I don’t think Duncan and I are in clear agreement more generally (even if we agree that the particular comment I wrote that caused Duncan to give up on me was in fact a bad comment).
Here’s my quick attempt to pass Duncan’s Ideological Turing Test on what our feud is about: “one of the most important obstacles to having a culture of clear thinking and clear communication is the tendency for interlocutors to misrepresent one another, to jump to conclusions about what the other person is saying, and lash out at that strawman, instead of appropriately maintaining uncertainty, or split-and-committing pending further evidence. These skills are a prerequisite for being able to have a sane discussion. Empirically, Zack doesn’t seem to care about these skills much, if at all. As a result, his presence makes the discussion spaces he’s in worse.”
(I probably didn’t pass, but I tried.)
My response to my-attempt-to-pass-Duncan’s-ITT (which probably didn’t succeed at capturing Duncan’s real views) is that I strongly disagree that pro-actively modeling one’s interlocutors should be a prerequisite for being able to have a discussion. As an author, it’s often frustrating when critics don’t understand my words the way I hoped they would, but ultimately, I think it’s my responsibility to try to produce text that stands up to scrutiny. I would never tell a critic that they’re not passing my ITT, because in my view, passing my ITT isn’t their job; their job is to offer their real thoughts on the actual text I actually published. I don’t accuse critics of strawmanning unless I expect to be able to convince third parties with an explanation of how the text the critic published substantively misrepresents the text I published. I’m extremely wary that a culture that heavily penalizes not-sufficiently-modeling-one’s-interlocutor, interferes with the process of subjecting each other’s work to scrutiny.
Again, that’s my interpretation of what the feud is about. I’m not claiming to have accurately understood Duncan. If he happens to see this comment and wants to correct where my ITT is falling short, he’s welcome to. If not, that’s fine, too: people are busy; no one is under any obligation to spend time arguing on the internet when they have better things to do!
Yeah, I didn’t mean that I thought you two agreed in general, just on the specific thing he was commenting on. I didn’t mean to insert myself into this feud and I was kinda asking how I got here, but now that I’m here we might as well have fun with it. I think I have a pretty good feel for where you’re coming from, and actually agree with a lot of it. However, agreement isn’t where the fun is so I’m gonna push back where I see you as screwing up and you can let me know if it doesn’t fit.
These two lines stand out to me as carrying all the weight:
I strongly disagree that pro-actively modeling one’s interlocutors should be a prerequisite for being able to have a discussion.
I’m extremely wary that a culture that heavily penalizes not-sufficiently-modeling-one’s-interlocutor, interferes with the process of subjecting each other’s work to scrutiny.
These two lines seem to go hand in hand in your mind, but my initial response to the two is very different.
To the latter, I simply agree that there’s a failure mode there and don’t fault you for being extremely wary of it. To the former though.… “I disagree that this thing should be necessary” is kinda a “Tough?”. Either it’s necessary or it isn’t, and if you’re focusing on what “should” be you’re neglecting what is.
I don’t think I have to make the case that things aren’t going well as is. And I’m not going to try to convince you that you should drop the “should” and attend to the “is” so that things run more smoothly—that one is up to you to decide, and as much as “should” intentionally looks away from “is” and is in a sense fundamentally irrational in that way, it’s sometimes computationally necessary or prudent given constraints.
But I will point out that this “should” is a sure sign that you’re looking away from truth, and that it fits Duncan’s accusations of what you’re doing to a T. “I shouldn’t have to do this in order to be able to have a discussion” sounds reasonable enough if you feel able to back up the idea that your norms are better, and it has a strong tendency to lead towards not doing the thing you “shouldn’t have to” do. But when you look back at reality, that combination is “I actually do have to do this in order to have a (productive) discussion, and I’m gonna not do it, and I’m going to engage anyway”. When you’re essentially telling someone “Yeah, know what I’m doing is going to piss you off, and not only am I going to do it anyway I am going to show that pissing you off doesn’t even weigh into my decisions because your feelings are wrong”, then that’s pretty sure to piss someone off.
It’s clear that you’re willing to weigh those considerations as a favor to Duncan, the way you recount asking Michael Vassar for such a favor, and that in your mind if Duncan wants you to accommodate his fragility, he should admit that this is what he’s asking for and that it’s a favor not an obligation—you know, play by your rules.
And it’s clear that by just accommodating everyone in this way without having the costs acknowledged (i.e. playing by his rules), you’d be giving up something you’re unwilling to give up. I don’t fault you there.
I agree with your framing that this is actually a conflict. And there are inherent reasons why that isn’t trivially avoidable, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a path towards genuine cooperation—just that you can’t declare same sidedness by fiat.
Elsewhere in the comments you gave an example of “stealing bread” as a conflict that causes “disagreements” and lying. The solution here isn’t to “cooperatively” pursue conflicting goals, it’s to step back and look at how to align goals. Specifically, notice that everyone is better off if there’s less thieving, and cooperate on not-thieving and punishing theft. And if you’ve already screwed up, cooperate towards norms that make confession and rehabilitation more appealing than lying but less appealing than not-thieving in the first place.
I don’t think our problems are that big here. There are conflicts of values, sure, but I don’t think the attempts to push ones values over others is generally so deliberately antisocial. In this case, for example, I think you and Duncan both more or less genuinely believe that it is the other party who is doing the antisocial acts. And so rather than “One person is knowingly trying to get away with being antisocial, so of course they’re not going to cooperate”, I think it’s better modeled as an actual disagreement that isn’t able to be trivially resolved because people are resorting to trying to use conflict rather than cooperation to advance their (perceived as righteous) goals, and then missing the fact that they’re doing this because they’re so open to cooperating (within the norms which are objectively correct, according to themselves) and which the other person irrationally and antisocially isn’t (by rules they don’t agree with)!
I don’t agree with the way that he used it, but Duncan is spot on calling your behavior “trauma response”. I don’t mean it as a big-T “Trauma” like “abused as a child”, but trauma in the “1 grain is a ‘heap’” sense is at is at the core of this kind of conflict and many many other things—and it is more or less necessary for trauma response to exist on both sides for these things to not fizzle out. The analogy I like to give is that psychological trauma is like plutonium and hostile acts are like neutrons.
As a toy example to illustrate the point, imagine someone steps on your toes; how do you respond? If it’s a barefoot little kid, you might say “Hey kid, you’re standing on my toes” and they might say “Didn’t mean to, sorry!” and step off. No trauma no problem. If it’s a 300lb dude with cleats, you might shove him as hard as you can because the damage incurred from letting him stand on your toes until you can get his attention is less acceptable. And if he’s sensitive enough, he might get pissed at you for shoving him and deck you. If it becomes a verbal argument, he might say “your toes shouldn’t have been there”, and now it’s an explicit conflict about where you get to put your toes and whether he as a right to step on them anyway if they are where you put them.
In order to not allow things to degenerate into conflict as the less-than-perfectly-secure cleat wearing giant steps on your toes, you have to be able to withstand that neutron blast without retaliating with your own so much that it turns into a fight instead of a “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize your toes were there. I’ll step off them for now because I care about your toes, but we need to have a conversation about where your feet are okay to be”.
This means:
1) orienting to the truth that your toes are going to take damage whether you like it or not, and that “should” can’t make this untrue or unimportant.
2) maintaining connection with the larger perspective that tracks what is likely to cause conflict, what isn’t, and how to cause the minimal conflict and maximum cooperation possible so that you best succeed at your goals with least sacrifice of your formerly-sacred-and-still-instrumentally-important values.
In some cases, the most truth-oriented and most effective response is going to be politely tapping the big guy on the shoulder while your feet bleed, and having a conversation after the fact about whether he needs to be more careful where he’s stepping—because acting like shoving this guy makes sense is willful irrationality.
In other cases he’s smaller and more shove-able and it doesn’t make sense to accept the damage, but instead of coming off like “I’m totally happy to apologize for anything I actually did wrong. I’m sorry I called you a jerk while shoving you; that was unnecessary and inappropriate [but I will conspicuously not even address the fact that you didn’t like being shoved or that you spilled your drink, because #notmyproblem. I’ll explain why I’m right to not give a fuck if you care to ask]”, you’ll at least be more able to see the value in saying things like “I’m sorry I had to shove you. I know you don’t like being shoved, and I don’t like doing it. You even spilled your drink, and that sucks. I wish I saw another way to protect our communities ability to receive criticism without shoving you”.
This shouldn’t need to be said but probably does (for others, probably not for you), so I’ll say it. This very much is not me taking sides on the whole thing. It’s not a “Zach is in the wrong for not doing this” or a “I endorse Duncan’s norms relatively more”—nor is it the opposite. It’s just a “I see Zach as wanting me to argue that he’s screwing up in a way that might end up giving him actionable alternatives that might get him more of what he wants, so I will”.
I don’t think Duncan and I are in clear agreement more generally (even if we agree that the particular comment I wrote that caused Duncan to give up on me was in fact a bad comment).
Here’s my quick attempt to pass Duncan’s Ideological Turing Test on what our feud is about: “one of the most important obstacles to having a culture of clear thinking and clear communication is the tendency for interlocutors to misrepresent one another, to jump to conclusions about what the other person is saying, and lash out at that strawman, instead of appropriately maintaining uncertainty, or split-and-committing pending further evidence. These skills are a prerequisite for being able to have a sane discussion. Empirically, Zack doesn’t seem to care about these skills much, if at all. As a result, his presence makes the discussion spaces he’s in worse.”
(I probably didn’t pass, but I tried.)
My response to my-attempt-to-pass-Duncan’s-ITT (which probably didn’t succeed at capturing Duncan’s real views) is that I strongly disagree that pro-actively modeling one’s interlocutors should be a prerequisite for being able to have a discussion. As an author, it’s often frustrating when critics don’t understand my words the way I hoped they would, but ultimately, I think it’s my responsibility to try to produce text that stands up to scrutiny. I would never tell a critic that they’re not passing my ITT, because in my view, passing my ITT isn’t their job; their job is to offer their real thoughts on the actual text I actually published. I don’t accuse critics of strawmanning unless I expect to be able to convince third parties with an explanation of how the text the critic published substantively misrepresents the text I published. I’m extremely wary that a culture that heavily penalizes not-sufficiently-modeling-one’s-interlocutor, interferes with the process of subjecting each other’s work to scrutiny.
Again, that’s my interpretation of what the feud is about. I’m not claiming to have accurately understood Duncan. If he happens to see this comment and wants to correct where my ITT is falling short, he’s welcome to. If not, that’s fine, too: people are busy; no one is under any obligation to spend time arguing on the internet when they have better things to do!
Yeah, I didn’t mean that I thought you two agreed in general, just on the specific thing he was commenting on. I didn’t mean to insert myself into this feud and I was kinda asking how I got here, but now that I’m here we might as well have fun with it. I think I have a pretty good feel for where you’re coming from, and actually agree with a lot of it. However, agreement isn’t where the fun is so I’m gonna push back where I see you as screwing up and you can let me know if it doesn’t fit.
These two lines stand out to me as carrying all the weight:
These two lines seem to go hand in hand in your mind, but my initial response to the two is very different.
To the latter, I simply agree that there’s a failure mode there and don’t fault you for being extremely wary of it. To the former though.… “I disagree that this thing should be necessary” is kinda a “Tough?”. Either it’s necessary or it isn’t, and if you’re focusing on what “should” be you’re neglecting what is.
I don’t think I have to make the case that things aren’t going well as is. And I’m not going to try to convince you that you should drop the “should” and attend to the “is” so that things run more smoothly—that one is up to you to decide, and as much as “should” intentionally looks away from “is” and is in a sense fundamentally irrational in that way, it’s sometimes computationally necessary or prudent given constraints.
But I will point out that this “should” is a sure sign that you’re looking away from truth, and that it fits Duncan’s accusations of what you’re doing to a T. “I shouldn’t have to do this in order to be able to have a discussion” sounds reasonable enough if you feel able to back up the idea that your norms are better, and it has a strong tendency to lead towards not doing the thing you “shouldn’t have to” do. But when you look back at reality, that combination is “I actually do have to do this in order to have a (productive) discussion, and I’m gonna not do it, and I’m going to engage anyway”. When you’re essentially telling someone “Yeah, know what I’m doing is going to piss you off, and not only am I going to do it anyway I am going to show that pissing you off doesn’t even weigh into my decisions because your feelings are wrong”, then that’s pretty sure to piss someone off.
It’s clear that you’re willing to weigh those considerations as a favor to Duncan, the way you recount asking Michael Vassar for such a favor, and that in your mind if Duncan wants you to accommodate his fragility, he should admit that this is what he’s asking for and that it’s a favor not an obligation—you know, play by your rules.
And it’s clear that by just accommodating everyone in this way without having the costs acknowledged (i.e. playing by his rules), you’d be giving up something you’re unwilling to give up. I don’t fault you there.
I agree with your framing that this is actually a conflict. And there are inherent reasons why that isn’t trivially avoidable, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a path towards genuine cooperation—just that you can’t declare same sidedness by fiat.
Elsewhere in the comments you gave an example of “stealing bread” as a conflict that causes “disagreements” and lying. The solution here isn’t to “cooperatively” pursue conflicting goals, it’s to step back and look at how to align goals. Specifically, notice that everyone is better off if there’s less thieving, and cooperate on not-thieving and punishing theft. And if you’ve already screwed up, cooperate towards norms that make confession and rehabilitation more appealing than lying but less appealing than not-thieving in the first place.
I don’t think our problems are that big here. There are conflicts of values, sure, but I don’t think the attempts to push ones values over others is generally so deliberately antisocial. In this case, for example, I think you and Duncan both more or less genuinely believe that it is the other party who is doing the antisocial acts. And so rather than “One person is knowingly trying to get away with being antisocial, so of course they’re not going to cooperate”, I think it’s better modeled as an actual disagreement that isn’t able to be trivially resolved because people are resorting to trying to use conflict rather than cooperation to advance their (perceived as righteous) goals, and then missing the fact that they’re doing this because they’re so open to cooperating (within the norms which are objectively correct, according to themselves) and which the other person irrationally and antisocially isn’t (by rules they don’t agree with)!
I don’t agree with the way that he used it, but Duncan is spot on calling your behavior “trauma response”. I don’t mean it as a big-T “Trauma” like “abused as a child”, but trauma in the “1 grain is a ‘heap’” sense is at is at the core of this kind of conflict and many many other things—and it is more or less necessary for trauma response to exist on both sides for these things to not fizzle out. The analogy I like to give is that psychological trauma is like plutonium and hostile acts are like neutrons.
As a toy example to illustrate the point, imagine someone steps on your toes; how do you respond? If it’s a barefoot little kid, you might say “Hey kid, you’re standing on my toes” and they might say “Didn’t mean to, sorry!” and step off. No trauma no problem. If it’s a 300lb dude with cleats, you might shove him as hard as you can because the damage incurred from letting him stand on your toes until you can get his attention is less acceptable. And if he’s sensitive enough, he might get pissed at you for shoving him and deck you. If it becomes a verbal argument, he might say “your toes shouldn’t have been there”, and now it’s an explicit conflict about where you get to put your toes and whether he as a right to step on them anyway if they are where you put them.
In order to not allow things to degenerate into conflict as the less-than-perfectly-secure cleat wearing giant steps on your toes, you have to be able to withstand that neutron blast without retaliating with your own so much that it turns into a fight instead of a “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize your toes were there. I’ll step off them for now because I care about your toes, but we need to have a conversation about where your feet are okay to be”.
This means:
1) orienting to the truth that your toes are going to take damage whether you like it or not, and that “should” can’t make this untrue or unimportant.
2) maintaining connection with the larger perspective that tracks what is likely to cause conflict, what isn’t, and how to cause the minimal conflict and maximum cooperation possible so that you best succeed at your goals with least sacrifice of your formerly-sacred-and-still-instrumentally-important values.
In some cases, the most truth-oriented and most effective response is going to be politely tapping the big guy on the shoulder while your feet bleed, and having a conversation after the fact about whether he needs to be more careful where he’s stepping—because acting like shoving this guy makes sense is willful irrationality.
In other cases he’s smaller and more shove-able and it doesn’t make sense to accept the damage, but instead of coming off like “I’m totally happy to apologize for anything I actually did wrong. I’m sorry I called you a jerk while shoving you; that was unnecessary and inappropriate [but I will conspicuously not even address the fact that you didn’t like being shoved or that you spilled your drink, because #notmyproblem. I’ll explain why I’m right to not give a fuck if you care to ask]”, you’ll at least be more able to see the value in saying things like “I’m sorry I had to shove you. I know you don’t like being shoved, and I don’t like doing it. You even spilled your drink, and that sucks. I wish I saw another way to protect our communities ability to receive criticism without shoving you”.
This shouldn’t need to be said but probably does (for others, probably not for you), so I’ll say it. This very much is not me taking sides on the whole thing. It’s not a “Zach is in the wrong for not doing this” or a “I endorse Duncan’s norms relatively more”—nor is it the opposite. It’s just a “I see Zach as wanting me to argue that he’s screwing up in a way that might end up giving him actionable alternatives that might get him more of what he wants, so I will”.