I agreed that an “I am tapping out of this” comment is helpful until I experienced it and realized that the experience is quite unpleasant. There’s something particularly stinging about being told that a discussion with you can’t be productive. I think I wouldn’t be effected at all if the non-response was “I am tapping out of this.” without any particular reason being given.
I think it has to do with Jordan Peterson’s 9th rule for life, “Assume the person you’re listening to might know something that you don’t”. That just just makes sense to me. I don’t quite understand why some people care about vitriolic comments on the internet. To me, vitriolic comments are par for the course and bringing it up is an obvious attempt to play the victim card for sympathy. But hey ozziegooen seems like a well-written dude so maybe he has a good explanation for why I should care about whether or not people have written scathing online reviews of DiAngelo’s book. Or maybe he has another insight into the topic that I couldn’t predict. Definitely his last response to me gave me a lot of information I didn’t already know so for me the interaction was a net positive.
Saying “we can’t have a productive discussion” in response to a two sentence reply completely goes against that 9th rule. It’s an acknowledgement that the responder is listening to me, because he responded to my comment. But he’s also stating that he thinks I have literally nothing to offer him by way of new information and vice-versa. That’s pretty low!
I am certainly more sensitive on this issue than most people here. If ozziegooen’s comment wouldn’t seem insulting to others then really the issue lies entirely with me and I’ll adapt to the style of decorum that fits most people. I don’t want to jump at conduct that the LW community thinks is fine.
On a different note, I agree with you that people should feel free to tap out of discussions. I don’t mind if someone doesn’t wish to discuss further. I’ve tapped out of many conversations myself for a variety of reasons and sometimes the reason is I don’t think the conversation will be productive.
I’m not going to respond any further after this comment because I don’t think this back-and-forth will be productive. [1]
There are >7 billion people on the planet, and likely >100 active threads on LessWrong. Your prior should strongly be against interaction with any specific person on any specific topic being the best use of your time, not for it.
I believe that operating from tell culture when interacting on LessWrong is fine. Yes, that will mean that people who are socialized in guess culture will find some things rude or unpleasant but that doesn’t justify LessWrong switching to ask culture norms.
Jordan Peterson’s rules for life are about taking responsibility for your own life. It seems like you advocate here that other people are supposed to take responsibilty for you feeling offended.
I seems to me like you are violating the rule you appear when you advocate here if you state that ozziegooen should have self censored themselves instead of truthfully expressing what he believed to be true.
My response is fine in tell culture too no? I’m stating what I believe to be true of their comment. Why is it ok for ozziegooen to speak truthfully in his comment but it’s not ok for me to reply truthfully wrt to my impression of his comment?
Mind reading (“It’s an attempt to signal you hold some sort of moral high ground”) isn’t what you do in tell culture. The idea that you are “telling the truth” when you are mind reading seems strange to me.
In contrast when ozziegooen says I do X because I expect Y then it makes sense to assume that his explanation of his own motivation is correct. Unless of course, you think he’s lying about his motivation (maybe because he would actually believe ¬Y, and has another reason).
But he’s also stating that he thinks I have literally nothing to offer him by way of new information and vice-versa. That’s pretty low!
This is definitely not how I saw it.
I’m sure everyone has a lot to learn from everyone else. The big challenge is that this learning is costly and we have extremely limited resources. There’s an endless number of discussions we could be part of, and we all have very limited time left in total (for discussions and other things). So if I try to gently leave a conversation, it’s mainly a signal of “I don’t think that this is the absolutely most high-value thing for me to be doing now”, which is a high bar!
Second, I think you might have been taking this a bit personally, like me trying to hold off conversation was a personal evaluation as you as a person.
Again, I know very little about you, and I used to know even less (when you made the original comment). This is the comment in question:
Defending a position by pointing out that a portion (however big or small) of the critics of the position are ‘vitriolic’ isn’t actually a valid argument. If people really hate something so much so that they get emotional about it that’s still pretty good evidence that the something is bad.
This really doesn’t give me much insight into your position or background. Basically all I know about you is that you wrote these two sentences here, and have written a few comments on LessWrong in the past. My prior for “person with an anonymous name on LessWrong, a few previous comments there, and so on”, doesn’t make me incredibly excited to spend a lot of time going back and forth with. I’ve been burned in the past, a few times, with people who match similar characteristics.
Often people who use anonymous accounts wind up being terrific, it’s just hard to discern which are which, early on.
About that last line; I’m fine with you replying or not replying. I wish you the best in the continuation of your intellectual journey.
Lastly, I’ll note that this “White Fragility” is a very sensitive topic that I’m not excited to chat about publicly on forums like this. (In part because my comments on this get downvoted a lot, in part because this sort of discussion can easily be used as ammunition later on by anyone interested (against either myself or any of the other commenters who responds)). My identity is clearly public, so there is real risk.
I write blog posts on LessWrong that are far less controversial, and am much more happy to publicly discuss those topics.
I agreed that an “I am tapping out of this” comment is helpful until I experienced it and realized that the experience is quite unpleasant. There’s something particularly stinging about being told that a discussion with you can’t be productive. I think I wouldn’t be effected at all if the non-response was “I am tapping out of this.” without any particular reason being given.
I think it has to do with Jordan Peterson’s 9th rule for life, “Assume the person you’re listening to might know something that you don’t”. That just just makes sense to me. I don’t quite understand why some people care about vitriolic comments on the internet. To me, vitriolic comments are par for the course and bringing it up is an obvious attempt to play the victim card for sympathy. But hey ozziegooen seems like a well-written dude so maybe he has a good explanation for why I should care about whether or not people have written scathing online reviews of DiAngelo’s book. Or maybe he has another insight into the topic that I couldn’t predict. Definitely his last response to me gave me a lot of information I didn’t already know so for me the interaction was a net positive.
Saying “we can’t have a productive discussion” in response to a two sentence reply completely goes against that 9th rule. It’s an acknowledgement that the responder is listening to me, because he responded to my comment. But he’s also stating that he thinks I have literally nothing to offer him by way of new information and vice-versa. That’s pretty low!
I am certainly more sensitive on this issue than most people here. If ozziegooen’s comment wouldn’t seem insulting to others then really the issue lies entirely with me and I’ll adapt to the style of decorum that fits most people. I don’t want to jump at conduct that the LW community thinks is fine.
On a different note, I agree with you that people should feel free to tap out of discussions. I don’t mind if someone doesn’t wish to discuss further. I’ve tapped out of many conversations myself for a variety of reasons and sometimes the reason is I don’t think the conversation will be productive.
I’m not going to respond any further after this comment because I don’t think this back-and-forth will be productive. [1]
I’m just saying this to give you the experience. I don’t mean it at all. But even then I feel bad saying it because it sounds so rude to me!
There are >7 billion people on the planet, and likely >100 active threads on LessWrong. Your prior should strongly be against interaction with any specific person on any specific topic being the best use of your time, not for it.
I believe that operating from tell culture when interacting on LessWrong is fine. Yes, that will mean that people who are socialized in guess culture will find some things rude or unpleasant but that doesn’t justify LessWrong switching to ask culture norms.
Jordan Peterson’s rules for life are about taking responsibility for your own life. It seems like you advocate here that other people are supposed to take responsibilty for you feeling offended.
I seems to me like you are violating the rule you appear when you advocate here if you state that ozziegooen should have self censored themselves instead of truthfully expressing what he believed to be true.
My response is fine in tell culture too no? I’m stating what I believe to be true of their comment. Why is it ok for ozziegooen to speak truthfully in his comment but it’s not ok for me to reply truthfully wrt to my impression of his comment?
Mind reading (“It’s an attempt to signal you hold some sort of moral high ground”) isn’t what you do in tell culture. The idea that you are “telling the truth” when you are mind reading seems strange to me.
In contrast when ozziegooen says I do X because I expect Y then it makes sense to assume that his explanation of his own motivation is correct. Unless of course, you think he’s lying about his motivation (maybe because he would actually believe ¬Y, and has another reason).
You know, I wrote a whole reply but your comment isn’t worth responding to.
Thanks for the longer comments here!
Quick thoughts, on my end:
This is definitely not how I saw it.
I’m sure everyone has a lot to learn from everyone else. The big challenge is that this learning is costly and we have extremely limited resources. There’s an endless number of discussions we could be part of, and we all have very limited time left in total (for discussions and other things). So if I try to gently leave a conversation, it’s mainly a signal of “I don’t think that this is the absolutely most high-value thing for me to be doing now”, which is a high bar!
Second, I think you might have been taking this a bit personally, like me trying to hold off conversation was a personal evaluation as you as a person.
Again, I know very little about you, and I used to know even less (when you made the original comment). This is the comment in question:
This really doesn’t give me much insight into your position or background. Basically all I know about you is that you wrote these two sentences here, and have written a few comments on LessWrong in the past. My prior for “person with an anonymous name on LessWrong, a few previous comments there, and so on”, doesn’t make me incredibly excited to spend a lot of time going back and forth with. I’ve been burned in the past, a few times, with people who match similar characteristics.
Often people who use anonymous accounts wind up being terrific, it’s just hard to discern which are which, early on.
About that last line; I’m fine with you replying or not replying. I wish you the best in the continuation of your intellectual journey.
Lastly, I’ll note that this “White Fragility” is a very sensitive topic that I’m not excited to chat about publicly on forums like this. (In part because my comments on this get downvoted a lot, in part because this sort of discussion can easily be used as ammunition later on by anyone interested (against either myself or any of the other commenters who responds)). My identity is clearly public, so there is real risk.
I write blog posts on LessWrong that are far less controversial, and am much more happy to publicly discuss those topics.