Too little politeness is clearly unfortunate. Too much politeness is… possibly somewhat annoying? (Certainly not a huge problem.)
Too much truth is an oxymoron (there can never be too much truth; the optimal amount of truth is also the maximum possible amount of truth). Too little truth is catastrophic.
Therefore, to ban truthful people for being insufficiently civil is to court catastrophe; meanwhile, to fail to ban insufficiently civil people who are truthful is… somewhat unfortunate, at best.
Truth, in short, is the object. Civility is an additional desideratum (however important of one it may be). Losing the former makes the latter irrelevant.
This model assumes that truth and politeness are in a simple tradeoff relationship, and if that were true I would absolutely agree that truth is more important. But I don’t think the territory is that simple.
Our goal is not just to maximize the truth on the website at this current moment, but to optimize the process of discovering and sharing truth. One effect of a comment is to directly share some truth, and so removing comments or banning people does, in the short term, reduce the amount of truth produced. However, another effect of a comment is to incentivize or disincentivize other posters, by creating a welcoming or hostile environment. Since those posters may also produce comments that contain truth, a comment can in this way indirectly encourage or discourage the later production of truth.
The downstream effects of the incentivization/disincentivization of comments containing truth will, I think, often swamp the short-term effect of the specific truth shared in the specific comment. (This has some similarities to the long-termist view in altruism.)
This analysis explains why 4chan is not at the forefront of scientific discovery.
We can, of course. We should. But consider:
Too little politeness is clearly unfortunate. Too much politeness is… possibly somewhat annoying? (Certainly not a huge problem.)
Too much truth is an oxymoron (there can never be too much truth; the optimal amount of truth is also the maximum possible amount of truth). Too little truth is catastrophic.
Therefore, to ban truthful people for being insufficiently civil is to court catastrophe; meanwhile, to fail to ban insufficiently civil people who are truthful is… somewhat unfortunate, at best.
Truth, in short, is the object. Civility is an additional desideratum (however important of one it may be). Losing the former makes the latter irrelevant.
This model assumes that truth and politeness are in a simple tradeoff relationship, and if that were true I would absolutely agree that truth is more important. But I don’t think the territory is that simple.
Our goal is not just to maximize the truth on the website at this current moment, but to optimize the process of discovering and sharing truth. One effect of a comment is to directly share some truth, and so removing comments or banning people does, in the short term, reduce the amount of truth produced. However, another effect of a comment is to incentivize or disincentivize other posters, by creating a welcoming or hostile environment. Since those posters may also produce comments that contain truth, a comment can in this way indirectly encourage or discourage the later production of truth.
The downstream effects of the incentivization/disincentivization of comments containing truth will, I think, often swamp the short-term effect of the specific truth shared in the specific comment. (This has some similarities to the long-termist view in altruism.)
This analysis explains why 4chan is not at the forefront of scientific discovery.