by putting her name in the headline (what I meant by name-calling)
Gotcha, that’s fair.
If it wasn’t meant to tarnish her reputation, why not instead make the post about just her issues with the disagreeable content?
I can think of multiple possible reasons. E.g. If OP sees a pattern of several bad or problematic posts, it can make sense to go above the object-level criticisms of those posts and talk about the meta-level questions.
but the standard you’ve set for determining intent is as naive as
Maybe, but in my view accusing someone of making personal attacks is a serious thing, so I’d rather be cautious, have a high bar of evidence, and take an “innocent until proven guilty” approach. Maybe I’ll be too charitable in some cases and fail to condemn someone for making a personal attack, but that’s worth it to avoid making the opposite mistake: accusing someone of making a personal attack who was doing no such thing.
because it’s fun to do
That stated fun motivation did bother me. Obviously given that people feel the post is attacking Kat personally making the post for fun isn’t a good enough reason. However, I do also see the post as raising legitmate questions about whether the sort of content that Kat produces and promotes a lot of is actually helping to raise the quality of discourse on EA and AI safety, etc, so it’s clearly not just a post for fun. The OP seemed to be fustrated and venting when writing the post, resulting in it having an unnecessarily harsh tone. But I don’t think this makes it amount to bullying.
Why don’t you hold yourself to a higher standard?
I try to. I guess we just disagree about which kind of mistake (described above) is worse. In the face of uncertainty, I think it’s better to caution on the side of not mistakenly accusing someone of bullying and engaging in a personal attack than on the side of mistakenly being too charitable and failing to call out someone who actually said something mean (especially when there are already a lot of other people in the comments like you doing that).
After she elevates Kat’s name to the headline; uses the entire post to insult her writing; draws on ageist tropes and perjoratives like “cringe” to make her case; explicitly chooses to share the message not with the writing’s intended audience but rather a specific in-group who shares a distaste for Reddit’s lower-brow content; doing so in an effort to rile up pressure to change her behavior on the other site; an all the more potent strike considering the context that Kat is already a well-known figure who presumably cares about her standing among LW/EA communities… you don’t believe this is bullying because Browsing dropped a passing caveat that Kat might be nice in personal relations and that her object-level issue was largely that the content checks notes “feels bad for my brain” like the equivalent of eating cheetos.
Huh?
Here’s the problem with your view. You’re so reluctant to “accuse” someone of a “personal attack” or “bullying” that when it happens, you’re lost trying to determine where the behavior lies in gray thresholds of the definition that you ignore the misbehavior in plain sight. That lacks common sense. If she didn’t want this to be a “personal attack”, she could have made many different choices along the way, which she obviously did not, the most prominent being posting on Reddit rather than here and not putting her name in the headline, on top of what you already pointed out was “unnecessarily harsh tone” and what I will deem shallow and uncharitable motivations like being “grumpy” about the vibes and mounting this attack for “fun”, a far more viscious kind of engagement bait than the memes she criticized.
I’m going to withdraw from this comment thread since I don’t think my further participation is a good use of time/energy. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and sorry we didn’t come to agreement.
When we got drill down into the crux of disagreement you walk away because it’s not a good use of time/energy. Of course you’re welcome to do that, but unfortunate.
Gotcha, that’s fair.
I can think of multiple possible reasons. E.g. If OP sees a pattern of several bad or problematic posts, it can make sense to go above the object-level criticisms of those posts and talk about the meta-level questions.
Maybe, but in my view accusing someone of making personal attacks is a serious thing, so I’d rather be cautious, have a high bar of evidence, and take an “innocent until proven guilty” approach. Maybe I’ll be too charitable in some cases and fail to condemn someone for making a personal attack, but that’s worth it to avoid making the opposite mistake: accusing someone of making a personal attack who was doing no such thing.
That stated fun motivation did bother me. Obviously given that people feel the post is attacking Kat personally making the post for fun isn’t a good enough reason. However, I do also see the post as raising legitmate questions about whether the sort of content that Kat produces and promotes a lot of is actually helping to raise the quality of discourse on EA and AI safety, etc, so it’s clearly not just a post for fun. The OP seemed to be fustrated and venting when writing the post, resulting in it having an unnecessarily harsh tone. But I don’t think this makes it amount to bullying.
I try to. I guess we just disagree about which kind of mistake (described above) is worse. In the face of uncertainty, I think it’s better to caution on the side of not mistakenly accusing someone of bullying and engaging in a personal attack than on the side of mistakenly being too charitable and failing to call out someone who actually said something mean (especially when there are already a lot of other people in the comments like you doing that).
Let me get this straight.
After she elevates Kat’s name to the headline; uses the entire post to insult her writing; draws on ageist tropes and perjoratives like “cringe” to make her case; explicitly chooses to share the message not with the writing’s intended audience but rather a specific in-group who shares a distaste for Reddit’s lower-brow content; doing so in an effort to rile up pressure to change her behavior on the other site; an all the more potent strike considering the context that Kat is already a well-known figure who presumably cares about her standing among LW/EA communities… you don’t believe this is bullying because Browsing dropped a passing caveat that Kat might be nice in personal relations and that her object-level issue was largely that the content checks notes “feels bad for my brain” like the equivalent of eating cheetos.
Huh?
Here’s the problem with your view. You’re so reluctant to “accuse” someone of a “personal attack” or “bullying” that when it happens, you’re lost trying to determine where the behavior lies in gray thresholds of the definition that you ignore the misbehavior in plain sight. That lacks common sense. If she didn’t want this to be a “personal attack”, she could have made many different choices along the way, which she obviously did not, the most prominent being posting on Reddit rather than here and not putting her name in the headline, on top of what you already pointed out was “unnecessarily harsh tone” and what I will deem shallow and uncharitable motivations like being “grumpy” about the vibes and mounting this attack for “fun”, a far more viscious kind of engagement bait than the memes she criticized.
I’m going to withdraw from this comment thread since I don’t think my further participation is a good use of time/energy. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and sorry we didn’t come to agreement.
When we got drill down into the crux of disagreement you walk away because it’s not a good use of time/energy. Of course you’re welcome to do that, but unfortunate.