One thing I do want to note is that while I think you’re pointing at a real phenomena, I don’t actually think the two examples you gave for my post are quite pointing at the right thing.
This itself serves as an interesting example. Even if a particular author isn’t bothered by certain comments (due to an existing relationship, being unusually stoic, etc), it is still possible for others to perceive those comments as aversive/hostile/negative.
This is a feature of reality worth noticing, even before we determine what the correct response to it is. It would suggest you could have a world with many LessWrong members discussing in a way that they all enjoyed, yet it appears hostile and uncivil to the outside world who assume those participating are doing so despite being upset. This possibly has bad consequences for getting new people to join (those who aren’t here). You might expect this if a Nurture-native person was exposed to a Combat culture.
If that’s happening a lot, you might do any of the following:
1) shift your subculture to represent the dominant outside one
2) invest in “cultural-onboarding” so that new people learn to understand people aren’t unhappy with the comments they’re receiving (of course, we want this to be true)
3) create different spaces: ones for new people who are still acculturating, and others for the veterans who know that a blunt critical remark is a sign of respect.
The last one mirrors how most interpersonal relationships progress. At first you invest heavily in politeness to signal your positive intent and friendliness; progressively, as the prior of friendliness is established, fewer overt signals are required and politeness requirements drop; eventually, the prior of friendliness is so high that it’s possible to engage in countersignalling behaviors.
A fear I have is that veteran members of blunt and critical spaces (sometimes LW) have learnt that critical comments don’t have much interpersonal significance and pose little reputational or emotional risk to them. That might be the rational [1] prior from their perspective given their experience. A new member to the space who is bringing priors from the outside world may rationally infer hostility and attack when they read a casually and bluntly written critical comment. Rather than reading it as someone engaging positively with their post and wanting to discuss, they just feel slighted, unwelcome, and discouraged. This picture remains true even if a person is not usually sensitive or defensive to what they know is well-intentioned criticism. The perception of attack can be the result of appropriate priors about the significance [2] of different actions.
If this picture is correct and we want to recruit new people to LessWrong, we need to figure out some way of ensuring that people know they’re being productively engaged with.
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Coming back to this post. Here there was private information which shifted what state of affairs the cited comments were Bayesian evidence for. Most people wouldn’t know that Raemon had requested Unreal copy the comment moved from FB (where he’d posted it only partially) or that Raemon has been housemates with Qiaochu for years. In other words, Raemon has strongly established relationships with those commenters and knows them to be friendly to him—but that’s not universal knowledge. The OP’s assessment might be very reasonable if you lacked that private info (knowing it myself already, it’s hard for me to simulate not knowing it). This is also info it’s not at all reasonable to expect all readers of the site to know.
I think it’s very unfortunate if someone incorrectly thinks someone else is being attacked or disincentivized from contributing. It’s worth thinking about how one might avoid it. There are obviously bad solutions, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t better ones than just ignoring the problem.
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[1] Rational as in the sense of reaching the appropriate conclusion with the data available.
[2] By significance I mean what is it Bayesian evidence for.
This itself serves as an interesting example. Even if a particular author isn’t bothered by certain comments (due to an existing relationship, being unusually stoic, etc), it is still possible for others to perceive those comments as aversive/hostile/negative.
This is a feature of reality worth noticing, even before we determine what the correct response to it is. It would suggest you could have a world with many LessWrong members discussing in a way that they all enjoyed, yet it appears hostile and uncivil to the outside world who assume those participating are doing so despite being upset. This possibly has bad consequences for getting new people to join (those who aren’t here). You might expect this if a Nurture-native person was exposed to a Combat culture.
If that’s happening a lot, you might do any of the following:
1) shift your subculture to represent the dominant outside one
2) invest in “cultural-onboarding” so that new people learn to understand people aren’t unhappy with the comments they’re receiving (of course, we want this to be true)
3) create different spaces: ones for new people who are still acculturating, and others for the veterans who know that a blunt critical remark is a sign of respect.
The last one mirrors how most interpersonal relationships progress. At first you invest heavily in politeness to signal your positive intent and friendliness; progressively, as the prior of friendliness is established, fewer overt signals are required and politeness requirements drop; eventually, the prior of friendliness is so high that it’s possible to engage in countersignalling behaviors.
A fear I have is that veteran members of blunt and critical spaces (sometimes LW) have learnt that critical comments don’t have much interpersonal significance and pose little reputational or emotional risk to them. That might be the rational [1] prior from their perspective given their experience. A new member to the space who is bringing priors from the outside world may rationally infer hostility and attack when they read a casually and bluntly written critical comment. Rather than reading it as someone engaging positively with their post and wanting to discuss, they just feel slighted, unwelcome, and discouraged. This picture remains true even if a person is not usually sensitive or defensive to what they know is well-intentioned criticism. The perception of attack can be the result of appropriate priors about the significance [2] of different actions.
If this picture is correct and we want to recruit new people to LessWrong, we need to figure out some way of ensuring that people know they’re being productively engaged with.
--------------------
Coming back to this post. Here there was private information which shifted what state of affairs the cited comments were Bayesian evidence for. Most people wouldn’t know that Raemon had requested Unreal copy the comment moved from FB (where he’d posted it only partially) or that Raemon has been housemates with Qiaochu for years. In other words, Raemon has strongly established relationships with those commenters and knows them to be friendly to him—but that’s not universal knowledge. The OP’s assessment might be very reasonable if you lacked that private info (knowing it myself already, it’s hard for me to simulate not knowing it). This is also info it’s not at all reasonable to expect all readers of the site to know.
I think it’s very unfortunate if someone incorrectly thinks someone else is being attacked or disincentivized from contributing. It’s worth thinking about how one might avoid it. There are obviously bad solutions, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t better ones than just ignoring the problem.
--------------------
[1] Rational as in the sense of reaching the appropriate conclusion with the data available.
[2] By significance I mean what is it Bayesian evidence for.