FWIW, I think of it as a useful mnemonic and more something like “here are three principal components on which I would score a comment before posting to evaluate whether posting it is a good idea”. I think the three hypothesized principal components are decent at capturing important aspects of reality, but not perfect.
I think on LW the “is it true”/”logically valid”/”written with truth-seeking orientation” principal component is more important than on other forums.
I also think de-facto we have settled on the “is it kind”/”written with caring”/”avoiding causing emotional hurt” direction being less important on LW, though this is a topic of great long-standing disagreement between people on the site. To the substantial but still ultimately limited degree I can set norms on the site, I think the answer to this should probably roughly be “yes, I think it makes sense for it to be less important around here, but on the margin I think I would like there to be more kindness, but like, not enormously more”.
I feel like LW has varied a surprising amount on how much it values something like the “useful”/”relevant”/”important”/”weightiness”/”seriousness” principal component. LW is not a humor site, and there isn’t a ton of frivolous posting, but we do have a lot of culture and people do have fun a bunch. My current take is that LW does care about this dimension more than most other internet forums, but a lot less than basically all professional forums or scientific journals or anything in that reference class.
Not sure whether this helps this discussion. I found it helpful to think through this, and figured I would share more of the principal-component framing of this, which is closer to how I think about it. Also, maybe you don’t see how these three things might meaningfully be considered three principal components of comment quality, or don’t see how they carve reality at its joints, which IDK, I am not like enamored with this frame, but I found that it pays decent rent in my ability to predict the consequences of posting a comment.
I feel like LW has varied a surprising amount on how much it values something like the “useful”/”relevant”/”important”/”weightiness”/”seriousness” principal component. LW is not a humor site, and there isn’t a ton of frivolous posting, but we do have a lot of culture and people do have fun a bunch. My current take is that LW does care about this dimension more than most other internet forums, but a lot less than basically all professional forums or scientific journals or anything in that reference class.
Part of the problem (not the entirety of it by any means, but a substantial part) is that the claim that these things (‘“useful”/”relevant”/”important”/”weightiness”/”seriousness”’) are somehow one thing is… extremely non-obvious. To me they seem like several different things. I don’t even really know what you mean by any of them (I can make some very general guesses, but who knows if my guesses are even close to what you’ve got in mind?), and I definitely don’t have the first clue how to interpret them as some kind of single thing.
(Really there are so many problems with this whole “kind/true/necessary, pick 2” thing that it seems like if I start listing them, we’ll be here all day. Maybe a big part of the problem is that I’ve never seen it persuasively—or even seriously—defended, and yet it’s routinely cited as if it’s just an uncontroversially good framework. It seems like one of those things that has so much intuitive appeal that most people simply refuse to give it any real thought, no matter how many and how serious are the problems that it is demonstrated to have, because they so strongly don’t want to abandon it. I do not include you among that number, to be clear.)
To me they seem like several different things. I don’t even really know what you mean by any of them (I can make some very general guesses, but who knows if my guesses are even close to what you’ve got in mind?), and I definitely don’t have the first clue how to interpret them as some kind of single thing.
My guess is I could communicate the concept extensionally by just pointing to lots of examples, but IDK, I don’t super feel like putting in the effort right now. I broadly agree with you that this feels like a framework that is often given too much weight, but I also get decent mileage out of the version I described in my comment.
To be clear, it wasn’t my intention to suggest that I expected you to clarify, right here in this comment thread, this concept (or concepts) that you’re using. I don’t expect that would be a good use of your time (and it seems like you agree).
My point, rather, was that it’s really not clear (to me, and I expect—based on many concrete instances of experience!—to many others, also) what these words are being used to mean, whether this is a single concept or multiple concepts, what exactly those concepts are, etc. Quite apart from the concrete question “what does that mean”, the fact that I don’t have even any good guesses about the answer (much less anything resembling certainty) makes the concept in question a poor basis for any evaluation with practical consequences!
I broadly agree with you that this feels like a framework that is often given too much weight, but I also get decent mileage out of the version I described in my comment.
I don’t doubt that, but I do want to point out that a set of criteria applied to oneself, and the same set of criteria applied to others, will have very different consequences.
FWIW, I think of it as a useful mnemonic and more something like “here are three principal components on which I would score a comment before posting to evaluate whether posting it is a good idea”. I think the three hypothesized principal components are decent at capturing important aspects of reality, but not perfect.
I think on LW the “is it true”/”logically valid”/”written with truth-seeking orientation” principal component is more important than on other forums.
I also think de-facto we have settled on the “is it kind”/”written with caring”/”avoiding causing emotional hurt” direction being less important on LW, though this is a topic of great long-standing disagreement between people on the site. To the substantial but still ultimately limited degree I can set norms on the site, I think the answer to this should probably roughly be “yes, I think it makes sense for it to be less important around here, but on the margin I think I would like there to be more kindness, but like, not enormously more”.
I feel like LW has varied a surprising amount on how much it values something like the “useful”/”relevant”/”important”/”weightiness”/”seriousness” principal component. LW is not a humor site, and there isn’t a ton of frivolous posting, but we do have a lot of culture and people do have fun a bunch. My current take is that LW does care about this dimension more than most other internet forums, but a lot less than basically all professional forums or scientific journals or anything in that reference class.
Not sure whether this helps this discussion. I found it helpful to think through this, and figured I would share more of the principal-component framing of this, which is closer to how I think about it. Also, maybe you don’t see how these three things might meaningfully be considered three principal components of comment quality, or don’t see how they carve reality at its joints, which IDK, I am not like enamored with this frame, but I found that it pays decent rent in my ability to predict the consequences of posting a comment.
Part of the problem (not the entirety of it by any means, but a substantial part) is that the claim that these things (‘“useful”/”relevant”/”important”/”weightiness”/”seriousness”’) are somehow one thing is… extremely non-obvious. To me they seem like several different things. I don’t even really know what you mean by any of them (I can make some very general guesses, but who knows if my guesses are even close to what you’ve got in mind?), and I definitely don’t have the first clue how to interpret them as some kind of single thing.
(Really there are so many problems with this whole “kind/true/necessary, pick 2” thing that it seems like if I start listing them, we’ll be here all day. Maybe a big part of the problem is that I’ve never seen it persuasively—or even seriously—defended, and yet it’s routinely cited as if it’s just an uncontroversially good framework. It seems like one of those things that has so much intuitive appeal that most people simply refuse to give it any real thought, no matter how many and how serious are the problems that it is demonstrated to have, because they so strongly don’t want to abandon it. I do not include you among that number, to be clear.)
My guess is I could communicate the concept extensionally by just pointing to lots of examples, but IDK, I don’t super feel like putting in the effort right now. I broadly agree with you that this feels like a framework that is often given too much weight, but I also get decent mileage out of the version I described in my comment.
To be clear, it wasn’t my intention to suggest that I expected you to clarify, right here in this comment thread, this concept (or concepts) that you’re using. I don’t expect that would be a good use of your time (and it seems like you agree).
My point, rather, was that it’s really not clear (to me, and I expect—based on many concrete instances of experience!—to many others, also) what these words are being used to mean, whether this is a single concept or multiple concepts, what exactly those concepts are, etc. Quite apart from the concrete question “what does that mean”, the fact that I don’t have even any good guesses about the answer (much less anything resembling certainty) makes the concept in question a poor basis for any evaluation with practical consequences!
I don’t doubt that, but I do want to point out that a set of criteria applied to oneself, and the same set of criteria applied to others, will have very different consequences.