I think the occasional rhetorical question is a pretty ordinary part of the way people naturally talk and discuss ideas? I can avoid it if the discourse norms in a particular space demand it, but I tend to feel like this is excessive optimization for politeness at the cost of expressivity. Perhaps different writers place different weights on the relative value of politeness, but I should hope to at least be consistent in what behavior I display and what behavior I expect from others: if you see me tone-policing others over statements whose tone is as harsh as statements I’ve made in comparable situations, then I would be being hypocritical and you should criticize me for it!
The tone of these sentences, appending an exclamation mark to a trivial statements [...] adding energy and surprise to your lessons
I often use a “high-energy” writing style with lots of italics and exclamation points! I think it textually mimics the way I talk when I’m excited! (I think if you scan over my Less Wrong contributions, my personal blog, or my secret (“secret”) blog, you’ll see this a lot.) I can see how some readers might find this obnoxious, but I don’t think it’s accurate to read it as an indicator of contempt for my present interlocutor. (It probably correlates somewhat with contempt, but not nearly as much as you seem to be assuming?)
you’re maybe leaning a bit too much on your sources/references/links for credibility in a way that also registers as condescending [...] despite those links going to elementary resources and concepts
Likewise, I think lots of hyperlinks to jargon and concepts are a pretty persistent feature of my writing style? (To a greater extent in public forum posts like this rather than private emails.) In-body hyperlinks are pretty unobtrusive—readers who are interested in the link can click it, and readers who aren’t can not-click it.
I wouldn’t denigrate the value of having “elementary” resources easily at hand! I often find myself, e.g., looking up the definition of words I ostensibly “already know,” not because I can’t successfully use the word in a sentence, but to “sync up” my learned understanding of what the word means with what the dictionary says. (For example, I looked up brusque while composing this comment.)
You’re using a lot of examples to back up a very simple point (that clamoring in streets isn’t an effective strategy).
The intent wasn’t just to back up the point that clamoring in the streets is ineffective, but to illustrate what I thought cause-and-effect (causal reality) reasoning would look like in contrast to social (social reality) reasoning—I took “clamoring in the steets” to be an example of the kind of action that social-reality reasoning would recommend. I thought such illustration could provide value to the comment thread, even though you’ve doubtlessly already heard of earning to give. (I didn’t mean to falsely imply you hadn’t.)
In practice, you spent 400 words
Yes, it was a bit of a tangent. (Once I start excitedly explaining something, it can be hard to know exactly when to stop! The 29 karma (in 13 votes) suggests that the voters seemed to like it, at least?)
I won’t assume you’re paying attention, but you might have noticed that I post a moderate amount on LessWrong and am in fact a member of the LessWrong 2.0 team.
I noticed, yes. I don’t think this should affect my writing that much? Certainly, how I write should depend on my model of who I’m talking to, but my model of you is mostly informed by the text you’ve written. (I think we also met at a party once? Aren’t you Miranda’s husband?) The fact that you work for Less Wrong doesn’t alter my perception much.
As another example, this is dismissive and rude too
I wouldn’t say “dismissive”, exactly, but it’s definitely brusque, which, in the context of the surrounding thread, was an awful writing choice on my part. I’m sorry about that! Now that you’ve correctly pointed out that I made a terrible writing decision, let me try to make partial amends for it by exerting some more interpretive labor to unpack what I meant—
I suspect we have a pretty large disagreement on the degree to which respect is a necessary prerequisite for whether a conversation with someone will be productive? I think if someone is making good arguments, then I consider it my responsibility to update on the information content of what they’re saying. Because I’m a social monkey, I certainly find it harder to update (especially publicly) if someone’s good arguments are phrased in a way that doesn’t seem to respect me. Correspondingly, for my own emotional well-being, I prefer discussion spaces with strong politeness norms. But from the standpoint of minds as inference engines, I consider this a bug in my cognition: I expect to perform better if I can somehow muster the mental toughness to learn from people who hate my guts. (As it is written of the fifth virtue: “Do not believe you do others a favor if you accept their arguments; the favor is to you.”)
From that perspective (which you might disagree with!), can you see why it might be tempting to metaphorically characterize the respectful-behavior-is-necessary mindset as “expecting to be marketed to”?
I doubt neither of us is going to start feeling more warmly towards the other with further comments, nor do I expect us to communicate much more information than we already have.
I take that as a challenge! I hope this comment has succeeded at making you feel more warmly towards me and communicating much more information that we already have! But, I’m also assigning a substantial probability that I failed in this ambition. I’m sorry if I failed.
Thanks for the informative writing feedback!
I think the occasional rhetorical question is a pretty ordinary part of the way people naturally talk and discuss ideas? I can avoid it if the discourse norms in a particular space demand it, but I tend to feel like this is excessive optimization for politeness at the cost of expressivity. Perhaps different writers place different weights on the relative value of politeness, but I should hope to at least be consistent in what behavior I display and what behavior I expect from others: if you see me tone-policing others over statements whose tone is as harsh as statements I’ve made in comparable situations, then I would be being hypocritical and you should criticize me for it!
I often use a “high-energy” writing style with lots of italics and exclamation points! I think it textually mimics the way I talk when I’m excited! (I think if you scan over my Less Wrong contributions, my personal blog, or my secret (“secret”) blog, you’ll see this a lot.) I can see how some readers might find this obnoxious, but I don’t think it’s accurate to read it as an indicator of contempt for my present interlocutor. (It probably correlates somewhat with contempt, but not nearly as much as you seem to be assuming?)
Likewise, I think lots of hyperlinks to jargon and concepts are a pretty persistent feature of my writing style? (To a greater extent in public forum posts like this rather than private emails.) In-body hyperlinks are pretty unobtrusive—readers who are interested in the link can click it, and readers who aren’t can not-click it.
I wouldn’t denigrate the value of having “elementary” resources easily at hand! I often find myself, e.g., looking up the definition of words I ostensibly “already know,” not because I can’t successfully use the word in a sentence, but to “sync up” my learned understanding of what the word means with what the dictionary says. (For example, I looked up brusque while composing this comment.)
The intent wasn’t just to back up the point that clamoring in the streets is ineffective, but to illustrate what I thought cause-and-effect (causal reality) reasoning would look like in contrast to social (social reality) reasoning—I took “clamoring in the steets” to be an example of the kind of action that social-reality reasoning would recommend. I thought such illustration could provide value to the comment thread, even though you’ve doubtlessly already heard of earning to give. (I didn’t mean to falsely imply you hadn’t.)
Yes, it was a bit of a tangent. (Once I start excitedly explaining something, it can be hard to know exactly when to stop! The 29 karma (in 13 votes) suggests that the voters seemed to like it, at least?)
I noticed, yes. I don’t think this should affect my writing that much? Certainly, how I write should depend on my model of who I’m talking to, but my model of you is mostly informed by the text you’ve written. (I think we also met at a party once? Aren’t you Miranda’s husband?) The fact that you work for Less Wrong doesn’t alter my perception much.
I wouldn’t say “dismissive”, exactly, but it’s definitely brusque, which, in the context of the surrounding thread, was an awful writing choice on my part. I’m sorry about that! Now that you’ve correctly pointed out that I made a terrible writing decision, let me try to make partial amends for it by exerting some more interpretive labor to unpack what I meant—
I suspect we have a pretty large disagreement on the degree to which respect is a necessary prerequisite for whether a conversation with someone will be productive? I think if someone is making good arguments, then I consider it my responsibility to update on the information content of what they’re saying. Because I’m a social monkey, I certainly find it harder to update (especially publicly) if someone’s good arguments are phrased in a way that doesn’t seem to respect me. Correspondingly, for my own emotional well-being, I prefer discussion spaces with strong politeness norms. But from the standpoint of minds as inference engines, I consider this a bug in my cognition: I expect to perform better if I can somehow muster the mental toughness to learn from people who hate my guts. (As it is written of the fifth virtue: “Do not believe you do others a favor if you accept their arguments; the favor is to you.”)
From that perspective (which you might disagree with!), can you see why it might be tempting to metaphorically characterize the respectful-behavior-is-necessary mindset as “expecting to be marketed to”?
I take that as a challenge! I hope this comment has succeeded at making you feel more warmly towards me and communicating much more information that we already have! But, I’m also assigning a substantial probability that I failed in this ambition. I’m sorry if I failed.