You once responded to someone’s comment by writing:
“It would seem we don’t appreciate your genius. Perhaps you should complain about this some more.”
I’m a professor at a women’s college and when I read this comment I thought to myself that a significant percentage of women who read this would not want to participate in this site.
I am male with Agreeableness probably at least as high as the average female, and that comment annoyed me also. I wouldn’t say that such dismissive sarcasm is never deserved, but I don’t see how that post came anywhere near deserving it. Eliezer seems to have a short fuse with some individuals, but without knowing the history between them or being interested in digging it up, such comments seem mean-spirited. They may also look like an evasion.
I am male with Agreeableness probably at least as high as the average female, and that comment annoyed me also.
I’ve noticed that ‘Agreeableness’ seems to be closely related to tollerance for ‘tit for tat’ responses. Ironically this means I often find the most ‘Agreeable’ people altogether disagreeable rather frequently.
It is an answer short on patience, but it was a comment short on insight. In response to a post relayed in short as: ‘The common definition of rationality is stupid. Here is a new proposal that is a basic tenet of most of my writing. (Implicitly, keep this in mind when you see me talk about rationality.)‘, the poster simply added ‘Well, I think the original definition of rationality is right, and I’ve said this before.’
The inciting comment seems just like the responses (on Fark, HNews, etc.) to Pullum’s article about Strunk & White- people who like what they learned flatly deny any counterargument.
Have you read the original post? Yudkowski had his reasons for being hostile. Whether or not they’re valid is debatable; but since that’s not what you’re debating I’m calling you out.
Accusing somebody of ‘seeming’ mean spirited is BS. Either he was mean spirited, or he wasn’t. Any level of ‘agreeable quotient’ is inadequate reason to make ad hominem attacks, while simultaneously refusing to provide evidence.
If the ‘seemingness’ of his hostility was sufficient reason to scare female-types away—then point that out! Say: “I did the home work, and his hostility was/wasn’t justified for reasons A,B,C,D, but regardless, it intimidates female-types, and the solution is X.”
The half-assed, poorly thought out, emotional post you just made undermines the entire purpose of this site, and is degrading to women; it implies that the curvier members of our species are incapable of admitting failure, and must be cottled and comforted any time they make a whoopsie. Grow a pair.
[meta]Well, that was a delicious bit of irony.[/meta]
Nobody seemed to have any coherent criticism the last time around—and yet now we have the same issue all over again.
The thread he was referring to is here. I agree with his characterization that nobody had conclusively refuted the Wikipedia notion of rationality; Eliezer hadn’t even responded to it in that thread.
Tim was raising a valid criticism, and then added another post saying that he had pointed it out before and that it was unaddressed. Eliezer responded substantively to the first post, and gave the response under discussion to the second post.
I agree that Eliezer had reasons to be hostile, yet I do deny that they justified such a level of hostility, which is why I hypothesized that his response was due to a short fuse with the particular individual since I know that there is a weird dynamic between them. It would have been enough to say something like “I saw your post, so you don’t need to keep bringing up the Wikipedia definition of rationality. See my response above.” As the person advancing a definition of rationality, I think that the onus is on Eliezer to defend it from all comers. And as the owner of the website which is trying to build a community, it may be advantageous to reign in hostility even when justified, and try to always take the high road if only for reasons of impression management.
Accusing somebody of ‘seeming’ mean spirited is BS. Either he was mean spirited, or he wasn’t.
Or, in my subjective opinion, his comment was mean-spirited, while granting that others, such as you, might disagree and think that the comment was deserved. My reference to my level of Agreeableness is so that others can have context to interpret my impression. (e.g. “Well, Hugh is just bothered by Eliezer’s comment because he is high in Agreeabless”)
Any level of ‘agreeable quotient’ is inadequate reason to make ad hominem attacks, while simultaneously refusing to provide evidence.
This is an incorrect usage of ad hominem, since Eliezer was not making a factual claim, and my impression of his comment as mean-spirited is not implying that he is wrong. I think you are engaging in the common confusion of ad hominem and personal attack. It is neither an ad hominem nor a personal attack to characterize someone’s comment as mean-spirited; note also that I was calling the comment mean-spirited, not the person.
If the ‘seemingness’ of his hostility was sufficient reason to scare female-types away—then point that out! Say: “I did the home work, and his hostility was/wasn’t justified for reasons A,B,C,D, but regardless, it intimidates female-types, and the solution is X.”
Yes, I do think it’s possible that such a level of hostility will intimidate female-types (though it is also possible that women who would participate here in first place wouldn’t mind). There is no reason for me to attempt to make an objective judgment about whether or not the hostility was justified in order to make this point. As for a solution, I suggested an example response earlier in this post. But I’m not going to claim that I have all the answers. I just think that it’s possible to deal with people who are potentially annoying or trollish without losing the high ground, and without injecting a tone of hostility into the website that might drive people away, especially if it becomes a common practice for many commenters.
The half-assed, poorly thought out, emotional post you just made undermines the entire purpose of this site, and is degrading to women; it implies that the curvier members of our species are incapable of admitting failure, and must be cottled and comforted any time they make a whoopsie. Grow a pair.
I think you missed the entire point of my post. As Eliezer and others have suggested,
average personality differences between men and women may be a factor in why women are less likely to participate on this website. One of these potential personality differences is in Agreeableness. The point of my post was to show how that comment by Eliezer could be perceived, offering myself as a data point of someone with a female-typical level of Agreeableness; I wasn’t particularly interested in trying to make an objective judgment about whether Eliezer’s comment was justified or not, nor did I think that such a judgment was necessary.
From where I’m sitting this whole conversation is surreal. Yes, Eliezer said something uncivil once and was downvoted only to −4, but on the whole the tone here has been less hostile than most of the internet by any reasonable metric.
While you make valid points, I can’t help feeling that some people are missing the fact that Eliezer’s comment was funny. Maybe not everyone was amused but I think it would be a shame if the occasional flippant/comical remark was not welcome here. I couldn’t help but think of this which just makes me chuckle.
Agreed. This reminds me of an anecdote a high school teacher once shared with me about when he switched from coaching the boys’ track team to the girls’ track team. He didn’t adjust his coaching strategy at all and in short order had a fair number of crying high school girls on his hands.
I’ve found this comment too elliptical to be helpful. I’ve left to guess why “a significant percentage of women who read this would not want to participate in this site.”
Here is my guess. A comment whines of unappreciated genius, the reply is a sarcastic put down. That is not just a person-male interaction. That is a male-male interaction. I expect stereotypical female readers to tune it out as boys-will-be-boys bullshit. It is noise, so it makes the signal to noise ratio worse, but it is also tuned out pretty automatically, so it is not a large enough deterioration to drive any-one away.
That comment was so far outside what I expect to see on this site in general or from Eliezer in particular that I didn’t initially realize that he was being hostile. On any comment board I’ve seen more than a glimpse of outside OB/LW I doubt I make that mistake.
There’s almost always room for improvement in this area but this is one place where I think we do an admirable job. If this were a primary cause, I would expect most forum-based sites to have the same problem, usually far worse than we do. Is there a general gender imbalance in most forums?
I’m bothered that this is voted up so high. Perhaps EY’s words were intemperate, but this feels more like taking the opportunity to have a jab at him than sitting down to address the broader problem he raises.
Perhaps EY’s words were intemperate, but this feels more like taking the opportunity to have a jab at him than sitting down to address the broader problem he raises.
The point is valid that, probably for reasons of social training, more women than men are likely to be turned away by such snide criticism.
However, it’s not clear that that sort of tone is even remotely common in comments here, and in fact the negative score Eliezer’s comment received is strongly indicative that the community as a whole disapproved.
I hardly think −4 (now −3, apparently) is indicative of wholesale disapproval. Of course, if most people keep the default viewing threshold and don’t click through often then it’ would be impossible to tell. But since this very thread has a comment at −8, and I’ve seen several below −10, I don’t think that’s the case.
Eliezer,
You once responded to someone’s comment by writing:
“It would seem we don’t appreciate your genius. Perhaps you should complain about this some more.”
I’m a professor at a women’s college and when I read this comment I thought to myself that a significant percentage of women who read this would not want to participate in this site.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/7i/rationality_is_systematized_winning/4zp
I am male with Agreeableness probably at least as high as the average female, and that comment annoyed me also. I wouldn’t say that such dismissive sarcasm is never deserved, but I don’t see how that post came anywhere near deserving it. Eliezer seems to have a short fuse with some individuals, but without knowing the history between them or being interested in digging it up, such comments seem mean-spirited. They may also look like an evasion.
I’ve noticed that ‘Agreeableness’ seems to be closely related to tollerance for ‘tit for tat’ responses. Ironically this means I often find the most ‘Agreeable’ people altogether disagreeable rather frequently.
It is an answer short on patience, but it was a comment short on insight. In response to a post relayed in short as: ‘The common definition of rationality is stupid. Here is a new proposal that is a basic tenet of most of my writing. (Implicitly, keep this in mind when you see me talk about rationality.)‘, the poster simply added ‘Well, I think the original definition of rationality is right, and I’ve said this before.’
The inciting comment seems just like the responses (on Fark, HNews, etc.) to Pullum’s article about Strunk & White- people who like what they learned flatly deny any counterargument.
Have you read the original post? Yudkowski had his reasons for being hostile. Whether or not they’re valid is debatable; but since that’s not what you’re debating I’m calling you out.
Accusing somebody of ‘seeming’ mean spirited is BS. Either he was mean spirited, or he wasn’t. Any level of ‘agreeable quotient’ is inadequate reason to make ad hominem attacks, while simultaneously refusing to provide evidence.
If the ‘seemingness’ of his hostility was sufficient reason to scare female-types away—then point that out! Say: “I did the home work, and his hostility was/wasn’t justified for reasons A,B,C,D, but regardless, it intimidates female-types, and the solution is X.”
The half-assed, poorly thought out, emotional post you just made undermines the entire purpose of this site, and is degrading to women; it implies that the curvier members of our species are incapable of admitting failure, and must be cottled and comforted any time they make a whoopsie. Grow a pair.
[meta]Well, that was a delicious bit of irony.[/meta]
Yes. Here is what Timtyler said:
The thread he was referring to is here. I agree with his characterization that nobody had conclusively refuted the Wikipedia notion of rationality; Eliezer hadn’t even responded to it in that thread.
Tim was raising a valid criticism, and then added another post saying that he had pointed it out before and that it was unaddressed. Eliezer responded substantively to the first post, and gave the response under discussion to the second post.
I agree that Eliezer had reasons to be hostile, yet I do deny that they justified such a level of hostility, which is why I hypothesized that his response was due to a short fuse with the particular individual since I know that there is a weird dynamic between them. It would have been enough to say something like “I saw your post, so you don’t need to keep bringing up the Wikipedia definition of rationality. See my response above.” As the person advancing a definition of rationality, I think that the onus is on Eliezer to defend it from all comers. And as the owner of the website which is trying to build a community, it may be advantageous to reign in hostility even when justified, and try to always take the high road if only for reasons of impression management.
Or, in my subjective opinion, his comment was mean-spirited, while granting that others, such as you, might disagree and think that the comment was deserved. My reference to my level of Agreeableness is so that others can have context to interpret my impression. (e.g. “Well, Hugh is just bothered by Eliezer’s comment because he is high in Agreeabless”)
This is an incorrect usage of ad hominem, since Eliezer was not making a factual claim, and my impression of his comment as mean-spirited is not implying that he is wrong. I think you are engaging in the common confusion of ad hominem and personal attack. It is neither an ad hominem nor a personal attack to characterize someone’s comment as mean-spirited; note also that I was calling the comment mean-spirited, not the person.
Yes, I do think it’s possible that such a level of hostility will intimidate female-types (though it is also possible that women who would participate here in first place wouldn’t mind). There is no reason for me to attempt to make an objective judgment about whether or not the hostility was justified in order to make this point. As for a solution, I suggested an example response earlier in this post. But I’m not going to claim that I have all the answers. I just think that it’s possible to deal with people who are potentially annoying or trollish without losing the high ground, and without injecting a tone of hostility into the website that might drive people away, especially if it becomes a common practice for many commenters.
I think you missed the entire point of my post. As Eliezer and others have suggested, average personality differences between men and women may be a factor in why women are less likely to participate on this website. One of these potential personality differences is in Agreeableness. The point of my post was to show how that comment by Eliezer could be perceived, offering myself as a data point of someone with a female-typical level of Agreeableness; I wasn’t particularly interested in trying to make an objective judgment about whether Eliezer’s comment was justified or not, nor did I think that such a judgment was necessary.
From where I’m sitting this whole conversation is surreal. Yes, Eliezer said something uncivil once and was downvoted only to −4, but on the whole the tone here has been less hostile than most of the internet by any reasonable metric.
While you make valid points, I can’t help feeling that some people are missing the fact that Eliezer’s comment was funny. Maybe not everyone was amused but I think it would be a shame if the occasional flippant/comical remark was not welcome here. I couldn’t help but think of this which just makes me chuckle.
Exactly!
Agreed. This reminds me of an anecdote a high school teacher once shared with me about when he switched from coaching the boys’ track team to the girls’ track team. He didn’t adjust his coaching strategy at all and in short order had a fair number of crying high school girls on his hands.
I’ve found this comment too elliptical to be helpful. I’ve left to guess why “a significant percentage of women who read this would not want to participate in this site.”
Here is my guess. A comment whines of unappreciated genius, the reply is a sarcastic put down. That is not just a person-male interaction. That is a male-male interaction. I expect stereotypical female readers to tune it out as boys-will-be-boys bullshit. It is noise, so it makes the signal to noise ratio worse, but it is also tuned out pretty automatically, so it is not a large enough deterioration to drive any-one away.
So my guess doesn’t work. I fail. Shrug.
(And the said comment was voted down to −4, the threshold at which comments (by default) become invisible.)
That comment was so far outside what I expect to see on this site in general or from Eliezer in particular that I didn’t initially realize that he was being hostile. On any comment board I’ve seen more than a glimpse of outside OB/LW I doubt I make that mistake.
There’s almost always room for improvement in this area but this is one place where I think we do an admirable job. If this were a primary cause, I would expect most forum-based sites to have the same problem, usually far worse than we do. Is there a general gender imbalance in most forums?
I’m bothered that this is voted up so high. Perhaps EY’s words were intemperate, but this feels more like taking the opportunity to have a jab at him than sitting down to address the broader problem he raises.
The point is valid that, probably for reasons of social training, more women than men are likely to be turned away by such snide criticism.
However, it’s not clear that that sort of tone is even remotely common in comments here, and in fact the negative score Eliezer’s comment received is strongly indicative that the community as a whole disapproved.
I hardly think −4 (now −3, apparently) is indicative of wholesale disapproval. Of course, if most people keep the default viewing threshold and don’t click through often then it’ would be impossible to tell. But since this very thread has a comment at −8, and I’ve seen several below −10, I don’t think that’s the case.