The central descriptive insight I took from him is that most things we do are status-motivated, even when we think we have a clear picture of what our motivations are and status is not included in that picture. Our picture of what the truth looks like is fundamentally warped by status in ways that are very hard to fully adjust for.
Relatedly, I think the moderation policies of new LessWrong double down on this status-warping, and so I am reluctant to put anything of significant value on this site.
Moderation styles harsher than “Easy-going” are toxic to group rationality and failure to ban them results in an echo chamber. Banning users from commenting on your post(s) is toxic to group rationality and results in an echo chamber. Deleting comments without a trace, likewise. It is absolutely essential that anyone who is silencing people they don’t want to hear from must take significant effort to do so and that these actions must be extremely visible to everyone else, or else there is no way to note and shame people who abuse it. And virtually everyone who has this power and has social power will abuse it, whether they realize that’s what they’re doing or not.
What do you consider to be his core insights? Would you consider writing a post on this?
The central descriptive insight I took from him is that most things we do are status-motivated, even when we think we have a clear picture of what our motivations are and status is not included in that picture. Our picture of what the truth looks like is fundamentally warped by status in ways that are very hard to fully adjust for.
Relatedly, I think the moderation policies of new LessWrong double down on this status-warping, and so I am reluctant to put anything of significant value on this site.
Which policies in particular?
Literally everything described here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/adk5xv5Q4hjvpEhhh/meta-new-moderation-tools-and-moderation-guidelines
Moderation styles harsher than “Easy-going” are toxic to group rationality and failure to ban them results in an echo chamber. Banning users from commenting on your post(s) is toxic to group rationality and results in an echo chamber. Deleting comments without a trace, likewise. It is absolutely essential that anyone who is silencing people they don’t want to hear from must take significant effort to do so and that these actions must be extremely visible to everyone else, or else there is no way to note and shame people who abuse it. And virtually everyone who has this power and has social power will abuse it, whether they realize that’s what they’re doing or not.