Today we have banned two users, curi and Periergo from LessWrong for two years each.
I wanted to reply to this because I don’t think it’s right to judge curi the way you have. Periergo I don’t have an issue w/. (it’s a sockpuppet acct anyway)
I think your decision should not go unquestioned/uncriticized, which is why I’m posting. I also think you should reconsider curi’s ban under a sort of appeals process.
Also, the LW moderation process is evidently transparent enough for me to make this criticism, and that is notable and good. I am grateful for that.
On his blog, he and others maintain a long list of people who engaged with him and others in the Critical Rationalist community, but then stopped, in a way that is very hard to read as anything but a public attack.
You are judging curi and FI (Fallible Ideas) via your standards (LW standards), not FI’s standards. I think this is problematic.
I’d like to note I am on that list. (like 1⁄2 way down) I am also a public figure in Australia, having founded a federal political party based on epistemic principles with nearly 9k members. I am okay with being on that list. Arguably, if there is something truly wrong with the list, I should have an issue with it. I knew about being on that list earlier this year, before I returned to FI. Being on the list was not a factor in my decision.
There is nothing immoral or malicious about curi.us/2215. I can understand why you would find it distasteful, but that’s not a decisive reason to ban someone or condemn their actions.
A few hours ago, curi and I discussed elements about the ban and curi.us/2215on his stream. I recommend watching a few minutes starting at 5:50 and at 19:00, for transparency you might also be interested in 23:40 → 24:00. (you can watch on 2x speed, should be fine)
Particularly, I discuss my presence on curi.us/2215 at 5:50
You say:
a long list of people who engaged with him and others in the Critical Rationalist community
There are 33 by my count (including me). The list spans a decade, and is there for a particular purpose, and it is not to publicly shame people in to returning, or to be mean for the sake of it. I’d like to point out some quotes from the first paragraph of curi.us/2215:
This is a list of ppl who had discussion contact with FI and then quit/evaded/lied/etc.
It would be good to find patterns about what goes wrong.
People who left are welcome to come back and try again.
Notably, you don’t end up on the list if you are active. Also, although it’s not explicitly mentioned in the top paragraph; a crucial thing is that those on the list have left and avoided discussion about it. Discussion is much more important in FI than most philosophy forums—it’s how we learn from each other, make sure we understand, offer criticism and assist with error correction. You’re not under any obligation to discuss something, but if you have criticisms and refuse to share them: you’re preventing error correction; and if you leave to evade criticism then you’re not living by your values and philosophy.
The people listed on curi.us/2215 have participated in a public philosophy forum for which there are established norms that are not typical and are different from LW. FI views the act of truth-seeking differently. While our (LW/FI) schools of thought disagree on epistemology, both schools have norms that are related to their epistemic ideas. Ours look different.
It is unfair to punish someone for an act done outside of your jurisdiction under different established norms. If curi were putting LW people on his list, or publishing off-topic stuff at LW, sure, take moderation action. None of those things happened. In fact, the main reason you’ve provided for even knowing about that list is via the sockpuppet you banned.
Sockpuppet accounts are not used to make the lives of their victims easier. By banning curi along with Periergo you have facilitated a (minor) victory for Periergo. This is not right.
a history of threats against people who engage with him
THIS IS A SERIOUS ALLEGATION! PLEASE PROVIDE QUOTES
curi prefers to discuss in public so they should be easy to find and verify. I have never known curi to threaten people. He may criticise them, but he does not threaten them.
Notably, curi has consistently and loudly opposed violence and the initiation of force, if people ask him to leave them alone (provided they haven’t e.g. committed a crime against him), he respects that.
being the historically most downvoted account in LessWrong history
This is not a reason to ban him, or anyone. Being disliked is not a reason for punishment.
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.
“a history of threats against people who engage with him” has not been established or substantiated.
he seems well-intentioned
I believe he is. As far as I can tell he’s gone to great personal expense and trouble to keep FI alive for no other reason than that his sense of morality demands it. (That might be over simplifying things, but I think the essence is the same. I think he believes it is the right thing to do, and it is a necessary thing to do)
I do also think his most recent series of posts and comments is overall much less bad than the posts and comments he posted a few years ago (where most of his negative karma comes from)
He has gained karma since returning to LW briefly. I think you should retract the part about him having negative karma b/c it misrepresents the situation. He could have made a new account and he would have positive karma now. That means your judgement is based on past behaviour that was already punished. This is double jeopardy. (Edit: after some discussion on FI it looks like this isn’t double jeopardy, just double punishment. Double jeopardy specifically refers to being on trial for the same offense twice, not being punished twice.)
Moreover, curi is being punished for being honest and transparent. If he had registered a new account and hidden his identity, would you have banned him only based on his actions this past 1-2 months? If you can say yes, then fine, but I don’t think your argument holds in this case the only part that is verifiable is based on your disapproval of his discussion methods. Disagreeing with him is fine. I think a proportionate response would be a warning.
As it stands no warning was given, and no attempt to learn his plans was made. I think doing that would be proportionate and appropriate. A ban is not.
It is significant that curi is not able to discuss this ban himself. I am voluntarily doing this, of my own accord. He was not able to defend himself or provide explanation.
This is especially problematic as you specifically say you think he was improving compared with his conduct several years ago.
I do also think his most recent series of posts and comments is overall much less bad than the posts and comments he posted a few years ago (where most of his negative karma comes from), but they still don’t strike me as great contributions to the LessWrong canon
This alone is not enough. A warning is proportionate.
are all low-karma
Unpopularity is no reason for a ban
and I assign too high of a probability that old patterns will repeat themselves.
How is this different to pre-crime?
I think, given he had deliberately changed his modus operandi weeks ago and has not posted in 13 days, this is unfair and overly judgmental.
You go on to say:
and I do think that was the right move, but I don’t think it’s enough to tip the scales on this issue.
What could curi have done differently which would have tipped the scales? If there is no acceptable thing he could have done, why was action not taken weeks ago when he was active?
I believe it is fundamentally unjust to delay action in this fashion without talking with him first. curi has an incredibly long track record of discussion, he is very open to it. He is not someone who avoids taking responsibility for things; quite the opposite. If you had engaged him, I am confident he would have discussed things with you.
and to generally err on the side of curating our userbase pretty heavily and maintaining high standards.
It makes sense that you want to cultivate the best rational forums you can. I think that is a good goal. However, again, there were other, less extreme and more proportionate actions that could have been taken first, especially seeing as curi had changed his LW discussion policy and was inactive at the time of the ban.
We presumably disagree on the meaning of ‘high standards’, but I don’t think that’s particularly relevant here.
This means making difficult moderation decision long before it is proven “beyond a reasonable doubt” that someone is not a net-positive contributor to the site.
There were many alternative actions you could have taken. For example, a 1-month ban. Restricting curi to only posting on his own shortform. Warning him of the circumstances and consequences under conditions, etc.
In this case, I think it is definitely not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that curi is overall net-negative for the site
I’m glad you’ve mentioned this, but LW is not a court of law and you are not bound to those standards (and no punishment here is comparable to the punishment a court might distribute). I think there are other good reasons for reconsidering curi’s ban.
banning him might well be a mistake, but I think the probabilities weigh heavily enough in favor of the net-negative, and the worst-case outcomes are bad-enough, that on-net I think this is the right choice.
I think there is a critical point to be made here: you could have taken no action at this time and put a mod-notification for activity on his account. If he were to return and do something you deemed unacceptable, you could swiftly warn him. If he did it again, then a short-term ban. Instead, this is a sledge-sized banhammer used when other options were available. It is a decision that is now publicly on LW and indicates that LW is possibly intolerant of things other than irrationality. I don’t think this is reflective of LW, and I think it reflects poorly on the moderation policies here. I don’t think it needs to be that way, though.
I think a conditional unbanning (i.e. 1 warning, with the next action being a swift short ban) is an appropriate action for the moderation team to make, and I implore you to reconsider your decision.
If you think this is not appropriate, then I request you explain why 2 years is an appropriate length of time, and why Periergo and curi should have identical ban lengths.
The alternative to pacificity does not need to be so heavy handed.
You are judging curi and FI (Fallible Ideas) via your standards (LW standards), not FI’s standards. I think this is problematic.
The above post explicitely says that the ban isn’t a personal judgement of curi. It’s rather a question of whether it’s good or not to have curi around on LessWrong and that’s where LW standards matter.
Unpopularity is no reason for a ban
That seems like a sentiment indicative of ignoring the reason for which he was banned. It was a utilitarian argument. The fact that someone gets downvoted is Bayesian evidence that it’s not valuable for people to interact with him on LessWrong.
How is this different to pre-crime?
If you imprision someone who murdered in the past because you are afarid they murder again, that’s not pre-crime in most common senses of the word.
Additionally even if it would be, LW is not a place with virtue ethics standards but one with utilitarian standards. Taking action to prevent things that are likely to negatively effect LW from happening in the future is perfectly fine with the idea of good gardening.
If you stand in your garden you don’t ask “what crimes did the plants commit and how should they be punished?” but you focus on the future.
The above post explicitely says that the ban isn’t a personal judgement of curi. It’s rather a question of whether it’s good or not to have curi around on LessWrong and that’s where LW standards matter.
Isn’t it even worse then b/c no action was necessary?
But more to the point, isn’t the determination X person is not good to have around a personal judgement? It doesn’t apply to everyone else.
I think what habryka meant was that he wasn’t making a personal judgement.
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.
If I understand you correctly then your primary argument appears to be that a ban is (1) too harsh a judgment where a warning would have sufficed, (2) that curi ought to have some sort of appeals process and (3) that habryka’s top-level comment does not provide detailed citations for all the accusations against curi.
(2) Curi is being banned for wasting time with long, unproductive conversations. An appeals process would produce another long, unproductive conversation.
(3) Specific quotes are unnecessary. It blindingly obvious from a glance through curi’s profile and even curi’s response you linked to that curi is damaging to productive dialogue on Less Wrong.
The strongest claim against curi is “a history of threats against people who engage with him [curi]”. I was able to confirm this via a quick glance through curi’s past behavior on this site. In this comment curi threatens to escalate a dialogue by mirroring it off of this website. By the standards of collaborative online dialogue, this constitutes a threat against someone who engaged with him.
I had not looked, at that point; I took “mirrored” to mean taking copies of whole discussions, which would imply copying other people’s writing en masse. I have looked, now. I agree that what you’ve put there so far is probably OK both legally and morally.
My apologies for being a bit twitchy on this point; I should maybe explain for the benefit of other readers that the last time curi came to LW, he did take a whole pile of discussion from the LW slack and copy it en masse to the publicly-visible internet, which is one reason why I thought it plausible he might have done the same this time.
I don’t think there is case for (1). Unless gjm is a mod and there are things I don’t know?
lsusr said:
(2) Curi is being banned for wasting time with long, unproductive conversations. An appeals process would produce another long, unproductive conversation.
habryka explicitly mentions curi changing his LW commenting policy to be ‘less demanding’. I can see the motivation for expedition, but the mods don’t have to speedrun it. I think it’s bad there wasn’t any communication beforehand.
lsusr said:
(3) Specific quotes are unnecessary. It blindingly obvious from a glance through curi’s profile and even curi’s response you linked to that curi is damaging to productive dialogue on Less Wrong.
I don’t think that’s the case. His net karma has increased, and judging him for content on his blog—not his content on LW—does not establish whether he was ‘damaging to productive dialogue on Less Wrong’.
This is not the track record of someone wanting to waste time. I know there are disagreements between LW and curi / FI. If that’s the main point of contention, and that’s why he’s being banned, then so be it. But he doesn’t deserve to mistreated and have baseless accusations thrown at him.
lsusr said:
The strongest claim against curi is “a history of threats against people who engage with him [curi]”. I was able to confirm this via a quickly glance through curi’s past behavior on this site. In this comment threatens to escalate a dialogue by mirroring it off of this website. By the standards of collaborative online dialogue, this constitutes a threat against someone who engaged with him.
We have substantial disagreements about what constitutes a threat, in that case. I think a threat needs to involve something like danger, or violence, or something like that. It’s not a ‘threat’ to copy public discussion under fair use for criticism and commentary.
I googled the definition, and these are the two (for define:threat)
a statement of an intention to inflict pain, injury, damage, or other hostile action on someone in retribution for something done or not done.
a person or thing likely to cause damage or danger.
I googled the definition, and these are the two (for define:threat)
a statement of an intention to inflict pain, injury, damage, or other hostile action on someone in retribution for something done or not done.
a person or thing likely to cause damage or danger.
Neither of these apply.
I prefer this definition, “a declaration of an intention or determination to inflict punishment, injury, etc., in retaliation for, or conditionally upon, some action or course; menace”. I think the word “retribution” implies undue justice. A “threat” need only imply retaliation, not retribution, of hostile action.
We have substantial disagreements about what constitutes a threat,
This is the definition that I had in mind when I wrote the notice above, sorry for any confusion it might have caused.
This definition doesn’t describe anything curi has done (see my sibling reply linked below), at least that I’ve seen. I’d appreciate any quotes you can provide.
I prefer this definition, “a declaration of an intention or determination to inflict punishment, injury, etc., in retaliation for, or conditionally upon, some action or course; menace”.
This definition seems okay to me.
undue justice
I don’t know how justice can be undue, do you mean like undue or excessive prosecution? or persecution perhaps? thought I don’t think either prosecution or persecution describe anything curi’s done on LW. If you have counterexamples I would appreciate it if you could quote them.
We have substantial disagreements about what constitutes a threat,
Evidently yes, as do dictionaries.
I don’t think the dictionary definitions disagree much. It’s not a substantial disagreement. thesaurus.com seems to agree; it lists them as ~strong synonyms. the crux is retribution vs retaliation, and retaliation is more general. The mafia can threaten shopkeeps with violence if they don’t pay protection. I think retaliation is a better fitting word.
However, this still does not apply to anything curi has done!
I do not think the core disagreement between you and me comes from a failure of me to explain my thoughts clearly enough. I do not believe that elaborating upon my reasoning would get you to change your mind about the core disagreement. Elaborating upon my position would therefore waste both of our time.
The same goes for your position. The many words you have already written have failed to move me. I do not expect even more words to change this pattern.
Curi is being banned for wasting time with long, unproductive conversations. It would be ironic for me to embroil myself in such a conversation as a consequence.
I do not think the core disagreement between you and me comes from a failure of me to explain my thoughts clearly enough.
I don’t either.
The same goes for your position. The many words you have already written have failed to move me. I do not expect even more words to change this pattern.
Sure, we can stop.
Curi is being banned for wasting time with long, unproductive conversations.
I don’t know anywhere I could go to find out that this is a bannable offense. If it is not in a body of rules somewhere, then it should be added. If the mods are unwilling to add it to the rules, he should be unbanned, simple as that.
Maybe that idea is worth discussing? I think it’s reasonable. If something is an offense it should be publicly stated as such and new and continuing users should be able to point to it and say “that’s why”. It shouldn’t feel like it was made up on the fly as a special case—it’s a problem when new rules are invented ad-hoc and not canonicalized (I don’t have a problem with JIT rulebooks, it’s practical).
Arguably, if there is something truly wrong with the list, I should have an issue with it.
This is non-obvious. It seems like you are extrapolating from yourself to everyone else. In my model, how much you would mind being on such a list is largely determined by how much social anxiety you generally feel. I would very much mind being on that list, even if I felt like it was justified.
Knowing the existence of the list (again, even if it were justified) would also make me uneasy to talk to curi.
Arguably, if there is something truly wrong with the list, I should have an issue with it.
This is non-obvious. It seems like you are extrapolating from yourself to everyone else. In my model, how much you would mind being on such a list is largely determent by how much social anxiety you generally feel. I would very much mind being on that list, even if I felt like it was justified.
I think this is fair, and additionally I maybe shouldn’t have used the word “truly”; it’s a very laden word. I do think that, on the balance of probabilities, my case does reduce the likelihood of something being foundationally wrong with it, though. (Note: I’ve said this in, what I think, is a LW friendly way. I’d say it differently on FI.)
One thing I do think, though, is that people’s social anxiety does not make things in general right or wrong, but can be decisive wrt thinking about a single action.
Another thing to point out is anonymous participation in FI is okay, it’s reasonably easy to use an anonymous/pseudonymous email to start with. curi’s blog/forum hybrid also allows for anonymous posting. FI is very pro-free-speech.
Knowing the existence of the list (again, even if it were justified) would also make me uneasy to talk to curi.
I think that’s okay, curi isn’t trying to attract everyone as an audience, and FI isn’t designed to be a forum which makes people feel comfortable, as such. It has different goals from e.g. LW or a philosophy subreddit.
I think we’d agree that norms at FI aren’t typical and aren’t for everyone. It’s a place where anyone can post, but that doesn’t mean that everyone should, sorta thing.
That means your judgement is based on past behaviour that was already punished.
I don’t understand this sentence at all. How has he already been punished for his past behavior? Indeed, he has never been banned before, so there was never any previous punishment.
I wanted to reply to this because I don’t think it’s right to judge curi the way you have. Periergo I don’t have an issue w/. (it’s a sockpuppet acct anyway)
I think your decision should not go unquestioned/uncriticized, which is why I’m posting. I also think you should reconsider curi’s ban under a sort of appeals process.
Also, the LW moderation process is evidently transparent enough for me to make this criticism, and that is notable and good. I am grateful for that.
You are judging curi and FI (Fallible Ideas) via your standards (LW standards), not FI’s standards. I think this is problematic.
I’d like to note I am on that list. (like 1⁄2 way down) I am also a public figure in Australia, having founded a federal political party based on epistemic principles with nearly 9k members. I am okay with being on that list. Arguably, if there is something truly wrong with the list, I should have an issue with it. I knew about being on that list earlier this year, before I returned to FI. Being on the list was not a factor in my decision.
There is nothing immoral or malicious about curi.us/2215. I can understand why you would find it distasteful, but that’s not a decisive reason to ban someone or condemn their actions.
A few hours ago, curi and I discussed elements about the ban and curi.us/2215 on his stream. I recommend watching a few minutes starting at 5:50 and at 19:00, for transparency you might also be interested in 23:40 → 24:00. (you can watch on 2x speed, should be fine)
Particularly, I discuss my presence on curi.us/2215 at 5:50
You say:
There are 33 by my count (including me). The list spans a decade, and is there for a particular purpose, and it is not to publicly shame people in to returning, or to be mean for the sake of it. I’d like to point out some quotes from the first paragraph of curi.us/2215:
Notably, you don’t end up on the list if you are active. Also, although it’s not explicitly mentioned in the top paragraph; a crucial thing is that those on the list have left and avoided discussion about it. Discussion is much more important in FI than most philosophy forums—it’s how we learn from each other, make sure we understand, offer criticism and assist with error correction. You’re not under any obligation to discuss something, but if you have criticisms and refuse to share them: you’re preventing error correction; and if you leave to evade criticism then you’re not living by your values and philosophy.
The people listed on curi.us/2215 have participated in a public philosophy forum for which there are established norms that are not typical and are different from LW. FI views the act of truth-seeking differently. While our (LW/FI) schools of thought disagree on epistemology, both schools have norms that are related to their epistemic ideas. Ours look different.
It is unfair to punish someone for an act done outside of your jurisdiction under different established norms. If curi were putting LW people on his list, or publishing off-topic stuff at LW, sure, take moderation action. None of those things happened. In fact, the main reason you’ve provided for even knowing about that list is via the sockpuppet you banned.
Sockpuppet accounts are not used to make the lives of their victims easier. By banning curi along with Periergo you have facilitated a (minor) victory for Periergo. This is not right.
THIS IS A SERIOUS ALLEGATION! PLEASE PROVIDE QUOTES
curi prefers to discuss in public so they should be easy to find and verify. I have never known curi to threaten people. He may criticise them, but he does not threaten them.
Notably, curi has consistently and loudly opposed violence and the initiation of force, if people ask him to leave them alone (provided they haven’t e.g. committed a crime against him), he respects that.
This is not a reason to ban him, or anyone. Being disliked is not a reason for punishment.
“a history of threats against people who engage with him” has not been established or substantiated.
I believe he is. As far as I can tell he’s gone to great personal expense and trouble to keep FI alive for no other reason than that his sense of morality demands it. (That might be over simplifying things, but I think the essence is the same. I think he believes it is the right thing to do, and it is a necessary thing to do)
He has gained karma since returning to LW briefly. I think you should retract the part about him having negative karma b/c it misrepresents the situation. He could have made a new account and he would have positive karma now. That means your judgement is based on past behaviour that was already punished.
This is double jeopardy.(Edit: after some discussion on FI it looks like this isn’t double jeopardy, just double punishment. Double jeopardy specifically refers to being on trial for the same offense twice, not being punished twice.)Moreover, curi is being punished for being honest and transparent. If he had registered a new account and hidden his identity, would you have banned him only based on his actions this past 1-2 months? If you can say yes, then fine, but I don’t think your argument holds in this case the only part that is verifiable is based on your disapproval of his discussion methods. Disagreeing with him is fine. I think a proportionate response would be a warning.
As it stands no warning was given, and no attempt to learn his plans was made. I think doing that would be proportionate and appropriate. A ban is not.
It is significant that curi is not able to discuss this ban himself. I am voluntarily doing this, of my own accord. He was not able to defend himself or provide explanation.
This is especially problematic as you specifically say you think he was improving compared with his conduct several years ago.
This alone is not enough. A warning is proportionate.
Unpopularity is no reason for a ban
How is this different to pre-crime?
I think, given he had deliberately changed his modus operandi weeks ago and has not posted in 13 days, this is unfair and overly judgmental.
You go on to say:
What could curi have done differently which would have tipped the scales? If there is no acceptable thing he could have done, why was action not taken weeks ago when he was active?
I believe it is fundamentally unjust to delay action in this fashion without talking with him first. curi has an incredibly long track record of discussion, he is very open to it. He is not someone who avoids taking responsibility for things; quite the opposite. If you had engaged him, I am confident he would have discussed things with you.
It makes sense that you want to cultivate the best rational forums you can. I think that is a good goal. However, again, there were other, less extreme and more proportionate actions that could have been taken first, especially seeing as curi had changed his LW discussion policy and was inactive at the time of the ban.
We presumably disagree on the meaning of ‘high standards’, but I don’t think that’s particularly relevant here.
There were many alternative actions you could have taken. For example, a 1-month ban. Restricting curi to only posting on his own shortform. Warning him of the circumstances and consequences under conditions, etc.
I’m glad you’ve mentioned this, but LW is not a court of law and you are not bound to those standards (and no punishment here is comparable to the punishment a court might distribute). I think there are other good reasons for reconsidering curi’s ban.
I think there is a critical point to be made here: you could have taken no action at this time and put a mod-notification for activity on his account. If he were to return and do something you deemed unacceptable, you could swiftly warn him. If he did it again, then a short-term ban. Instead, this is a sledge-sized banhammer used when other options were available. It is a decision that is now publicly on LW and indicates that LW is possibly intolerant of things other than irrationality. I don’t think this is reflective of LW, and I think it reflects poorly on the moderation policies here. I don’t think it needs to be that way, though.
I think a conditional unbanning (i.e. 1 warning, with the next action being a swift short ban) is an appropriate action for the moderation team to make, and I implore you to reconsider your decision.
If you think this is not appropriate, then I request you explain why 2 years is an appropriate length of time, and why Periergo and curi should have identical ban lengths.
The alternative to pacificity does not need to be so heavy handed.
I’d also like to note that curi has published a post on his blog regarding this ban; I read it after drafting this reply: http://curi.us/2381-less-wrong-banned-me
The above post explicitely says that the ban isn’t a personal judgement of curi. It’s rather a question of whether it’s good or not to have curi around on LessWrong and that’s where LW standards matter.
That seems like a sentiment indicative of ignoring the reason for which he was banned. It was a utilitarian argument. The fact that someone gets downvoted is Bayesian evidence that it’s not valuable for people to interact with him on LessWrong.
If you imprision someone who murdered in the past because you are afarid they murder again, that’s not pre-crime in most common senses of the word.
Additionally even if it would be, LW is not a place with virtue ethics standards but one with utilitarian standards. Taking action to prevent things that are likely to negatively effect LW from happening in the future is perfectly fine with the idea of good gardening.
If you stand in your garden you don’t ask “what crimes did the plants commit and how should they be punished?” but you focus on the future.
Isn’t it even worse then b/c no action was necessary?
But more to the point, isn’t the determination X person is not good to have around a personal judgement? It doesn’t apply to everyone else.
I think what habryka meant was that he wasn’t making a personal judgement.
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.
If I understand you correctly then your primary argument appears to be that a ban is (1) too harsh a judgment where a warning would have sufficed, (2) that curi ought to have some sort of appeals process and (3) that habryka’s top-level comment does not provide detailed citations for all the accusations against curi.
(1) Curi was warned at least once.
(2) Curi is being banned for wasting time with long, unproductive conversations. An appeals process would produce another long, unproductive conversation.
(3) Specific quotes are unnecessary. It blindingly obvious from a glance through curi’s profile and even curi’s response you linked to that curi is damaging to productive dialogue on Less Wrong.
The strongest claim against curi is “a history of threats against people who engage with him [curi]”. I was able to confirm this via a quick glance through curi’s past behavior on this site. In this comment curi threatens to escalate a dialogue by mirroring it off of this website. By the standards of collaborative online dialogue, this constitutes a threat against someone who engaged with him.
Edit: grammar.
lsusr said:
I’m reasonably sure the slack comments refers to events 3 years ago, not anything in the last few months. I’ll check, though.
There are some other comments about recent discussion in that thread, like this: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/iAnXcZ5aGZzNc2J8L/the-law-of-least-effort-contributes-to-the-conjunction?commentId=38FzXA6g54ZKs3HQY
gjm said:
I don’t think there is case for (1). Unless gjm is a mod and there are things I don’t know?
lsusr said:
habryka explicitly mentions curi changing his LW commenting policy to be ‘less demanding’. I can see the motivation for expedition, but the mods don’t have to speedrun it. I think it’s bad there wasn’t any communication beforehand.
lsusr said:
I don’t think that’s the case. His net karma has increased, and judging him for content on his blog—not his content on LW—does not establish whether he was ‘damaging to productive dialogue on Less Wrong’.
His posts on less wrong have been contributions, for example, www.lesswrong.com/posts/tKcdTsMFkYjnFEQJo/can-social-dynamics-explain-conjunction-fallacy-experimental is a direct response to of EY’s posts and it was net-upvoted. He followed that up with two more net-upvoted posts:
www.lesswrong.com/posts/HpiTacu2P6c22GEzF/asch-conformity-could-explain-the-conjunction-fallacy
www.lesswrong.com/posts/tKcdTsMFkYjnFEQJo/can-social-dynamics-explain-conjunction-fallacy-experimental
This is not the track record of someone wanting to waste time. I know there are disagreements between LW and curi / FI. If that’s the main point of contention, and that’s why he’s being banned, then so be it. But he doesn’t deserve to mistreated and have baseless accusations thrown at him.
lsusr said:
We have substantial disagreements about what constitutes a threat, in that case. I think a threat needs to involve something like danger, or violence, or something like that. It’s not a ‘threat’ to copy public discussion under fair use for criticism and commentary.
I googled the definition, and these are the two (for
define:threat)a statement of an intention to inflict pain, injury, damage, or other hostile action on someone in retribution for something done or not done.
a person or thing likely to cause damage or danger.
Neither of these apply.
I prefer this definition, “a declaration of an intention or determination to inflict punishment, injury, etc., in retaliation for, or conditionally upon, some action or course; menace”. I think the word “retribution” implies undue justice. A “threat” need only imply retaliation, not retribution, of hostile action.
Evidently yes, as do dictionaries.
This is the definition that I had in mind when I wrote the notice above, sorry for any confusion it might have caused.
This definition doesn’t describe anything curi has done (see my sibling reply linked below), at least that I’ve seen. I’d appreciate any quotes you can provide.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PkpuvsFYr6yuYnppy/open-and-welcome-thread-september-2020?commentId=H2tyDgoRFov8Xs8HS
This definition seems okay to me.
I don’t know how justice can be undue, do you mean like undue or excessive prosecution? or persecution perhaps? thought I don’t think either prosecution or persecution describe anything curi’s done on LW. If you have counterexamples I would appreciate it if you could quote them.
I don’t think the dictionary definitions disagree much. It’s not a substantial disagreement. thesaurus.com seems to agree; it lists them as ~strong synonyms. the crux is retribution vs retaliation, and retaliation is more general. The mafia can threaten shopkeeps with violence if they don’t pay protection. I think retaliation is a better fitting word.
However, this still does not apply to anything curi has done!
I do not think the core disagreement between you and me comes from a failure of me to explain my thoughts clearly enough. I do not believe that elaborating upon my reasoning would get you to change your mind about the core disagreement. Elaborating upon my position would therefore waste both of our time.
The same goes for your position. The many words you have already written have failed to move me. I do not expect even more words to change this pattern.
Curi is being banned for wasting time with long, unproductive conversations. It would be ironic for me to embroil myself in such a conversation as a consequence.
I don’t either.
Sure, we can stop.
I don’t know anywhere I could go to find out that this is a bannable offense. If it is not in a body of rules somewhere, then it should be added. If the mods are unwilling to add it to the rules, he should be unbanned, simple as that.
Maybe that idea is worth discussing? I think it’s reasonable. If something is an offense it should be publicly stated as such and new and continuing users should be able to point to it and say “that’s why”. It shouldn’t feel like it was made up on the fly as a special case—it’s a problem when new rules are invented ad-hoc and not canonicalized (I don’t have a problem with JIT rulebooks, it’s practical).
This is non-obvious. It seems like you are extrapolating from yourself to everyone else. In my model, how much you would mind being on such a list is largely determined by how much social anxiety you generally feel. I would very much mind being on that list, even if I felt like it was justified.
Knowing the existence of the list (again, even if it were justified) would also make me uneasy to talk to curi.
I think this is fair, and additionally I maybe shouldn’t have used the word “truly”; it’s a very laden word. I do think that, on the balance of probabilities, my case does reduce the likelihood of something being foundationally wrong with it, though. (Note: I’ve said this in, what I think, is a LW friendly way. I’d say it differently on FI.)
One thing I do think, though, is that people’s social anxiety does not make things in general right or wrong, but can be decisive wrt thinking about a single action.
Another thing to point out is anonymous participation in FI is okay, it’s reasonably easy to use an anonymous/pseudonymous email to start with. curi’s blog/forum hybrid also allows for anonymous posting. FI is very pro-free-speech.
I think that’s okay, curi isn’t trying to attract everyone as an audience, and FI isn’t designed to be a forum which makes people feel comfortable, as such. It has different goals from e.g. LW or a philosophy subreddit.
I think we’d agree that norms at FI aren’t typical and aren’t for everyone. It’s a place where anyone can post, but that doesn’t mean that everyone should, sorta thing.
I don’t understand this sentence at all. How has he already been punished for his past behavior? Indeed, he has never been banned before, so there was never any previous punishment.