it is truly shocking to see someone endorsing this standard on Less Wrong
I don’t think I was endorsing it, I was stating (what I believe to be) a fact about how lots of people perceive certain things.
I used the term “provocative” as a descriptive (not normative) statement: it means “a thing that provokes people”. I didn’t run a survey, but my very strong belief is that “provocative” is an accurate description here.
I do think we should take actions that achieve goals we want in the universe we actually live in, even if this universe is different than the universe we want to live in. If something is liable to provoke people, and we wish it weren’t liable to provoke people, we should still consider acting as if it is in fact liable to provoke people. For example, we can consider what are the consequences of provoking people, and do we care, and if we do care, how much effort and cost is required to not provoke people. My suggestion is that this is a case where provoking people has really bad potential consequences, and where not provoking people is an eminently feasible alternative with minimal costs, and therefore we should choose to not provoke people.
I read Robin’s blog post as saying that disclaimers are kinda annoying (which is fair enough), not that they are a very very bad thing that must never be done. I think we can take it on a case-by-case basis, weighing the costs and benefits.
and where not provoking people is an eminently feasible alternative with minimal costs
Considering that your suggestion is getting pushback, isn’t that indicative of this being a fabricated option? In suggesting to change the culture of Less Wrong, you inevitably get pushback from those who like the status quo. What’s the option that offends nobody?
That said, if you just mean that the review could be written better, that may be the case; I haven’t read it yet. In any case, I don’t have the impression that lsusr’s writing style is necessarily one for subtlety and disclaimers. Imposing restrictions on our prolific writers, merely because they might occasionally say something potentially controversial, seems misguided.
A more appropriate response in those cases would be to just strong-downvote the thing you find controversial, and explain why you did so. I did such a thing with this LW post, which I did indeed find potentially damaging to LW culture (though my response in that case was strong-downvoting, rather than advocating censorship). Reasoning here. Crucially, in that case I did not argue that the post offended hypothetical third parties or the larger society, but me personally, which forced me to be very specific about what parts of the post I did not like, and my reasons for why.
That said, I think LW overall benefits from its “no frontpaged politics” rule, and hence prefer posts like this one not to be frontpaged, which indeed did not happen. A recent post about Dominic Cummings was briefly frontpaged and did get lots of pushback and rather unproductive political discussions in the comments, but that was eventually rectified by un-frontpaging it. I think that state of affairs is completely fine.
PS: If one does want to develop the skill of saying things more delicately and with ample disclaimers, Scott’s Nonfiction Writing Advice covers this among other things; and when he wrote about Charles Murray in some other context, he did indeed use tons of disclaimers; but this was still not enough to deter a NYT hitpiece, once he got famous enough.
I don’t think my suggestions are getting pushback; I think that my suggestions are being pattern-matched to “let’s all self-censor / cower before the woke mob” and everyone loves having that debate at the slightest pretense. For example, I maintain that my suggestion of “post at another site and linkpost from here, in certain special situations” is next-to-zero-cost, for significant benefit. Indeed, some people routinely post-elsewhere-and-linkpost, for no reason in particular. (The OP author already has a self-hosted blog, so there’s no inconvenience.) This seems to me like a prudent, win-win move, and if people aren’t jumping on it, I’m tempted to speculate that people are here for the fun signaling not the boring problem-solving / world-optimizing.
Imposing restrictions on our prolific writers
That’s not a useful framing. The mods have indicated that they won’t impose restrictions. Instead, I am trying to persuade people.
Although this is a very controversial topic I feel the need to offer a hopefully helpful observation to reduce the tension.
Namely that all these imputed motives, and most of the overall discussion on motives, can be true simultaneously in a single individual. Because people vary in their motives and capacities over time and can truly believe in contradictory positions while typing. (Dependent on anything, such as the phases of the moon, their last conversation with parents, the colour of their hat, etc…)
That is someone could be here for:
‘fun signalling’
‘boring problem solving’
‘cowering before woke mobs’
fighting against ‘cowering before woke mobs’
making others ‘cower before woke mobs’ but personally reject such
helping others fight against ‘cowering before woke mobs’ while accepting such personally
enforcing self censorship on others
revolting against any imposition of self censorship on them
enforcing self censorship on themselves but fighting against any imposition of the same on others
engaging in controversial debate at the ‘slightest pretense’
rejecting all controversial debate at the ’slightest pretense’
making others engage in controversial debate at the ‘slightest pretense’ but personally avoiding and vice versa
and so on…
simultaneously
So speculating on motives may not be the most efficient way to convince someone even if they genuinely agree with every rational criticism. If you really want to implement the ‘linked post’ solution, maybe there is an immensely convincing argument that the upsides of forcing such a behaviour is greater than the downsides?
I don’t think I was endorsing it, I was stating (what I believe to be) a fact about how lots of people perceive certain things.
I used the term “provocative” as a descriptive (not normative) statement: it means “a thing that provokes people”. I didn’t run a survey, but my very strong belief is that “provocative” is an accurate description here.
I do think we should take actions that achieve goals we want in the universe we actually live in, even if this universe is different than the universe we want to live in. If something is liable to provoke people, and we wish it weren’t liable to provoke people, we should still consider acting as if it is in fact liable to provoke people. For example, we can consider what are the consequences of provoking people, and do we care, and if we do care, how much effort and cost is required to not provoke people. My suggestion is that this is a case where provoking people has really bad potential consequences, and where not provoking people is an eminently feasible alternative with minimal costs, and therefore we should choose to not provoke people.
I read Robin’s blog post as saying that disclaimers are kinda annoying (which is fair enough), not that they are a very very bad thing that must never be done. I think we can take it on a case-by-case basis, weighing the costs and benefits.
Considering that your suggestion is getting pushback, isn’t that indicative of this being a fabricated option? In suggesting to change the culture of Less Wrong, you inevitably get pushback from those who like the status quo. What’s the option that offends nobody?
That said, if you just mean that the review could be written better, that may be the case; I haven’t read it yet. In any case, I don’t have the impression that lsusr’s writing style is necessarily one for subtlety and disclaimers. Imposing restrictions on our prolific writers, merely because they might occasionally say something potentially controversial, seems misguided.
A more appropriate response in those cases would be to just strong-downvote the thing you find controversial, and explain why you did so. I did such a thing with this LW post, which I did indeed find potentially damaging to LW culture (though my response in that case was strong-downvoting, rather than advocating censorship). Reasoning here. Crucially, in that case I did not argue that the post offended hypothetical third parties or the larger society, but me personally, which forced me to be very specific about what parts of the post I did not like, and my reasons for why.
That said, I think LW overall benefits from its “no frontpaged politics” rule, and hence prefer posts like this one not to be frontpaged, which indeed did not happen. A recent post about Dominic Cummings was briefly frontpaged and did get lots of pushback and rather unproductive political discussions in the comments, but that was eventually rectified by un-frontpaging it. I think that state of affairs is completely fine.
PS: If one does want to develop the skill of saying things more delicately and with ample disclaimers, Scott’s Nonfiction Writing Advice covers this among other things; and when he wrote about Charles Murray in some other context, he did indeed use tons of disclaimers; but this was still not enough to deter a NYT hitpiece, once he got famous enough.
I don’t think my suggestions are getting pushback; I think that my suggestions are being pattern-matched to “let’s all self-censor / cower before the woke mob” and everyone loves having that debate at the slightest pretense. For example, I maintain that my suggestion of “post at another site and linkpost from here, in certain special situations” is next-to-zero-cost, for significant benefit. Indeed, some people routinely post-elsewhere-and-linkpost, for no reason in particular. (The OP author already has a self-hosted blog, so there’s no inconvenience.) This seems to me like a prudent, win-win move, and if people aren’t jumping on it, I’m tempted to speculate that people are here for the fun signaling not the boring problem-solving / world-optimizing.
That’s not a useful framing. The mods have indicated that they won’t impose restrictions. Instead, I am trying to persuade people.
Although this is a very controversial topic I feel the need to offer a hopefully helpful observation to reduce the tension.
Namely that all these imputed motives, and most of the overall discussion on motives, can be true simultaneously in a single individual. Because people vary in their motives and capacities over time and can truly believe in contradictory positions while typing. (Dependent on anything, such as the phases of the moon, their last conversation with parents, the colour of their hat, etc…)
That is someone could be here for:
‘fun signalling’
‘boring problem solving’
‘cowering before woke mobs’
fighting against ‘cowering before woke mobs’
making others ‘cower before woke mobs’ but personally reject such
helping others fight against ‘cowering before woke mobs’ while accepting such personally
enforcing self censorship on others
revolting against any imposition of self censorship on them
enforcing self censorship on themselves but fighting against any imposition of the same on others
engaging in controversial debate at the ‘slightest pretense’
rejecting all controversial debate at the ’slightest pretense’
making others engage in controversial debate at the ‘slightest pretense’ but personally avoiding and vice versa
and so on…
simultaneously
So speculating on motives may not be the most efficient way to convince someone even if they genuinely agree with every rational criticism. If you really want to implement the ‘linked post’ solution, maybe there is an immensely convincing argument that the upsides of forcing such a behaviour is greater than the downsides?