This is not a reason to ban him, or anyone. Being disliked is not a reason for punishment.
The traditional guidance for up/downvotes has been “upvote what you would like want to see more of, downvote what you would like to see less of”. If this is how votes are interpreted, then heavy downvotes imply “the forum’s users would on average prefer to see less content of this kind”. Someone posting the kind of content that’s unwanted on a forum seems like a reasonable reason to bar that person from the forum in question.
I agree with “being disliked is not a reason for punishment”, but people also have the right to choose who they want to spend their time with, even if someone who they preferred not to spend time with viewed that as being punished. In my book, banning people from a private forum is more like “choosing not to invite someone to your party again, after they previously caused others to have a bad time” than it is like “punishing someone”.
I’m a fan of solving problems with technology. One way to solve this problem of people not liking an author’s content is to allow users to put people on an ignore list (and maybe for some period of time).
The traditional guidance for up/downvotes has been “upvote what you would like want to see more of, downvote what you would like to see less of”. If this is how votes are interpreted, then heavy downvotes imply “the forum’s users would on average prefer to see less content of this kind”.
You’re using quotes but I am not sure what you’re quoting, do you just mean to emphasize/offset those clauses?
but people also have the right to choose who they want to spend their time with,
Sure, that might be part of the reason curi hadn’t been active on LW for 13 days at the time of the ban.
(continued)
even if someone who they preferred not to spend time with viewed that as being punished.
I don’t know if curi think’s it’s punishment. I think it’s punishment, and I think most ppl would agree that ‘A ban’ would be an answer to the question (in online forum contexts, generally) ‘What is an appropriate punishment?’ That would mean a ban is a punishment.
LW mods can do what they want; in essence it’s their site. I’m arguing:
it’s unnecessary
it was done improperly
it reflects badly on LW and creates a hostile culture to opposing ideas
(3) is antithetical to the opening lines of the LessWrong FAQ (which I quote below). Note: I’m introducing this argument in this post, I didn’t mention it originally.
significant parts of habryka’s post were factually incorrect. It was noted, btw, in FI that a) habryka’s comments were libel, and b) that curi’s reaction—quoted below—is mild and undercuts habryka’s claim.
curi wrote (in his post on the LW ban)
Those three things in combination, a propensity for long unproductive discussions, a history of threats against people who engage with him, and being the historically most downvoted account in LessWrong history, make me overall think it’s better for curi to find other places as potential discussion venues.
I didn’t threaten anyone. I’m guessing it was a careless wording. I think habryka should retract or clarify it. Above habryka used “attack[]” as a synonym for criticize. I don’t like that but it’s pretty standard language. But I don’t think using “threat[en]” as a synonym for criticize is reasonable.
“threaten” has meanings like “state one’s intention to take hostile action against someone in retribution for something done or not done” and “express one’s intention to harm or kill“ (New Oxford Dictionary). This is the one thing in the post that I strongly object to.
from the FI discussion:
JustinCEO: i think curi’s response to this libel is written in a super mild way
JustinCEO: which notably contrasts with being the sort of person who would have “a history of threats against people who engage with him” in the first place
LessWrong FAQ (original emphasis)
LessWrong is a community dedicated to improving our reasoning and decision-making. We seek to hold true beliefs and to be effective at accomplishing our goals. More generally, we want to develop and practice the art of human rationality.
To that end, LessWrong is a place to 1) develop and train rationality, and 2) apply one’s rationality to real-world problems.
I don’t think the things people have described (in this thread) as seemly important parts of LW are at all reflected by this quote, rather, they contradict it.
significant parts of habryka’s post were factually incorrect.
I am not currently aware of any factual inaccuracies, but would be happy to correct any you point out.
The only thing you pointed out was something about the word “threat” being wrong, but that only appears to be true under some very narrow definition of threat. This might be weird rationalist jargon, but I’ve reliably used the word “threat” to simply mean signaling some kind of intention of inflicting some kind punishment in response to some condition by the other person. Curi and other people from FI have done this repeatedly, and the “list of people who have evaded/lied/etc.” is exactly one of such threats, whether explicitly labeled as such or not.
The average LessWrong user would pretty substantially regret having engaged with curi if they later end up on that list, so I do think it’s a pretty concrete punishment, and while there might be some chance you are unaware of the negative consequences, this doesn’t really change the reality very much that due to the way I’ve seen curi active on the site, engaging with him is a trap that people are likely to regret.
I’ve reliably used the word “threat” to simply mean signaling some kind of intention of inflicting some kind punishment in response to some condition by the other person. Curi and other people from FI have done this repeatedly, and the “list of people who have evaded/lied/etc.” is exactly one of such threats, whether explicitly labeled as such or not.
This game-theoretic concept of “threat” is fine, but underdetermined: what counts as a threat in this sense depends on where the the “zero point” is; what counts as aggression versus self-defense depends on what the relevant “property rights” are. (Scare quotes on “property rights” because I’m not talking about legal claims, but “property rights” is an apt choice of words, because I’m claiming that the way people negotiate disputes that don’t rise to the level of dragging in the (slow, expensive) formal legal system, have a similar structure.)
If people have a “right” to not be publicly described as lying, evading, &c., then someone who puts up a “these people lied, evaded, &c.” page on their own website is engaging in a kind of aggression. The page functions as a threat: “If you don’t keep engaging in a way that satisfies my standards of discourse, I’ll publicly call you a liar, evader, &c..”
If people don’t have a “right” to not be publicly described as lying, evading, &c., then a website administrator who cites a user’s “these people lied, evaded, &c.” page on their own website as part of a rationale for banning that user, is engaging in a kind of aggression. The ban functions as a threat: “If you don’t cede your claim on being able to describe other people as lying, evading, &c., I won’t let you participate in this forum.”
The size of the website administrator’s threat depends on the website’s “market power.” Less Wrong is probably small enough and niche enough such that the threat doesn’t end up controlling anyone’s off-site behavior: anyone who perceives not being able to post on Less Wrong as a serious threat is probably already so deeply socially-embedded into our little robot cult, that they either have similar property-rights intuitions as the administrators, or are too loyal to the group to publicly accuse other group members as lying, evading, &c., even if they privately think they are lying, evading, &c.. (Nobody likes self-styled whistleblowers!) But getting kicked off a service with the market power of a Google, Facebook, Twitter, &c. is a sufficiently big deal to sufficiently many people such that those websites’ terms-of-service do exert some controlling pressure on the rest of Society.
What are the consequences of each of these “property rights” regimes?
Which regime better fulfills our charter of advancing the art of human rationality? I don’t think I’ve written this skillfully enough for you to not be able to guess what answer I lean towards, but you shouldn’t trust my answer if it seems like something I might lie or evade about! You need to think it through for yourself.
For what it’s worth, I think a decision to ban would stand on just his pursuit of conversational norms that reward stamina over correctness, in a way that I think makes LessWrong worse at intellectual progress. I didn’t check out this page, and it didn’t factor into my sense that curi shouldn’t be on LW.
I also find it somewhat worrying that, as I understand it, the page was a combination of “quit”, “evaded”, and “lied”, of which ‘quit’ is not worrying (I consider someone giving up on a conversation with curi understandable instead of shameful), and that getting wrapped up in the “&c.” instead of being the central example seems like it’s defining away my main crux.
To elaborate on this, I think there are two distinct issues: “do they have the right norms?” and “do they do norm enforcement?”. The second is normally good instead of problematic, but makes the first much more important than it would be otherwise. I see Zack_M_Davis as pointing out “hey, if we don’t let people enforce norms because that would make normbreakers feel threatened, do we even have norms?”, which is a valid point, but which feels somewhat irrelevant to the curi question.
The traditional guidance for up/downvotes has been “upvote what you would like want to see more of, downvote what you would like to see less of”. If this is how votes are interpreted, then heavy downvotes imply “the forum’s users would on average prefer to see less content of this kind”. Someone posting the kind of content that’s unwanted on a forum seems like a reasonable reason to bar that person from the forum in question.
I agree with “being disliked is not a reason for punishment”, but people also have the right to choose who they want to spend their time with, even if someone who they preferred not to spend time with viewed that as being punished. In my book, banning people from a private forum is more like “choosing not to invite someone to your party again, after they previously caused others to have a bad time” than it is like “punishing someone”.
I’m a fan of solving problems with technology. One way to solve this problem of people not liking an author’s content is to allow users to put people on an ignore list (and maybe for some period of time).
How many people here remember Usenet’s kill files?
You’re using quotes but I am not sure what you’re quoting, do you just mean to emphasize/offset those clauses?
Sure, that might be part of the reason curi hadn’t been active on LW for 13 days at the time of the ban.
(continued)
I don’t know if curi think’s it’s punishment. I think it’s punishment, and I think most ppl would agree that ‘A ban’ would be an answer to the question (in online forum contexts, generally) ‘What is an appropriate punishment?’ That would mean a ban is a punishment.
LW mods can do what they want; in essence it’s their site. I’m arguing:
it’s unnecessary
it was done improperly
it reflects badly on LW and creates a hostile culture to opposing ideas
(3) is antithetical to the opening lines of the LessWrong FAQ (which I quote below). Note: I’m introducing this argument in this post, I didn’t mention it originally.
significant parts of habryka’s post were factually incorrect. It was noted, btw, in FI that a) habryka’s comments were libel, and b) that curi’s reaction—quoted below—is mild and undercuts habryka’s claim.
curi wrote (in his post on the LW ban)
from the FI discussion:
LessWrong FAQ (original emphasis)
I don’t think the things people have described (in this thread) as seemly important parts of LW are at all reflected by this quote, rather, they contradict it.
I am not currently aware of any factual inaccuracies, but would be happy to correct any you point out.
The only thing you pointed out was something about the word “threat” being wrong, but that only appears to be true under some very narrow definition of threat. This might be weird rationalist jargon, but I’ve reliably used the word “threat” to simply mean signaling some kind of intention of inflicting some kind punishment in response to some condition by the other person. Curi and other people from FI have done this repeatedly, and the “list of people who have evaded/lied/etc.” is exactly one of such threats, whether explicitly labeled as such or not.
The average LessWrong user would pretty substantially regret having engaged with curi if they later end up on that list, so I do think it’s a pretty concrete punishment, and while there might be some chance you are unaware of the negative consequences, this doesn’t really change the reality very much that due to the way I’ve seen curi active on the site, engaging with him is a trap that people are likely to regret.
This game-theoretic concept of “threat” is fine, but underdetermined: what counts as a threat in this sense depends on where the the “zero point” is; what counts as aggression versus self-defense depends on what the relevant “property rights” are. (Scare quotes on “property rights” because I’m not talking about legal claims, but “property rights” is an apt choice of words, because I’m claiming that the way people negotiate disputes that don’t rise to the level of dragging in the (slow, expensive) formal legal system, have a similar structure.)
If people have a “right” to not be publicly described as lying, evading, &c., then someone who puts up a “these people lied, evaded, &c.” page on their own website is engaging in a kind of aggression. The page functions as a threat: “If you don’t keep engaging in a way that satisfies my standards of discourse, I’ll publicly call you a liar, evader, &c..”
If people don’t have a “right” to not be publicly described as lying, evading, &c., then a website administrator who cites a user’s “these people lied, evaded, &c.” page on their own website as part of a rationale for banning that user, is engaging in a kind of aggression. The ban functions as a threat: “If you don’t cede your claim on being able to describe other people as lying, evading, &c., I won’t let you participate in this forum.”
The size of the website administrator’s threat depends on the website’s “market power.” Less Wrong is probably small enough and niche enough such that the threat doesn’t end up controlling anyone’s off-site behavior: anyone who perceives not being able to post on Less Wrong as a serious threat is probably already so deeply socially-embedded into our little robot cult, that they either have similar property-rights intuitions as the administrators, or are too loyal to the group to publicly accuse other group members as lying, evading, &c., even if they privately think they are lying, evading, &c.. (Nobody likes self-styled whistleblowers!) But getting kicked off a service with the market power of a Google, Facebook, Twitter, &c. is a sufficiently big deal to sufficiently many people such that those websites’ terms-of-service do exert some controlling pressure on the rest of Society.
What are the consequences of each of these “property rights” regimes?
In a world where people have a right to not be publicly described as lying, evading, &c., then people don’t have to be afraid of losing reputation on that account. But we also lose out on the possibility of having a public accounting of who has actually in fact lied, evaded, &c.. We give up on maintaining the coordination equilibrium such that words like “lie” have a literal meaning that can actually be true or false, rather than the word itself simply constituting an attack.
Which regime better fulfills our charter of advancing the art of human rationality? I don’t think I’ve written this skillfully enough for you to not be able to guess what answer I lean towards, but you shouldn’t trust my answer if it seems like something I might lie or evade about! You need to think it through for yourself.
For what it’s worth, I think a decision to ban would stand on just his pursuit of conversational norms that reward stamina over correctness, in a way that I think makes LessWrong worse at intellectual progress. I didn’t check out this page, and it didn’t factor into my sense that curi shouldn’t be on LW.
I also find it somewhat worrying that, as I understand it, the page was a combination of “quit”, “evaded”, and “lied”, of which ‘quit’ is not worrying (I consider someone giving up on a conversation with curi understandable instead of shameful), and that getting wrapped up in the “&c.” instead of being the central example seems like it’s defining away my main crux.
To elaborate on this, I think there are two distinct issues: “do they have the right norms?” and “do they do norm enforcement?”. The second is normally good instead of problematic, but makes the first much more important than it would be otherwise. I see Zack_M_Davis as pointing out “hey, if we don’t let people enforce norms because that would make normbreakers feel threatened, do we even have norms?”, which is a valid point, but which feels somewhat irrelevant to the curi question.