… well, that bit is a p.r.r.f.i. only in the same way as things like “Are you really as stupid as you sound?” are. I repeat: Douglas_Reay’s post contains no blank-slatey attempts to explain anything and makes no claims that anyone’s discriminating against anyone else. It just doesn’t.
Well, if you bring up a a bunch of links about learning how not to come off as creepy, and pose it as a salient topic of discussion to the community, you’re tacitly implying that people coming off as creepy is a problem of particular relevance to the community.
The connotations are such that, rather than having to make explicit that there have been cases where people at Less Wrong meetups have been offended by behavior they’ve found creepy, it could reasonably be taken as implied, unless explicitly disavowed.
If there is evidence of such a pattern, then it is certainly worth knowing about. But posing it as an explanation, or even a contributing factor, in the gender imbalance of the community, is something that could reasonably be taken as insulting.
Suppose you have an online acquaintance who’s rather unpopular. Your only information on why they might be unpopular comes from your online interactions with them and what they tell you themself, and you’re unsure why they have so little social success based on that information. So, you suggest “Maybe you should try showering more often.”
Now, if the person does in fact have poor personal hygiene, this could be the exact behavior modification they need to achieve better social success. But this is not gently suggesting that one possible contributing factor to their lack of social success is poor personal hygiene. In terms of ordinary human communication, it amounts to a tacit accusation that they’re a smelly person.
I parse Filipe’s comment as being something along the lines of “Do we have evidence that this is a pervasive pattern in this community? If so, I acknowledge this as as being a potentially valuable contribution. If not, I find the tacit assumption that it is somewhat offensive.” If no such assumption is intended, then the post would do well to disclaim it.
I think all it implies is that creepiness could be a problem. There have been a number of recent instances—much discussed online—where it seems to have been, in the SF and atheist communities; that seems to me plenty enough to explain Douglas’s decision to bring it up.
I don’t find the analogy with suggesting that an unpopular person shower more very convincing. The main (though not the only) reason is that the dynamics of giving and taking offence seem to me quite different in the two cases, on account of the difference between saying something to one person and saying it to a whole community.
Consider: rather a large fraction of LW’s content consists of articles saying “Here is a mistake it’s possible to make when thinking. You should probably try not to do that.” If you go up to an individual person and say something like that then they’re likely to think you’re accusing them of making that mistake, and they may well take offence. If you say it publicly to the whole community then no one is being accused of anything and empirically it seems that people don’t take offence. Similarly, no one takes the LW articles about akrasia as personal accusations of Not Getting Stuff Done, etc. For that matter, since you use it as an analogy: I’ve seen articles in LW that said explicitly: “Some people, more of them among people of the sort LW attracts, have poor personal hygiene: you should shower regularly.” And, as it turns out, no one seems to have been offended; I don’t recall any responses saying “How dare you accuse me of having poor personal hygiene?”.
Why take a statement of the form “Some people in our community may do such-and-such a bad thing; let’s avoid it” as a personal attack and take offence? It just isn’t a personal attack. Not even if it really does mean “Some people in our community actually do do such-and-such a bad thing”. -- Not unless someone thinks that actually they, personally, are being attacked (or that someone close to them is) and that the generalized some-people-in-our-community stuff is just a cover. But I haven’t heard anyone suggest that anything like that is going on here.
I personally agree that creepiness could be a problem in this community, and was not offended by the article, but I don’t see it as unreasonable defensiveness for someone to be offended by the implication that this is a significant problem in the absence of evidence.
This is an issue which, I suspect, a significant number of our members are very conscious of, and take pains to avoid. One effective way to offend people, indeed the way in which I have most recently personally been significantly offended, is lecturing them in the assumption that they’re unaware of an error which they have actually gone to significant effort to correct.
Since this is a particularly touchy subject, it helps to take pains not to offend people. Maybe this article “just isn’t” a personal attack, but then many creepy behaviors “just aren’t” making inappropriate advances, but still set off the triggers of people who, after all, can only read behaviors, not intentions.
Well, if you bring up a a bunch of links about learning how not to come off as creepy, and pose it as a salient topic of discussion to the community, you’re tacitly implying that people coming off as creepy is a problem of particular relevance to the community.
The connotations are such that, rather than having to make explicit that there have been cases where people at Less Wrong meetups have been offended by behavior they’ve found creepy, it could reasonably be taken as implied, unless explicitly disavowed.
If there is evidence of such a pattern, then it is certainly worth knowing about. But posing it as an explanation, or even a contributing factor, in the gender imbalance of the community, is something that could reasonably be taken as insulting.
Suppose you have an online acquaintance who’s rather unpopular. Your only information on why they might be unpopular comes from your online interactions with them and what they tell you themself, and you’re unsure why they have so little social success based on that information. So, you suggest “Maybe you should try showering more often.”
Now, if the person does in fact have poor personal hygiene, this could be the exact behavior modification they need to achieve better social success. But this is not gently suggesting that one possible contributing factor to their lack of social success is poor personal hygiene. In terms of ordinary human communication, it amounts to a tacit accusation that they’re a smelly person.
I parse Filipe’s comment as being something along the lines of “Do we have evidence that this is a pervasive pattern in this community? If so, I acknowledge this as as being a potentially valuable contribution. If not, I find the tacit assumption that it is somewhat offensive.” If no such assumption is intended, then the post would do well to disclaim it.
I think all it implies is that creepiness could be a problem. There have been a number of recent instances—much discussed online—where it seems to have been, in the SF and atheist communities; that seems to me plenty enough to explain Douglas’s decision to bring it up.
I don’t find the analogy with suggesting that an unpopular person shower more very convincing. The main (though not the only) reason is that the dynamics of giving and taking offence seem to me quite different in the two cases, on account of the difference between saying something to one person and saying it to a whole community.
Consider: rather a large fraction of LW’s content consists of articles saying “Here is a mistake it’s possible to make when thinking. You should probably try not to do that.” If you go up to an individual person and say something like that then they’re likely to think you’re accusing them of making that mistake, and they may well take offence. If you say it publicly to the whole community then no one is being accused of anything and empirically it seems that people don’t take offence. Similarly, no one takes the LW articles about akrasia as personal accusations of Not Getting Stuff Done, etc. For that matter, since you use it as an analogy: I’ve seen articles in LW that said explicitly: “Some people, more of them among people of the sort LW attracts, have poor personal hygiene: you should shower regularly.” And, as it turns out, no one seems to have been offended; I don’t recall any responses saying “How dare you accuse me of having poor personal hygiene?”.
Why take a statement of the form “Some people in our community may do such-and-such a bad thing; let’s avoid it” as a personal attack and take offence? It just isn’t a personal attack. Not even if it really does mean “Some people in our community actually do do such-and-such a bad thing”. -- Not unless someone thinks that actually they, personally, are being attacked (or that someone close to them is) and that the generalized some-people-in-our-community stuff is just a cover. But I haven’t heard anyone suggest that anything like that is going on here.
I personally agree that creepiness could be a problem in this community, and was not offended by the article, but I don’t see it as unreasonable defensiveness for someone to be offended by the implication that this is a significant problem in the absence of evidence.
This is an issue which, I suspect, a significant number of our members are very conscious of, and take pains to avoid. One effective way to offend people, indeed the way in which I have most recently personally been significantly offended, is lecturing them in the assumption that they’re unaware of an error which they have actually gone to significant effort to correct.
Since this is a particularly touchy subject, it helps to take pains not to offend people. Maybe this article “just isn’t” a personal attack, but then many creepy behaviors “just aren’t” making inappropriate advances, but still set off the triggers of people who, after all, can only read behaviors, not intentions.