that there have been multiple confirmations that username2 has been used to downvote the same people that VoiceOfRa was downvoting before; in addition, VoiceOfRa has used the username2 account to start arguments with NancyLebovitz in a way that makes it look like a 3rd party is disagreeing with the decision, rather than VoiceOfRa himself. At the very least, it is better if everyone is aware of this situation, and ideally we would come up with a way to prevent such abuse.
Seriously, does your definition of “abuse” cash out as “someone’s saying someone I disagree with”, because that’s certainly the one that best fits your usage?
Where the hell are you getting that from jsteinhardt’s comment? He’s not saying anything about the content of those comments, only on the fact that they might mislead an outside observer in thinking that more distinct people are taking part in a discussion than actually are.
In the comment that got him banned, Advancedatheist said:
we need to restore a healthy patriarchy where women can’t get sexual experience until marriage
just after he implied that lack of sexually available women was a viable explanation for two cases of mass murder.
I don’t think it’s “abuse of power” to obstruct the dissemination of such abhorrent views, especially at a website that has world-improvement as one of its central goals.
I don’t think it’s “abuse of power” to obstruct the dissemination of such abhorrent views, especially at a website that has world-improvement as one of its central goals.
The truth of a view is more important than whether or not it’s abhorrent. I agree with entirelyuseless in that I endorse banning advancedatheist because he had a long string of low-quality posting but do not endorse banning him because of the content of that comment by itself.
You are explicitly prohibited from:
[...]
Posting or transmitting content through the Website that is harassing, threatens or encourages bodily harm, constitutes hate speech, or advocates for the destruction of property;
This case went beyond LW’s usual attitude toward debate; this was explicit advocacy of violence, which should always be treated as Serious Business.
I believe the intent of EY’s ban on violence was violence against identifiable individuals. Discussion and advocacy of violence against collective groups (the canonical example being supporting specific wars) is OK.
I agree with entirelyuseless in that I endorse banning advancedatheist because he had a long string of low-quality posting
Do you have any idea how many LW users that would apply to? Come to think of it, looking through polymathwannabe’s recent history the highest quality content appears to be the open threads he initiates.
Do you have any idea how many LW users that would apply to?
This illustrates the effect size of the action. It’s one of a few things that seem to me to have the potential of changing the current situation, although it’s likely useless on its own, and it’s not obvious whether the change would be for the better. A few years ago I maintained a list of users whose comments I was subscribed to (via rss), and two other lists, marked “toxic” and “clueless”. Getting rid of those users might make lesswrong a better place, if it won’t scare away the rest.
I don’t see a certainty in this. Policies have downsides. It’s not clear how significant a bit of systematic injustice and bias would be compared to the other effects.
Is it an abhorrent view to turn away people fleeing the Holocaust? To eat babies? To kill a person for their organs? To divert a trolley to kill a person in order to save someone else? To state that some populations have higher IQ than others? To suggest that divorce is harmful to children?
As Romeo noted, Nancy was appointed roughly by popular acclaim (more like, a small number of highly dedicated and respected users appointing her, and no one objecting). I think it’s reasonable in general to give mods a lot of discretionary power, and trust other veteran users to step in if things take a turn for the worse.
That makes sense for visible behavior, like trolling, but this ban is about the invisible behavior of mass downvoting. I don’t think anyone is worried about Nancy’s judgment of such actions, but she is worried about the difficulty of discovering it. Algorithms might be useful for enforcing rules on voting or discovering patterns therein.
I don’t think it’s going to be very difficult to discover Eugene’s new account once he makes it. The real difficulty is making it not worth his while to keep coming back.
I don’t count myself as either a rationalist or a community member here, so this is an opinion of a somewhat sympathetic outsider (take it for what it is). But I think you guys should find a way to throw the nrx out, and let them start their own community. I think they are going to do more harm than good in the long run. Yvain started to clean house already on his blog, because he noticed the same.
Nrx people can participate if they are able to do so apolitically.
...nor do anything else as dickish as downvoting the hell out of somebody’s every single comment because they disagree with one of them or use the anonymous account to vote.
I don’t think it’s going to be very difficult to discover Eugene’s new account once he makes it. The real difficulty is making it not worth his while to keep coming back.
Seconded.
I don’t count myself as either a rationalist or a community member here,
FWIW, I think of anyone who posts here regularly as a Wronger! (I know, I know, you disagree with other people here about how to do causal inference and about the insightfulness/worthiness of academics — but disagreeing with the rest of the gang on some specific topic is pretty common, I reckon, and not nearly enough to get you kicked out of the treehouse.)
I think you guys should find a way to throw the nrx out, and let them start their own community. I think they are going to do more harm than good in the long run.
This I disagree with. The only neoreactionaries I remember being obnoxious enough here to raise a real stink are Eugine_Nier and Jim, and Jim hasn’t posted here since 2012. That’s too thin a basis for kicking out a particular political group, especially since Eugine_Nier being here has had some benefit. (I have occasionally seen them shake people out of misconceptions.) It’s just that Eugine_Nier’s abuse of the voting system outweighed/outweighs that benefit. (That wasn’t Eugine_Nier’s only downside, but it was the big one.)
you disagree with other people here about how to do causal inference
I don’t think I have substantive disagreements with folks here who know about the topic. I try to do outreach with others, not the same as disagreement :).
But I think you guys should find a way to throw the nrx out, and let them start their own community.
Why? Because you’d rather have an echo-chamber than a rationalist community? Because you secretly suspect the NRx’s are correct and are worried their arguments will persuade more people to agree with them?
You mean people willing to say things likely to be true even if it isn’t socially acceptable to admit they are. Yes, I can see why people who are uncomfortable with reality would have a problem with that.
You mean people willing to say things likely to be true even if it isn’t socially acceptable to admit they are.
People holding similar positions to yours but expressing them in much less dickish ways have included, off the top of my head, Konkvistador (whose total karma is 88% positive), nydwracu (91% positive), Vladimir M (93% positive). Nyan Sandwich and Moss Piglet appear to have deleted their accounts, but I don’t recall them being downvoted much either—nor can I recall many people lamenting the presence of any of said commenters.
For comparison, advancedatheist is 59% positive and sam0345 (most likely James Donald) is 53% positive; also eridu, who expressed radical feminist opinions in a way almost as obnoxious as Jim expresses his, has since deleted his account, but IIRC his % positive was also in the mid 50s.
This may sound like an intricate Song of Ice and Fire fan theory, but has anybody checked whether eugine_nier and Jim Donald are the same person? For example, can we compare the IP of sam0345 and Eugine’s accounts? Alternatively, Yvain probably has access to the IP address for both posters.
(I am not the same username2 as above. This is my first post using the anonymous username2 account)
It seems very unlikely (< 10%) to me, given they have regularly commented on the same Armed and Dangerous threads for years, with no obvious reason for one person to use two aliases at the same time (also, Eugine has commented on Jim’s blog e.g.).
Very unlikely, I think. Eugine is, or claims to be, from somewhere ex-Soviet, and writes like a non-native. Jim seems straightforwardly American. I don’t see any obvious reason for either of those to be fake.
You mean people willing to say things likely to be true even if it isn’t socially acceptable to admit they are. Yes, I can see why people who are uncomfortable with reality would have a problem with that.
Or because you and Jim are being tedious assholes nobody likes to hang out with, while going on about the same predictable set of not socially acceptable stuff for years and years without having anything new and interesting to say after a while.
Or because you and Jim are being tedious assholes nobody likes to hang out with
Given the most obvious way to taboo “tedious assholes” I don’t see how this is different than what I wrote.
while going on about the same predictable set of not socially acceptable stuff for years
That’s because no one has yet offered a good argument for why we are wrong. They’ve just done the equivalent of sticking fingers in their ears and going “na-na-na I can’t hear you”. Sort of like what Ilya and yourself are doing right now.
without having anything new and interesting to say after a while.
Yes, we do, maybe you’d notice if you didn’t shut down your brain whenever you encountered a non-PC idea.
Yes, we do, maybe you’d notice if you didn’t shut down your brain whenever you encountered a non-PC idea.
I don’t think there’s been much elaboration on the ideas that were already floating around here five-ish years ago in the last few years. We’ve just had the few regulars jumping in with the same message, failing to start much interesting conversation, and growing increasingly cranky.
Making being a reactionary your life’s work isn’t very rewarding. It’s a feature of the present system that proponents who get boring and repetitive get thrown in the wood chipper and more clever and interesting ones take their place, but any single person will get stuck in their old material after a while.
First, stop putting words in people’s mouths. Second, as rationalists, we’d convert to NRx in an instant if we had any sufficiently strong reason to believe NRx is correct.
Second, as rationalists, we’d convert to NRx in an instant if we had any sufficiently strong reason to believe NRx is correct.
This isn’t obvious to me, or at least would benefit from a separation between NRx critiques and NRx proposals / attitudes. One can think that the NRx view of liberal democracy is much more correct than the liberal democracy view of liberal democracy without thinking that the NRx prescriptions are correct.
Nancy, I support Scott’s (Yvain’s) approach. Just say you are a dictator and ban at a whim (or perhaps ban “virtue-ethically” rather than “deontologically”—“we don’t want your type around here.”) Publishing rules just invites people to bend them.
There is a slight problem in that LW is not Nancy’s personal blog to be shaped by her whims.
Voting for a new CEO is dramatically more effective than the board trying to micromanage the current CEO with rules. Find a reasonable person and let them be flexibly reasonable.
LW is not a corporation and I don’t think it needs a Great Leader, especially of the CEO type.
That only works if there is a mechanism for getting rid of CEOs who abuse their power. See comment above. Also note, that the victims of said abuse are generally not in a position to defend themselves.
In Eliezer’s post about gardens dying through pacifism, he says that in online gardens, you should either trust he moderators, or garden. A place where moderators get really worried about who to moderate is a place where trolls get in.
There is a mechanism. It will be fruitless in this case, as Nancy is not abusing her power.
I believe that Nancy is conservative enough with management that this is not a real danger.
She’s already abused her power at least once to ban someone for expressing opinions she doesn’t like.
I was asked if I wanted to be moderator. There is no policy requiring me to only ban for formal reasons. The idea that people shouldn’t be banned for content is somewhat popular and I tried following it, but it has since occurred to me that the places I’ve seen with no banning for content end up being a flavor of right-wing hostile that I don’t like. We’ll see how that plays out here.
I was patient with advancedatheist for a while, but he really doesn’t like women, and shows it. Before I banned him, I decided that it was worth my ceasing to be moderator.
I hope I can notice it if any poster is that contemptuous of any demographic—and if I fail to notice it, I have no doubt that I will be seeing complaints to draw it to my attention. While I’m here, I will not tolerate a pattern of such behavior, though I’m planning to be better about warnings.
I’ve seen concerns about LW turning into an echo chamber, but there’s a tremendous amount to disagree about even if complaining about demographic groups is taken off the table. Also, an echo chamber in the sense of everyone agreeing with each other isn’t the only way things can go wrong. You can also get very low information density because people are attacking each other repetitively..
I was one of those who said they didn’t approve of banning for content. I don’t know how others would take that, but I was referring to conceptual content; I think regularly showing hostility or contempt could definitely merit banning, but that is not an issue of conceptual content. Even if someone makes comparative statements about demographic groups, e.g. “Irish drink more alcohol on average than Romanians” (not that I know if that’s true or not), that does not necessarily show any contempt for anyone. That is more a question of attitude, although perhaps you could infer that someone has such an attitude if he makes obviously false statements of that kind on a frequent basis.
Given that her comment announcing her decision has 31 upvotes, people seem to disagree with you on this being an abuse of power.
More precisely: Net score of +31, 84% positive. So p/(p+n)=0.84 or 0.16p=0.84n and p-n=31, so (1-0.16/0.84)p=31, so +38-7.
I’m dubious that that constitutes abusing her power; AdvancedAtheist was highly and consistently downvoted for a long period of time before being banned.
That wasn’t the reason she gave for banning him.
If we’re doing the virtue ethical banning, then as long as we agree that the people in question deserved a ban, the specific reasons given for the ban aren’t very important. The moderator may be reacting to a pattern that’s clearly ban-worthy, but nonetheless hard to verbalize exactly, and thus misreport their real reason. Verbal reporting is hard.
It’s reasonable for people to know why someone is banned because they want to know what might get them banned.
Yes, they are. They set the percedent for which other users get banned.
That’s a big problem. By the verbal standard that Nancy used for banning advancedatheist, I and lots of people here are in danger of being banned. I just argued on SSC that it could be preferable for a country to limit how many refugees it takes in when they are fleeing the Holocaust, thus leaving the remaining ones to die horribly (if the country has taken in as many refugees as it can accommodate, this becomes a case of torture versus dust specks).
Of course, that would extend to banning people for supporting standard torture versus dust specks too.
It’s an important part of rational discussion that we be able to say things that pattern-match to promoting horrible ideas.
There should be a difference between people who post the same controversial opinions over and over again like a broken record and people who write about a wide variety of topics and sometimes post controversial things, e.g. people like you. The latter should be allowed much more and they should not be banned even for the most extreme opinions, because they have a controversial idea because that’s where their reasoning led them to, and not because they simply want to promote their popular pet idea here.
I think you misunderstand virtue-ethical banning. It’s not about what you say, it’s about who you are. “Precedents” are a deontological idea.
Yes, and in particular it matters which aspect of who you are is the one that got you banned?
This. If I read the ban announcement legalistically, I disagree with it. But if I read the offending post, together with multiple users’ assurances that AA’s posts were basically all like that—I don’t want that in my garden.
I think there’s been enough time and enough posts that Nancy could have figured out that she misreported her reason and said so, if that was in fact the case.
I haven’t answered your objections to my style of moderation, but it isn’t because I haven’t been thinking about them. Unfortunately, I don’t think I can manage the sort of clear boundaries I think you prefer.
The good news is that I’m extremely unlikely to want to ban you. You have a civil approach, and part of what gets people banned is lowering the tone or if you prefer, being a pain in the ass.
The hard thing is that there doesn’t seem to be a good way to discuss the emotional effects of statements—the only way to evaluate emotional effects is by what people say those emotional effects are, and in addition to whether you trust what people say about their emotions, language is ambiguous that there are frequently alternate interpretations, especially when the underlying question is how much of a welcome people feel in a venue. It might be more efficient to say that claims about emotional effect are entangled with implied claims about who’s in charge and who matters.
The bad news is that I’m not at all sure I can formalize this, though my net gain in karma in this discussion suggests that I have an accurate sense of what LW is, even if it’s possible that LW could be improved with a more open attitude about abhorrent viewpoints. (I don’t think it would be an improvement, I’m just saying I acknowledge it’s theoretically possible.)
Just getting a clearer idea of what is abhorrent and what isn’t might help, but I really do think part of the problem is tone. There are policies which are vile no matter how abstractly and politely they’re expressed (for example, slavery on a grand scale), but the amount of hatred added to policy adds an emotional sting.
So basically what you’re saying is that your emotional unqualified to be a moderator.
BTW, you’re doing a remarkably good job of demonstrating advancedatheist’s claim that women can’t be trusted with positions of power.
I’m 85% sure that you’re VoiceOfRa.
So what?
(EDIT: In case you don’t know,
username2is an anonymous account that anyone can use, created after some jerk changed the password to theUsernameaccount formerly used for that purpose.)I’m well aware. It is therefore even more problematic if this account is abused—note that there have been multiple confirmations that username2 has been used to downvote the same people that VoiceOfRa was downvoting before; in addition, VoiceOfRa has used the username2 account to start arguments with NancyLebovitz in a way that makes it look like a 3rd party is disagreeing with the decision, rather than VoiceOfRa himself. At the very least, it is better if everyone is aware of this situation, and ideally we would come up with a way to prevent such abuse.
Seriously, does your definition of “abuse” cash out as “someone’s saying someone I disagree with”, because that’s certainly the one that best fits your usage?
Where the hell are you getting that from jsteinhardt’s comment? He’s not saying anything about the content of those comments, only on the fact that they might mislead an outside observer in thinking that more distinct people are taking part in a discussion than actually are.
The sudden very positive karma is extremely suspicious.
I was 85% sure at the time that username2′s comment was posted. I’m now 98% sure for a variety of reasons.
I’m only 75% sure that the upvotes on “username2”/VoiceOfRa’s comments above are from sockpuppets.
In the comment that got him banned, Advancedatheist said:
just after he implied that lack of sexually available women was a viable explanation for two cases of mass murder.
I don’t think it’s “abuse of power” to obstruct the dissemination of such abhorrent views, especially at a website that has world-improvement as one of its central goals.
The truth of a view is more important than whether or not it’s abhorrent. I agree with entirelyuseless in that I endorse banning advancedatheist because he had a long string of low-quality posting but do not endorse banning him because of the content of that comment by itself.
Amen. But the LW Terms of Use state:
This case went beyond LW’s usual attitude toward debate; this was explicit advocacy of violence, which should always be treated as Serious Business.
Did you mean for the “advocacy of violence” link to go to https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Deletion_policy#Hypothetical_violence_against_identifiable_targets instead?
It seemed that one applied to the Wiki only, so I didn’t use it.
I believe the intent of EY’s ban on violence was violence against identifiable individuals. Discussion and advocacy of violence against collective groups (the canonical example being supporting specific wars) is OK.
Do you have any idea how many LW users that would apply to? Come to think of it, looking through polymathwannabe’s recent history the highest quality content appears to be the open threads he initiates.
This illustrates the effect size of the action. It’s one of a few things that seem to me to have the potential of changing the current situation, although it’s likely useless on its own, and it’s not obvious whether the change would be for the better. A few years ago I maintained a list of users whose comments I was subscribed to (via rss), and two other lists, marked “toxic” and “clueless”. Getting rid of those users might make lesswrong a better place, if it won’t scare away the rest.
I’m much more tolerant of clueless than toxic, but even then there is a limit.
It would certainly be for the worse if the banning was selectively enforced based on whether the mod in question liked the opinion being expressed.
I don’t see a certainty in this. Policies have downsides. It’s not clear how significant a bit of systematic injustice and bias would be compared to the other effects.
Is it an abhorrent view to turn away people fleeing the Holocaust? To eat babies? To kill a person for their organs? To divert a trolley to kill a person in order to save someone else? To state that some populations have higher IQ than others? To suggest that divorce is harmful to children?
As Romeo noted, Nancy was appointed roughly by popular acclaim (more like, a small number of highly dedicated and respected users appointing her, and no one objecting). I think it’s reasonable in general to give mods a lot of discretionary power, and trust other veteran users to step in if things take a turn for the worse.
That makes sense for visible behavior, like trolling, but this ban is about the invisible behavior of mass downvoting. I don’t think anyone is worried about Nancy’s judgment of such actions, but she is worried about the difficulty of discovering it. Algorithms might be useful for enforcing rules on voting or discovering patterns therein.
Exactly.
I don’t think it’s going to be very difficult to discover Eugene’s new account once he makes it. The real difficulty is making it not worth his while to keep coming back.
I don’t count myself as either a rationalist or a community member here, so this is an opinion of a somewhat sympathetic outsider (take it for what it is). But I think you guys should find a way to throw the nrx out, and let them start their own community. I think they are going to do more harm than good in the long run. Yvain started to clean house already on his blog, because he noticed the same.
If we have a “no politics” rule it should apply to nrx. Nrx people can participate if they are able to do so apolitically.
...nor do anything else as dickish as downvoting the hell out of somebody’s every single comment because they disagree with one of them or use the anonymous account to vote.
We don’t have a no politics rule, though we may have a no politics custom.
It’s difficult to talk rationally about politics, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
Seconded.
FWIW, I think of anyone who posts here regularly as a Wronger! (I know, I know, you disagree with other people here about how to do causal inference and about the insightfulness/worthiness of academics — but disagreeing with the rest of the gang on some specific topic is pretty common, I reckon, and not nearly enough to get you kicked out of the treehouse.)
This I disagree with. The only neoreactionaries I remember being obnoxious enough here to raise a real stink are Eugine_Nier and Jim, and Jim hasn’t posted here since 2012. That’s too thin a basis for kicking out a particular political group, especially since Eugine_Nier being here has had some benefit. (I have occasionally seen them shake people out of misconceptions.) It’s just that Eugine_Nier’s abuse of the voting system outweighed/outweighs that benefit. (That wasn’t Eugine_Nier’s only downside, but it was the big one.)
I don’t think I have substantive disagreements with folks here who know about the topic. I try to do outreach with others, not the same as disagreement :).
Why? Because you’d rather have an echo-chamber than a rationalist community? Because you secretly suspect the NRx’s are correct and are worried their arguments will persuade more people to agree with them?
Because nrx attracts the type of people like you or “Jim.”
You mean people willing to say things likely to be true even if it isn’t socially acceptable to admit they are. Yes, I can see why people who are uncomfortable with reality would have a problem with that.
People holding similar positions to yours but expressing them in much less dickish ways have included, off the top of my head, Konkvistador (whose total karma is 88% positive), nydwracu (91% positive), Vladimir M (93% positive). Nyan Sandwich and Moss Piglet appear to have deleted their accounts, but I don’t recall them being downvoted much either—nor can I recall many people lamenting the presence of any of said commenters.
For comparison, advancedatheist is 59% positive and sam0345 (most likely James Donald) is 53% positive; also eridu, who expressed radical feminist opinions in a way almost as obnoxious as Jim expresses his, has since deleted his account, but IIRC his % positive was also in the mid 50s.
So no, the social acceptability of a statement does not just depend on its factual content.
This may sound like an intricate Song of Ice and Fire fan theory, but has anybody checked whether eugine_nier and Jim Donald are the same person? For example, can we compare the IP of sam0345 and Eugine’s accounts? Alternatively, Yvain probably has access to the IP address for both posters.
(I am not the same username2 as above. This is my first post using the anonymous username2 account)
It seems very unlikely (< 10%) to me, given they have regularly commented on the same Armed and Dangerous threads for years, with no obvious reason for one person to use two aliases at the same time (also, Eugine has commented on Jim’s blog e.g.).
Very unlikely, I think. Eugine is, or claims to be, from somewhere ex-Soviet, and writes like a non-native. Jim seems straightforwardly American. I don’t see any obvious reason for either of those to be fake.
Consider the possibility that Ilya doesn’t mean what you say he means.
I don’t know what Ilya means, that’s way I’m asking and giving by best guess.
This:
isn’t what asking looks like.
I notice we’ve already gone two rounds of comments without you providing any alternate explanation.
Whyever should it be my job to provide alternate explanations?
Because you’re the one who asserted that there are explanations for Ilya’s behaviour besides the ones listed here.
False.
Or because you and Jim are being tedious assholes nobody likes to hang out with, while going on about the same predictable set of not socially acceptable stuff for years and years without having anything new and interesting to say after a while.
Given the most obvious way to taboo “tedious assholes” I don’t see how this is different than what I wrote.
That’s because no one has yet offered a good argument for why we are wrong. They’ve just done the equivalent of sticking fingers in their ears and going “na-na-na I can’t hear you”. Sort of like what Ilya and yourself are doing right now.
Yes, we do, maybe you’d notice if you didn’t shut down your brain whenever you encountered a non-PC idea.
This entire discussion is about you, not about your ideas.
Wrong, try again.
I don’t think there’s been much elaboration on the ideas that were already floating around here five-ish years ago in the last few years. We’ve just had the few regulars jumping in with the same message, failing to start much interesting conversation, and growing increasingly cranky.
Making being a reactionary your life’s work isn’t very rewarding. It’s a feature of the present system that proponents who get boring and repetitive get thrown in the wood chipper and more clever and interesting ones take their place, but any single person will get stuck in their old material after a while.
The universal counterargument of crackpots.
First, stop putting words in people’s mouths. Second, as rationalists, we’d convert to NRx in an instant if we had any sufficiently strong reason to believe NRx is correct.
This isn’t obvious to me, or at least would benefit from a separation between NRx critiques and NRx proposals / attitudes. One can think that the NRx view of liberal democracy is much more correct than the liberal democracy view of liberal democracy without thinking that the NRx prescriptions are correct.