Categories like “conflicts of interest”, “discussions about who should be banned”, “arguments about moderation in cases in which you’re involved”, etc., already constitute “evidence” that push the conclusion away from the prior of “on the whole, people are more likely to say true things than false things”, without even getting into anything more specific.
The strength of the evidence is, in fact, a relevant input. And of the evidential strength conferred by the style of reasoning employed here, much has already been written.
You’ve misunderstood. My point was that “Said keeps finding mistakes in what I have written” is a good first approximation (but only that!) of what Duncan allegedly finds unpleasant about interacting with me, not that it’s a good first approximation of Duncan’s description of same.
Then your response to gjm’s point seems misdirected, as the sentence you were quoting from his comment explicitly specifies that it concerns what Duncan himself said. Furthermore, I find it unlikely that this is an implication you could have missed, given that the first quote-block above speaks specifically of the likelihood that “people” (Duncan) may or may not say false things with regards to a topic in which they are personally invested; indeed, this back-and-forth stemmed from discussion of that initial point!
Setting that aside, however, there is a further issue to be noted (one which, if anything, is more damning than the previous), which is that—having now (apparently) detached our notion of what is being “approximated” from any particular set of utterances—we are left with the brute claim that “‘Said keeps finding mistakes in what Duncan have written’ is a good approximation of what Duncan finds unpleasant about interacting with Said”—a claim for which I don’t see how you could defend even having positive knowledge of, much less its truth value! After all, neither of us has telepathic access to Duncan’s inner thoughts, and so the claim that his ban of you was been motivated by some factor X—which factor he in fact explicitly denies having exerted an influence—is speculation at best, and psychologizing at worst.
A single circumspectly disagreeing comment on a tangential, secondary (tertiary? quaternary?) point, buried deep in a subthread, having minimal direct bearing on the claims in the post under which it’s posted. “Robust disagreement”, this ain’t.
I appreciate the starkness of this response. Specifically, your response makes it quite clear that the word “robust” is carrying essentially entirety of the weight of your argument. However, you don’t appear to have operationalized this anywhere in your comment, and (unfortunately) I confess myself unclear as to what you mean by it. “Disagreement” is obvious enough, which is why I was able to provide an example on such short notice, but if you wish me to procure an example of whatever you are calling “robust disagreement”, you will have to explain in more detail what this thing is, and (hopefully) why it matters!
I am (moreover) quite confident in my ability to find additional such examples if necessary
Please do. So far, the example count remains at zero.
but in lieu of that, I will instead question the necessity of such: did you, Said Achmiz, (prior to my finding an example) honestly expect/suspect that there were no such examples to be found?
Given that you did not, in fact, find an example, I think that this question remains unmotivated.
[...]
So my request for examples of the alleged phenomenon wherein “other people have disagreed robustly with Duncan and not had him ban them from commenting on his posts” is not so absurd, after all.
It is my opinion that the response to the previous quoted block also serves adequately as a response to these miscellaneous remarks.
Indeed, this observation has me questioning the reliability of your stance on this particular issue, since the tendency to get things like this wrong suggests a model of (this subregion of) reality so deeply flawed, little to no wisdom avails to be extracted.
I think that, on the contrary, it is you who should re-examine your stance on the matter. Perhaps the absurdity heuristic, coupled with a too-hasty jump to a conclusion, has led you astray?
This question is, in fact, somewhat difficult to answer as of this exact moment, since the answer depends in large part on the meaning of a term (“robustness”) whose contextual usage you have not yet concretely operationalized. I of course invite such an operationalization, and would be delighted to reconsider my stance if presented with a good one; until that happens, however, I confess myself skeptical of what (in my estimation) amounts to an uncashed promissory note.
As alluded to in the quote/response pair at the beginning of this comment, this is not a valid inference. What you propose is a valid probabilistic inference in the setting where we are presented only with the information you describe (although even then the strength of update justified by such information is limited at best). Nonetheless, there are plenty of remaining hypotheses consistent with the information in question, and which have (hence) not been ruled out merely by observing Bob to have banned Alice.
That’s why I said “default”.
Well. Let’s review what you actually said, shall we?
If Alice criticizes one of Bob’s posts, and Bob immediately or shortly thereafter bans Alice from commenting on Bob’s posts, the immediate default assumption should be that the criticism was the reason for the ban. Knowing nothing else, just based on these bare facts, we should jump right to the assumption that Bob’s reasons for banning Alice were lousy.
Rereading, it appears that the word you singled out (“default”) was in fact part of a significantly longer phrase (which you even italicized for emphasis); and this phrase, I think, conveys a notion substantially stronger than the weakened version you appear to have retreated to in response to my pushback. We are presented with the idea, not just of a “default” state, but an immediate assumption regarding Bob’s motives—quite a forceful assertion to make!
An assumption with what confidence level, might I ask? And (furthermore) what kind of extraordinarily high “default” confidence level must you postulate, sufficient to outweigh other, more situationally specific forms of evidence, such as—for example—the opinions of onlookers (as conveyed through third-party comments such as gjm’s or mine, as well as through voting behavior)?
For example, suppose it is the case that Alice (in addition to criticizing Bob’s object-level points) also takes it upon herself to include, in each of her comments, a remark to the effect that Bob is physically unattractive.
That would be one of those “exceptional circumstances” I referred to. Do you claim such circumstances obtain in the case at hand?
I claim that Duncan so claims, and that (moreover) you have thus far made no move to refute that claim directly, preferring instead to appeal to priors wherever possible (a theme present throughout many of the individual quote/response pairs in this comment). Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Duncan’s claim here is correct—but as time goes on and I continue to observe [what appear to me to be] attempts to avoid analyzing the situation on the object level, I do admit that one side’s position starts to look increasingly favored over the other!
(Having said that, I realize that the above may come off as “taking sides” to some extent, and so—both for your benefit and for the benefit of onlookers—I would like to stress for myself the same point gjm stressed upthread, which is that I consider both Said and Duncan to be strong positive contributors to LW content/culture, and would be accordingly sad to see either one of them go. That I am to some extent “defending” Duncan in this instance is not in any way a broader indictment of Said—only of the accusations of misconduct he [appears to me to be] leveling at Duncan.)
and if Bob then proceeded to ban Alice for such provocations, we would not consider this evidence that he cannot tolerate criticism. The reason for the ban, after all, would have been explained, and thus screened off, leaving us with no reason to suspect him of banning Alice for “lousy reasons”.
All of this, as I said, was quite comprehensively covered in the comment to which you’re responding. (I begin to suspect that you did not read it very carefully.)
Perhaps the topic of discussion (as you have construed it) differs substantially from how I see it, because this statement is, so far as I can tell, simply false. Of course, it should be easy enough to disconfirm this merely by pointing out the specific part of the grandparent comment you believe addresses the point I made inside of the nested quote block; and so I will await just such a response.
But the claim that you have not, in any of your prior interactions with him, engaged in a style of discourse that made him think of you as an unusually unlikely-to-be-productive commenter, is, I think, unsupported.
But of course I never claimed anything like this. What the heck sort of strawman is this? Where is it coming from? And what relevance does it have?
Well, by the law of the excluded middle, can I take your seeming disavowal of this claim as an admission that its negation holds—in other words, that you have, in fact, engaged with Duncan in ways that he considers unproductive? If so, the relevance of this point seems nakedly obvious to me: if you are, in fact, (so far as Duncan can tell) an unproductive presence in the comment section of his posts, then… well, I might as well let my past self of ~4 hours ago say it:
And if he had perceived you as such, why, this might then be perceived as sufficient grounds to remove the possibility of such unproductive interactions going forward, and to make that decision independent of the quality (or, indeed, existence) of your object-level criticisms.
What is this passive-voice “might then be perceived” business? Do you perceive this to be the case?
It seems like you are saying something like “if Bob decides that he is unlikely to engage in productive discussion with Alice, then that is a good and honorable reason for Bob to ban Alice from commenting on his posts”. Are you, in fact, saying that? If not—what are you saying?
And in response to this, I can only say: the sentence within quotation marks is very nearly the opposite of what I am saying—which, phrased within the same framing, would go like this:
“If Bob decides that Alice is unlikely to engage in productive discussion with him, then that is a good and honorable reason for Bob to ban Alice from commenting on his posts.”
We’re not talking about a commutative operation here; it does in fact matter, whose name goes where!
I appreciate the starkness of this response. Specifically, your response makes it quite clear that the word “robust” is carrying essentially entirety of the weight of your argument. However, you don’t appear to have operationalized this anywhere in your comment, and (unfortunately) I confess myself unclear as to what you mean by it. “Disagreement” is obvious enough, which is why I was able to provide an example on such short notice, but if you wish me to procure an example of whatever you are calling “robust disagreement”, you will have to explain in more detail what this thing is, and (hopefully) why it matters!
Well. Let’s review what you actually said, shall we? …
Yes. A strong default. I stand by what I said.
An assumption with what confidence level, might I ask?
A high one.
And (furthermore) what kind of extraordinarily high “default” confidence level must you postulate
This seems to me to be only an ordinarily high “default” confidence level, for things like this.
sufficient to outweigh other, more situationally specific forms of evidence, such as—for example—the opinions of onlookers (as conveyed through third-party comments such as gjm’s or mine
See my above-linked reply to gjm, re: “the opinions of onlookers”.
as well as through voting behavior)?
People on Less Wrong downvote for things other than “this is wrong”. You know this. (Indeed, this is wholly consonant with the designed purpose of the karma vote.)
I claim that Duncan so claims, and that (moreover) you have thus far made no move to refute that claim directly, preferring instead to appeal to priors wherever possible (a theme present throughout many of the individual quote/response pairs in this comment). Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Duncan’s claim here is correct—but as time goes on and I continue to observe [what appear to me to be] attempts to avoid analyzing the situation on the object level, I do admit that one side’s position starts to look increasingly favored over the other!
Likewise see my above-linked reply to gjm.
All of this, as I said, was quite comprehensively covered in the comment to which you’re responding. (I begin to suspect that you did not read it very carefully.)
Perhaps the topic of discussion (as you have construed it) differs substantially from how I see it, because this statement is, so far as I can tell, simply false. Of course, it should be easy enough to disconfirm this merely by pointing out the specific part of the grandparent comment you believe addresses the point I made inside of the nested quote block; and so I will await just such a response.
I refer there to the three quote–reply pairs above that one.
accusations of misconduct
I must object to this. I don’t think what I’ve accused Duncan of can be fairly called “misconduct”. He’s broken no rules or norms of Less Wrong, as far as I can tell. Everything he’s done is allowed (and even, in some sense, encouraged) by the site rules. He hasn’t done anything underhanded or deliberately deceptive, hasn’t made factually false claims, etc. It does not seem to me that either Duncan, or Less Wrong’s moderation team, would consider any of his behavior in this matter to be blameworthy. (I could be wrong about this, of course, but that would surprise me.)
Well, by the law of the excluded middle, can I take your seeming disavowal of this claim as an admission that its negation holds—in other words, that you have, in fact, engaged with Duncan in ways that he considers unproductive?
Yes, of course. Duncan has said as much, repeatedly. It would be strange to disbelieve him on this.
Just as obviously, I don’t agree with his characterization!
(As before, see my above-linked reply to gjm for more details.)
And if he had perceived you as such, why, this might then be perceived as sufficient grounds to remove the possibility of such unproductive interactions going forward, and to make that decision independent of the quality (or, indeed, existence) of your object-level criticisms.
What is this passive-voice “might then be perceived” business? Do you perceive this to be the case?
It seems like you are saying something like “if Bob decides that he is unlikely to engage in productive discussion with Alice, then that is a good and honorable reason for Bob to ban Alice from commenting on his posts”. Are you, in fact, saying that? If not—what are you saying?
And in response to this, I can only say: the sentence within quotation marks is very nearly the opposite of what I am saying—which, phrased within the same framing, would go like this:
“If Bob decides that Alice is unlikely to engage in productive discussion with him, then that is a good and honorable reason for Bob to ban Alice from commenting on his posts.”
We’re not talking about a commutative operation here; it does in fact matter, whose name goes where!
This seems clearly wrong to me. The operation is of course commutative; it doesn’t matter in the least whose name goes where. In any engagement between Alice and Bob, Alice can decide that Bob is engaging unproductively, at the same time as Bob decides that Alice is engaging unproductively. And of course Bob isn’t going to decide that it’s he who is the one engaging unproductively with Alice (and vice-versa).
And both formulations can be summarized as “Bob decides that he is unlikely to engage in productive discussion with Alice” (regardless of whether Bob or Alice is allegedly to blame; Bob, clearly, will hold the latter view; Alice, the former).
In any case, you have now made your view clear enough:
“If Bob decides that Alice is unlikely to engage in productive discussion with him, then that is a good and honorable reason for Bob to ban Alice from commenting on his posts.”
All I can say is that this, too, seems clearly wrong to me (for reasons which I’ve already described in some detail).
The strength of the evidence is, in fact, a relevant input. And of the evidential strength conferred by the style of reasoning employed here, much has already been written.
Then your response to gjm’s point seems misdirected, as the sentence you were quoting from his comment explicitly specifies that it concerns what Duncan himself said. Furthermore, I find it unlikely that this is an implication you could have missed, given that the first quote-block above speaks specifically of the likelihood that “people” (Duncan) may or may not say false things with regards to a topic in which they are personally invested; indeed, this back-and-forth stemmed from discussion of that initial point!
Setting that aside, however, there is a further issue to be noted (one which, if anything, is more damning than the previous), which is that—having now (apparently) detached our notion of what is being “approximated” from any particular set of utterances—we are left with the brute claim that “‘Said keeps finding mistakes in what Duncan have written’ is a good approximation of what Duncan finds unpleasant about interacting with Said”—a claim for which I don’t see how you could defend even having positive knowledge of, much less its truth value! After all, neither of us has telepathic access to Duncan’s inner thoughts, and so the claim that his ban of you was been motivated by some factor X—which factor he in fact explicitly denies having exerted an influence—is speculation at best, and psychologizing at worst.
I appreciate the starkness of this response. Specifically, your response makes it quite clear that the word “robust” is carrying essentially entirety of the weight of your argument. However, you don’t appear to have operationalized this anywhere in your comment, and (unfortunately) I confess myself unclear as to what you mean by it. “Disagreement” is obvious enough, which is why I was able to provide an example on such short notice, but if you wish me to procure an example of whatever you are calling “robust disagreement”, you will have to explain in more detail what this thing is, and (hopefully) why it matters!
It is my opinion that the response to the previous quoted block also serves adequately as a response to these miscellaneous remarks.
This question is, in fact, somewhat difficult to answer as of this exact moment, since the answer depends in large part on the meaning of a term (“robustness”) whose contextual usage you have not yet concretely operationalized. I of course invite such an operationalization, and would be delighted to reconsider my stance if presented with a good one; until that happens, however, I confess myself skeptical of what (in my estimation) amounts to an uncashed promissory note.
Well. Let’s review what you actually said, shall we?
Rereading, it appears that the word you singled out (“default”) was in fact part of a significantly longer phrase (which you even italicized for emphasis); and this phrase, I think, conveys a notion substantially stronger than the weakened version you appear to have retreated to in response to my pushback. We are presented with the idea, not just of a “default” state, but an immediate assumption regarding Bob’s motives—quite a forceful assertion to make!
An assumption with what confidence level, might I ask? And (furthermore) what kind of extraordinarily high “default” confidence level must you postulate, sufficient to outweigh other, more situationally specific forms of evidence, such as—for example—the opinions of onlookers (as conveyed through third-party comments such as gjm’s or mine, as well as through voting behavior)?
I claim that Duncan so claims, and that (moreover) you have thus far made no move to refute that claim directly, preferring instead to appeal to priors wherever possible (a theme present throughout many of the individual quote/response pairs in this comment). Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Duncan’s claim here is correct—but as time goes on and I continue to observe [what appear to me to be] attempts to avoid analyzing the situation on the object level, I do admit that one side’s position starts to look increasingly favored over the other!
(Having said that, I realize that the above may come off as “taking sides” to some extent, and so—both for your benefit and for the benefit of onlookers—I would like to stress for myself the same point gjm stressed upthread, which is that I consider both Said and Duncan to be strong positive contributors to LW content/culture, and would be accordingly sad to see either one of them go. That I am to some extent “defending” Duncan in this instance is not in any way a broader indictment of Said—only of the accusations of misconduct he [appears to me to be] leveling at Duncan.)
Perhaps the topic of discussion (as you have construed it) differs substantially from how I see it, because this statement is, so far as I can tell, simply false. Of course, it should be easy enough to disconfirm this merely by pointing out the specific part of the grandparent comment you believe addresses the point I made inside of the nested quote block; and so I will await just such a response.
Well, by the law of the excluded middle, can I take your seeming disavowal of this claim as an admission that its negation holds—in other words, that you have, in fact, engaged with Duncan in ways that he considers unproductive? If so, the relevance of this point seems nakedly obvious to me: if you are, in fact, (so far as Duncan can tell) an unproductive presence in the comment section of his posts, then… well, I might as well let my past self of ~4 hours ago say it:
And in response to this, I can only say: the sentence within quotation marks is very nearly the opposite of what I am saying—which, phrased within the same framing, would go like this:
“If Bob decides that Alice is unlikely to engage in productive discussion with him, then that is a good and honorable reason for Bob to ban Alice from commenting on his posts.”
We’re not talking about a commutative operation here; it does in fact matter, whose name goes where!
Please see my reply to gjm.
Yes. A strong default. I stand by what I said.
A high one.
This seems to me to be only an ordinarily high “default” confidence level, for things like this.
See my above-linked reply to gjm, re: “the opinions of onlookers”.
People on Less Wrong downvote for things other than “this is wrong”. You know this. (Indeed, this is wholly consonant with the designed purpose of the karma vote.)
Likewise see my above-linked reply to gjm.
I refer there to the three quote–reply pairs above that one.
I must object to this. I don’t think what I’ve accused Duncan of can be fairly called “misconduct”. He’s broken no rules or norms of Less Wrong, as far as I can tell. Everything he’s done is allowed (and even, in some sense, encouraged) by the site rules. He hasn’t done anything underhanded or deliberately deceptive, hasn’t made factually false claims, etc. It does not seem to me that either Duncan, or Less Wrong’s moderation team, would consider any of his behavior in this matter to be blameworthy. (I could be wrong about this, of course, but that would surprise me.)
Yes, of course. Duncan has said as much, repeatedly. It would be strange to disbelieve him on this.
Just as obviously, I don’t agree with his characterization!
(As before, see my above-linked reply to gjm for more details.)
This seems clearly wrong to me. The operation is of course commutative; it doesn’t matter in the least whose name goes where. In any engagement between Alice and Bob, Alice can decide that Bob is engaging unproductively, at the same time as Bob decides that Alice is engaging unproductively. And of course Bob isn’t going to decide that it’s he who is the one engaging unproductively with Alice (and vice-versa).
And both formulations can be summarized as “Bob decides that he is unlikely to engage in productive discussion with Alice” (regardless of whether Bob or Alice is allegedly to blame; Bob, clearly, will hold the latter view; Alice, the former).
In any case, you have now made your view clear enough:
All I can say is that this, too, seems clearly wrong to me (for reasons which I’ve already described in some detail).