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).
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).