The debate here feels like something more than combat vs other cultures of discussion. There are versions of combative cultures which are fine and healthy and which I like a lot, but also versions which are much less so. I would be upset if anyone thought I was opposed to combative discussion altogether, though I do think they need to be done right and with sensitivity to the significance of the speech acts involved.
Addressing what you said:
I think in an ideal world there would be two vibrant LW2s, one for each conversational culture, because right now it’s not clear where people who strongly prefer combat culture are supposed to go.
I think there’s some room on LessWrong for that. Certainly under the Archipelago model, authors can set the norms they prefer for discussions on their posts. Outside of that, it seems fine, even good, if users who’ve established trust with each other and have both been seen to opt-in a combative culture choose to have exchanges which go like that.
I realize this isn’t quite the same as a website where you universally know without checking that in any place on the site one can abide by their preferred norms. So you might be right—the ideal world might be require more than one LessWrong and anything else is going to fall short. Possibly we build “subreddits” and those could have an established universal culture where you just know “this is how people talk here”.
I can imagine a world where eventually it was somehow decided by all (or enough of the relevant) parties that the default on LessWrong was an unfiltered, unrestrained combative culture. I could imagine being convinced that actually that was best . . . though it’d be surprising. If it was known as the price of admission, then maybe that would work okay.
The debate here feels like something more than combat vs other cultures of discussion. There are versions of combative cultures which are fine and healthy and which I like a lot, but also versions which are much less so. I would be upset if anyone thought I was opposed to combative discussion altogether, though I do think they need to be done right and with sensitivity to the significance of the speech acts involved.
Addressing what you said:
I think there’s some room on LessWrong for that. Certainly under the Archipelago model, authors can set the norms they prefer for discussions on their posts. Outside of that, it seems fine, even good, if users who’ve established trust with each other and have both been seen to opt-in a combative culture choose to have exchanges which go like that.
I realize this isn’t quite the same as a website where you universally know without checking that in any place on the site one can abide by their preferred norms. So you might be right—the ideal world might be require more than one LessWrong and anything else is going to fall short. Possibly we build “subreddits” and those could have an established universal culture where you just know “this is how people talk here”.
I can imagine a world where eventually it was somehow decided by all (or enough of the relevant) parties that the default on LessWrong was an unfiltered, unrestrained combative culture. I could imagine being convinced that actually that was best . . . though it’d be surprising. If it was known as the price of admission, then maybe that would work okay.