I think I should actually punt this question to Kaj_Sotala, since they are his posts, and the meta rule is that authors get to set the norms on this posts.
Sure.
I still think it’d be most useful if you came at it from the frame of “What product is Kaj trying to build, and if I think that product isn’t useful, are there different products that would better solve the problem that Kaj’s product is trying to solve?”
Sure, but what if (as seems likely enough) I think there aren’t any different products that better solve the problem…?
I actually think the most useful thing you might do is write a more extensive post that critiques the sequence as a whole.
So, just as a general point (and this is related to the previous paragraph)…
The problem with the norm of writing critiques as separate posts, is that it biases (or, if you like, nudges) critiques toward the sort that constitute points or theses in their own right.
In other words, if you write a post, and I comment to say that your post is dumb and you are dumb for thinking and writing this and the whole thing is wrong and bad (except, you know, in a tactful way), well, that is, at least in some sense, appropriate (or we might say, it is relevant, in the Gricean sense); you wrote a post, I posted a comment about that post. Fine.
But if you write a post, and I write a post of my own the entirety of whose content and message is “post X which Raemon just wrote is wrong and bad etc.”, well, what is that? Who writes a whole post just to say that someone else is wrong? It seems… odd; and also, antagonistic, somehow. “What was the point of this post?”, commenters may inquire; “Surely you didn’t write a whole post just to say that another post is wrong? What’s your take, then? What Raemon said is wrong, but then what’s right?”—and what do I answer? “I have no idea what’s right, but that is wrong, and… that’s all I wanted to say, really.” As I said, this simply looks odd (socially speaking). (And certainly one is much less likely to get any traction or even engagement—except the dubious sort of engagement; the kind which is all meta, no substance.)
And the thing is, many of my critiques (of CFAR stuff, yes, and of many other things that are discussed in rationalist spaces) boil down to just “what you are saying is wrong”. If you ask me what I think the right answer is, in such cases, I will have nothing to offer you. I don’t know what the right answer is. I don’t think you know what the right answer is, either; I don’t think anyone has the right answer. Beyond saying that (hypothetical) you are wrong, I often really don’t have much to add.
But such criticisms are extremely important! Refraining from falsely believing ourselves to have the right answer, or even a good answer, or even “the best answer so far”, when what we actually have is simply wrong—this is extremely important! It is very tempting to think that we’ve found an answer, when we have not. Avoiding this trap is what allows us to keep looking, and eventually (one hopes!) find the actual right answer.
I understand that you are coming at this from a view in which an idea that someone proposes, a “framework”, etc., has value, and we take that idea and we build on it; or perhaps we say “but what about this instead”, and we offer our own idea or framework, and maybe we synthesize them, and together, cooperatively, we work toward the answer. Under that view, what you say makes sense.
My commentary (not quite an objection, really) is just that it’s crucial to instead be able to say “no, actually, that is simply wrong [because reasons X Y Z]”, and have that be the end of (that branch of) the conversation. You had an idea, that idea was wrong, end of story, back to the drawing board.
That having been said, I do find your response entirely reasonable and satisfactory, as far as this specific case goes; thank you. I will reread both your post and Kaj’s sequence, and comment on both (the latter, contingent on Kaj’s approval).
And the thing is, many of my critiques (of CFAR stuff, yes, and of many other things that are discussed in rationalist spaces) boil down to just “what you are saying is wrong”. If you ask me what I think the right answer is, in such cases, I will have nothing to offer you. I don’t know what the right answer is. I don’t think you know what the right answer is, either; I don’t think anyone has the right answer. Beyond saying that (hypothetical) you are wrong, I often really don’t have much to add.
If all you have to say is “this seems wrong”, that… basically just seems fine. [edit to clarify: I mean making a comment, not a post].
I don’t expect most LessWrong users would get annoyed at that. The specific complaint we’ve gotten about you has more to do with the way you Socratic-ly draw people into lengthy conversations that don’t acknowledge the difference in frame, and leave people feeling like it was a waste of time. (This has more to do with implicitly demanding asymmetric effort between you and the author, than about criticism).
I’m not quite sure what you’re saying. Yes, no doubt, no one’s complained about me doing the thing I described—because, obviously, I haven’t ever done it! You say that it “basically seems just fine”, but… I don’t expect that it would actually seem “just fine” if I (or anyone else) were to actually do it.
Of course, I could be wrong. What are three examples of posts that others have written, that boil down simply to “other post X, written by person Y, is wrong”, and which have gotten a good reception? Perhaps if we did a case study or three, we’d gain some more insight into this thing.
(As for the “specific complaint”—there I just don’t know what you mean. Feel free to elaborate, if you like.)
Slight clarification – I think I worded the previous comment confusingly. I meant to say, if the typical LessWrong user wrote a single comment in reply to a post saying “this seems wrong”, I would expect that to basically be fine.
I only recommend the “create a whole new post” thing when an author specifically asks you to stop commenting.
(In some cases I think creating a whole new post would actually be just fine, based on how I’ve seen, say, Eliezer, Robin Hanson, Zvi, Ben Hoffman and Sarah Constantin respond to each other in longform on occasion. In other cases creating a whole new post might go over less well, and/or might be a bit of an experiment rather than a tried-and-true-solution, but I think it’s the correct experiment to try)
Also want to be a clear—if authors are banning or asking lots of users to avoid criticism, I do think the author should take something of a social hit as “a person who can’t accept any criticism”. But I nonetheless think it’s still a better metanorm for established authors to have control over their post’s discussion area.
[The LessWrong team is currently trying to develop a much clearer understanding of what good moderation policies are, which might result in some of my opinions changing over the next few weeks, this is just a quick summary of what I currently believe]
Also want to be a clear—if authors are banning or asking lots of users to avoid criticism, I do think the author should take something of a social hit as “a person who can’t accept any criticism”. But I nonetheless think it’s still a better metanorm for established authors to have control over their post’s discussion area.
Quite. A suggestion, then, if I may: display “how many people has this person banned from their posts” (with, upon a click or mouseover or some such, the full list of users available, who have been thus banned) prominently, when viewing a person’s post (somewhere near the post’s author line, perhaps). This way, if I open a post by one Carol, say, I can see at once that she’s banned 12 people from her posts; I take note of this (as that is unusually many); I then click/mouseover/etc., and see either that all the banned accounts are known trolls and curmudgeons (and conclude that Carol is a sensible person with a low tolerance for low-grade nonsense), or that all the banned accounts are people I judge to be reasonable and polite (and conclude that Carol is a prima donna with a low tolerance for having her ideas challenged).
Something in that space seems basically reasonable. Note that I haven’t prioritized cleaning up (and then improving visibility for) the moderation log in part because the list of users who have ever banned users is actually just extremely short, and meanwhile there’s a lot of other site features that seem higher priority.
I have been revisiting it recently and think it’d be a good thing to include in the nearish future (esp. if I am prioritizing other features that’d make archipelago-norms more likely to actually get used), but for the immediate future I actually think just saying to the few people who’ve expressed concerns ‘yo, when you look at the moderation log almost nobody has used it’ is the right call given limited dev time.
I meant to say, if the typical LessWrong user wrote a single comment in reply to a post saying “this seems wrong”, I would expect that to basically be fine.
Ah, I see. Well, yes. But then, that’s also what I was saying: this sort of thing is generally fine as a comment, but as a post…
I only recommend the “create a whole new post” thing when an author specifically asks you to stop commenting.
I entirely understand your intention here, but consider: this would be even worse, “optics”-wise! “So,” thinks the reader, “this guy was so annoying, with his contrarian objections, that the victim of his nitpicking actually asked him to stop commenting; but he can’t let it go, so he wrote a whole post about it?!” And of course this is an uncharitable perspective, and one which isn’t consistent with “good truth-seeking norms”, etc. But… do you doubt that this is the sort of impression that will, if involuntarily, be formed in the minds of the commentariat?
3. Author says “this is annoying enough that I’d prefer you not to comment on my posts anymore.” [Hopefully, although not necessarily, the author does this knowing that they are basically opting into you now being encouraged by LessWrong moderators to post your criticism elsewhere if you think it’s important. This might not currently be communicated that well but I think it should be]
4. Then you go and write a post titled ‘My thoughts on X’ or ‘Alternative Conversation about X’ or whatever, that says ‘the author seems wrong / bad.’
By that point, sure it might be annoying, but it’s presumably an improvement from the author’s take. (I know that if I wanted to write a post about some high level Weird Introspection Stuff that took a bunch of Weird Introspection Paradigm stuff for granted, I’d personally probably be annoyed if you made the discussion about whether the Weird Introspection Paradigm was even any good, and much less annoyed if you wrote another post saying so.
I might be typical minding, but two important bits from my perspective are ‘getting to have the conversation that I actually wanted to have’, and ‘not being forced to provide my own platform for someone else who I don’t think is arguing in good faith’
Sure.
Sure, but what if (as seems likely enough) I think there aren’t any different products that better solve the problem…?
So, just as a general point (and this is related to the previous paragraph)…
The problem with the norm of writing critiques as separate posts, is that it biases (or, if you like, nudges) critiques toward the sort that constitute points or theses in their own right.
In other words, if you write a post, and I comment to say that your post is dumb and you are dumb for thinking and writing this and the whole thing is wrong and bad (except, you know, in a tactful way), well, that is, at least in some sense, appropriate (or we might say, it is relevant, in the Gricean sense); you wrote a post, I posted a comment about that post. Fine.
But if you write a post, and I write a post of my own the entirety of whose content and message is “post X which Raemon just wrote is wrong and bad etc.”, well, what is that? Who writes a whole post just to say that someone else is wrong? It seems… odd; and also, antagonistic, somehow. “What was the point of this post?”, commenters may inquire; “Surely you didn’t write a whole post just to say that another post is wrong? What’s your take, then? What Raemon said is wrong, but then what’s right?”—and what do I answer? “I have no idea what’s right, but that is wrong, and… that’s all I wanted to say, really.” As I said, this simply looks odd (socially speaking). (And certainly one is much less likely to get any traction or even engagement—except the dubious sort of engagement; the kind which is all meta, no substance.)
And the thing is, many of my critiques (of CFAR stuff, yes, and of many other things that are discussed in rationalist spaces) boil down to just “what you are saying is wrong”. If you ask me what I think the right answer is, in such cases, I will have nothing to offer you. I don’t know what the right answer is. I don’t think you know what the right answer is, either; I don’t think anyone has the right answer. Beyond saying that (hypothetical) you are wrong, I often really don’t have much to add.
But such criticisms are extremely important! Refraining from falsely believing ourselves to have the right answer, or even a good answer, or even “the best answer so far”, when what we actually have is simply wrong—this is extremely important! It is very tempting to think that we’ve found an answer, when we have not. Avoiding this trap is what allows us to keep looking, and eventually (one hopes!) find the actual right answer.
I understand that you are coming at this from a view in which an idea that someone proposes, a “framework”, etc., has value, and we take that idea and we build on it; or perhaps we say “but what about this instead”, and we offer our own idea or framework, and maybe we synthesize them, and together, cooperatively, we work toward the answer. Under that view, what you say makes sense.
My commentary (not quite an objection, really) is just that it’s crucial to instead be able to say “no, actually, that is simply wrong [because reasons X Y Z]”, and have that be the end of (that branch of) the conversation. You had an idea, that idea was wrong, end of story, back to the drawing board.
That having been said, I do find your response entirely reasonable and satisfactory, as far as this specific case goes; thank you. I will reread both your post and Kaj’s sequence, and comment on both (the latter, contingent on Kaj’s approval).
If all you have to say is “this seems wrong”, that… basically just seems fine. [edit to clarify: I mean making a comment, not a post].
I don’t expect most LessWrong users would get annoyed at that. The specific complaint we’ve gotten about you has more to do with the way you Socratic-ly draw people into lengthy conversations that don’t acknowledge the difference in frame, and leave people feeling like it was a waste of time. (This has more to do with implicitly demanding asymmetric effort between you and the author, than about criticism).
I’m not quite sure what you’re saying. Yes, no doubt, no one’s complained about me doing the thing I described—because, obviously, I haven’t ever done it! You say that it “basically seems just fine”, but… I don’t expect that it would actually seem “just fine” if I (or anyone else) were to actually do it.
Of course, I could be wrong. What are three examples of posts that others have written, that boil down simply to “other post X, written by person Y, is wrong”, and which have gotten a good reception? Perhaps if we did a case study or three, we’d gain some more insight into this thing.
(As for the “specific complaint”—there I just don’t know what you mean. Feel free to elaborate, if you like.)
Slight clarification – I think I worded the previous comment confusingly. I meant to say, if the typical LessWrong user wrote a single comment in reply to a post saying “this seems wrong”, I would expect that to basically be fine.
I only recommend the “create a whole new post” thing when an author specifically asks you to stop commenting.
(In some cases I think creating a whole new post would actually be just fine, based on how I’ve seen, say, Eliezer, Robin Hanson, Zvi, Ben Hoffman and Sarah Constantin respond to each other in longform on occasion. In other cases creating a whole new post might go over less well, and/or might be a bit of an experiment rather than a tried-and-true-solution, but I think it’s the correct experiment to try)
Also want to be a clear—if authors are banning or asking lots of users to avoid criticism, I do think the author should take something of a social hit as “a person who can’t accept any criticism”. But I nonetheless think it’s still a better metanorm for established authors to have control over their post’s discussion area.
[The LessWrong team is currently trying to develop a much clearer understanding of what good moderation policies are, which might result in some of my opinions changing over the next few weeks, this is just a quick summary of what I currently believe]
Quite. A suggestion, then, if I may: display “how many people has this person banned from their posts” (with, upon a click or mouseover or some such, the full list of users available, who have been thus banned) prominently, when viewing a person’s post (somewhere near the post’s author line, perhaps). This way, if I open a post by one Carol, say, I can see at once that she’s banned 12 people from her posts; I take note of this (as that is unusually many); I then click/mouseover/etc., and see either that all the banned accounts are known trolls and curmudgeons (and conclude that Carol is a sensible person with a low tolerance for low-grade nonsense), or that all the banned accounts are people I judge to be reasonable and polite (and conclude that Carol is a prima donna with a low tolerance for having her ideas challenged).
Something in that space seems basically reasonable. Note that I haven’t prioritized cleaning up (and then improving visibility for) the moderation log in part because the list of users who have ever banned users is actually just extremely short, and meanwhile there’s a lot of other site features that seem higher priority.
I have been revisiting it recently and think it’d be a good thing to include in the nearish future (esp. if I am prioritizing other features that’d make archipelago-norms more likely to actually get used), but for the immediate future I actually think just saying to the few people who’ve expressed concerns ‘yo, when you look at the moderation log almost nobody has used it’ is the right call given limited dev time.
Ah, I see. Well, yes. But then, that’s also what I was saying: this sort of thing is generally fine as a comment, but as a post…
I entirely understand your intention here, but consider: this would be even worse, “optics”-wise! “So,” thinks the reader, “this guy was so annoying, with his contrarian objections, that the victim of his nitpicking actually asked him to stop commenting; but he can’t let it go, so he wrote a whole post about it?!” And of course this is an uncharitable perspective, and one which isn’t consistent with “good truth-seeking norms”, etc. But… do you doubt that this is the sort of impression that will, if involuntarily, be formed in the minds of the commentariat?
I’m fairly uncertain here. But I don’t currently share the intuition.
Note that the order of events I’m suggesting is:
1. Author posts.
2. Commenter says “this seems wrong / bad”. Disagreement ensues
3. Author says “this is annoying enough that I’d prefer you not to comment on my posts anymore.” [Hopefully, although not necessarily, the author does this knowing that they are basically opting into you now being encouraged by LessWrong moderators to post your criticism elsewhere if you think it’s important. This might not currently be communicated that well but I think it should be]
4. Then you go and write a post titled ‘My thoughts on X’ or ‘Alternative Conversation about X’ or whatever, that says ‘the author seems wrong / bad.’
By that point, sure it might be annoying, but it’s presumably an improvement from the author’s take. (I know that if I wanted to write a post about some high level Weird Introspection Stuff that took a bunch of Weird Introspection Paradigm stuff for granted, I’d personally probably be annoyed if you made the discussion about whether the Weird Introspection Paradigm was even any good, and much less annoyed if you wrote another post saying so.
I might be typical minding, but two important bits from my perspective are ‘getting to have the conversation that I actually wanted to have’, and ‘not being forced to provide my own platform for someone else who I don’t think is arguing in good faith’