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).
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).