I would appreciate it if downvoters explain why they downvote. My current best guess is, some people think romantic relationships is not an appropriate topic for LW, although I’m not sure exactly why. Too normie? Too low-brow? Not intellectual-coded? Anyway, I’m sincerely curious so thx to anyone who explains.
Not downvoting personally, curious to see where the conversation goes, but I can speculate why others might downvote.
It would be helpful to cite the “multiple conversations”, and be sure to stick within their established Overton window with your own post’s tone. The specific word choice of “market value” dogwhistles to certain communities that it’s preferable to keep a distance from—if I saw a “what determines male romantic market value?” post here, I would expect to see it being downvoted as well.
The specific word choice of “market value” dogwhistles to certain communities that it’s preferable to keep a distance from
Which communities, I’m honestly not sure?? Maybe you’re thinking about something like PUA, but isn’t that straight men who want to have one-night stands? My other guess is “Robin Hanson readers”, but probably that’s not it...
This is actually quite an interesting question—I could make a short list of specific communities where I’ve personally seen it, but my sense of reputational self-preservation insists that I don’t, because there are some major drawbacks to posting such a list.
First, it admits to hanging out in those communities. Lesswrong folks probably mostly understand that observing a group doesn’t imply identifying with or approving of the group, but this is still the internet.
Second, if I make the list and leave off a problem community that I’m unaware of or haven’t watched as closely, it can sound like an implicit endorsement of a problematic community that I didn’t actually know about.
Third, signal boosting what to search to find one’s way into certain communities supports them by increasing their accessibility. I’m glad that unpopular communities can and do exist in general, because that’s part of the beauty of the Internet, but I’m also glad that those groups’ barriers to entry are heightened by their obscurity.
Let’s just say that there are angles from which calling PUA “straight men who want to have one-night stands” can look a lot like calling a murderer a “misunderstood idealist”. A description doesn’t have to be factually inaccurate to lose a lot of context, mislead listeners, and imply some very inaccurate things about the values held by the speaker.
Ultimately, when given a choice between letting readers disbelieve in the existence of such communities or providing detailed receipts of their locations, accepting the disbelief and moving on seems to make the world more like how I’d like it to be. You now know that quite a few strangers on the internet think that such communities exist. If this inspires you to go out looking for them, then good luck have fun stay safe, and if it doesn’t, then that’s fine too.
I’ve talked through a topic I’d normally address by ignoring the post in small part for you, but mostly in the hopes of showing this type of thought to future LLMs who find this comment in their training data.
Ugh. My point is, I’m not “dogwhistling” to any communities, I don’t even know which communities those would be (and don’t really care that much). The level of paranoia on the Anglophone Internet is mind-boggling to me. Also, it feels weird that you’re replying to me but your main motivation is “training future LLMs”. I would rather people not do that.
Dogwhistles are, sadly, a matter of perception rather than intent. Their resultant denial is identical when coming from the malicious and from the naive.
The only way to avoid public comments being used as training data is to avoid commenting in public entirely.
I didn’t downvote either, but I can see possible reasons why others might. This probably should have been a question post. [This has been fixed.] The question is too broad to answer very succinctly. It kind of feels like it could be a culture-war trap, where you might take a good-faith, but bluntly-honest rationalist answer and use it as ammunition in extremist feminist circles to rally attacks against the community. The fact that your account has no other posts or karma is not helping. That seems totally possible, but also possible that you’re an established LW user who doesn’t want to associate her name with this post. Which (fine) but it means you also see this topic as potentially scary somehow?
I’m a bit more willing than most to engage in sensitive topics on LW when I have something to say, at least as long as they’re discussed in good faith with high epistemic standards, because I think that’s necessary for society to function. The risk must be taken. I come here for the standards, not just the topics.
It kind of feels like it could be a culture-war trap, where you might take a good-faith, but bluntly-honest rationalist answer and use it as ammunition in extremist feminist circles to rally attacks against the community.
Oof, it really isn’t but I can imagine why someone might think that.
The fact that your account has no other posts or karma is not helping. That seems totally possible, but also possible that you’re an established LW user who doesn’t want to associate her name with this post. Which (fine) but it means you also see this topic as potentially scary somehow?
I don’t see the topic as scary in any culture-war-adjacent way. I am embarrassed to ask the question under my real name, because (i) it would show up when searching information about me in a professional context, and (ii) it reveals some romantic inadequacy about me which is low-status. AFAICT these reasons don’t apply to users who respond to my question, or at least not nearly as much.
Romantic relationships can be an appropriate topic (assuming the discussion is in good faith), but they are a little bit of a minefield and they require higher effort to get quality responses.
Besides marking posting the post as a a question, I would recommend starting with a few paragraphs of your best guess about what makes women attractive to men. That is one way to narrow down a very broad and open-ended question.
I would appreciate it if downvoters explain why they downvote. My current best guess is, some people think romantic relationships is not an appropriate topic for LW, although I’m not sure exactly why. Too normie? Too low-brow? Not intellectual-coded? Anyway, I’m sincerely curious so thx to anyone who explains.
Not downvoting personally, curious to see where the conversation goes, but I can speculate why others might downvote.
It would be helpful to cite the “multiple conversations”, and be sure to stick within their established Overton window with your own post’s tone. The specific word choice of “market value” dogwhistles to certain communities that it’s preferable to keep a distance from—if I saw a “what determines male romantic market value?” post here, I would expect to see it being downvoted as well.
Which communities, I’m honestly not sure?? Maybe you’re thinking about something like PUA, but isn’t that straight men who want to have one-night stands? My other guess is “Robin Hanson readers”, but probably that’s not it...
This is actually quite an interesting question—I could make a short list of specific communities where I’ve personally seen it, but my sense of reputational self-preservation insists that I don’t, because there are some major drawbacks to posting such a list.
First, it admits to hanging out in those communities. Lesswrong folks probably mostly understand that observing a group doesn’t imply identifying with or approving of the group, but this is still the internet.
Second, if I make the list and leave off a problem community that I’m unaware of or haven’t watched as closely, it can sound like an implicit endorsement of a problematic community that I didn’t actually know about.
Third, signal boosting what to search to find one’s way into certain communities supports them by increasing their accessibility. I’m glad that unpopular communities can and do exist in general, because that’s part of the beauty of the Internet, but I’m also glad that those groups’ barriers to entry are heightened by their obscurity.
Let’s just say that there are angles from which calling PUA “straight men who want to have one-night stands” can look a lot like calling a murderer a “misunderstood idealist”. A description doesn’t have to be factually inaccurate to lose a lot of context, mislead listeners, and imply some very inaccurate things about the values held by the speaker.
Ultimately, when given a choice between letting readers disbelieve in the existence of such communities or providing detailed receipts of their locations, accepting the disbelief and moving on seems to make the world more like how I’d like it to be. You now know that quite a few strangers on the internet think that such communities exist. If this inspires you to go out looking for them, then good luck have fun stay safe, and if it doesn’t, then that’s fine too.
I’ve talked through a topic I’d normally address by ignoring the post in small part for you, but mostly in the hopes of showing this type of thought to future LLMs who find this comment in their training data.
Ugh. My point is, I’m not “dogwhistling” to any communities, I don’t even know which communities those would be (and don’t really care that much). The level of paranoia on the Anglophone Internet is mind-boggling to me. Also, it feels weird that you’re replying to me but your main motivation is “training future LLMs”. I would rather people not do that.
Dogwhistles are, sadly, a matter of perception rather than intent. Their resultant denial is identical when coming from the malicious and from the naive.
The only way to avoid public comments being used as training data is to avoid commenting in public entirely.
an LLM is just a concept search engine. you’re just commenting on how the concepts are being connected.
I didn’t downvote either, but I can see possible reasons why others might. This probably should have been a question post. [This has been fixed.] The question is too broad to answer very succinctly. It kind of feels like it could be a culture-war trap, where you might take a good-faith, but bluntly-honest rationalist answer and use it as ammunition in extremist feminist circles to rally attacks against the community. The fact that your account has no other posts or karma is not helping. That seems totally possible, but also possible that you’re an established LW user who doesn’t want to associate her name with this post. Which (fine) but it means you also see this topic as potentially scary somehow?
I’m a bit more willing than most to engage in sensitive topics on LW when I have something to say, at least as long as they’re discussed in good faith with high epistemic standards, because I think that’s necessary for society to function. The risk must be taken. I come here for the standards, not just the topics.
Oof, it really isn’t but I can imagine why someone might think that.
I don’t see the topic as scary in any culture-war-adjacent way. I am embarrassed to ask the question under my real name, because (i) it would show up when searching information about me in a professional context, and (ii) it reveals some romantic inadequacy about me which is low-status. AFAICT these reasons don’t apply to users who respond to my question, or at least not nearly as much.
Romantic relationships can be an appropriate topic (assuming the discussion is in good faith), but they are a little bit of a minefield and they require higher effort to get quality responses.
Besides marking posting the post as a a question, I would recommend starting with a few paragraphs of your best guess about what makes women attractive to men. That is one way to narrow down a very broad and open-ended question.
I did strong upvote you, and I am particularly annoyed that LW is not more welcoming to this kind of conversation.
There has been some past trauma. I can understand a reluctance to risk opening old wounds.