Strong-downvoted. I want lesswrong to be a peaceful place where we can have polite boring truth-seeking arguments without incurring reputational risk / guilt-by-association. I understand the benefit of having polite boring truth-seeking arguments about racism-adjacent topics that take sides in an incredibly incendiary culture war. However, there is also a cost—namely, there’s a public good called “right now there is minimal reputational risk of being publicly IRL known as a lesswrong participant”, and each time there’s a post about racism-adjacent topics that takes sides in an incredibly incendiary culture war, we’re shooting a flaming arrow at that public good, and hoping we get lucky and the whole thing doesn’t burn to the ground.
There are simple ways to get almost all the benefit with almost none of the cost, namely: (1) post on a different site (especially a different site that allows comments) and (if you must) do a linkpost here, (2) pick a post title / framing that’s less provocative (UPDATE: see my comment here for why I think reasonable people could find this post provocative / insulting), (3) put more effort into not saying racist / racist-adjacent things (or to be charitable, “things that would plausibly come across as racist”), like (to pick one example) how the word “better” in “a secretary or a dentist who is one standard deviation better than average is worth a 40% premium in salary” seems to be thoughtlessly equating g-factor with moral worth, (4) seriously engage with intelligent criticism of this book, including describing in a sympathetic / ITT-passing way why people might have found this book hurtful or problematic, or if you can’t be bothered to do that, then maybe you shouldn’t write the post in the first place.
I agree the post didn’t address Murray’s points that critically or look deeply into the long list of critiques of the book, but it’s a useful summary of the main points (with some criticism here and there), which I think was the point.
I’m not sure how most of these options would ensure the benefit of summarizing without the cost of reputational risk: (1) This one might, until the connections are easily followed by, say, the NYT or any random internet sleuth; (2) Maybe the title has been edited (?), but I’m not seeing a provocative title or framing, most of it isn’t even about race; (3) The example here isn’t even about race and is obviously not about moral worth though the general point is good from an editing standpoint; (4) Certainly this would enhance the contribution (I wanted some of this myself), but particularly when it comes to The Bell Curve, people have this misconception that it’s just a racist screed, so a summary from someone who actually read the book is helpful to start. Maybe a summary just isn’t up to the contribution level of a LW post and one should hit a higher bar—but that’s a norm that has yet to be established IMHO.
Intelligence and race are both uncomfortable topics, and mixing them together is even more uncomfortable. If LW wants a norm of not discussing particular uncomfortable topics, then okay! But at least let it be through topic-screening rather than overblowing what is actually being said in a post.
…until the connections are easily followed by, say, the NYT or any random internet sleuth…
I think there’s a widespread perception in society that “being a platform that hosts racist content” is very much worse than “being a site where one can find a hyperlink to racist content”. I’m not necessarily endorsing that distinction, but I’m quite confident that it exists in many people’s minds.
I’m not seeing a provocative title or framing
Hmm, maybe you’re from a different part of the world / subculture or something. But in cosmopolitan USA culture, merely mentioning TBC (without savagely criticizing it in the same breath) is widely and instantly recognized as a strongly provocative and hurtful and line-crossing thing to do. Saying “Hey, I’m just reading TBC with a curious and open mind, I’m not endorsing every word” is kinda likeperceived to be kinda like saying “Hey, I’m just studying the philosophy of Nazism with a curious and open mind, I’m not endorsing every word” or “Hey, I’m just reading this argument for legalizing child rape with a curious and open mind, I’m not endorsing every word” or whatever.
If you’re writing a post that some rape law doesn’t actually help with rape despite popular perceptions, you open with a statement that rape is in fact bad and you do in fact want to reduce it, and you write it in a way that’s sympathetic to people who have been really harmed by rape. By the same token, if you’re writing a post that says reading TBC does not actually perpetuate racism despite popular perceptions, you open with a statement that racism is bad and you do in fact want to reduce it, and you write it in a way that’s sympathetic to people who have been really seriously harmed by racism.
Hmm, maybe you’re from a different part of the world / subculture or something. But in cosmopolitan USA culture, merely mentioning TBC (without savagely criticizing it in the same breath) is widely and instantly recognized as a strongly provocative and hurtful and line-crossing thing to do.
This may or may not be true, but it is truly shocking to see someone endorsing this standard on Less Wrong, of all places. It’s difficult to think of a more neutrally descriptive title than this post has—it’s almost the Platonic ideal of “neutrally descriptive”! To suggest that we should treat any mention of a book as “provocative” is, frankly, something that I find offensive.
Saying “Hey, I’m just reading TBC with a curious and open mind, I’m not endorsing every word” is kinda like saying “Hey, I’m just studying the philosophy of Nazism with a curious and open mind, I’m not endorsing every word” or “Hey, I’m just reading this argument for legalizing child rape with a curious and open mind, I’m not endorsing every word” or whatever.
This is a truly ludicrous comparison, which makes me disinclined to trust that you’re commenting in good faith.
If you’re writing a post that some rape law doesn’t actually help with rape despite popular perceptions, you open with a statement that rape is in fact bad and you do in fact want to reduce it, and you write it in a way that’s sympathetic to people who have been really harmed by rape. By the same token, if you’re writing a post that says reading TBC does not actually perpetuate racism despite popular perceptions, you open with a statement that racism is bad and you do in fact want to reduce it, and you write it in a way that’s sympathetic to people who have been really seriously harmed by racism.
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 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.
Hmm, maybe you’re from a different part of the world / subculture or something. But in cosmopolitan USA culture, merely mentioning TBC (without savagely criticizing it in the same breath) is widely and instantly recognized as a strongly provocative and hurtful and line-crossing thing to do.
If this is an argument for adding disclaimers or pulling one’s punches, would you agree that LW also shouldn’t host anything critical of the People’s Republic of China, even if the rest of the world does not consider the topic provocative? If not, what’s the difference? (Asking as someone who’s from neither place.) Does the answer depend on how many readers are from the U.S. vs. from China?
More generally, to which extent should a presumably international site like Less Wrong conform to the cultural assumptions of the U.S. in particular?
I want to say loud and clear that I don’t think the only two options are (1) “saying X in a way that will predictably and deeply hurt lots of people and/or piss them off” and (2) “not saying X at all”. There’s also the option of (3) “saying X in a way that will bring anti-X-ers to change their mind and join your side”. And also sometimes there’s (4) “saying X in a kinda low-key way where anti-X-ers won’t really care or take notice, or at least won’t try to take revenge on things that we care about”.
My sense is that there’s safety-in-numbers in saying “obviously Tiananmen Square is a thing that happened”, in a way that there is not safety-in-numbers in saying “obviously TBC is a perfectly lovely normal book full of interesting insights written in good faith by a smart and reasonable person who is not racist in the slightest”.
But still, if lots and lots of people in China believe Z, and I were writing a post that says “Here’s why Z is false”, I would try to write it in a way that might be persuasive to initially-skeptical Chinese readers. And if I were writing a post that says “Z is false, and this has interesting implications on A,B,C”, I would try to open it with “Side note: I’m taking it for granted that Z is false for the purpose of this post. Not everyone agrees with me that Z is false. But I really think I’m right about this, and here’s a link to a different article that makes that argument in great detail.”
People on this site should stop pretending to be rational and calling themselves “rationalists” if they’re not willing to seek truth just because some people find it offensive. And it should change its name from “lesswrong”.
Strong-downvoted. I want lesswrong to be a peaceful place where we can have polite boring truth-seeking arguments without incurring reputational risk / guilt-by-association. I understand the benefit of having polite boring truth-seeking arguments about racism-adjacent topics that take sides in an incredibly incendiary culture war. However, there is also a cost—namely, there’s a public good called “right now there is minimal reputational risk of being publicly IRL known as a lesswrong participant”, and each time there’s a post about racism-adjacent topics that takes sides in an incredibly incendiary culture war, we’re shooting a flaming arrow at that public good, and hoping we get lucky and the whole thing doesn’t burn to the ground.
There are simple ways to get almost all the benefit with almost none of the cost, namely: (1) post on a different site (especially a different site that allows comments) and (if you must) do a linkpost here, (2) pick a post title / framing that’s less provocative (UPDATE: see my comment here for why I think reasonable people could find this post provocative / insulting), (3) put more effort into not saying racist / racist-adjacent things (or to be charitable, “things that would plausibly come across as racist”), like (to pick one example) how the word “better” in “a secretary or a dentist who is one standard deviation better than average is worth a 40% premium in salary” seems to be thoughtlessly equating g-factor with moral worth, (4) seriously engage with intelligent criticism of this book, including describing in a sympathetic / ITT-passing way why people might have found this book hurtful or problematic, or if you can’t be bothered to do that, then maybe you shouldn’t write the post in the first place.
I agree the post didn’t address Murray’s points that critically or look deeply into the long list of critiques of the book, but it’s a useful summary of the main points (with some criticism here and there), which I think was the point.
I’m not sure how most of these options would ensure the benefit of summarizing without the cost of reputational risk: (1) This one might, until the connections are easily followed by, say, the NYT or any random internet sleuth; (2) Maybe the title has been edited (?), but I’m not seeing a provocative title or framing, most of it isn’t even about race; (3) The example here isn’t even about race and is obviously not about moral worth though the general point is good from an editing standpoint; (4) Certainly this would enhance the contribution (I wanted some of this myself), but particularly when it comes to The Bell Curve, people have this misconception that it’s just a racist screed, so a summary from someone who actually read the book is helpful to start. Maybe a summary just isn’t up to the contribution level of a LW post and one should hit a higher bar—but that’s a norm that has yet to be established IMHO.
Intelligence and race are both uncomfortable topics, and mixing them together is even more uncomfortable. If LW wants a norm of not discussing particular uncomfortable topics, then okay! But at least let it be through topic-screening rather than overblowing what is actually being said in a post.
I think there’s a widespread perception in society that “being a platform that hosts racist content” is very much worse than “being a site where one can find a hyperlink to racist content”. I’m not necessarily endorsing that distinction, but I’m quite confident that it exists in many people’s minds.
Hmm, maybe you’re from a different part of the world / subculture or something. But in cosmopolitan USA culture, merely mentioning TBC (without savagely criticizing it in the same breath) is widely and instantly recognized as a strongly provocative and hurtful and line-crossing thing to do. Saying “Hey, I’m just reading TBC with a curious and open mind, I’m not endorsing every word” is
kinda likeperceived to be kinda like saying “Hey, I’m just studying the philosophy of Nazism with a curious and open mind, I’m not endorsing every word” or “Hey, I’m just reading this argument for legalizing child rape with a curious and open mind, I’m not endorsing every word” or whatever.If you’re writing a post that some rape law doesn’t actually help with rape despite popular perceptions, you open with a statement that rape is in fact bad and you do in fact want to reduce it, and you write it in a way that’s sympathetic to people who have been really harmed by rape. By the same token, if you’re writing a post that says reading TBC does not actually perpetuate racism despite popular perceptions, you open with a statement that racism is bad and you do in fact want to reduce it, and you write it in a way that’s sympathetic to people who have been really seriously harmed by racism.
This may or may not be true, but it is truly shocking to see someone endorsing this standard on Less Wrong, of all places. It’s difficult to think of a more neutrally descriptive title than this post has—it’s almost the Platonic ideal of “neutrally descriptive”! To suggest that we should treat any mention of a book as “provocative” is, frankly, something that I find offensive.
This is a truly ludicrous comparison, which makes me disinclined to trust that you’re commenting in good faith.
This is exactly the sort of thing we should not be doing.
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?
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.
If this is an argument for adding disclaimers or pulling one’s punches, would you agree that LW also shouldn’t host anything critical of the People’s Republic of China, even if the rest of the world does not consider the topic provocative? If not, what’s the difference? (Asking as someone who’s from neither place.) Does the answer depend on how many readers are from the U.S. vs. from China?
More generally, to which extent should a presumably international site like Less Wrong conform to the cultural assumptions of the U.S. in particular?
I want to say loud and clear that I don’t think the only two options are (1) “saying X in a way that will predictably and deeply hurt lots of people and/or piss them off” and (2) “not saying X at all”. There’s also the option of (3) “saying X in a way that will bring anti-X-ers to change their mind and join your side”. And also sometimes there’s (4) “saying X in a kinda low-key way where anti-X-ers won’t really care or take notice, or at least won’t try to take revenge on things that we care about”.
My sense is that there’s safety-in-numbers in saying “obviously Tiananmen Square is a thing that happened”, in a way that there is not safety-in-numbers in saying “obviously TBC is a perfectly lovely normal book full of interesting insights written in good faith by a smart and reasonable person who is not racist in the slightest”.
But still, if lots and lots of people in China believe Z, and I were writing a post that says “Here’s why Z is false”, I would try to write it in a way that might be persuasive to initially-skeptical Chinese readers. And if I were writing a post that says “Z is false, and this has interesting implications on A,B,C”, I would try to open it with “Side note: I’m taking it for granted that Z is false for the purpose of this post. Not everyone agrees with me that Z is false. But I really think I’m right about this, and here’s a link to a different article that makes that argument in great detail.”
Isusr actually wrote a post about this contention.
You might be interested in the comment I posted on the other thread.
People on this site should stop pretending to be rational and calling themselves “rationalists” if they’re not willing to seek truth just because some people find it offensive. And it should change its name from “lesswrong”.