I should also add that Duncan has a recent post enthusiastically endorsing the idea that we should try to anticipate how other people might misinterpret what we say, and clarify that we do not in fact mean those things. That post got a lot of upvotes and no negative comments. But it seems to me that Duncan’s advice is in direct opposition to Robin’s advice. Do you think Duncan’s post is really bad advice? Or if not, how do you reconcile them?
Robin and Duncan are both right. Speakers and listeners should strive to understand each other. Speakers should anticipate, and listeners should be charitable. There are also exceptions to these rules (largely due to either high familiarity or bad faith), but we should as a whole strive for communication norms that allow for concision.
Recommending disclaimers, recommending almost-another-post’s-worth-of-wrestling, censorship...all are on a spectrum. Reasonable cases can be made for the options before outright censorship. I am of the opinion that additional critique is beneficial but should not be required of all posts, basic disclaimers are not beneficial but not very costly either, and censorship is usually wrong.
To a previous point of yours, if someone posted a summary of Mein Kampf on here, I’d be pretty taken aback from the lack of fit (which is saying something since this place is pretty eclectic), and I could see that as threatening to the community given how some outsider might react to it. I mean, I guess I would learn what’s in it instead of a one-sentence high school teacher’s summary passed down from teacher to teacher but without having to subject myself to it—so that’d be nice since I like to learn about things but don’t want to read Nazi propaganda (assuming the summary is written as a summary rather than endorsement). But I think there is a lot of daylight between that and TBC. I understand there are many people out there who do not agree, but one takeaway from this summary and JenniferRM’s comment is that those people...are mistaken.
I know there is the consequentialist argument that it doesn’t matter if they’re wrong if they’re the one with the gun, and we can’t know for sure how the appearance of a TBC summary will be received in the future, but there are a couple other things to do here: work to make them right instead of wrong, or help proliferate norms such that they don’t have that gun later. Meh, it is indeed simplest and easiest to just not talk about uncomfortable subjects...
If someone posted a summary of Mein Kampf on here, I would be quite interested to read it! I’ve never read that book myself (and I’m not sure that I could quite bear to do so—which is a personal weakness/fault, I hasten to add, not something at all to be proud of), but I am a firm believer in being familiar with the views of your opponents… or your enemies. If someone were to write a high-quality review of Mein Kampf for Less Wrong, I expect that I’d find it edifying, and it would save me the trouble of, you know… actually slogging through Adolf Hitler’s writing (which I have heard is rather tedious, even setting aside all the evil).
As for “fit”, well, that’s what personal pages are for, yes? If we can have discussions of obscure computer games, shower thoughts about fruit jam, “rational dating profiles”, and so on (all posted on people’s personal pages), then I really don’t see why we can’t have book reviews of… pretty much anything.
It seems that a better example for your case would be some book of a modern extremely woke-leftist. Notice how shocked you are that someone might be endorsing the wokist perception of TBC, how you’d wish that it, as well as disclaimer culture were below the sanity waterline. How tempting it is to assume by default that social justice crowd are unreasonable and are arguing in bad faith while their claims that Murray wrote a book in a bad faith are mildly offensive. How you feel your own raison d’etre being threatenned. Now that looks like an outgroup.
What do you mean, “would’ve”? That wasn’t a hypothetical scenario. I wasn’t using Mein Kampf as an example of anything; I was talking about the actual thing.
As for the rest of your comment—there’s no “assume” about it.
I understand Ape in the coat to be saying the bit from I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup, “Thus do you gain no merit by tolerating them!”, implying that you have nothing against fascists, and contrasting that to book review by a woke leftist, like perhaps the White Fragility review that was posted back in September.
I’m not saying that you literally have nothing against fashists. I’m pretty sure you disagree with them on nearly every subject, find them generally evil and do not really want to associate with them. I’m saying that they are not your outgroup in the same sense that Osama bin Laden wasn’t outgroup for blue tribe while Margaret Thatcher was:
...Blue Tribe – can’t get together enough energy to really hate Osama, let alone Muslims in general. We understand that what he did was bad, but it didn’t anger us personally. When he died, we were able to very rationally apply our better nature and our Far Mode beliefs about how it’s never right to be happy about anyone else’s death.
On the other hand, that same group absolutely loathed Thatcher. Most of us (though not all) can agree, if the question is posed explicitly, that Osama was a worse person than Thatcher. But in terms of actual gut feeling? Osama provokes a snap judgment of “flawed human being”, Thatcher a snap judgment of “scum”.
Fashists are not your outgroup, they are the outgroup of your outgroup. Contrary to a popular belief, this doesn’t make them your friends or allies. Sometimes you can benefit them, for instance, by arguing in favour of making LessWrong more attractive for them and less attractive for social justice related people, but it only happens by chance. For you, fashists are mainly an easy way to demonstrate how rational and tolerant you are, compared to the woke-leftists—your real outgroup. Thus scoring some points in a social game.
I should also add that Duncan has a recent post enthusiastically endorsing the idea that we should try to anticipate how other people might misinterpret what we say, and clarify that we do not in fact mean those things. That post got a lot of upvotes and no negative comments. But it seems to me that Duncan’s advice is in direct opposition to Robin’s advice. Do you think Duncan’s post is really bad advice? Or if not, how do you reconcile them?
Robin and Duncan are both right. Speakers and listeners should strive to understand each other. Speakers should anticipate, and listeners should be charitable. There are also exceptions to these rules (largely due to either high familiarity or bad faith), but we should as a whole strive for communication norms that allow for concision.
Recommending disclaimers, recommending almost-another-post’s-worth-of-wrestling, censorship...all are on a spectrum. Reasonable cases can be made for the options before outright censorship. I am of the opinion that additional critique is beneficial but should not be required of all posts, basic disclaimers are not beneficial but not very costly either, and censorship is usually wrong.
To a previous point of yours, if someone posted a summary of Mein Kampf on here, I’d be pretty taken aback from the lack of fit (which is saying something since this place is pretty eclectic), and I could see that as threatening to the community given how some outsider might react to it. I mean, I guess I would learn what’s in it instead of a one-sentence high school teacher’s summary passed down from teacher to teacher but without having to subject myself to it—so that’d be nice since I like to learn about things but don’t want to read Nazi propaganda (assuming the summary is written as a summary rather than endorsement). But I think there is a lot of daylight between that and TBC. I understand there are many people out there who do not agree, but one takeaway from this summary and JenniferRM’s comment is that those people...are mistaken.
I know there is the consequentialist argument that it doesn’t matter if they’re wrong if they’re the one with the gun, and we can’t know for sure how the appearance of a TBC summary will be received in the future, but there are a couple other things to do here: work to make them right instead of wrong, or help proliferate norms such that they don’t have that gun later. Meh, it is indeed simplest and easiest to just not talk about uncomfortable subjects...
If someone posted a summary of Mein Kampf on here, I would be quite interested to read it! I’ve never read that book myself (and I’m not sure that I could quite bear to do so—which is a personal weakness/fault, I hasten to add, not something at all to be proud of), but I am a firm believer in being familiar with the views of your opponents… or your enemies. If someone were to write a high-quality review of Mein Kampf for Less Wrong, I expect that I’d find it edifying, and it would save me the trouble of, you know… actually slogging through Adolf Hitler’s writing (which I have heard is rather tedious, even setting aside all the evil).
As for “fit”, well, that’s what personal pages are for, yes? If we can have discussions of obscure computer games, shower thoughts about fruit jam, “rational dating profiles”, and so on (all posted on people’s personal pages), then I really don’t see why we can’t have book reviews of… pretty much anything.
That would’ve been extremely virtious of you, if fashists actually were your outgroup.
It seems that a better example for your case would be some book of a modern extremely woke-leftist. Notice how shocked you are that someone might be endorsing the wokist perception of TBC, how you’d wish that it, as well as disclaimer culture were below the sanity waterline. How tempting it is to assume by default that social justice crowd are unreasonable and are arguing in bad faith while their claims that Murray wrote a book in a bad faith are mildly offensive. How you feel your own raison d’etre being threatenned. Now that looks like an outgroup.
What do you mean, “would’ve”? That wasn’t a hypothetical scenario. I wasn’t using Mein Kampf as an example of anything; I was talking about the actual thing.
As for the rest of your comment—there’s no “assume” about it.
I understand Ape in the coat to be saying the bit from I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup, “Thus do you gain no merit by tolerating them!”, implying that you have nothing against fascists, and contrasting that to book review by a woke leftist, like perhaps the White Fragility review that was posted back in September.
If so, then that’s an absurd thing to say. Given my background, saying that I have nothing against fascists is one heck of a claim…
I’m not saying that you literally have nothing against fashists. I’m pretty sure you disagree with them on nearly every subject, find them generally evil and do not really want to associate with them. I’m saying that they are not your outgroup in the same sense that Osama bin Laden wasn’t outgroup for blue tribe while Margaret Thatcher was:
Fashists are not your outgroup, they are the outgroup of your outgroup. Contrary to a popular belief, this doesn’t make them your friends or allies. Sometimes you can benefit them, for instance, by arguing in favour of making LessWrong more attractive for them and less attractive for social justice related people, but it only happens by chance. For you, fashists are mainly an easy way to demonstrate how rational and tolerant you are, compared to the woke-leftists—your real outgroup. Thus scoring some points in a social game.
Yes.