I really am confused by your ‘commonsense notion’ of niceness. Nice in common usage is very close to being a synonym for boring. Describing someone or something as nice usually sounds like damning with faint praise. I’m afraid I don’t feel I’ve learnt anything from your post.
We can taboo “nice”, and say instead “thinking about how my comment will make people feel, and revising it before I post it if the tone seems antagonistic or otherwise likely to distract from the underlying point”.
The salient features are: a) thinking about feelings and b) acknowledging that form matters as well as content.
Your comment is a good example of “nice”. You said you interpreted “nice” in such a way that you didn’t get much from Alicorn’s post, but you said that with some regard for her feelings. Let me attempt to rephrase it in a “mean” tone, attempting to preserve the content, and please tell me if the difference is apparent:
Last time I looked, “nice” was politically correct bullcrap for plain old “boring”. “Nice” is what my mom calls old ladies and their doggies. Can we get back to discussing rationality now, or are you going to waste more of everyone’s time ?
We can taboo “nice”, and say instead “thinking about how my comment will make people feel, and revising it before I post it if the tone seems antagonistic or otherwise likely to distract from the underlying point”.
Instead of tabooing a perfectly good word, how about we just agree to define “nice” as “thinking about how my comment will make people feel, and revising it before I post it if the tone seems antagonistic or otherwise likely to distract from the underlying point”?
Not really I’m afraid. Kindness generally implies a status differential. People are kind to children, animals, the sick, the poor or the old. It is a gesture of charity to those of lower status and not a stance that makes much sense in a context of an intellectual discussion between equals. Being ‘kind’ in that context sounds dangerously close to condescension. The word that makes the most sense to me is ‘polite’ but you stated that politeness is not what you mean.
The one definite point I take away from your post is that people won’t like you if you are a dick to them. That is true but not particularly enlightening. Implicit in your post is the idea that Less Wrong as a community is insufficiently nice/kind. I’m not sure if you actually think that but I don’t believe it is true. Beyond that, I don’t find anything in the post that persuades me I should try to be more nice/kind and even if I were convinced that I should the post does not give any concrete steps I could take to become so. That is why I don’t feel I’ve learnt anything from the post.
Not really I’m afraid. Kindness generally implies a status differential. People are kind to children, animals, the sick, the poor or the old. It is a gesture of charity to those of lower status and not a stance that makes much sense in a context of an intellectual discussion between equals. Being ‘kind’ in that context sounds dangerously close to condescension. The word that makes the most sense to me is ‘polite’ but you stated that politeness is not what you mean.
We seem to have a pretty universal norm here for considering people who we think are wrong about something that we think we’re right about to be temporarily/contextually slightly lower-status than ourselves. ‘Kind’ might be more accurate than you’re giving it credit for. (Alternately, I could be misreading the group’s norms; I’m fairly sure I’m not, in this case, but it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been wrong about such things without realizing it, if I am.)
As a newcomer to the community, I’m ill-equipped to comment on norms (and am also commenting on something nearly five years old) but my intuition agrees with your assessment of how we view those with whom we disagree. With that said, it doesn’t seem to fully cover the relevant scenarios, though. Take, for example, a request for clarification or explanation of some jargon; one can make such requests kindly or non-kindly (no effort to be kind) or unkindly (antagonistically or degradingly). In such a case, if behooves the requester to be nice, because that is more likely to yield a beneficial response, but one could still consider the relevant meaning of “nice” unresolved.
To continue the example, I value an indication that the other person has considered the value of my time before asking me to clarify something more than I value the actual politeness of the form of the request. Suppose I’m interacting with another newcomer to the (unrelated-to-LW) community; I consider “I can’t find a relevant definition of \”fully unlocked\” on Google” nicer than “can you please tell me what \”fully unlocked\” means?” when operating in a context where I know that the community’s definition of the term is well established because the first person has indicated an acknowledgement that the time of others is valuable by attempting to find the answer themselves before answering. It looks less nice, but that’s mostly because it’s structured less politely. Neither is sufficiently unkind that I wouldn’t answer, but the former would get a “thanks for searching; I’ll try to post that somewhere more prominent” or similar in addition to a link to the relevant definition, whereas I would need to remind myself (for the reasons given here) of the need to be nice to the second poster instead of just posting a direct link (or worse, a LMGTFY link).
I really am confused by your ‘commonsense notion’ of niceness. Nice in common usage is very close to being a synonym for boring. Describing someone or something as nice usually sounds like damning with faint praise. I’m afraid I don’t feel I’ve learnt anything from your post.
We can taboo “nice”, and say instead “thinking about how my comment will make people feel, and revising it before I post it if the tone seems antagonistic or otherwise likely to distract from the underlying point”.
The salient features are: a) thinking about feelings and b) acknowledging that form matters as well as content.
Your comment is a good example of “nice”. You said you interpreted “nice” in such a way that you didn’t get much from Alicorn’s post, but you said that with some regard for her feelings. Let me attempt to rephrase it in a “mean” tone, attempting to preserve the content, and please tell me if the difference is apparent:
Instead of tabooing a perfectly good word, how about we just agree to define “nice” as “thinking about how my comment will make people feel, and revising it before I post it if the tone seems antagonistic or otherwise likely to distract from the underlying point”?
Taboo in this sense, I think.
I meant taboo in that sense, yes.
Erm, I see. Sorry :-)
Does it make sense if you substitute “kind”?
Not really I’m afraid. Kindness generally implies a status differential. People are kind to children, animals, the sick, the poor or the old. It is a gesture of charity to those of lower status and not a stance that makes much sense in a context of an intellectual discussion between equals. Being ‘kind’ in that context sounds dangerously close to condescension. The word that makes the most sense to me is ‘polite’ but you stated that politeness is not what you mean.
The one definite point I take away from your post is that people won’t like you if you are a dick to them. That is true but not particularly enlightening. Implicit in your post is the idea that Less Wrong as a community is insufficiently nice/kind. I’m not sure if you actually think that but I don’t believe it is true. Beyond that, I don’t find anything in the post that persuades me I should try to be more nice/kind and even if I were convinced that I should the post does not give any concrete steps I could take to become so. That is why I don’t feel I’ve learnt anything from the post.
We seem to have a pretty universal norm here for considering people who we think are wrong about something that we think we’re right about to be temporarily/contextually slightly lower-status than ourselves. ‘Kind’ might be more accurate than you’re giving it credit for. (Alternately, I could be misreading the group’s norms; I’m fairly sure I’m not, in this case, but it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been wrong about such things without realizing it, if I am.)
As a newcomer to the community, I’m ill-equipped to comment on norms (and am also commenting on something nearly five years old) but my intuition agrees with your assessment of how we view those with whom we disagree. With that said, it doesn’t seem to fully cover the relevant scenarios, though. Take, for example, a request for clarification or explanation of some jargon; one can make such requests kindly or non-kindly (no effort to be kind) or unkindly (antagonistically or degradingly). In such a case, if behooves the requester to be nice, because that is more likely to yield a beneficial response, but one could still consider the relevant meaning of “nice” unresolved.
To continue the example, I value an indication that the other person has considered the value of my time before asking me to clarify something more than I value the actual politeness of the form of the request. Suppose I’m interacting with another newcomer to the (unrelated-to-LW) community; I consider “I can’t find a relevant definition of \”fully unlocked\” on Google” nicer than “can you please tell me what \”fully unlocked\” means?” when operating in a context where I know that the community’s definition of the term is well established because the first person has indicated an acknowledgement that the time of others is valuable by attempting to find the answer themselves before answering. It looks less nice, but that’s mostly because it’s structured less politely. Neither is sufficiently unkind that I wouldn’t answer, but the former would get a “thanks for searching; I’ll try to post that somewhere more prominent” or similar in addition to a link to the relevant definition, whereas I would need to remind myself (for the reasons given here) of the need to be nice to the second poster instead of just posting a direct link (or worse, a LMGTFY link).