It doesn’t seem like that would be the case, no. I expected your alterations to have been deeper than that, including stuff like softening your disagreement.
Here is why your comment strikes me as unfriendly and not particularly rational:
I wonder
You wonder? If you really wanted to know you would either ask me or you could just read through my comment history and determine that, no, I am pretty direct and people still misunderstand me. Or you could identify specific examples where this did happen and let me know in a helpful way where I messed up my argument. Instead, you just sort of demonstratively express your hypothesis so people who already agree with you can see it and pat you on the back. Pretty mind-killery, in my opinion.
But it’s okay! I understand! These things happen. =]
To be honest, I’m surprised by the hostility of your comments here. I was bringing a hypothesis to your attention so that you could evaluate it. I suppose I could have read all of your comments but I don’t really care that much I guess. “I wonder” was meant to identify this as a passing thought. And in my second comment I updated away from the hypothesis, so I’m not sure why this tone would be present.
I might be misreading it, but your last sentence sounds sort of fake-nice and passive aggressive due to the rest of the comment. I normally wouldn’t make an entire comment just about tone, and I actually like the tone on Lessswrong, but this conversation is sort of about it, and like I said, I was surprised.
See, this is where the whole thing gets confusingly meta, but a lot of what you’re saying contributes to my overall point. You’re right, my comment was written in a pretty hostile tone (and I apologize), but it was also pretty sparse and direct, and … how else do you respond to someone who claims that your writing is too cluttered with niceness? It’s kind of difficult to balance.
This is where I’m not sure what the overall stance on writing things is in the LW community. It seems like there are sequence posts that urge people to pay attention to the effect of their writing and how it will be interpreted by others. So I go in with the assumption that most people have read them and are also paying attention to tone and word choice. Which leads me to assume that if their tone is hostile then it’s intentionally so. When someone says “I wonder,” it’s not clear if they’re asking a question or if they’re just … content to wonder. And because I personally find it awkward to start offering up answers when someone doesn’t want any, it starts feeling like the comment was designed to not have a response.
Add in the large, scary-sounding opposition claiming that they come here to talk about intellectual things and don’t need to care about people’s feelings, and if feels like your stand-alone comment was just going to attract mind-killer-ed people from the other camp even if it wasn’t intended to.
I also apologize that the last part sounded passive-aggressive, but I also feel like that demonstrates the extent to which the community is intolerant of flawed, biased humans that make mistakes. I really wish we had more of a culture that pointed out a bias, and then responded with a *patpat*, “happens!” (like sneezes!) rather than “you are a bad rationalist, go feel bad now.” (Which I’m sure no one ever actually said, but culture gets constructed through things people don’t say as well?)
I wonder if your niceness padding has led to people missing your point and to you being frustrated by their failure to understand you.
Right, because words like “sorry” and “thank you” and occasional exclamation marks make my writing completely incomprehensible.
Haha, because words like “sorry” and “thank you” and occasional exclamation marks make my writing completely incomprehensible. =P
It doesn’t seem like that would be the case, no. I expected your alterations to have been deeper than that, including stuff like softening your disagreement.
Here is why your comment strikes me as unfriendly and not particularly rational:
You wonder? If you really wanted to know you would either ask me or you could just read through my comment history and determine that, no, I am pretty direct and people still misunderstand me. Or you could identify specific examples where this did happen and let me know in a helpful way where I messed up my argument. Instead, you just sort of demonstratively express your hypothesis so people who already agree with you can see it and pat you on the back. Pretty mind-killery, in my opinion.
But it’s okay! I understand! These things happen. =]
To be honest, I’m surprised by the hostility of your comments here. I was bringing a hypothesis to your attention so that you could evaluate it. I suppose I could have read all of your comments but I don’t really care that much I guess. “I wonder” was meant to identify this as a passing thought. And in my second comment I updated away from the hypothesis, so I’m not sure why this tone would be present.
I might be misreading it, but your last sentence sounds sort of fake-nice and passive aggressive due to the rest of the comment. I normally wouldn’t make an entire comment just about tone, and I actually like the tone on Lessswrong, but this conversation is sort of about it, and like I said, I was surprised.
See, this is where the whole thing gets confusingly meta, but a lot of what you’re saying contributes to my overall point. You’re right, my comment was written in a pretty hostile tone (and I apologize), but it was also pretty sparse and direct, and … how else do you respond to someone who claims that your writing is too cluttered with niceness? It’s kind of difficult to balance.
This is where I’m not sure what the overall stance on writing things is in the LW community. It seems like there are sequence posts that urge people to pay attention to the effect of their writing and how it will be interpreted by others. So I go in with the assumption that most people have read them and are also paying attention to tone and word choice. Which leads me to assume that if their tone is hostile then it’s intentionally so. When someone says “I wonder,” it’s not clear if they’re asking a question or if they’re just … content to wonder. And because I personally find it awkward to start offering up answers when someone doesn’t want any, it starts feeling like the comment was designed to not have a response.
Add in the large, scary-sounding opposition claiming that they come here to talk about intellectual things and don’t need to care about people’s feelings, and if feels like your stand-alone comment was just going to attract mind-killer-ed people from the other camp even if it wasn’t intended to.
I also apologize that the last part sounded passive-aggressive, but I also feel like that demonstrates the extent to which the community is intolerant of flawed, biased humans that make mistakes. I really wish we had more of a culture that pointed out a bias, and then responded with a
*patpat*, “happens!” (like sneezes!) rather than “you are a bad rationalist, go feel bad now.” (Which I’m sure no one ever actually said, but culture gets constructed through things people don’t say as well?)