[taking off my mod hat, insofar as I honestly can]
I think the essay makes a lot of good points. I don’t like Punch Bug – I think it was the wrong choice of symbol to carry the argument forward, in particular because “no-punch-back” rules on non-opted-in games seem like bullshit to me, and importantly so. I’m not certain about roughhousing in general or the threshold of “punch” being the correct line.
But I think the essay is well within bounds. It is an important case study for attempting a deep/aesthetic double crux on a topic that normally would involve completely talking past each other.
And as much as I think no-punchback-rules are bullshit, I think they are importantly not on the same level as pogroms.
It so happens you can more easily paint a visceral picture of how no-punchback-roughhousing-games leads to pogroms, than, say, how bad economic policy might lead to pogroms. But I think bad economic policy is probably more relevant (or at least tied). Economic policy is also hard to get right, and there’s a lot of room for i.e. people arguing for and against minimum wage pointing at each other and calling each other monsters, and that clearly isn’t the environment you want for figuring out good economic policy, and I don’t think it’s the environment you want for figuring out interpersonal societal norms either.
In an adjaecent comment, Ozy describes BDSM consent norms, and notes that “a light tap doesn’t count as violence.” In the present-day world, I think it’s fair for people to note, if someone says “punch buggy no punch backs” and does a light tap, they are totally setting up a potential future situation where harder punches might happen.
But I can imagine a world, 20 years from now, where consent norms more firmly solidify, and someone hypothetically manages to invent “tap on the shoulder no tap back” without the historical baggage, and people react just as strongly as they are to the punching thing now. I think this would most likely be real bad.
And the argument here is that this has already happened, or is a about to happen. Humans adapt to treat pain signals as relevant depending on their context, and the feedback loop of treating smaller and smaller pain thresholds as suffering is bad – not actually reducing suffering on net, and meanwhile crimping a lot of important needs regarding touch, both gentle and rough.
I’m not sold on this argument, but it’s not obviously wrong.
The part where I think the essay is most wrong is where it doesn’t engage with the notion of actual abuse, with Punch-Bug-No-Punchbacks being a cover for bullying. But I feel like the correct response to this is more like “okay, this essay obviously misses this thing”, and then think about how to take the essay’s points seriously and do the thesis/anti-thesis/synthesis dance.
(I think this is mostly what’s been happening – pretty much every thread I’ve seen re: this post has included people bringing up those points, and at least some amount of synthesis, and I think this is basically correct)
It is an important case study for attempting a deep/aesthetic double crux on a topic that normally would involve completely talking past each other.
I’ve never done a double crux as such or even watched one before, so my understanding here is limited, but I don’t see how someone who disagrees with Duncan is supposed to find the “double crux” with him, given that (1) the OP doesn’t engage with three important counter-arguments in the post itself: cover for actual abuse/bullying, slippery slope towards a lot more violence, people who hate Punch-Bug-No-Punchbacks and wouldn’t just get used to it (how is the analogy to “peanut-free zone” actually supposed to work?!) and (2) the author seems to have no intention of engaging with critics who subsequently bring up these counter-arguments.
Yeah, I was stretching/abusing the definition of double crux here. I’d edit the original but I’m actually not sure how to quite phrase what I meant.
There’s a concept I’ve been thinking about lately I’ve been internally calling “aesthetic doublecrux” or “deep doublecrux.” In an in-person-conversation, I’d expect it to take at least a full day of discussion, quite likely much more.
The OP would essentially be the *first* stage of the discussion. (In person, it’d actually be an interwoven with the two people trying to explain all their background assumptions and mash their worldviews together. Online, in essay format… well I don’t know exactly how it’d work, but there’d need to be at least four stages of Essay/Response/Counter-Response/counter-counter-response (and it’d only end there if the counter-counter-response was “ah, I agree with your counter-response”).
In the spheres where Duncan has been commenting (which doesn’t include LW), I have noticed the pattern you point to (i.e. he hasn’t been engaging with the three major criticisms), and yeah this post does not earn the term “deep doublecrux” until he actually does that, and I think it makes sense to be wary about the fact that he hasn’t.
The version of my remark I’d endorse is something more like “whatever you want to call it, the original post was a huge amount of effort, and I think fairly successful at being the first stage of an extended disagreement, of a class that normally doesn’t even get to the first stage. And it makes sense to hold up the bar that says ‘you aren’t actually done until we get to the end’, but I think it’s also important to at least acknowledge the effort so far.”
(The situation on how to consider the post and subsequent LW is a bit confusing, since Duncan didn’t post it here)
Is Duncan Right?
[taking off my mod hat, insofar as I honestly can]
I think the essay makes a lot of good points. I don’t like Punch Bug – I think it was the wrong choice of symbol to carry the argument forward, in particular because “no-punch-back” rules on non-opted-in games seem like bullshit to me, and importantly so. I’m not certain about roughhousing in general or the threshold of “punch” being the correct line.
But I think the essay is well within bounds. It is an important case study for attempting a deep/aesthetic double crux on a topic that normally would involve completely talking past each other.
And as much as I think no-punchback-rules are bullshit, I think they are importantly not on the same level as pogroms.
It so happens you can more easily paint a visceral picture of how no-punchback-roughhousing-games leads to pogroms, than, say, how bad economic policy might lead to pogroms. But I think bad economic policy is probably more relevant (or at least tied). Economic policy is also hard to get right, and there’s a lot of room for i.e. people arguing for and against minimum wage pointing at each other and calling each other monsters, and that clearly isn’t the environment you want for figuring out good economic policy, and I don’t think it’s the environment you want for figuring out interpersonal societal norms either.
In an adjaecent comment, Ozy describes BDSM consent norms, and notes that “a light tap doesn’t count as violence.” In the present-day world, I think it’s fair for people to note, if someone says “punch buggy no punch backs” and does a light tap, they are totally setting up a potential future situation where harder punches might happen.
But I can imagine a world, 20 years from now, where consent norms more firmly solidify, and someone hypothetically manages to invent “tap on the shoulder no tap back” without the historical baggage, and people react just as strongly as they are to the punching thing now. I think this would most likely be real bad.
And the argument here is that this has already happened, or is a about to happen. Humans adapt to treat pain signals as relevant depending on their context, and the feedback loop of treating smaller and smaller pain thresholds as suffering is bad – not actually reducing suffering on net, and meanwhile crimping a lot of important needs regarding touch, both gentle and rough.
I’m not sold on this argument, but it’s not obviously wrong.
The part where I think the essay is most wrong is where it doesn’t engage with the notion of actual abuse, with Punch-Bug-No-Punchbacks being a cover for bullying. But I feel like the correct response to this is more like “okay, this essay obviously misses this thing”, and then think about how to take the essay’s points seriously and do the thesis/anti-thesis/synthesis dance.
(I think this is mostly what’s been happening – pretty much every thread I’ve seen re: this post has included people bringing up those points, and at least some amount of synthesis, and I think this is basically correct)
I’ve never done a double crux as such or even watched one before, so my understanding here is limited, but I don’t see how someone who disagrees with Duncan is supposed to find the “double crux” with him, given that (1) the OP doesn’t engage with three important counter-arguments in the post itself: cover for actual abuse/bullying, slippery slope towards a lot more violence, people who hate Punch-Bug-No-Punchbacks and wouldn’t just get used to it (how is the analogy to “peanut-free zone” actually supposed to work?!) and (2) the author seems to have no intention of engaging with critics who subsequently bring up these counter-arguments.
Yeah, I was stretching/abusing the definition of double crux here. I’d edit the original but I’m actually not sure how to quite phrase what I meant.
There’s a concept I’ve been thinking about lately I’ve been internally calling “aesthetic doublecrux” or “deep doublecrux.” In an in-person-conversation, I’d expect it to take at least a full day of discussion, quite likely much more.
The OP would essentially be the *first* stage of the discussion. (In person, it’d actually be an interwoven with the two people trying to explain all their background assumptions and mash their worldviews together. Online, in essay format… well I don’t know exactly how it’d work, but there’d need to be at least four stages of Essay/Response/Counter-Response/counter-counter-response (and it’d only end there if the counter-counter-response was “ah, I agree with your counter-response”).
In the spheres where Duncan has been commenting (which doesn’t include LW), I have noticed the pattern you point to (i.e. he hasn’t been engaging with the three major criticisms), and yeah this post does not earn the term “deep doublecrux” until he actually does that, and I think it makes sense to be wary about the fact that he hasn’t.
The version of my remark I’d endorse is something more like “whatever you want to call it, the original post was a huge amount of effort, and I think fairly successful at being the first stage of an extended disagreement, of a class that normally doesn’t even get to the first stage. And it makes sense to hold up the bar that says ‘you aren’t actually done until we get to the end’, but I think it’s also important to at least acknowledge the effort so far.”
(The situation on how to consider the post and subsequent LW is a bit confusing, since Duncan didn’t post it here)