So first of all, I think the dynamics of surrounding offense are tripartite. You have the the party who said something offensive, the party who gets offended, and the party who judges the others involved based on the remark. Furthermore, the reason why simulacra=bad in general is because the underlying truth is irrelevant. Without extra social machinery, there’s no way to distinguish between valid criticism and slander. Offense and slander are both symmetric weapons.
This might be another difference of personalities...you can try to come up with a different set of norms that solves the problem. But that can’t be Crocker’s rules, at least it can’t be only Crocker’s rules.
I think that’s a big part of it. Especially IRL, I’ve taken quite a few steps over the course of years to mitigate the trust issues you bring up in the first place, and I rely on social circles with norms that mitigate the downsides of Crocker’s rules. A good combination of integrity+documentation+choice of allies makes it difficult to criticize someone legitimately. To an extent, I try to make my actions align with the values of the people I associate myself with, I keep good records of what I do, and I check that the people I need either put effort into forming accurate beliefs or won’t judge me regardless of how they see me. Then when criticism is levelled against myself and or my group, I can usually challenge it by encouraging relevant third parties to look more closely at the underlying reality, usually by directly arguing against what was stated. That way I can ward off a lot of criticism without compromising as much on truth seeking, provided there isn’t a sea change in the values of my peers. This has the added benefit that it allows me and my peers to hold each other accountable to take actions that promote each others values.
The other thing I’m doing that is both far easier to pull off and way more effective, is just to be anonymous. When the judging party can’t retaliate because they don’t know you IRL and the people calling the shots on the site respect privacy and have very permissive posting norms, who cares what people say about you? You can take and dish out all the criticism you want and the only consequence is that you’ll need to sort through the crap to find the constructive/actionable/accurate stuff. (Although crap criticism can easily be a serious problem in and of itself.)
So first of all, I think the dynamics of surrounding offense are tripartite. You have the the party who said something offensive, the party who gets offended, and the party who judges the others involved based on the remark. Furthermore, the reason why simulacra=bad in general is because the underlying truth is irrelevant. Without extra social machinery, there’s no way to distinguish between valid criticism and slander. Offense and slander are both symmetric weapons.
I think that’s a big part of it. Especially IRL, I’ve taken quite a few steps over the course of years to mitigate the trust issues you bring up in the first place, and I rely on social circles with norms that mitigate the downsides of Crocker’s rules. A good combination of integrity+documentation+choice of allies makes it difficult to criticize someone legitimately. To an extent, I try to make my actions align with the values of the people I associate myself with, I keep good records of what I do, and I check that the people I need either put effort into forming accurate beliefs or won’t judge me regardless of how they see me. Then when criticism is levelled against myself and or my group, I can usually challenge it by encouraging relevant third parties to look more closely at the underlying reality, usually by directly arguing against what was stated. That way I can ward off a lot of criticism without compromising as much on truth seeking, provided there isn’t a sea change in the values of my peers. This has the added benefit that it allows me and my peers to hold each other accountable to take actions that promote each others values.
The other thing I’m doing that is both far easier to pull off and way more effective, is just to be anonymous. When the judging party can’t retaliate because they don’t know you IRL and the people calling the shots on the site respect privacy and have very permissive posting norms, who cares what people say about you? You can take and dish out all the criticism you want and the only consequence is that you’ll need to sort through the crap to find the constructive/actionable/accurate stuff. (Although crap criticism can easily be a serious problem in and of itself.)