Or an indication that some otherwise non-banned members of the site are actually kind of poor at exhibiting one or more of the basics of rationalist discourse and have been tolerated on LW for other reasons unrelated to their quality as thinkers, reasoners, and conversational partners.
For instance, they might think that, because they can’t think of a way, this means that there literally exists no way for a thing to be true (or be prone to using exaggerated language that communicates that even though it doesn’t reflect their actual belief).
(The Basics post was written because I felt it was needed on LW, because there are people who engage in frequent violation of good discourse norms and get away with it because it’s kind of tricky to point at precisely what they’re doing that’s bringing down the quality of the conversations. That doesn’t mean that my particular formulation was correct (I have already offered above to make changes to the two weakest sections), but it is not, in fact, the case, that [a user who’s been barred from commenting but otherwise still welcome on LW as a whole] is necessarily in possession of good critique. Indeed they might be, but they might also be precisely the kind of user who was the casus belli of the post in the first place.)
All of this is irrelevant, because the point is that if the conversational norms cannot be discussed openly (by people who otherwise aren’t banned from the site for being spammers or something similarly egregious), then there’s no reason to believe that they’re good norms. How were they vetted? How were they arrived at? Why should we trust that they’re not, say, chock-full of catastrophic problems? (Indeed, the more people[1] are banned from commenting on the norms as a consequence of their criticism of said norms, the less we should believe that the norms are any good!)
Of all the posts on the site, the post proposing new site norms is the one that should be subjected to the greatest scrutiny—and yet it’s also the post[2] from which more critics have been banned than from almost any other. This is an extremely bad sign.
Weighted by karma (as a proxy for “not just some random person off the street, but someone whom the site and its participants judge to have worthwhile things to say”). (The ratio of “total karma of people banned from commenting on ‘Basics of Rationalist Discourse’” to “karma of author of ‘Basics of Rationalist Discourse’” is approximately 3:1. If karma represents some measure of “Less Wrong, as a site and a community, has endorsed this person as someone whose participation in discussions here is a positive good”—and the OP here suggests that it does, indeed, represent that—what does it mean that the so-called “Basics of Rationalist Discourse” cannot even bear discussion by people who are, collectively, so relatively well-regarded?)
For what it’s worth, the high level point here seems right to me (I am not trying to chime into the rest of the discussion about whether the ban system is a good idea in the first place).
If we canonize something like Duncan’s post I agree that we should do something like copy over a bunch of it into a new post, give prominent attribution to Duncan at the very top of the post, explain how it applies to our actual moderation policy, and then we should maintain our own ban list.
I think Duncan’s post is great, but I think when we canonize something like this it doesn’t make sense for Duncan’s ban list to carry over to the more canonized version.
This is certainly well and good, but it seems to me that the important thing is to do something like this before canonizing anything. Otherwise, it’s a case of “feel free to discuss this, but nothing will come of it, because the decision’s already been made”.
The whole point of community discussion of something like this is to serve as input into any decisions made. If you decide first, it’s too late to discuss. This is exactly what makes the author-determined ban lists so extraordinarily damaging in a case like this, where the post in question is on a “meta” topic (setting aside for the moment whether they’re good or bad in general).
The most interesting thing you said is left to your footnote:
The ratio of “total karma of people banned from commenting on ‘Basics of Rationalist Discourse’” to “karma of author of ‘Basics of Rationalist Discourse’” is approximately 3:1.
I would love to see if this pattern is also present in other posts.
There should be some mechanism to judge posts / comments that have a mix of good and bad karma, especially since there are two measures of this now. In the olden-days it still would have been possible to do, since an overall score of “0” could still be a very high-quality information signal, if the total number of votes is high. This is only even more the case now.
Indeed, the more people[1] are banned from commenting on the norms as a consequence of their criticism of said norms, the less we should believe that the norms are any good!
At issue is whether low-quality debate is ever fruitful. That piece of data in your footnote suggests that the issue might instead be whether or not there even is low-quality debate, or at least whether or not we can rely on moderators’ judgement calls or the sum of all (weighted) votes to make such calls.
That piece of data in your footnote suggests that the issue might instead be whether or not there even is low-quality debate, or at least whether or not we can rely on moderators’ judgement calls or the sum of all (weighted) votes to make such calls.
Certainly we can’t rely on the judgment of post authors! (And I am not even talking about this case in particular, but—just in general, for post authors to have the power to make such calls introduces a massive conflict of interest, and incentivizes ego-driven cognitive distortions. This is why the “post authors can ban people from their posts” feature is so corrosive to anything resembling good and useful discussion… truly, it seems to me like an egregious, and entirely unforced, mistake in system design.)
The mistake in system design started with the implementation of downvoting, but I have more complicated reasoning for this. If you have a system that implements downvoting, the reason for having that feature in place is to prevent ideas that are not easily argued away from being repeated. I tend to be skeptical of such systems because I tend to believe that if ideas are not easily argued away, they are more likely to have merit to them. If you have a post which argues for the enforcement of certain norms which push down specific kinds of ideas that are hard to argue away, one of which is the very idea that this ought to be done, it creates the impression that there are certain dogmas which can no longer be defended in open dialogue.
I am not sure that I’d go quite that far, but I certainly sympathize with the sentiment.
If you have a post which argues for the enforcement of certain norms which push down specific kinds of ideas that are hard to argue away, one of which is the very idea that this ought to be done, it creates the impression that there are certain dogmas which can no longer be defended in open dialogue.
… it is not, in fact, the case, that [a user who’s been barred from commenting but otherwise still welcome on LW as a whole] is necessarily in possession of good critique. Indeed they might be, but they might also be precisely the kind of user who was the casus belli of the post in the first place.)
Note, by the way, that these two things are not at all mutually exclusive. It might, indeed, be the case that the post was motivated by some kinds of people/critiques—which have/are good critiques. (Indeed that’s one of the most important and consequential sorts of criticism of the post: that among its motivations was one or more bad motivations, which we should not endorse, and which we should, in fact, oppose, as following it would have bad effects.)
(I think this is a thread that, if I had a “slow mode” button to make users take longer to reply, I’d probably have clicked it right about now. I don’t have such a button, but Said and @Duncan_Sabien can you guys a) hold off for a couple hours on digging into this and b) generally take ~an hour in between replies here if you were gonna keep going)
Ah. So, these people have banned duncan from commenting on their frontpage posts? or, duncan has banned them from commenting on his frontpage posts? I guess you’re implying the latter.
Zack_M_Davis JenniferRM AnnaSalamon Said Achmiz M. Y. Zuo LVSN
Or an indication that some otherwise non-banned members of the site are actually kind of poor at exhibiting one or more of the basics of rationalist discourse and have been tolerated on LW for other reasons unrelated to their quality as thinkers, reasoners, and conversational partners.
For instance, they might think that, because they can’t think of a way, this means that there literally exists no way for a thing to be true (or be prone to using exaggerated language that communicates that even though it doesn’t reflect their actual belief).
(The Basics post was written because I felt it was needed on LW, because there are people who engage in frequent violation of good discourse norms and get away with it because it’s kind of tricky to point at precisely what they’re doing that’s bringing down the quality of the conversations. That doesn’t mean that my particular formulation was correct (I have already offered above to make changes to the two weakest sections), but it is not, in fact, the case, that [a user who’s been barred from commenting but otherwise still welcome on LW as a whole] is necessarily in possession of good critique. Indeed they might be, but they might also be precisely the kind of user who was the casus belli of the post in the first place.)
All of this is irrelevant, because the point is that if the conversational norms cannot be discussed openly (by people who otherwise aren’t banned from the site for being spammers or something similarly egregious), then there’s no reason to believe that they’re good norms. How were they vetted? How were they arrived at? Why should we trust that they’re not, say, chock-full of catastrophic problems? (Indeed, the more people[1] are banned from commenting on the norms as a consequence of their criticism of said norms, the less we should believe that the norms are any good!)
Of all the posts on the site, the post proposing new site norms is the one that should be subjected to the greatest scrutiny—and yet it’s also the post[2] from which more critics have been banned than from almost any other. This is an extremely bad sign.
Weighted by karma (as a proxy for “not just some random person off the street, but someone whom the site and its participants judge to have worthwhile things to say”). (The ratio of “total karma of people banned from commenting on ‘Basics of Rationalist Discourse’” to “karma of author of ‘Basics of Rationalist Discourse’” is approximately 3:1. If karma represents some measure of “Less Wrong, as a site and a community, has endorsed this person as someone whose participation in discussions here is a positive good”—and the OP here suggests that it does, indeed, represent that—what does it mean that the so-called “Basics of Rationalist Discourse” cannot even bear discussion by people who are, collectively, so relatively well-regarded?)
Technically, the user. But that hardly changes the point.
For what it’s worth, the high level point here seems right to me (I am not trying to chime into the rest of the discussion about whether the ban system is a good idea in the first place).
If we canonize something like Duncan’s post I agree that we should do something like copy over a bunch of it into a new post, give prominent attribution to Duncan at the very top of the post, explain how it applies to our actual moderation policy, and then we should maintain our own ban list.
I think Duncan’s post is great, but I think when we canonize something like this it doesn’t make sense for Duncan’s ban list to carry over to the more canonized version.
This is certainly well and good, but it seems to me that the important thing is to do something like this before canonizing anything. Otherwise, it’s a case of “feel free to discuss this, but nothing will come of it, because the decision’s already been made”.
The whole point of community discussion of something like this is to serve as input into any decisions made. If you decide first, it’s too late to discuss. This is exactly what makes the author-determined ban lists so extraordinarily damaging in a case like this, where the post in question is on a “meta” topic (setting aside for the moment whether they’re good or bad in general).
The most interesting thing you said is left to your footnote:
I would love to see if this pattern is also present in other posts.
There should be some mechanism to judge posts / comments that have a mix of good and bad karma, especially since there are two measures of this now. In the olden-days it still would have been possible to do, since an overall score of “0” could still be a very high-quality information signal, if the total number of votes is high. This is only even more the case now.
At issue is whether low-quality debate is ever fruitful. That piece of data in your footnote suggests that the issue might instead be whether or not there even is low-quality debate, or at least whether or not we can rely on moderators’ judgement calls or the sum of all (weighted) votes to make such calls.
Certainly we can’t rely on the judgment of post authors! (And I am not even talking about this case in particular, but—just in general, for post authors to have the power to make such calls introduces a massive conflict of interest, and incentivizes ego-driven cognitive distortions. This is why the “post authors can ban people from their posts” feature is so corrosive to anything resembling good and useful discussion… truly, it seems to me like an egregious, and entirely unforced, mistake in system design.)
The mistake in system design started with the implementation of downvoting, but I have more complicated reasoning for this. If you have a system that implements downvoting, the reason for having that feature in place is to prevent ideas that are not easily argued away from being repeated. I tend to be skeptical of such systems because I tend to believe that if ideas are not easily argued away, they are more likely to have merit to them. If you have a post which argues for the enforcement of certain norms which push down specific kinds of ideas that are hard to argue away, one of which is the very idea that this ought to be done, it creates the impression that there are certain dogmas which can no longer be defended in open dialogue.
I am not sure that I’d go quite that far, but I certainly sympathize with the sentiment.
And with this, I entirely agree.
Note, by the way, that these two things are not at all mutually exclusive. It might, indeed, be the case that the post was motivated by some kinds of people/critiques—which have/are good critiques. (Indeed that’s one of the most important and consequential sorts of criticism of the post: that among its motivations was one or more bad motivations, which we should not endorse, and which we should, in fact, oppose, as following it would have bad effects.)
(I think this is a thread that, if I had a “slow mode” button to make users take longer to reply, I’d probably have clicked it right about now. I don’t have such a button, but Said and @Duncan_Sabien can you guys a) hold off for a couple hours on digging into this and b) generally take ~an hour in between replies here if you were gonna keep going)
who are the banned users? I’m not sure how to access the list and would like it mildly immortalized in case you change it later.
See lesswrong.com/moderation
I don’t see any bans related to that post there.
See the lower section, on user bans.
Ah. So, these people have banned duncan from commenting on their frontpage posts? or, duncan has banned them from commenting on his frontpage posts? I guess you’re implying the latter.
Makes sense.
shrug. people can make posts in reply. Zack has done so. no great loss, I think—if anything, it created slightly more discussion.