how can create a Friendly AI, when one can’t even create a friendly discussion board?
Different cultures have different notion of what’s friendly behavior. If you behave in a way that’s friendly behavior in the US in a village in Namibia, you are likely to do things that offend them and bring you into interactions that don’t feel good even if the people in the village follow the notions of what friendly Namibian behavior happens to be.
That’s roughly what happens here. You expect certain cultural customs to hold that you probably learned in the Social Justice warrior scene. Those customs don’t hold in this community and that’s why you behave in a way that get’s you into this conflict where people vote down your posts a lot.
That doesn’t mean that gwern’s behavior is optimal and can’t be improved, but part of being friendly usually means “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”
Well, I should seriously consider this point of view, try to figure out where this other person is coming from, and assume that they have good reason for believing it, even if it’s not true.
As far as the IQ debate goes, of course a lot of people have a good reason for being critical of IQ. IQ suggests that people are somehow unequal and many people consider that to be unfair. Gwern isn’t oblivious of that fact. He’s rather overly optimistic about the prospect of convincing people by pointing them to the research.
Now, as for the statement that you quoted, is it uncivil to point out someone else’s incivility?
Yes. It raises the emotional tension of the discussion in a way that not beneficial.
What is wrong with saying “If you can’t act like a rationalist, then I’m going to conclude you’re not a rationalist”?
A lot. To take the most obvious thing: You presume that gwern cares about whether you consider him to be a rationalist. In the Social Justice community people care about whether other people see them as a “real feminist”. We don’t have something similar on LW. I don’t care how other people on LW mentally label me. I care whether or not other people interact with me in a way that provides utility to me. On LW we are wary of labels. Robin Hanson lately even wrote a post against thinking of yourself as a rationalist.
We don’t use labels in a way to press obligations on other people and expect the people to fulfill the obligations to be worthy of the label. That a technique used in the Social Justice world but we don’t use it. It reduces the ability of other people to express themselves authentically and do what produces overall utility.
Keep in mind, gwern said that he believed that I was being dishonest in claiming not to understand what he said. He basically called me a liar. You want to call me wrong, fine. I’m quite willing to accept the possibility that I’m wrong. But calling me a LIAR?
To gwern your posts suggested that you lack the mediocre amount of intelligence necessary to see A → B or you do have the intelligence and pretend to not see A → B to mess with him. That means the in his interpretation of the situation the two options are that you are either a idiot for failing to have the amount of intelligence to see A → B or a troll for pretending to fail to see it.
That was gwern’s honest understanding of the situation and he expressed it. He didn’t call you a idiot or troll to make you feel bad but because those are the terms that accurately describe the situation he perceived to exist.
Of course being an idiot in the sense of having a low IQ likely isn’t the cause of you not thinking A → B. It’s more likely inferential distance given a different cultural background.
Whenever you run a test and that test produces a number that number is a metric for what the test measures. That’s a core basis on talking about measurements. Debating that fact is like debating whether 1+1=2. If you complain that someone who says 1+1=2 isn’t critically investigating his assumptions when you ask him why he thinks that 1+1=2, you are making demands that the person can perceive as unreasonable. In this case gwern is reacting in a way to those demands that’s doesn’t reflect a wise choice of words on his part.
On the other hand gwern has no obligation with spending the time to make an in depth explanation of why 1+1=2. The proper way to deal with such a discussion would have been for him to bow out.
Different cultures have different notion of what’s friendly behavior.
Yes. This is the point. If a there is a project to build a “Friendly” AI by a community that sees nothing wrong with gwern’s behavior, then that is not a FAI that I want built.
You expect certain cultural customs to hold that you probably learned in the Social Justice warrior scene. Those customs don’t hold in this community and that’s why you behave in a way that get’s you into this conflict where people vote down your posts a lot.
I feel that you are not listening to what I am saying. I think that I was quite clear in saying that gwern’s behavior is contrary to what I consider to be entailed by the values that this community purports to have. A valid response to that is to claim that I have misunderstood what values this community purports to have. Another valid response is to say that gwern’s behavior does not, in fact, violate those values. Saying that I am simply expecting people to follow a particular set of norms because those are the norms that have been inculcated in me from another community is not a valid response.
but part of being friendly usually means “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”
And apparently, part of doing as the Romans do is not starting threads asking what the Romans do. Because that’s “passive aggressive”.
Well, I should seriously consider this point of view, try to figure out where this other person is coming from, and assume that they have good reason for believing it, even if it’s not true.
As far as the IQ debate goes, of course a lot of people have a good reason for being critical of IQ. IQ suggests that people are somehow unequal and many people consider that to be unfair. Gwern isn’t oblivious of that fact. He’s rather overly optimistic about the prospect of convincing people by pointing them to the research.
It is quite unclear to me how you think that is a response to what you quoted.
Now, as for the statement that you quoted, is it uncivil to point out someone else’s incivility?
Yes. It raises the emotional tension of the discussion in a way that not beneficial.
You have said that “sometimes” it’s beneficial to call someone a liar. Yet you say that calling someone’s behavior uncivil is not beneficial. And since you’re saying that my behavior is uncivil, it follows that your behavior is also uncivil.
I don’t see why it is not beneficial to mention when I am taking offense at something that someone said, and giving them an opportunity to correct it.
What is wrong with saying “If you can’t act like a rationalist, then I’m going to conclude you’re not a rationalist”?
A lot. To take the most obvious thing: You presume that gwern cares about whether you consider him to be a rationalist.
That is not an unreasonable inference, but I did not say that. Rather, I explained why I felt that gwern was not being rational, and provided an opportunity for gwern, if he so chose, to address that. Again, I note that this is an area where it is difficult to communicate an idea without unwanted implicatures. If I say “If you want me to respect you as a rationalist”, people will take that as me arrogantly expecting that to be important to them. But that’s not what I’m saying. I’m simply saying that I am finding a conclusion to be warranted from their words, and I am giving them an opportunity to correct that if they so choose. Whether it is important enough for them to correct it is completely up to them.
In the Social Justice community people care about whether other people see them as a “real feminist”. We don’t have something similar on LW.
Sure we do. The karma system exists purely to communicate how other posters feel about you.
I think that, generally speaking, it’s rude to downvote someone without them knowing why you’re downvoting them, and giving them an opportunity to correct it. I downvoted gwern, and I told him why. That’s not “presuming” that gwern cares that I am downvoting him. If gwern doesn’t care about my downvotes, then he can ignore my post. It’s a bit odd that you’re twisting my giving gwern an explanation of my downvotes into some sort of presumptive act. If my exlpaining the downvotes is presumptive, then surely the downvotes themselves are presumptive. So, are you saying that every time someone downvotes a post, they are presuming that the other person cares about their opinion?
I don’t care how other people on LW mentally label me. I care whether or not other people interact with me in a way that provides utility to me
:sigh:
This getting rather tiresome.
If you care about how people interact with you, how can you possibly not care how people label you? Gwern’s behavior was increasing my inclination to interact with him in a way that would likely provide less utility. I explained to gwern what this behavior was, and why it was having that effect. And you’re objecting to that based on how I phrased it. Suppose, instead of saying “”If you can’t have a calm, rational, and civil conversation about this, then I can only conclude that it you are not a rationalist.”, I had said “”If you can’t have a calm, rational, and civil conversation about this, then I will modify my behavior towards you in a manner likely to result in less utility towards you”. Would that have avoided your opprobrium?
We don’t use labels in a way to press obligations on other people and expect the people to fulfill the obligations to be worthy of the label.
That’s not what I was was doing.
To gwern your posts suggested that you lack the mediocre amount of intelligence necessary to see A → B or you do have the intelligence and pretend to not see A → B to mess with him. That means the in his interpretation of the situation the two options are that you are either a idiot for failing to have the amount of intelligence to see A → B or a troll for pretending to fail to see it.
To what does “A->B” refer to? Given that what I was confused about was that gwern said that the threat was a bluff, and then said that he had not said that, a more appropriate summary would be “A → ~A”. Gwern claimed that he thought his post was clear. Assuming that he wasn’t lying, there are at least THREE explanations for why I was claiming to not understand it. One is that I am an idiot. Another is I was lying. And the third is … it actually was not clear. The fact that gwern didn’t even CONSIDER that possibility shows him to be an arrogant asshole. As I said, I got a third party to confirm that it was confusing. I was willing to consider the possibility that I was at fault. But gwern was not.
Is there anyone who thinks the post makes sense? And if so, are they willing to explain it?
He didn’t call you a idiot or troll to make you feel bad but because those are the terms that accurately describe the situation he perceived to exist.
And what is the point of describing your hypotheses, if you have already foreclosed any possibility of updating away from it? When I described my belief that gwern was being anti-rational, I was doing so to provide him an opportunity to falsify the hypothesis.
It’s more likely inferential distance given a different cultural background.
Like, what? Acquiring an idiolect that agrees with the acrolect on the meaning of the word “which”? That’s the only hypothesis I can come up with.
Whenever you run a test and that test produces a number that number is a metric for what the test measures. That’s a core basis on talking about measurements. Debating that fact is like debating whether 1+1=2.
And apparently, part of doing as the Romans do is not starting threads asking what the Romans do. Because that’s “passive aggressive”.
You started this thread with the title “Inquiry into community norms” yet you don’t seem to be interested in learning what the community norms happen to be but want to argue that they are simply wrong and should be replaced what you are used to.
Pretending to do one thing while actually trying to do the other is what being passive aggressive is about.
You have said that “sometimes” it’s beneficial to call someone a liar. Yet you say that calling someone’s behavior uncivil is not beneficial. And since you’re saying that my behavior is uncivil, it follows that your behavior is also uncivil.
I don’t have any general rules about calling people uncivil or liars but look at specific cases. You seem to search for a general rule that people shouldn’t call others uncivil or liars, and I don’t believe in such rules.
Again, as I argue in this post I don’t put much value on whether or not you label me behavior as uncivil.
In this case you opened a thread with the title “Inquiry into community norms” and I answer by pointing you towards how your own behavior differs from standard community norms. For that goal it’s useful to use certain labels to be able to communicate clearly.
If you care about how people interact with you, how can you possibly not care how people label you? Gwern’s behavior was increasing my inclination to interact with him in a way that would likely provide less utility.
You reacted to it in a way that isn’t friendly and that doesn’t provide utility. While Gwern might share some responsibility for that, you share the core responsibility for your behavior. At that point you could have simply ended the discussion to avoid anyone of you wasting further time with it. You could have spend your time elsewhere with more utility.
“If you can’t have a calm, rational, and civil conversation about this, then I will modify my behavior towards you in a manner likely to result in less utility towards you”
No. Rather “If you can’t have a calm, rational, and civil conversation about this, then I will will see no utility in continuing to interact with you”. It’s not about punishing other people. It’s about acting in your own self interest not to engage in low value discussions that don’t bring you utility.
And what is the point of describing your hypotheses, if you have already foreclosed any possibility of updating away from it?
There are many cases where it makes sense to explain someone an idea that’s accepted scientific knowledge to help spread scientific knowledge. Most professors who teach physics 101 don’t update their beliefs about physics because of the interaction with their students. They update their beliefs about physics when talking with colleagues that are well past physics 101.
Just to be clear, I’m not advocating that you should do something different. I have no problem with cultural diversity. On the other hand if you want that people treat you in a certain way, than it could be beneficial for you to interact with them in a way that’s conductive towards your goals.
You started this thread with the title “Inquiry into community norms” yet you don’t seem to be interested in learning what the community norms happen to be but want to argue that they are simply wrong and should be replaced what you are used to.
I think that this is a blatant misrepresentation of my position, and I think that I have corrected you on multiple occasions. I am getting tired of repeating myself.
I don’t have any general rules about calling people uncivil or liars but look at specific cases. You seem to search for a general rule that people shouldn’t call others uncivil or liars, and I don’t believe in such rules.
…
In this case you opened a thread with the title “Inquiry into community norms” and I answer by pointing you towards how your own behavior differs from standard community norms
You simply quoted a statement of mine. You didn’t identify any characteristics that made it uncivil. The most salient characteristic that I saw was that it was an accusation of incivility. I asked whether you were indeed saying that this was what was uncivil about it, and you said yes. You didn’t say “Yes in this case”. You said “Yes”. And now you’re trying to pretend that the responsibility lies entirely on my shoulders for misunderstanding you.
For that goal it’s useful to use certain labels to be able to communicate clearly.
I feel that you are, however, being rather uncharitable towards me using certain labels to be able to communicate clearly.
It’s not about punishing other people. It’s about acting in your own self interest not to engage in low value discussions that don’t bring you utility.
I reserve the right to identify aspects of gwern’s future posts that I consider to be in error. And in any such interactions, I will not be assuming that gwern is amenable to rational discussion. This is not necessarily punishment, it is consequences.
I think that this is a blatant misrepresentation of my position,
Do you claim that you didn’t make this thread to argue that gwern is wrong?
and I think that I have corrected you on multiple occasions.
And I correct you ;) My sentence describes your behavior. If you wear a green shirt and tell every one it’s blue that doesn’t mean the shirt actually is blue. If you want you can think about why other people might see your shirt as green but of course you aren’t obliged to do so. Learning to understand other people just makes life easier. Everybody has the freedom to suffer as much as they want.
I feel that you are, however, being rather uncharitable towards me using certain labels to be able to communicate clearly.
You both complain that I don’t make it easy for you to understand me and you claim that I use language that’s too direct. You can’t have both.
The most salient characteristic that I saw was that it was an accusation of incivility. I asked whether you were indeed saying that this was what was uncivil about it, and you said yes.
You confuse labeling with obligations. I’m perfectly capable of identifying someone’s behavior as rude or uncivil without claiming that they have an obligation to act otherwise.
I also didn’t simply say “Yes” I wrote quite a long paragraph to speak about the sentence and it doesn’t boil down to calling other people uncivil being the primary factor.
I reserve the right to identify aspects of gwern’s future posts that I consider to be in error.
You again switch into a notion of “rights” as if “rights” would matter in this context. This just illustrates that you for some reason don’t get very far in understanding what I’m arguing.
I’m perfectly capable of identifying someone’s behavior as rude or uncivil without claiming that they have an obligation to act otherwise.
This applies somewhat to both sides here, but I’m reminded of Arbcom on Wikipedia. Arbcom has a rule which says that Arbcom cannot make policy.
The result: most Arbcom discussions end up as people trying to get Arbcom to make policy, and Arbcom making policy, only specially phrased so as to sound like nobody is making policy or trying to do so.
Calling someone rude is a defacto claim that they have an obligation not to be so. You can rephrase it as “I’m not claiming they have an obligation not to be rude, I’m just claiming it’s in their own self-interest”, but you end up saying exactly the same things you would say if you claimed they had an obligation, just with extra clauses tacked onto your sentences to rephrase everything in terms of self-interest.
Calling someone rude is a defacto claim that they have an obligation not to be so.
No.
If I say that it’s not in your own self interest to not bang your head against the wall I’m not saying that I forbid you from banging your head against the wall. I’m not creating an obligation for the other person. If the like getting their head hurt they can continue banging their head against the wall and I don’t want to take that freedom away from them.
I follow the moral principle of giving people information about how they are hurting themselves, I’m not forbidding them from hurting themselves.
I have also no problem with someone making an expected utility analysis and finding that being rude is having the most utility to pursue that course of action. In the case of rudeness ends can completely justify means.
Furthermore you ignore a bunch of emotional effects that come along with putting obligations on other people. It makes you feel bad when they don’t follow your dictates. If someone bangs their hand against the wall after I told him that it’s not in his self interest and he continues, I might feel pity but not anger.
Getting rid of shoulds is one of the CBT exercises of identifying distorted thinking that David Burns described in the Feeling Good Handbook. It’s not just about changing around a few words.
You think that Alice should meet Bob and Alice. You feel bad and get angry at Alice. Then you want to be an asshole to Alice but you think you shouldn’t, so you suppress your anger. That’s a strategy you can use to live your life and it can make you depressed.
If you would get rid of the “should’s” in the first place, then you wouldn’t feel bad about the situation.
But of course you are free to bang your head against the wall and suffer. If I want to be cynic I can add that sometimes it needs a lot of suffering till people see that there a different way that doesn’t involve suffering. Maybe a person hasn’t suffered enough from banging their head against the wall and they still need a few rounds till their head hurts enough that they will stop. It’s their issue not mine.
It might be true that most people you interact with want to put an obligation on the other person to change their behavior when they use the word “rude”.
In my case I do separate factual descriptions of behavior from obligations.
Nothing I said in this discussion comes from a place of enforcing some norm.
At skeptic.stackexchange I do engage in telling people to stick to norms and vote for closing of questions that I consider to a norm violation. I’m engaging in this conversation in a different spirit.
I don’t think people who feel a desire to kill another person can go ahead to make a learning experience. With rudeness I don’t have any issue if people who feel that desire act on it and learn their lessons.
People generally distinguish between such cases as “You shoplifted, and now there will be negative consequences” and “You failed to pay protection money to the mob, and now there will negative consequences”. You can say that there is no essential difference between them, and in both cases you feel quite comfortable with telling the person in question that their actions are not in their self interest, but most people accept the idea that there are standards for behavior other than mere self-interest. Furthermore, if you merely intended to state that my behavior would have negative consequences, then you could have said so. There are plenty of behaviors that result in negative consequences, that are not rude. By applying the word “rude” to my behavior, you were asserting some attribute beyond merely negative consequences, and that attribute is generally considered to be a moral one.
Do you claim that you didn’t make this thread to argue that gwern is wrong?
Yes.
And I correct you ;) My sentence describes your behavior.
No, it described what you believe my internal mental state to be. You assert that you know better than I what that state is, yet you give no argument in support of that position.
You both complain that I don’t make it easy for you to understand me and you claim that I use language that’s too direct.
It would help if you would specify what statement of mine that you’re talking about.
You confuse labeling with obligations. I’m perfectly capable of identifying someone’s behavior as rude or uncivil without claiming that they have an obligation to act otherwise.
I really feel like you are not arguing in good faith. The quote you responded to made no mention of obligations. I feel like you’re arguing in circles, saying that my behavior is rude, but then when I argue that the same logic condemns your actions as rude, you then start with this “I don’t believe in shoulds” stuff.
I also didn’t simply say “Yes” I wrote quite a long paragraph to speak about the sentence and it doesn’t boil down to calling other people uncivil being the primary factor.
[me]Now, as for the statement that you quoted, is it uncivil to point out someone else’s incivility?
[you]Yes. It raises the emotional tension of the discussion in a way that not beneficial.
That’s the entirety of your response to my question. It is not “a long paragraph”, and it does boil down to calling other people uncivil being the primary factor.
Different cultures have different notion of what’s friendly behavior. If you behave in a way that’s friendly behavior in the US in a village in Namibia, you are likely to do things that offend them and bring you into interactions that don’t feel good even if the people in the village follow the notions of what friendly Namibian behavior happens to be.
That’s roughly what happens here. You expect certain cultural customs to hold that you probably learned in the Social Justice warrior scene. Those customs don’t hold in this community and that’s why you behave in a way that get’s you into this conflict where people vote down your posts a lot.
That doesn’t mean that gwern’s behavior is optimal and can’t be improved, but part of being friendly usually means “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”
As far as the IQ debate goes, of course a lot of people have a good reason for being critical of IQ. IQ suggests that people are somehow unequal and many people consider that to be unfair. Gwern isn’t oblivious of that fact. He’s rather overly optimistic about the prospect of convincing people by pointing them to the research.
Yes. It raises the emotional tension of the discussion in a way that not beneficial.
A lot. To take the most obvious thing: You presume that gwern cares about whether you consider him to be a rationalist. In the Social Justice community people care about whether other people see them as a “real feminist”. We don’t have something similar on LW. I don’t care how other people on LW mentally label me. I care whether or not other people interact with me in a way that provides utility to me. On LW we are wary of labels. Robin Hanson lately even wrote a post against thinking of yourself as a rationalist.
We don’t use labels in a way to press obligations on other people and expect the people to fulfill the obligations to be worthy of the label. That a technique used in the Social Justice world but we don’t use it. It reduces the ability of other people to express themselves authentically and do what produces overall utility.
To gwern your posts suggested that you lack the mediocre amount of intelligence necessary to see A → B or you do have the intelligence and pretend to not see A → B to mess with him. That means the in his interpretation of the situation the two options are that you are either a idiot for failing to have the amount of intelligence to see A → B or a troll for pretending to fail to see it.
That was gwern’s honest understanding of the situation and he expressed it. He didn’t call you a idiot or troll to make you feel bad but because those are the terms that accurately describe the situation he perceived to exist.
Of course being an idiot in the sense of having a low IQ likely isn’t the cause of you not thinking A → B. It’s more likely inferential distance given a different cultural background.
Whenever you run a test and that test produces a number that number is a metric for what the test measures. That’s a core basis on talking about measurements. Debating that fact is like debating whether 1+1=2. If you complain that someone who says 1+1=2 isn’t critically investigating his assumptions when you ask him why he thinks that 1+1=2, you are making demands that the person can perceive as unreasonable. In this case gwern is reacting in a way to those demands that’s doesn’t reflect a wise choice of words on his part.
On the other hand gwern has no obligation with spending the time to make an in depth explanation of why 1+1=2. The proper way to deal with such a discussion would have been for him to bow out.
Yes. This is the point. If a there is a project to build a “Friendly” AI by a community that sees nothing wrong with gwern’s behavior, then that is not a FAI that I want built.
I feel that you are not listening to what I am saying. I think that I was quite clear in saying that gwern’s behavior is contrary to what I consider to be entailed by the values that this community purports to have. A valid response to that is to claim that I have misunderstood what values this community purports to have. Another valid response is to say that gwern’s behavior does not, in fact, violate those values. Saying that I am simply expecting people to follow a particular set of norms because those are the norms that have been inculcated in me from another community is not a valid response.
And apparently, part of doing as the Romans do is not starting threads asking what the Romans do. Because that’s “passive aggressive”.
It is quite unclear to me how you think that is a response to what you quoted.
You have said that “sometimes” it’s beneficial to call someone a liar. Yet you say that calling someone’s behavior uncivil is not beneficial. And since you’re saying that my behavior is uncivil, it follows that your behavior is also uncivil.
I don’t see why it is not beneficial to mention when I am taking offense at something that someone said, and giving them an opportunity to correct it.
That is not an unreasonable inference, but I did not say that. Rather, I explained why I felt that gwern was not being rational, and provided an opportunity for gwern, if he so chose, to address that. Again, I note that this is an area where it is difficult to communicate an idea without unwanted implicatures. If I say “If you want me to respect you as a rationalist”, people will take that as me arrogantly expecting that to be important to them. But that’s not what I’m saying. I’m simply saying that I am finding a conclusion to be warranted from their words, and I am giving them an opportunity to correct that if they so choose. Whether it is important enough for them to correct it is completely up to them.
Sure we do. The karma system exists purely to communicate how other posters feel about you.
I think that, generally speaking, it’s rude to downvote someone without them knowing why you’re downvoting them, and giving them an opportunity to correct it. I downvoted gwern, and I told him why. That’s not “presuming” that gwern cares that I am downvoting him. If gwern doesn’t care about my downvotes, then he can ignore my post. It’s a bit odd that you’re twisting my giving gwern an explanation of my downvotes into some sort of presumptive act. If my exlpaining the downvotes is presumptive, then surely the downvotes themselves are presumptive. So, are you saying that every time someone downvotes a post, they are presuming that the other person cares about their opinion?
:sigh:
This getting rather tiresome.
If you care about how people interact with you, how can you possibly not care how people label you? Gwern’s behavior was increasing my inclination to interact with him in a way that would likely provide less utility. I explained to gwern what this behavior was, and why it was having that effect. And you’re objecting to that based on how I phrased it. Suppose, instead of saying “”If you can’t have a calm, rational, and civil conversation about this, then I can only conclude that it you are not a rationalist.”, I had said “”If you can’t have a calm, rational, and civil conversation about this, then I will modify my behavior towards you in a manner likely to result in less utility towards you”. Would that have avoided your opprobrium?
That’s not what I was was doing.
To what does “A->B” refer to? Given that what I was confused about was that gwern said that the threat was a bluff, and then said that he had not said that, a more appropriate summary would be “A → ~A”. Gwern claimed that he thought his post was clear. Assuming that he wasn’t lying, there are at least THREE explanations for why I was claiming to not understand it. One is that I am an idiot. Another is I was lying. And the third is … it actually was not clear. The fact that gwern didn’t even CONSIDER that possibility shows him to be an arrogant asshole. As I said, I got a third party to confirm that it was confusing. I was willing to consider the possibility that I was at fault. But gwern was not.
Is there anyone who thinks the post makes sense? And if so, are they willing to explain it?
And what is the point of describing your hypotheses, if you have already foreclosed any possibility of updating away from it? When I described my belief that gwern was being anti-rational, I was doing so to provide him an opportunity to falsify the hypothesis.
Like, what? Acquiring an idiolect that agrees with the acrolect on the meaning of the word “which”? That’s the only hypothesis I can come up with.
But I never debated that.
You started this thread with the title “Inquiry into community norms” yet you don’t seem to be interested in learning what the community norms happen to be but want to argue that they are simply wrong and should be replaced what you are used to.
Pretending to do one thing while actually trying to do the other is what being passive aggressive is about.
I don’t have any general rules about calling people uncivil or liars but look at specific cases. You seem to search for a general rule that people shouldn’t call others uncivil or liars, and I don’t believe in such rules.
Again, as I argue in this post I don’t put much value on whether or not you label me behavior as uncivil.
In this case you opened a thread with the title “Inquiry into community norms” and I answer by pointing you towards how your own behavior differs from standard community norms. For that goal it’s useful to use certain labels to be able to communicate clearly.
You reacted to it in a way that isn’t friendly and that doesn’t provide utility. While Gwern might share some responsibility for that, you share the core responsibility for your behavior. At that point you could have simply ended the discussion to avoid anyone of you wasting further time with it. You could have spend your time elsewhere with more utility.
No. Rather “If you can’t have a calm, rational, and civil conversation about this, then I will will see no utility in continuing to interact with you”. It’s not about punishing other people. It’s about acting in your own self interest not to engage in low value discussions that don’t bring you utility.
There are many cases where it makes sense to explain someone an idea that’s accepted scientific knowledge to help spread scientific knowledge. Most professors who teach physics 101 don’t update their beliefs about physics because of the interaction with their students. They update their beliefs about physics when talking with colleagues that are well past physics 101.
Just to be clear, I’m not advocating that you should do something different. I have no problem with cultural diversity. On the other hand if you want that people treat you in a certain way, than it could be beneficial for you to interact with them in a way that’s conductive towards your goals.
I think that this is a blatant misrepresentation of my position, and I think that I have corrected you on multiple occasions. I am getting tired of repeating myself.
You simply quoted a statement of mine. You didn’t identify any characteristics that made it uncivil. The most salient characteristic that I saw was that it was an accusation of incivility. I asked whether you were indeed saying that this was what was uncivil about it, and you said yes. You didn’t say “Yes in this case”. You said “Yes”. And now you’re trying to pretend that the responsibility lies entirely on my shoulders for misunderstanding you.
I feel that you are, however, being rather uncharitable towards me using certain labels to be able to communicate clearly.
I reserve the right to identify aspects of gwern’s future posts that I consider to be in error. And in any such interactions, I will not be assuming that gwern is amenable to rational discussion. This is not necessarily punishment, it is consequences.
Do you claim that you didn’t make this thread to argue that gwern is wrong?
And I correct you ;) My sentence describes your behavior. If you wear a green shirt and tell every one it’s blue that doesn’t mean the shirt actually is blue. If you want you can think about why other people might see your shirt as green but of course you aren’t obliged to do so. Learning to understand other people just makes life easier. Everybody has the freedom to suffer as much as they want.
You both complain that I don’t make it easy for you to understand me and you claim that I use language that’s too direct. You can’t have both.
You confuse labeling with obligations. I’m perfectly capable of identifying someone’s behavior as rude or uncivil without claiming that they have an obligation to act otherwise.
I also didn’t simply say “Yes” I wrote quite a long paragraph to speak about the sentence and it doesn’t boil down to calling other people uncivil being the primary factor.
You again switch into a notion of “rights” as if “rights” would matter in this context. This just illustrates that you for some reason don’t get very far in understanding what I’m arguing.
This applies somewhat to both sides here, but I’m reminded of Arbcom on Wikipedia. Arbcom has a rule which says that Arbcom cannot make policy.
The result: most Arbcom discussions end up as people trying to get Arbcom to make policy, and Arbcom making policy, only specially phrased so as to sound like nobody is making policy or trying to do so.
Calling someone rude is a defacto claim that they have an obligation not to be so. You can rephrase it as “I’m not claiming they have an obligation not to be rude, I’m just claiming it’s in their own self-interest”, but you end up saying exactly the same things you would say if you claimed they had an obligation, just with extra clauses tacked onto your sentences to rephrase everything in terms of self-interest.
No.
If I say that it’s not in your own self interest to not bang your head against the wall I’m not saying that I forbid you from banging your head against the wall. I’m not creating an obligation for the other person. If the like getting their head hurt they can continue banging their head against the wall and I don’t want to take that freedom away from them.
I follow the moral principle of giving people information about how they are hurting themselves, I’m not forbidding them from hurting themselves.
I have also no problem with someone making an expected utility analysis and finding that being rude is having the most utility to pursue that course of action. In the case of rudeness ends can completely justify means.
Furthermore you ignore a bunch of emotional effects that come along with putting obligations on other people. It makes you feel bad when they don’t follow your dictates. If someone bangs their hand against the wall after I told him that it’s not in his self interest and he continues, I might feel pity but not anger.
Getting rid of shoulds is one of the CBT exercises of identifying distorted thinking that David Burns described in the Feeling Good Handbook. It’s not just about changing around a few words.
You think that Alice should meet Bob and Alice. You feel bad and get angry at Alice. Then you want to be an asshole to Alice but you think you shouldn’t, so you suppress your anger. That’s a strategy you can use to live your life and it can make you depressed.
If you would get rid of the “should’s” in the first place, then you wouldn’t feel bad about the situation. But of course you are free to bang your head against the wall and suffer. If I want to be cynic I can add that sometimes it needs a lot of suffering till people see that there a different way that doesn’t involve suffering. Maybe a person hasn’t suffered enough from banging their head against the wall and they still need a few rounds till their head hurts enough that they will stop. It’s their issue not mine.
“Is” and “Is, defacto” aren’t the same thing. Two things can be different, yet for practical purposes be the same.
It might be true that most people you interact with want to put an obligation on the other person to change their behavior when they use the word “rude”.
In my case I do separate factual descriptions of behavior from obligations. Nothing I said in this discussion comes from a place of enforcing some norm.
At skeptic.stackexchange I do engage in telling people to stick to norms and vote for closing of questions that I consider to a norm violation. I’m engaging in this conversation in a different spirit.
I don’t think people who feel a desire to kill another person can go ahead to make a learning experience. With rudeness I don’t have any issue if people who feel that desire act on it and learn their lessons.
People generally distinguish between such cases as “You shoplifted, and now there will be negative consequences” and “You failed to pay protection money to the mob, and now there will negative consequences”. You can say that there is no essential difference between them, and in both cases you feel quite comfortable with telling the person in question that their actions are not in their self interest, but most people accept the idea that there are standards for behavior other than mere self-interest. Furthermore, if you merely intended to state that my behavior would have negative consequences, then you could have said so. There are plenty of behaviors that result in negative consequences, that are not rude. By applying the word “rude” to my behavior, you were asserting some attribute beyond merely negative consequences, and that attribute is generally considered to be a moral one.
Yes.
No, it described what you believe my internal mental state to be. You assert that you know better than I what that state is, yet you give no argument in support of that position.
It would help if you would specify what statement of mine that you’re talking about.
I really feel like you are not arguing in good faith. The quote you responded to made no mention of obligations. I feel like you’re arguing in circles, saying that my behavior is rude, but then when I argue that the same logic condemns your actions as rude, you then start with this “I don’t believe in shoulds” stuff.
That’s the entirety of your response to my question. It is not “a long paragraph”, and it does boil down to calling other people uncivil being the primary factor.