Communities and democratic methods suck at doing the kind of strategic, centralized, coherent decision making that we really need.
Kings also suck at it, in the average. Of course, if we are lucky and find a good king… the only problem is that king selection is the kind of strategic decision humans suck at.
They should be self-selected, then we don’t have to rely on the community at large.
There’s this wonderful idea called “Do-ocracy” where everyone understands that the people actually willing to do things get all the say as to what gets done. This is where benevolent dictators like Linus Torvalds get there power.
Our democratic training has taught us to think this idea is a recipe for totalitarian disaster. The thing is, even if the democratic memplex were right in it’s injunction against authority, a country and an internet community are entirely different situations.
In a country, if you had king-power, you have military and law power as well, and can physically coerce people to do what you want. There is enough money and power at stake to make it so most of the people who want to do the job are in it for the money and power, not the public good. Thus measures like heritable power (at least you’re not selecting for power-hunger), and democracy (now we’re theoretically selecting for public support).
On the other hand, in a small artificial community like a meetup, a hackerspace, or lesswrong, there is no military to control, the banhammer is much less power than the noose or dungeon, and there is barely anything to gain by embezzling taxes (as a meetup organizer, I could embezzle about $30 a month...). At worst, a corrupt monarch could ban all the good people and destroy the community, but the incentive do do damage to the community is roughly “for the lulz”. Lulz is much cheaper elsewhere. The amount of damage is highly limited by the fact that, in the absence of military power, the do-ocrat’s power over people is derived from respect, which would rapidly fall off if they did dumb things. On the other hand, scope insensitivity makes the apparent do-gooder motivation just as high. So in a community like this, most of the people willing to do the job will be those motivated to do public good and those agenty enough to do it, so self-selection (do-ocracy) works and we don’t need other measures.
There’s this wonderful idea called “Do-ocracy” where everyone understands that the people actually willing to do things get all the say as to what gets done. … Our democratic training has taught us to think this idea is a recipe for totalitarian disaster.
I can’t speak for your democratic training, but my democratic training has absolutely no problem with acknowledging merits and giving active people trust proportional to their achievements and letting them decide what more should be done.
It has become somewhat fashionable here, in the Moldbuggian vein, to blame community failures on democracy. But what particular democratic mechanisms have caused the lack of strategic decisions on LW? Which kind of decisions? I don’t see much democracy here—I don’t recall participating in election, for example, or voting on a proposed policy, or seeing a heated political debate which prevented a beneficial resolution to be implemented. I recall recent implementation of the karma penalty feature, which lot of LWers were unhappy about but was put in force nevertheless in a quite autocratic manner. So perhaps the lack of strategic decisions is caused by the fact that
there just aren’t people willing to even propose what should be done
nobody has any reasonable idea what strategic decision should be made (it is one thing to say what kind of decisions should be made—e.g. “we should choose an efficient site design”, but a rather different thing to make the decision in detail—e.g. “the front page should have a huge violet picture of a pony on it”)
people aren’t willing to work for free
Either of those has little to do with democracy. I am pretty sure that if you volunteer to work on whichever of your suggestions (contacting meetup organisers, improving the site design...), nobody would seriously object and you would easily get some official status on LW (moderator style). To do anything from the examples you have mentioned you wouldn’t need dictatorial powers.
The power of the banhammer is roughly proportional to the power of the dungeon. If it seems less threatening, it’s only because an online community is generally less important to people’s lives than society at large.
A bad king can absolutely destroy an online community. Banning all the good people is actually one of the better things a bad king can do, because it can spark an organized exodus, which is just inconvenient. But by adding restrictions and terrorizing the community with the threat of bans, a bad king can make the good people self-deport. And then the community can’t be revived elsewhere.
At worst, a corrupt monarch could … destroy the community, but the incentive do do damage to the community is roughly “for the lulz”. Lulz is much cheaper elsewhere.
I admit, I have seen braindead moderators tear a community apart (/r/anarchism for one).
I have just as often seen lack of moderation prevent a community from becoming what it could. (4chan (though I’m unsure whether 4chan is glorious or a cesspool))
And I have seen strong moderation keep a community together.
The thing is, death by incompetent dictator is much more salient to our imaginations than death by slow entropy and september-effects. incompetent dictators have a face which makes us take it much more seriously than an unbiased assessment of the threats would warrant.
The power of the banhammer is roughly proportional to the power of the dungeon. If it seems less threatening, it’s only because an online community is generally less important to people’s lives than society at large.
There’s a big difference between exile and prison, and the power of exile depends on the desirability of the place in question.
LW as a place to test applied moldbuggery, right?
Kings also suck at it, in the average. Of course, if we are lucky and find a good king… the only problem is that king selection is the kind of strategic decision humans suck at.
They should be self-selected, then we don’t have to rely on the community at large.
There’s this wonderful idea called “Do-ocracy” where everyone understands that the people actually willing to do things get all the say as to what gets done. This is where benevolent dictators like Linus Torvalds get there power.
Our democratic training has taught us to think this idea is a recipe for totalitarian disaster. The thing is, even if the democratic memplex were right in it’s injunction against authority, a country and an internet community are entirely different situations.
In a country, if you had king-power, you have military and law power as well, and can physically coerce people to do what you want. There is enough money and power at stake to make it so most of the people who want to do the job are in it for the money and power, not the public good. Thus measures like heritable power (at least you’re not selecting for power-hunger), and democracy (now we’re theoretically selecting for public support).
On the other hand, in a small artificial community like a meetup, a hackerspace, or lesswrong, there is no military to control, the banhammer is much less power than the noose or dungeon, and there is barely anything to gain by embezzling taxes (as a meetup organizer, I could embezzle about $30 a month...). At worst, a corrupt monarch could ban all the good people and destroy the community, but the incentive do do damage to the community is roughly “for the lulz”. Lulz is much cheaper elsewhere. The amount of damage is highly limited by the fact that, in the absence of military power, the do-ocrat’s power over people is derived from respect, which would rapidly fall off if they did dumb things. On the other hand, scope insensitivity makes the apparent do-gooder motivation just as high. So in a community like this, most of the people willing to do the job will be those motivated to do public good and those agenty enough to do it, so self-selection (do-ocracy) works and we don’t need other measures.
I can’t speak for your democratic training, but my democratic training has absolutely no problem with acknowledging merits and giving active people trust proportional to their achievements and letting them decide what more should be done.
It has become somewhat fashionable here, in the Moldbuggian vein, to blame community failures on democracy. But what particular democratic mechanisms have caused the lack of strategic decisions on LW? Which kind of decisions? I don’t see much democracy here—I don’t recall participating in election, for example, or voting on a proposed policy, or seeing a heated political debate which prevented a beneficial resolution to be implemented. I recall recent implementation of the karma penalty feature, which lot of LWers were unhappy about but was put in force nevertheless in a quite autocratic manner. So perhaps the lack of strategic decisions is caused by the fact that
there just aren’t people willing to even propose what should be done
nobody has any reasonable idea what strategic decision should be made (it is one thing to say what kind of decisions should be made—e.g. “we should choose an efficient site design”, but a rather different thing to make the decision in detail—e.g. “the front page should have a huge violet picture of a pony on it”)
people aren’t willing to work for free
Either of those has little to do with democracy. I am pretty sure that if you volunteer to work on whichever of your suggestions (contacting meetup organisers, improving the site design...), nobody would seriously object and you would easily get some official status on LW (moderator style). To do anything from the examples you have mentioned you wouldn’t need dictatorial powers.
The power of the banhammer is roughly proportional to the power of the dungeon. If it seems less threatening, it’s only because an online community is generally less important to people’s lives than society at large.
A bad king can absolutely destroy an online community. Banning all the good people is actually one of the better things a bad king can do, because it can spark an organized exodus, which is just inconvenient. But by adding restrictions and terrorizing the community with the threat of bans, a bad king can make the good people self-deport. And then the community can’t be revived elsewhere.
I admit, I have seen braindead moderators tear a community apart (/r/anarchism for one).
I have just as often seen lack of moderation prevent a community from becoming what it could. (4chan (though I’m unsure whether 4chan is glorious or a cesspool))
And I have seen strong moderation keep a community together.
The thing is, death by incompetent dictator is much more salient to our imaginations than death by slow entropy and september-effects. incompetent dictators have a face which makes us take it much more seriously than an unbiased assessment of the threats would warrant.
There’s a big difference between exile and prison, and the power of exile depends on the desirability of the place in question.