It’s worse than “being uncomfortable.” The denotation of your comment isn’t incorrect, but it degrades the always fragile common knowledge that we will coordinate to resist abusers. If it’s already the case that “we” gain advantages by openly letting abusers run unchecked, then those of “us” who can should consider abandoning being part of this “we” and attempting to join healthier social groups.
Further-semi-aside: “common knowledge that we will coordinate to resist abusers” is actively bad and dangerous to victims if it isn’t true. If we won’t coordinate to resist abusers, making that fact (/ a model of when we will or won’t) common knowledge is doing good in the short run by not creating a false sense of security, and in the long run by allowing the pattern to be deliberately changed.
I don’t think it’s that simple. First, if abusers and victims exist then the situation just is actively dangerous. Hypocrisy is unavoidable but it’s less bad if non-abusers can operate openly and abusers need to keep secrets than vice versa. Second, I don’t think the pattern can be deliberately changed except by creating a sense of security that starts out false but becomes true once enough people have it.
The thing ialdabaoth and Nick are both pointing towards is something like ’the capacity to actually point out abuse (or any kind of unethical conduct) when someone you respect is involved (or someone all your friends respect) is really hard. It is something that requires practice, awareness of your self, and awareness of how the web of social connections works, and often literal sacrifice.
And it’s something that is very easy to tell a story about how you’d totally speak out, or go to the cops or something. But if it turns out that your mom/dad/favorite-teacher/favorite-writer /favorite-startup-founder/boss-that-is-paying-your-salary/venture-capitalist-who-can-offer-you-money is doing something wrong, the overwhelming default course of action is to just fail at speaking out, and if all you have is a vague narrative that you’re a good person or that your community is good people, you will be woefully unprepared.
Of course, all of that is true. I’d go further and say there’s basically no way a vague narrative that you’re a good person would be enough. What I’m trying to say is that the fear of the consequences of speaking out should be balanced with the fear of the consequences of looking complicit if the truth comes out and you didn’t speak out. Talking about how advantageous it can be to ignore abuse, or how hard it is to speak out (and implicitly, how forgivable it would be) is tipping that scale in the wrong direction.
I do agree with that (As mentioned in my earlier comment, I still lean in the direction of deleting comments like the initial downvoted one in the future).
But as worded I think I (at least sort of) disagree with your comment, in particular:
Second, I don’t think the pattern can be deliberately changed except by creating a sense of security that starts out false but becomes true once enough people have it.
I don’t think this is the mechanism by which anyone becomes safe. I think the sense of security doesn’t add up to “actual safety” even if 100% of the people have it.
I should’ve been more clear—by safety I meant safety of making a (true) accusation, rather than direct safety from actual abuse. I think the latter can only follow from the former.
I don’t think your original comment actually contributes to understanding them – I’ve talked to you enough to have some idea what you meant, but it’s buried beneath layers of different frames and inferential distance, which adds up to:
a) the comment mostly just getting parsed ‘yay abuse’ rather than anything nuanced or important.
b) sort of a drive-by change-in-topic/frame/hammering-on-pet-issue. (i.e. sort of like if we periodically have discussion of videogames, and someone keeps jumping in to say ‘have you considered that videogames are superstimulus lotus eating?’ And maybe they are, and maybe it’s important to talk about, but that doesn’t mean it’s a productive dynamic to keep bringing them up in random threads)
I do think there’s an important thing you’re actually trying to say, and you’re welcome to say it either in your own top level posts (that actually spell out the inferential distance and make it clear what your actual goals are), or in the comments of people who opt into it. (I have no idea of Sarah’s take on that and whether she’d consider this subthread off-topic or on-topic).
But I think making comments like this whenever the topic veers in the direction of abuse or mental illness makes it harder, not easier, to talk seriously about it. And, yes, is generally uncomfortable and makes the site a place people are less excited to hang out, and that is something that actually matters.
I haven’t chatted with other moderators about this yet and haven’t formed an official longterm stance on this, but am leaning towards deleting comments similar to the initial downvoted one except on threads where the OP author has opted into it.
I’ve talked to you enough to have some idea what you meant, but it’s buried beneath layers of different frames and inferential distance
FWIW, I don’t think that I’ve talked to ialdabaoth a huge amount, but the comment seemed pretty comprehensible to me. The grammar isn’t very complicated, and all the words are pretty common and mean what they usually mean*. Maybe I’m just spoiled by reading a lot of Robin Hanson? I sort of agree that point (b) applies and is sort of annoying.
*except maybe ‘abuse’, which is one that I’ve never been super clear on what exactly people mean by it, but that’s a word that’s basically unavoidable here. [I’m not very interested in people explaining it to me in this thread]
I have more thoughts (short answer: yeah, I think reading and internalizing Hanson is a quite reasonable way to bridge most of the inferential distance, although not all of it). Will respond in more detail later.
I’ll be moving this subthread to meta, but I’m taking this opportunity to force myself to actually build a “move subthread to meta” tool instead of doing it manually.
1. It’s not a change in topic. It’s an explicit focus on the topic-in-question, and an attempt to explain—in a way that people’s guts will *get* - WHY the current equilibrium is preferred to the one being proposed by the author.
2. At no point does it even connotationally say “yay abuse”. It DOES connotationally call out humans-as-a-process for consistently performing actions that signal “yay abuse”, however. Connotationally saying “yay abuse” would have been phrased very differently, and I think we all know that.
3. Controversiality has less to do with opt-in/opt-out, and more to do with… who we think the connotations are making look bad. I’d really like that to stop.
… an attempt to explain—in a way that people’s guts will get—WHY the current equilibrium is preferred to the one being proposed by the author.
Though it’s likely that what you said is true in some cases, if you think that the model you propose is of comparable explanatory importance to what gwern said, then you’re simply mistaken—so framing your point as “I’m just explaining it in a way people will get” is not appropriate.
From things you’ve written before I suspect the point you were intending to make is “in practice, people will act in this shitty way because it’s advantageous to them”. But the actual words you wrote—and the place you put the comment—clearly denote “we should act in this shitty way out of self-interest”. I more or less agree with the first thing and disagree strenuously with the latter. (And I really hate the thing you do where you conflate is and ought on things like this.)
Didn’t downvote, but I am confused about what point you were trying to make.
Did you mean that we don’t gain anything from a short-term, selfish perspective? In which case, of course—who’s advocating believing victims for personal gain?
Or did you mean that in the aggregate, overall, as a society, we’re not better off believing and defending true claims of abuse? In which case, that seems questionable at best.
If I take “gain anything” literally, then it seems clearly wrong. At the very least we gain knowledge by believing true claims.
And if I take “gain anything” to mean, “are better off overall”, then I’m still a bit skeptical. For example, in the short run it only hurts me to learn that farm animals suffer. But in the long run, that’s something I want to know about and hope that we could ultimately fix. The situation seems similar with abuse of humans.
What am I missing—do you disagree with any of the above? Are we just using words differently?
Just to clarify: am I being downvoted for being factually wrong, or for being uncomfortable?
It’s worse than “being uncomfortable.” The denotation of your comment isn’t incorrect, but it degrades the always fragile common knowledge that we will coordinate to resist abusers. If it’s already the case that “we” gain advantages by openly letting abusers run unchecked, then those of “us” who can should consider abandoning being part of this “we” and attempting to join healthier social groups.
Further-semi-aside: “common knowledge that we will coordinate to resist abusers” is actively bad and dangerous to victims if it isn’t true. If we won’t coordinate to resist abusers, making that fact (/ a model of when we will or won’t) common knowledge is doing good in the short run by not creating a false sense of security, and in the long run by allowing the pattern to be deliberately changed.
I don’t think it’s that simple. First, if abusers and victims exist then the situation just is actively dangerous. Hypocrisy is unavoidable but it’s less bad if non-abusers can operate openly and abusers need to keep secrets than vice versa. Second, I don’t think the pattern can be deliberately changed except by creating a sense of security that starts out false but becomes true once enough people have it.
The thing ialdabaoth and Nick are both pointing towards is something like ’the capacity to actually point out abuse (or any kind of unethical conduct) when someone you respect is involved (or someone all your friends respect) is really hard. It is something that requires practice, awareness of your self, and awareness of how the web of social connections works, and often literal sacrifice.
And it’s something that is very easy to tell a story about how you’d totally speak out, or go to the cops or something. But if it turns out that your mom/dad/favorite-teacher/favorite-writer /favorite-startup-founder/boss-that-is-paying-your-salary/venture-capitalist-who-can-offer-you-money is doing something wrong, the overwhelming default course of action is to just fail at speaking out, and if all you have is a vague narrative that you’re a good person or that your community is good people, you will be woefully unprepared.
Of course, all of that is true. I’d go further and say there’s basically no way a vague narrative that you’re a good person would be enough. What I’m trying to say is that the fear of the consequences of speaking out should be balanced with the fear of the consequences of looking complicit if the truth comes out and you didn’t speak out. Talking about how advantageous it can be to ignore abuse, or how hard it is to speak out (and implicitly, how forgivable it would be) is tipping that scale in the wrong direction.
I do agree with that (As mentioned in my earlier comment, I still lean in the direction of deleting comments like the initial downvoted one in the future).
But as worded I think I (at least sort of) disagree with your comment, in particular:
I don’t think this is the mechanism by which anyone becomes safe. I think the sense of security doesn’t add up to “actual safety” even if 100% of the people have it.
I should’ve been more clear—by safety I meant safety of making a (true) accusation, rather than direct safety from actual abuse. I think the latter can only follow from the former.
Ah, I think that makes sense.
I don’t see how we can fight entropic systems without understanding them.
I don’t think your original comment actually contributes to understanding them – I’ve talked to you enough to have some idea what you meant, but it’s buried beneath layers of different frames and inferential distance, which adds up to:
a) the comment mostly just getting parsed ‘yay abuse’ rather than anything nuanced or important.
b) sort of a drive-by change-in-topic/frame/hammering-on-pet-issue. (i.e. sort of like if we periodically have discussion of videogames, and someone keeps jumping in to say ‘have you considered that videogames are superstimulus lotus eating?’ And maybe they are, and maybe it’s important to talk about, but that doesn’t mean it’s a productive dynamic to keep bringing them up in random threads)
I do think there’s an important thing you’re actually trying to say, and you’re welcome to say it either in your own top level posts (that actually spell out the inferential distance and make it clear what your actual goals are), or in the comments of people who opt into it. (I have no idea of Sarah’s take on that and whether she’d consider this subthread off-topic or on-topic).
But I think making comments like this whenever the topic veers in the direction of abuse or mental illness makes it harder, not easier, to talk seriously about it. And, yes, is generally uncomfortable and makes the site a place people are less excited to hang out, and that is something that actually matters.
I haven’t chatted with other moderators about this yet and haven’t formed an official longterm stance on this, but am leaning towards deleting comments similar to the initial downvoted one except on threads where the OP author has opted into it.
FWIW, I don’t think that I’ve talked to ialdabaoth a huge amount, but the comment seemed pretty comprehensible to me. The grammar isn’t very complicated, and all the words are pretty common and mean what they usually mean*. Maybe I’m just spoiled by reading a lot of Robin Hanson? I sort of agree that point (b) applies and is sort of annoying.
*except maybe ‘abuse’, which is one that I’ve never been super clear on what exactly people mean by it, but that’s a word that’s basically unavoidable here. [I’m not very interested in people explaining it to me in this thread]
I have more thoughts (short answer: yeah, I think reading and internalizing Hanson is a quite reasonable way to bridge most of the inferential distance, although not all of it). Will respond in more detail later.
I’ll be moving this subthread to meta, but I’m taking this opportunity to force myself to actually build a “move subthread to meta” tool instead of doing it manually.
I know the mod team have been busy in the past while, but I’d like to remind you of this.
Lol, thanks. I certainly did not end up getting around to this on the day I was planning to.
1. It’s not a change in topic. It’s an explicit focus on the topic-in-question, and an attempt to explain—in a way that people’s guts will *get* - WHY the current equilibrium is preferred to the one being proposed by the author.
2. At no point does it even connotationally say “yay abuse”. It DOES connotationally call out humans-as-a-process for consistently performing actions that signal “yay abuse”, however. Connotationally saying “yay abuse” would have been phrased very differently, and I think we all know that.
3. Controversiality has less to do with opt-in/opt-out, and more to do with… who we think the connotations are making look bad. I’d really like that to stop.
Though it’s likely that what you said is true in some cases, if you think that the model you propose is of comparable explanatory importance to what gwern said, then you’re simply mistaken—so framing your point as “I’m just explaining it in a way people will get” is not appropriate.
Even though it had equally suspect connotation?
What difference does that make…?
It hilights problematic assumptions that lead to problematic voting patterns.
Aaaaand now we really ARE meta.
That has nothing to do with what I said.
I disagree. How do we resolve who’s right, within the current trust environment?
From things you’ve written before I suspect the point you were intending to make is “in practice, people will act in this shitty way because it’s advantageous to them”. But the actual words you wrote—and the place you put the comment—clearly denote “we should act in this shitty way out of self-interest”. I more or less agree with the first thing and disagree strenuously with the latter. (And I really hate the thing you do where you conflate is and ought on things like this.)
Guess: Antisocial opinion. Potentially promoting/endorsing causing suffering to the “victim”.
The promotion is already happening in revealed preference, to lethal consequence. I’m just keeping score.
Didn’t downvote, but I am confused about what point you were trying to make.
Did you mean that we don’t gain anything from a short-term, selfish perspective? In which case, of course—who’s advocating believing victims for personal gain?
Or did you mean that in the aggregate, overall, as a society, we’re not better off believing and defending true claims of abuse? In which case, that seems questionable at best.
If I take “gain anything” literally, then it seems clearly wrong. At the very least we gain knowledge by believing true claims.
And if I take “gain anything” to mean, “are better off overall”, then I’m still a bit skeptical. For example, in the short run it only hurts me to learn that farm animals suffer. But in the long run, that’s something I want to know about and hope that we could ultimately fix. The situation seems similar with abuse of humans.
What am I missing—do you disagree with any of the above? Are we just using words differently?