Yeah. One of my hopes with this thread is that basically, there would turn out to be two major types of spaces people wanted, the Debate cluster and the Collaborate cluster (I don’t know what names are best for either of them).
There are some fine-tune issues where… well, for example, while I don’t expect Eliezer to show up in the comments anytime soon, my model of Eliezer prefers “debate/combat norms, but with people he respects”. But that sort of thing might be easily solvable with “who is allowed to comment” being a different axis than “what are the norms and rules if you are commenting?”
I think including something like the 3rd “nice” cluster is important because it gives a way for people to post things on LW that maybe they don’t want to receive critical feedback on, regardless of how it is delivered. These things are rare now, but things I can think of where the “nice” norm might be appropriate:
the short-form feeds
art
posts that people would otherwise be afraid to make because they personally lack the self-esteem to handle people being critical of the content but nonetheless would like to share (think stuff people hide in friends-only Facebook posts or secret Tumblers)
I think there’s also a way the Debate and Collaborate clusters interact that is worth pointing out.
Within a Collaborate space, Debate is unwelcome. If you come and start trying to Debate you’re breaking the norms in a destructive way that wrecks what Collaborate is about.
Within a Debate space, Collaborate is maybe perceived as “too nice” or “pulling punches” but doesn’t wreck Debate. If you Collaborate within a Debate space it’s like you’re imposing extra rules on yourself that mean you give up some ways you could have expressed yourself (within the debate-as-combat metaphor, it’s like bringing a knife to a gun fight, or tying your hands behind your back), and people may think you’re less serious about your point than you are because you didn’t present it as forcefully as you would have under Debate culture, but you could still get along.
Both Debate and Collaborate are problems for Nice.
If we go with my 4 clusters and include Asshole it’s like:
Nice <~ Collaborate <~ Debate <~ Asshole
You can always use a lower one in a higher one, but you can’t use a higher one in a lower one.
People playing nice and being polite don’t want their positions analyze, even in a collaborative way; they will view that as adversarial because in that way of interacting any critical consideration is viewed as adversarial. The only correct responses within nice are those that support and accept and don’t question for any purpose other than learning more and to not point out contradictions (to create cognitive dissonance in an interlocutor in nice culture would be quite rude!).
(the way this is actually handled in most in-person spaces I know of is that there is a natural progression where strangers are expected to show each other politeness, and people that know each other well are more likely to spar with each other. I think this is in fact good, and part of the problem of online spaces is that there’s a lot of ambiguity of who knows each other well enough to spar and have it be net-positive rather than just causing everyone to dig in their heels and get frustrated)
This is interesting, most especially because it’s mutable, situational, and different for different participants. There’s not a policy about the topic or space, there’s a meta-policy that you lurk long enough to understand the fine-grained expectations about which sub-topics are accepted to be discussed by which styles.
This matches my experiences with good in-person discussions (incuding business, technical, and personal friendship groups): some points are ok (and expected) to directly contradict if you disagree, some others should be questioned and expanded, but not rejected, and still others are pretty much out of bounds for the current group. And which sub-point is in which group depends BOTH on who you are and what you think.
I’m not certain that this translates well to public online discussions. I don’t know if we should TRY, even. But it should make us aware that this is harder than just selecting rules we think we want—it’s figuring out what behaviors to encourage and discourage, in what situations. It’s way more detailed than “pick an island or a subreddit that has rules you like”.
Yeah. One of my hopes with this thread is that basically, there would turn out to be two major types of spaces people wanted, the Debate cluster and the Collaborate cluster (I don’t know what names are best for either of them).
There are some fine-tune issues where… well, for example, while I don’t expect Eliezer to show up in the comments anytime soon, my model of Eliezer prefers “debate/combat norms, but with people he respects”. But that sort of thing might be easily solvable with “who is allowed to comment” being a different axis than “what are the norms and rules if you are commenting?”
I think including something like the 3rd “nice” cluster is important because it gives a way for people to post things on LW that maybe they don’t want to receive critical feedback on, regardless of how it is delivered. These things are rare now, but things I can think of where the “nice” norm might be appropriate:
the short-form feeds
art
posts that people would otherwise be afraid to make because they personally lack the self-esteem to handle people being critical of the content but nonetheless would like to share (think stuff people hide in friends-only Facebook posts or secret Tumblers)
I think there’s also a way the Debate and Collaborate clusters interact that is worth pointing out.
Within a Collaborate space, Debate is unwelcome. If you come and start trying to Debate you’re breaking the norms in a destructive way that wrecks what Collaborate is about.
Within a Debate space, Collaborate is maybe perceived as “too nice” or “pulling punches” but doesn’t wreck Debate. If you Collaborate within a Debate space it’s like you’re imposing extra rules on yourself that mean you give up some ways you could have expressed yourself (within the debate-as-combat metaphor, it’s like bringing a knife to a gun fight, or tying your hands behind your back), and people may think you’re less serious about your point than you are because you didn’t present it as forcefully as you would have under Debate culture, but you could still get along.
Both Debate and Collaborate are problems for Nice.
If we go with my 4 clusters and include Asshole it’s like:
Nice <~ Collaborate <~ Debate <~ Asshole
You can always use a lower one in a higher one, but you can’t use a higher one in a lower one.
See Abram Demski’s Combat vs Nurture and Meta-Contrarianism for (what I think of) as a more fleshed out version of this thought.
How does Collaborate break Nice?
(The ordering is a great idea btw.!)
People playing nice and being polite don’t want their positions analyze, even in a collaborative way; they will view that as adversarial because in that way of interacting any critical consideration is viewed as adversarial. The only correct responses within nice are those that support and accept and don’t question for any purpose other than learning more and to not point out contradictions (to create cognitive dissonance in an interlocutor in nice culture would be quite rude!).
(the way this is actually handled in most in-person spaces I know of is that there is a natural progression where strangers are expected to show each other politeness, and people that know each other well are more likely to spar with each other. I think this is in fact good, and part of the problem of online spaces is that there’s a lot of ambiguity of who knows each other well enough to spar and have it be net-positive rather than just causing everyone to dig in their heels and get frustrated)
This is interesting, most especially because it’s mutable, situational, and different for different participants. There’s not a policy about the topic or space, there’s a meta-policy that you lurk long enough to understand the fine-grained expectations about which sub-topics are accepted to be discussed by which styles.
This matches my experiences with good in-person discussions (incuding business, technical, and personal friendship groups): some points are ok (and expected) to directly contradict if you disagree, some others should be questioned and expanded, but not rejected, and still others are pretty much out of bounds for the current group. And which sub-point is in which group depends BOTH on who you are and what you think.
I’m not certain that this translates well to public online discussions. I don’t know if we should TRY, even. But it should make us aware that this is harder than just selecting rules we think we want—it’s figuring out what behaviors to encourage and discourage, in what situations. It’s way more detailed than “pick an island or a subreddit that has rules you like”.