I suppose I should’ve used my free will to ignore the negative conditioning being applied to me? I’ll go do that as soon as I acquire free will.
This isn’t a goal you automatically succeed at; responding appropriately to criticism is a skill that takes development. I’ve put quite a bit of effort into training my skill at this, and am pleased with how far I have gotten, but recognize I still have a ways to go. In particular, I’m afraid I haven’t put much effort into developing my ability to train others; I’d recommend talking to Val about it; he should be able to teach you much more effectively than I can.
The primary technique that I use that’s communicable is to try and use defensiveness as a trigger for curiosity. That association is very useful, but I’m not sure what sort of practice would help teach it. Perhaps a helpful visualization is to try and ‘slide’ down from combativeness into curiosity.
Perspective alteration is also useful. People aren’t responding to you, but to what you created; Julia has a neat visualization trick of seeing people’s positions (including her own) as somewhat displaced from them during arguments. If Caledonian has something mean to say about one of your posts, well, it’s attacking your post, not you. (And even if he says something along the lines of “Eliezer is a big meanie head,” well, it could easily be the case that the Eliezer model in Caledonian’s mind is a big meanie head, but you don’t have to interpret that as an attack.)
And once you have distance from it, you can remove the tone and focus on the substance, and see whether or not you can use the substance to make yourself stronger.
Been there. Done that. Got tired. Try being a D-level Internet celebrity sometime. It will rapidly exceed reserves of patience you didn’t know you had.
I empathize. Looking back, I also realize I was unclear; in the grandparent I talked mostly about how to respond positively to criticism, when my original comment of responding appropriately to criticism was closer to the mark.
I don’t expect you to respond positively to all criticism; one of the benefits of being a celebrity is that there are other people who will do that for you. But if it takes patience for you to be indifferent to criticism, then I think you would see significant gains from further skill development. Deleting critical comments reduces your public effectiveness, and putting emotional satisfaction above that is not something I recommend. This is especially important for you, because you have pinned your public image so closely to rationality.
I don’t think you understand the concept here. I’m not deleting comments because it gives me a satisfying feeling. I deleted Caledonian’s comments because he was successfully shifting OB to troll comments and discussion of troll comments, and this was giving me an ‘ouch’ feeling each time I posted. I tried talking myself out of the ouch feeling but it didn’t actually work. I asked people to stop feeding the troll and that also didn’t work. So I started deleting comments because I don’t live in a world of things that ought to work.
Banning all meta discussion on LW of any kind seems like an increasingly good idea—in terms of it being healthy for the community, or rather, meta of any kind being unhealthy.
/r/science occasionally vaporizes half the comments in their threads now and it hasn’t seemed to hurt them any. I don’t think censorship actually hurts reputation very much, certainly not enough to make up for the degree to which meta blather hurts community.
I don’t think censorship actually hurts reputation very much, certainly not enough to make up for the degree to which meta blather hurts community.
Censorship of offtopic and idiots is very much appreciated and not usually regarded as the squicky kind of censorship, except on places like r/anarchism, which I wouldn’t worry about.
As always, I encourage you to do more public executions. (keyword “public”. The masses must know that there is a benevolent moderator delivering them from evil trolls).
Banning all meta discussion on LW of any kind seems like an increasingly good idea—in terms of it being healthy for the community, or rather, meta of any kind being unhealthy.
+1. Even those of us who participate in meta discussions don’t necessarily appreciate their existence. Start with this thread.
I’m not deleting comments because it gives me a satisfying feeling.
What would it look like if you were?
I deleted Caledonian’s comments because he was successfully shifting OB to troll comments and discussion of troll comments, and this was giving me an ‘ouch’ feeling each time I posted. I tried talking myself out of the ouch feeling but it didn’t actually work, so there you go.
It’s not clear to me how to interpret this “and.” If he were successfully shifting OB to troll comments, and this was giving you a pleasant feeling every time you posted, you wouldn’t have deleted his comments? If lowering the discourse was reason enough to delete his comments, why not just list that as your primary reason, rather than your internal emotional response to him lowering the discourse?
Banning all meta discussion on LW of any kind seems like an increasingly good idea—in terms of it being healthy for the community, or rather, meta of any kind being unhealthy.
It seems to me that there are several kinds of healthy meta discussions. I am worried that a ban on meta discussion will accelerate the departure of dissatisfied members of the community, because they have no outlet to process their dissatisfactions, and that this will decrease the quality and intellectual breadth of the community.
Banning all meta discussion on LW of any kind seems like an increasingly good idea—in terms of it being healthy for the community, or rather, meta of any kind being unhealthy.
Just voicing support for this, together with an outlet in terms of a periodic meta thread or that LW subreddit.
Banning all meta discussion on LW of any kind seems like an increasingly good idea—in terms of it being healthy for the community, or rather, meta of any kind being unhealthy.
It is a good idea, provided you also give people an explicit outlet to blow off steam, like http://www.reddit.com/r/LessWrong. Seems to have worked for the basilisk discussions. Alternatively, a periodic “Rules and Regulations” meta thread could help keep meta discussions away from other threads. Anyway, something like this works great for a few of subject-specific IRC channels I frequent or moderate.
Banning all meta discussion on LW of any kind seems like an increasingly good idea—in terms of it being healthy for the community, or rather, meta of any kind being unhealth
Have you considered having a separate “place” for it?
I haven’t seen anything to say that is for meta discussion, it mostly isn’t de facto, and I haven’t seen a “take it elsewhere” notice anywhere as an aternative to downvote and delete.
Nope; I only saw his comments when reading through the sequences, and thought they were often sharp (in both senses of the word). There are no doubt selection effects at play in which ones still existed for me to read them.
Caledonian was attacking posts because it knew it was getting under people’s skin.
To which the obvious response is to not let it get under your skin, and if you lack that level of control over your skin, to deliberately develop it.
But being able to handle criticism properly is a very important rational skill. Those who feel they cannot do it need to adjust their levels of self-advertisement as rationalists accordingly.
being able to handle criticism properly is a very important rational skill
You are absolutely right. Some parts of this very important rational skill are: properly discerning genuine criticism from trolling; properly discerning whether the person posting it is a useful or a harmful presence in the forum; properly deciding a useful course of action.
I think that Eliezer has indeed demonstrated possession of this very important rational skill in his handling of V_V’s criticism.
This isn’t a goal you automatically succeed at; responding appropriately to criticism is a skill that takes development. I’ve put quite a bit of effort into training my skill at this, and am pleased with how far I have gotten, but recognize I still have a ways to go. In particular, I’m afraid I haven’t put much effort into developing my ability to train others; I’d recommend talking to Val about it; he should be able to teach you much more effectively than I can.
The primary technique that I use that’s communicable is to try and use defensiveness as a trigger for curiosity. That association is very useful, but I’m not sure what sort of practice would help teach it. Perhaps a helpful visualization is to try and ‘slide’ down from combativeness into curiosity.
Perspective alteration is also useful. People aren’t responding to you, but to what you created; Julia has a neat visualization trick of seeing people’s positions (including her own) as somewhat displaced from them during arguments. If Caledonian has something mean to say about one of your posts, well, it’s attacking your post, not you. (And even if he says something along the lines of “Eliezer is a big meanie head,” well, it could easily be the case that the Eliezer model in Caledonian’s mind is a big meanie head, but you don’t have to interpret that as an attack.)
And once you have distance from it, you can remove the tone and focus on the substance, and see whether or not you can use the substance to make yourself stronger.
Been there. Done that. Got tired. Try being a D-level Internet celebrity sometime. It will rapidly exceed reserves of patience you didn’t know you had.
I continue to support your decisions on heavier moderation, and once again thank you for your efforts to keep Less Wrong a well-tended garden.
I empathize. Looking back, I also realize I was unclear; in the grandparent I talked mostly about how to respond positively to criticism, when my original comment of responding appropriately to criticism was closer to the mark.
I don’t expect you to respond positively to all criticism; one of the benefits of being a celebrity is that there are other people who will do that for you. But if it takes patience for you to be indifferent to criticism, then I think you would see significant gains from further skill development. Deleting critical comments reduces your public effectiveness, and putting emotional satisfaction above that is not something I recommend. This is especially important for you, because you have pinned your public image so closely to rationality.
I don’t think you understand the concept here. I’m not deleting comments because it gives me a satisfying feeling. I deleted Caledonian’s comments because he was successfully shifting OB to troll comments and discussion of troll comments, and this was giving me an ‘ouch’ feeling each time I posted. I tried talking myself out of the ouch feeling but it didn’t actually work. I asked people to stop feeding the troll and that also didn’t work. So I started deleting comments because I don’t live in a world of things that ought to work.
Banning all meta discussion on LW of any kind seems like an increasingly good idea—in terms of it being healthy for the community, or rather, meta of any kind being unhealthy.
/r/science occasionally vaporizes half the comments in their threads now and it hasn’t seemed to hurt them any. I don’t think censorship actually hurts reputation very much, certainly not enough to make up for the degree to which meta blather hurts community.
Censorship of offtopic and idiots is very much appreciated and not usually regarded as the squicky kind of censorship, except on places like r/anarchism, which I wouldn’t worry about.
As always, I encourage you to do more public executions. (keyword “public”. The masses must know that there is a benevolent moderator delivering them from evil trolls).
+1. Even those of us who participate in meta discussions don’t necessarily appreciate their existence. Start with this thread.
What would it look like if you were?
It’s not clear to me how to interpret this “and.” If he were successfully shifting OB to troll comments, and this was giving you a pleasant feeling every time you posted, you wouldn’t have deleted his comments? If lowering the discourse was reason enough to delete his comments, why not just list that as your primary reason, rather than your internal emotional response to him lowering the discourse?
It seems to me that there are several kinds of healthy meta discussions. I am worried that a ban on meta discussion will accelerate the departure of dissatisfied members of the community, because they have no outlet to process their dissatisfactions, and that this will decrease the quality and intellectual breadth of the community.
SMITE!
Just voicing support for this, together with an outlet in terms of a periodic meta thread or that LW subreddit.
It is a good idea, provided you also give people an explicit outlet to blow off steam, like http://www.reddit.com/r/LessWrong. Seems to have worked for the basilisk discussions. Alternatively, a periodic “Rules and Regulations” meta thread could help keep meta discussions away from other threads. Anyway, something like this works great for a few of subject-specific IRC channels I frequent or moderate.
Have you considered having a separate “place” for it?
http://lesswrong.com/lw/gkv/official_lw_uncensored_thread_on_reddit/
I haven’t seen anything to say that is for meta discussion, it mostly isn’t de facto, and I haven’t seen a “take it elsewhere” notice anywhere as an aternative to downvote and delete.
Were you around back then? Caledonian was attacking posts because it knew it was getting under people’s skin.
Nope; I only saw his comments when reading through the sequences, and thought they were often sharp (in both senses of the word). There are no doubt selection effects at play in which ones still existed for me to read them.
To which the obvious response is to not let it get under your skin, and if you lack that level of control over your skin, to deliberately develop it.
To quote ShannonFriedman from another post:
(Replacing ‘write bylaws’, of course, with ‘respond positively to criticism.’)
Willpower isn’t an infinite resource.
But being able to handle criticism properly is a very important rational skill. Those who feel they cannot do it need to adjust their levels of self-advertisement as rationalists accordingly.
You are absolutely right. Some parts of this very important rational skill are: properly discerning genuine criticism from trolling; properly discerning whether the person posting it is a useful or a harmful presence in the forum; properly deciding a useful course of action.
I think that Eliezer has indeed demonstrated possession of this very important rational skill in his handling of V_V’s criticism.