Very reasonable question, albeit awkward to answer because making predictions about other people is kinda rude and kinda creepy.
I certainly don’t expect Lumifer to stop enjoying being snarky at people on LW. Neither do I expect him to make a radical shift from doing whatever he finds amusing to some kind of optimization of everyone’s net utility. But I do think it’s possible that he will make a small update to his estimate of how other people react to his snarky dismissals, and that there will be a small corresponding change in behaviour. That would, in my judgement, make LW a marginally better place.
I also hope that some people who are upvoting snarky dismissiveness may become slightly less inclined to do so. I don’t at all begrudge Lumifer his upvotes, but I think he’s often getting them for the wrong comments. More to the point, I think an environment where snarky dismissiveness gets lots of upvotes will encourage other people to move in the snarkily dismissive direction, which I think would be bad for LW.
Ok. Assume, for a moment, that Lumifer is judicious about when to be snarkily dismissive—that is, he is snarkily dismissive when he thinks it is the appropriate response.
In that case, would it be fair to say that the issue you take is not necessarily with his snarky dismissiveness, but rather his skipping the intermediate mental steps in explaining why somebody is wrong? That is, he is making leaps of logic that the audience can’t necessarily follow? (This might explain some of the upvotes, as well; they’re not upvoting his snarkiness, but his dismissal of something they also dismiss for similar reasons which nobody ever conveys to those who don’t know what those reasons are.)
In that case, instead of engaging him on a tone argument, it might be more productive to suggest he is losing some of his audience, who he could otherwise convince, by dismissing things without apparent cause.
There’s probably a competing needs access issue here; Lumifer’s commentary might be useful to a subset of people, while harmful (or at least non-useful) to another subset of people. The goal shouldn’t be to eliminate the usefulness of his commentary to the subset of people to whom his commentary is helpful, but rather to expand the usefulness of his commentary to those who don’t already know what his objections imply/what his true objections are.
(As for making predictions of people—you don’t improve your models of other people by never making predictions.)
In that case, would it be fair to say that the issue you take is [...] he is making leaps of logic that the audience can’t necessarily follow?
Maybe that’s part of the problem sometimes. But no, I don’t think it’s the main problem. In my own interactions with Lumifer, I am much more often annoyed by rudeness than by incomprehension. And my impression of his interaction with others is that they’re mostly the same.
(I do from time to time find Lumifer’s comments unhelpfully terse and seek clarification. But I don’t find those annoying in the same way as I do the snarky dismissals.)
I would say that, conditional on Lumifer’s snarky dismissiveness being “judicious” in the sense you describe, the objection I sometimes have is that he is incorrect in thinking it “the correct response”.
you don’t improve your models of other people by never making predictions
Of course. But you don’t need to make the predictions out loud in public, and often it’s a bad idea to—e.g., because of the “monkey brain jerking around” issue Lumifer mentioned: talking about what someone else is going to do in the future on account of what you’ve said is apt to feel like a status manoeuvre; there are other reasons too.
In my own interactions with Lumifer, I am much more often annoyed by rudeness than by incomprehension. And my impression of his interaction with others is that they’re mostly the same.
I find it rude when people don’t make eye contact. It made New England an interesting place for me to live. Was I wrong to try to make eye contact, or were they wrong to avoid it? And whose mores should win in a place where both cultures coincide?
Of course. But you don’t need to make the predictions out loud in public, and often it’s a bad idea to—e.g., because of the “monkey brain jerking around” issue Lumifer mentioned: talking about what someone else is going to do in the future on account of what you’ve said is apt to feel like a status manoeuvre; there are other reasons too.
Do you regard being predictable as being a low-status signal, and do you think society at large shares this view?
Not necessarily either, of course, but in practice it’s probably easier for you to learn that New Englanders may avoid eye contact even if they are friendly than for half the population of New England to change their habits.
Do you regard being predictable as being a low-status signal
I think most of us are inclined to treat being manipulable as a low-status signal, and being predictable manipulable even more so. This is why, if you want to encourage someone to change their behaviour, it is often more effective to talk about it with them in private.
(In this case, the discussion was already going on in public when I first saw it.)
Not necessarily either, of course, but in practice it’s probably easier for you to learn that New Englanders may avoid eye contact even if they are friendly than for half the population of New England to change their habits.
You miss my point. Rudeness is culturally contextual. You’re insisting, here, that your social mores take precedent. It’s entirely possible they’re the majority mores, but Lumifer’s overall positive karma should be taken as evidence against that.
I often upvote Lumifer’s comments simply because they contain good content (while downvoting the ones that are pure snark). I strongly suspect that many other LW users vote similarly. That Lumifer’s comments are often upvoted should not, therefore, be taken as an indication that people appreciate their tone (and I suspect that Lumifer’s karma ratio—which is currently at 80%--is so low at least in part because of the tone he/she uses).
(On a somewhat related note: I have noticed a rather strange phenomenon occurring, where one of Lumifer’s comments initially receives a large number of downvotes, sometimes falling all the way to −5, before a sudden surge of upvotes, usually a day or two later, brings it back up to around +4 or so. This is not the sort of pattern one would normally expect to see, and yet I have seen it happen multiple times, which leads me to think someone else may be gaming the system.)
That Lumifer’s comments are often upvoted should not, therefore, be taken as an indication that people appreciate their tone (and I suspect that Lumifer’s karma ratio—which is currently at 80%--is so low at least in part because of the tone he/she uses).
Approval of tone, and finding a comment on the whole useful, are distinct things.
I’m not insisting on anything. I am expressing the opinion that LW would, overall, function a little better if Lumifer were slightly less abrasive. Contrariwise, Lumifer is expressing the opinions that (1) he doesn’t wanna and (2) actually LW would be worse overall if he were all nice and gentle. I don’t see much of the way of insistence here on either side.
Am I misunderstanding what you mean by “insisting”?
It’s entirely possible they’re the majority mores
The thing about mores is that to some extent they’re trying to solve coordination problems, and they do that better when people are more willing to adopt common mores—and if you have a large majority on one side then, annoying though it may be for the other guys, it probably works best overall for them to do most of the adapting.
(Which isn’t—as I’ve said elsewhere in the thread—to say that total uniformity is called for. Just a certain level of accommodation. Now, Lumifer’s said that he’s already being less snarky and dismissive on LW than he would naturally prefer to be; so perhaps we’re actually at the optimum after all. I am inclined to think not, but of course I can see Lumifer’s situation only from the outside.)
Lumifer’s positive karma
His snarkiest comments are frequently on negative scores. (Scarcely ever because of me, for what it’s worth.) So while there’s little question that Lumifer is a valuable and valued member of the LW community, I don’t think we can infer from his high karma that his snarking is either valuable or valued.
[EDITED to add:] Personally, I value some of it but not all. (And no, the distinction is not whether he’s snarking at me or at others.) I’m quite sure that the optimum level of Lumifer-snark is well above zero.
Now, Lumifer’s said that he’s already being less snarky and dismissive on LW than he would naturally prefer to be
Not quite.
I have found out, empirically, that if I embrace the dark side and let my snark flow unimpeded, it grows. Grows both in width, taking over conversations, and in depth, as its teeth extend and become sharper. After a while I decided I don’t like that and that my snark needs to be limited and controlled.
So it’s not that I naturally prefer to be more snarky, but rather that there is a “natural” escalation which I’m deliberately keeping in check.
Am I misunderstanding what you mean by “insisting”?
Yes. You’re also ignoring the issue of cultural mores in favor of a perspective in which niceness and functionality are non-subjective qualities, the subjectivity of which was my point which you claim not to have missed.
The thing about mores is that to some extent they’re trying to solve coordination problems, and they do that better when people are more willing to adopt common mores—and if you have a large majority on one side then, annoying though it may be for the other guys, it probably works best overall for them to do most of the adapting.
“Rudeness” isn’t a coordination problem, except insofar as it’s a coordination problem of taste.
Forgot. I don’t write linearly, I bounce between different sections, and sometimes I forget things.
“Insisting” in this case meaning, roughly, “argue for over more than one iteration”. Insistence in the sense of “continuing to do something”, as opposed to the sense of “forcefully argue”.
OK. Then it seems that “insisting that [my] social mores take precedence” seems actually to mean making more than one comment in which I argue that if Lumifer took one step in the direction of (what happen to be) my social mores then LW would be (by standards I think both Lumifer and I endorse) a slightly better place.
I’m quite happy to agree that I did that, and I think it’s obvious that there’s nothing wrong with doing so by any reasonable standards.
(Note that I have not at any point said e.g. “Lumifer, you should be less dismissive because that would be nicer”. I have said “Lumifer, you should be less dismissive because your dismissiveness is likely to make others enjoy LW less and reduce the likelihood of mutual understanding in discussions”. Maybe I’ve slipped up somewhere and appealed to values that Lumifer doesn’t share with me; my intention has been not to do so.)
a perspective in which niceness and functionality are non-subjective qualities
I doubt it, since that is not in fact my perspective.
“Rudeness” isn’t a coordination problem
You said above that you find it rude when people don’t make (what you think is enough) eye contact. Some other people find it rude when people do make (what they think is excessive) eye contact. In a population where people don’t make eye contact by default, everyone is reasonably comfortable and making eye contact can be used as a signifier for, say, intimacy. In a population where people do make eye contact by default, everyone is reasonably comfortable and avoiding eye contact can be used as a signifier for, say, mistrust. Discomfort and miscommunication are liable to follow (as you found in New England) when there is a mismatch. Surely this is precisely a coordination problem.
Similarly for, e.g., a norm of always pointing out any mistakes or infelicities when you see them versus a norm of letting things slide. LW is in fact quite a lot further toward the first of those than most communities, of course; Lumifer’s preference is further still in that direction, and that’s roughly what this discussion is about. Again, this is a coordination problem; a community can sit pretty much anywhere along that line and manage OK, but if there’s a big mismatch then again you get discomfort and miscommunication.
I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind, I’m defending my right to have a mind which doesn’t exactly conform to other people’s notions of what it should be :-/
Evidently, my mind has a snarky module which can easily be swapped for the cooperate-bot module (you’ll usually find it labeled “anti-Moloch” or “something something charitable”) and that’s a minor surgery, I’ll be out of the clinic in no time. And then I’ll be allowed into the rainbows-and-unicorns land where everyone shall live happily ever after.
It would be interesting to speculate on how “LW would be a slightly better place if you were one notch less snarky” seems to have turned into “you want to change the workings of my brain to make me exactly what you think it should be, and you think that doing so would make everyone happy”, but I am much too polite to do so and will merely remark that no, of course I was not taking exception to the form or content of your mind; only (mildly) to some of your actions.
I think you’re both having different arguments than you think you are. Illusion of transparency, and all that.
I suspect Gjm’s true argument is something along the lines of “Lumifer has a tendency to dismiss people’s positions without explanation.” But instead he is making a tone argument, because he is noticing his reaction to your style of commentary rather than the nature of your style of commentary.
Which is not to say your dismissals are wrong, but it often requires a lot of reading between the lines, when reading your comments, to figure out what your reasons actually are. And if somebody isn’t familiar with the specific argument you’re implicitly referencing with your “snarky one-liners”, they may fail to be able to understand what your objection actually is. Gjm is also very uncomfortable guessing at people’s motivations/reasons (he considers it rude), so you two have an even wider communication gap.
Human interactions are complicated, there are usually multiple factors at play. It is true that from gjm’s point of view I sometimes dismiss people’s positions “arbitrarily”. But it is also true that my style breaks the rules of the polite society in gjm’s corner of the world and that makes him less comfortable. Plus there are status signals involved and the monkey brain is, of course, jerking around in response to them.
they may fail to be able to understand what your objection actually is
That’s a fair point.
Gjm is also very uncomfortable guessing at people’s motivations/reasons
Not guessing, but publicly stating. I am pretty sure that he—like all people—builds models of people in his head all the time. But bringing out these models into the open is too direct and explicit: gentlemen do not do that.
On the last point there, Lumifer is right and OrphanWilde wrong: I don’t consider it in any way improper to build mental models of other people, and so far as I can tell I understand Lumifer’s one-liners as well as anyone else does. (Which is not to say I always understand them correctly; but if not then his wounds are, as he might put it, self-inflicted.)
The other half of Lumifer’s commentary, attempting to explain what I dislike about his posting style, is so far as I can tell quite badly wrong, but I don’t think it would be productive to argue it further. (It very rarely is after one party has decided to go full Bulver on the other.)
The other half of Lumifer’s commentary, attempting to explain what I dislike about his posting style, is so far as I can tell quite badly wrong, but I don’t think it would be productive to argue it further. (It very rarely is after one party has decided to go full Bulver on the other.)
You should notice now that what he was interpreting you as saying isn’t what you were intending to convey, as demonstrated by the fact that you felt a need to clarify; likewise, by the fact that you didn’t notice what his argument was actually about, you were likewise not getting what he was trying to communicate.
Your wounds here are, as Lumifer might put it, self-inflicted. And accusing the other party of going “full Bulver” isn’t exactly conducive to the sort of respectful discussion you claim to want to reify here, which is really just a subset of the overall tone of discussion. You called Lumifer out, and, by my reckoning, have more or less admitted that the thread was at least in part a response to him and his style of commentary. More, for somebody who considers it incredibly rude and status-gamey to make predictions about people, your first response to Lumifer was a post-hoc prediction that he’d be the one to respond. Given that you regard such behavior as a status play, I can’t help but interpret this entire bloody discussion in that framework.
[ETA: Correction: It was Villiam who did the above.]
You’re playing at being the mature, responsible person, telling somebody who is ill-behaved that their behavior is problematic. But you’re not actually being a mature, responsible person here, as evidenced by the fact that you chose to insert a parting shot in your “I don’t want to argue about this anymore.”
If you don’t want to argue about it anymore, stop bloody arguing, and ignore the need to inject attacks in your closing statement.
You’re playing at being the mature, responsible person, telling somebody who is ill-behaved that their behavior is problematic. But you’re not actually being a mature, responsible person here, as evidenced by the fact that you chose to insert a parting shot in your “I don’t want to argue about this anymore.”
What makes you think I didn’t notice what Lumifer’s argument was actually about?
you’re not actually being a mature, responsible person here
I suggest that your assessment of that is strongly coloured by your completely incorrect characterization of the rest of the thread. You’ve already issued one correction—indeed, my first response to Lumifer was not the post-hoc prediction you said it was (which would indeed have been inconsistent with my stated opinions). Here are some more. I didn’t call Lumifer out; dxu did, my entry to the thread was an attempt to correct a misunderstanding. Given that I didn’t start the thread, I’m not sure how I could possibly “admit that the thread was” anything.
you chose to insert a parting shot
I explained why I don’t want to argue about it any more. I’m not sure exactly what you consider immature or irresponsible about that.
I would just like to point out that my entry point into this discussion was actually rather similar to your own, in that I was simply clarifying some of (what I thought were) Viliam’s points. This whole thread actually got started because SquirrelInHell proposed a “niceness norm”, Lumifer (as is his/her wont) began poking at it, and then Viliam took the opportunity to say some things that (I assume) he’s been wanting to say for a while. I do think OrphanWilde’s accusation of you was misplaced, but I would be cautious in accusing anyone else of “starting it”; for the record, I genuinely don’t think this thread was anyone’s “fault”—in fact, I would argue that, if nothing else, this thread allowed several people (including myself) to express some things that might in other contexts have been considered socially impermissible. So it wasn’t entirely a bad thing.
Finally, because I feel like this discussion has been rather grim for a while now, and because this is (after all) the place to discuss the positivity thread, have an emoticon:
I explained why I don’t want to argue about it any more. I’m not sure exactly what you consider immature or irresponsible about that.
“You’re too stupid to have this discussion with” is also an explanation about why you wouldn’t want to argue with somebody. One I’ve used, albeit with different words. But it also flies in the face of your argument about rudeness detracting from Less Wrong.
At this point in the conversation I have to ask: Do either of you actually expect to change anybody’s minds?
Very reasonable question, albeit awkward to answer because making predictions about other people is kinda rude and kinda creepy.
I certainly don’t expect Lumifer to stop enjoying being snarky at people on LW. Neither do I expect him to make a radical shift from doing whatever he finds amusing to some kind of optimization of everyone’s net utility. But I do think it’s possible that he will make a small update to his estimate of how other people react to his snarky dismissals, and that there will be a small corresponding change in behaviour. That would, in my judgement, make LW a marginally better place.
I also hope that some people who are upvoting snarky dismissiveness may become slightly less inclined to do so. I don’t at all begrudge Lumifer his upvotes, but I think he’s often getting them for the wrong comments. More to the point, I think an environment where snarky dismissiveness gets lots of upvotes will encourage other people to move in the snarkily dismissive direction, which I think would be bad for LW.
Ok. Assume, for a moment, that Lumifer is judicious about when to be snarkily dismissive—that is, he is snarkily dismissive when he thinks it is the appropriate response.
In that case, would it be fair to say that the issue you take is not necessarily with his snarky dismissiveness, but rather his skipping the intermediate mental steps in explaining why somebody is wrong? That is, he is making leaps of logic that the audience can’t necessarily follow? (This might explain some of the upvotes, as well; they’re not upvoting his snarkiness, but his dismissal of something they also dismiss for similar reasons which nobody ever conveys to those who don’t know what those reasons are.)
In that case, instead of engaging him on a tone argument, it might be more productive to suggest he is losing some of his audience, who he could otherwise convince, by dismissing things without apparent cause.
There’s probably a competing needs access issue here; Lumifer’s commentary might be useful to a subset of people, while harmful (or at least non-useful) to another subset of people. The goal shouldn’t be to eliminate the usefulness of his commentary to the subset of people to whom his commentary is helpful, but rather to expand the usefulness of his commentary to those who don’t already know what his objections imply/what his true objections are.
(As for making predictions of people—you don’t improve your models of other people by never making predictions.)
Maybe that’s part of the problem sometimes. But no, I don’t think it’s the main problem. In my own interactions with Lumifer, I am much more often annoyed by rudeness than by incomprehension. And my impression of his interaction with others is that they’re mostly the same.
(I do from time to time find Lumifer’s comments unhelpfully terse and seek clarification. But I don’t find those annoying in the same way as I do the snarky dismissals.)
I would say that, conditional on Lumifer’s snarky dismissiveness being “judicious” in the sense you describe, the objection I sometimes have is that he is incorrect in thinking it “the correct response”.
Of course. But you don’t need to make the predictions out loud in public, and often it’s a bad idea to—e.g., because of the “monkey brain jerking around” issue Lumifer mentioned: talking about what someone else is going to do in the future on account of what you’ve said is apt to feel like a status manoeuvre; there are other reasons too.
I find it rude when people don’t make eye contact. It made New England an interesting place for me to live. Was I wrong to try to make eye contact, or were they wrong to avoid it? And whose mores should win in a place where both cultures coincide?
Do you regard being predictable as being a low-status signal, and do you think society at large shares this view?
Not necessarily either, of course, but in practice it’s probably easier for you to learn that New Englanders may avoid eye contact even if they are friendly than for half the population of New England to change their habits.
I think most of us are inclined to treat being manipulable as a low-status signal, and being predictable manipulable even more so. This is why, if you want to encourage someone to change their behaviour, it is often more effective to talk about it with them in private.
(In this case, the discussion was already going on in public when I first saw it.)
You miss my point. Rudeness is culturally contextual. You’re insisting, here, that your social mores take precedent. It’s entirely possible they’re the majority mores, but Lumifer’s overall positive karma should be taken as evidence against that.
I often upvote Lumifer’s comments simply because they contain good content (while downvoting the ones that are pure snark). I strongly suspect that many other LW users vote similarly. That Lumifer’s comments are often upvoted should not, therefore, be taken as an indication that people appreciate their tone (and I suspect that Lumifer’s karma ratio—which is currently at 80%--is so low at least in part because of the tone he/she uses).
(On a somewhat related note: I have noticed a rather strange phenomenon occurring, where one of Lumifer’s comments initially receives a large number of downvotes, sometimes falling all the way to −5, before a sudden surge of upvotes, usually a day or two later, brings it back up to around +4 or so. This is not the sort of pattern one would normally expect to see, and yet I have seen it happen multiple times, which leads me to think someone else may be gaming the system.)
Approval of tone, and finding a comment on the whole useful, are distinct things.
I promise you, I didn’t.
I’m not insisting on anything. I am expressing the opinion that LW would, overall, function a little better if Lumifer were slightly less abrasive. Contrariwise, Lumifer is expressing the opinions that (1) he doesn’t wanna and (2) actually LW would be worse overall if he were all nice and gentle. I don’t see much of the way of insistence here on either side.
Am I misunderstanding what you mean by “insisting”?
The thing about mores is that to some extent they’re trying to solve coordination problems, and they do that better when people are more willing to adopt common mores—and if you have a large majority on one side then, annoying though it may be for the other guys, it probably works best overall for them to do most of the adapting.
(Which isn’t—as I’ve said elsewhere in the thread—to say that total uniformity is called for. Just a certain level of accommodation. Now, Lumifer’s said that he’s already being less snarky and dismissive on LW than he would naturally prefer to be; so perhaps we’re actually at the optimum after all. I am inclined to think not, but of course I can see Lumifer’s situation only from the outside.)
His snarkiest comments are frequently on negative scores. (Scarcely ever because of me, for what it’s worth.) So while there’s little question that Lumifer is a valuable and valued member of the LW community, I don’t think we can infer from his high karma that his snarking is either valuable or valued.
[EDITED to add:] Personally, I value some of it but not all. (And no, the distinction is not whether he’s snarking at me or at others.) I’m quite sure that the optimum level of Lumifer-snark is well above zero.
Not quite.
I have found out, empirically, that if I embrace the dark side and let my snark flow unimpeded, it grows. Grows both in width, taking over conversations, and in depth, as its teeth extend and become sharper. After a while I decided I don’t like that and that my snark needs to be limited and controlled.
So it’s not that I naturally prefer to be more snarky, but rather that there is a “natural” escalation which I’m deliberately keeping in check.
Distinction noted; my apologies for misinterpreting.
Yes. You’re also ignoring the issue of cultural mores in favor of a perspective in which niceness and functionality are non-subjective qualities, the subjectivity of which was my point which you claim not to have missed.
“Rudeness” isn’t a coordination problem, except insofar as it’s a coordination problem of taste.
Is there a reason why you didn’t follow that up by explaining what you did mean by it?
Forgot. I don’t write linearly, I bounce between different sections, and sometimes I forget things.
“Insisting” in this case meaning, roughly, “argue for over more than one iteration”. Insistence in the sense of “continuing to do something”, as opposed to the sense of “forcefully argue”.
OK. Then it seems that “insisting that [my] social mores take precedence” seems actually to mean making more than one comment in which I argue that if Lumifer took one step in the direction of (what happen to be) my social mores then LW would be (by standards I think both Lumifer and I endorse) a slightly better place.
I’m quite happy to agree that I did that, and I think it’s obvious that there’s nothing wrong with doing so by any reasonable standards.
(Note that I have not at any point said e.g. “Lumifer, you should be less dismissive because that would be nicer”. I have said “Lumifer, you should be less dismissive because your dismissiveness is likely to make others enjoy LW less and reduce the likelihood of mutual understanding in discussions”. Maybe I’ve slipped up somewhere and appealed to values that Lumifer doesn’t share with me; my intention has been not to do so.)
I doubt it, since that is not in fact my perspective.
You said above that you find it rude when people don’t make (what you think is enough) eye contact. Some other people find it rude when people do make (what they think is excessive) eye contact. In a population where people don’t make eye contact by default, everyone is reasonably comfortable and making eye contact can be used as a signifier for, say, intimacy. In a population where people do make eye contact by default, everyone is reasonably comfortable and avoiding eye contact can be used as a signifier for, say, mistrust. Discomfort and miscommunication are liable to follow (as you found in New England) when there is a mismatch. Surely this is precisely a coordination problem.
Similarly for, e.g., a norm of always pointing out any mistakes or infelicities when you see them versus a norm of letting things slide. LW is in fact quite a lot further toward the first of those than most communities, of course; Lumifer’s preference is further still in that direction, and that’s roughly what this discussion is about. Again, this is a coordination problem; a community can sit pretty much anywhere along that line and manage OK, but if there’s a big mismatch then again you get discomfort and miscommunication.
I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind, I’m defending my right to have a mind which doesn’t exactly conform to other people’s notions of what it should be :-/
Evidently, my mind has a snarky module which can easily be swapped for the cooperate-bot module (you’ll usually find it labeled “anti-Moloch” or “something something charitable”) and that’s a minor surgery, I’ll be out of the clinic in no time. And then I’ll be allowed into the rainbows-and-unicorns land where everyone shall live happily ever after.
It would be interesting to speculate on how “LW would be a slightly better place if you were one notch less snarky” seems to have turned into “you want to change the workings of my brain to make me exactly what you think it should be, and you think that doing so would make everyone happy”, but I am much too polite to do so and will merely remark that no, of course I was not taking exception to the form or content of your mind; only (mildly) to some of your actions.
I think you’re both having different arguments than you think you are. Illusion of transparency, and all that.
I suspect Gjm’s true argument is something along the lines of “Lumifer has a tendency to dismiss people’s positions without explanation.” But instead he is making a tone argument, because he is noticing his reaction to your style of commentary rather than the nature of your style of commentary.
Which is not to say your dismissals are wrong, but it often requires a lot of reading between the lines, when reading your comments, to figure out what your reasons actually are. And if somebody isn’t familiar with the specific argument you’re implicitly referencing with your “snarky one-liners”, they may fail to be able to understand what your objection actually is. Gjm is also very uncomfortable guessing at people’s motivations/reasons (he considers it rude), so you two have an even wider communication gap.
Human interactions are complicated, there are usually multiple factors at play. It is true that from gjm’s point of view I sometimes dismiss people’s positions “arbitrarily”. But it is also true that my style breaks the rules of the polite society in gjm’s corner of the world and that makes him less comfortable. Plus there are status signals involved and the monkey brain is, of course, jerking around in response to them.
That’s a fair point.
Not guessing, but publicly stating. I am pretty sure that he—like all people—builds models of people in his head all the time. But bringing out these models into the open is too direct and explicit: gentlemen do not do that.
On the last point there, Lumifer is right and OrphanWilde wrong: I don’t consider it in any way improper to build mental models of other people, and so far as I can tell I understand Lumifer’s one-liners as well as anyone else does. (Which is not to say I always understand them correctly; but if not then his wounds are, as he might put it, self-inflicted.)
The other half of Lumifer’s commentary, attempting to explain what I dislike about his posting style, is so far as I can tell quite badly wrong, but I don’t think it would be productive to argue it further. (It very rarely is after one party has decided to go full Bulver on the other.)
You should notice now that what he was interpreting you as saying isn’t what you were intending to convey, as demonstrated by the fact that you felt a need to clarify; likewise, by the fact that you didn’t notice what his argument was actually about, you were likewise not getting what he was trying to communicate.
Your wounds here are, as Lumifer might put it, self-inflicted. And accusing the other party of going “full Bulver” isn’t exactly conducive to the sort of respectful discussion you claim to want to reify here, which is really just a subset of the overall tone of discussion. You called Lumifer out, and, by my reckoning, have more or less admitted that the thread was at least in part a response to him and his style of commentary. More, for somebody who considers it incredibly rude and status-gamey to make predictions about people, your first response to Lumifer was a post-hoc prediction that he’d be the one to respond. Given that you regard such behavior as a status play, I can’t help but interpret this entire bloody discussion in that framework. [ETA: Correction: It was Villiam who did the above.]
You’re playing at being the mature, responsible person, telling somebody who is ill-behaved that their behavior is problematic. But you’re not actually being a mature, responsible person here, as evidenced by the fact that you chose to insert a parting shot in your “I don’t want to argue about this anymore.”
If you don’t want to argue about it anymore, stop bloody arguing, and ignore the need to inject attacks in your closing statement.
Logical fallacy: ad hominem tu quoque.
Do point out what argument I claim to invalidate there, if you would.
Or, more pithily: Fallacy fallacy.
What makes you think I didn’t notice what Lumifer’s argument was actually about?
I suggest that your assessment of that is strongly coloured by your completely incorrect characterization of the rest of the thread. You’ve already issued one correction—indeed, my first response to Lumifer was not the post-hoc prediction you said it was (which would indeed have been inconsistent with my stated opinions). Here are some more. I didn’t call Lumifer out; dxu did, my entry to the thread was an attempt to correct a misunderstanding. Given that I didn’t start the thread, I’m not sure how I could possibly “admit that the thread was” anything.
I explained why I don’t want to argue about it any more. I’m not sure exactly what you consider immature or irresponsible about that.
I would just like to point out that my entry point into this discussion was actually rather similar to your own, in that I was simply clarifying some of (what I thought were) Viliam’s points. This whole thread actually got started because SquirrelInHell proposed a “niceness norm”, Lumifer (as is his/her wont) began poking at it, and then Viliam took the opportunity to say some things that (I assume) he’s been wanting to say for a while. I do think OrphanWilde’s accusation of you was misplaced, but I would be cautious in accusing anyone else of “starting it”; for the record, I genuinely don’t think this thread was anyone’s “fault”—in fact, I would argue that, if nothing else, this thread allowed several people (including myself) to express some things that might in other contexts have been considered socially impermissible. So it wasn’t entirely a bad thing.
Finally, because I feel like this discussion has been rather grim for a while now, and because this is (after all) the place to discuss the positivity thread, have an emoticon:
:D
“You’re too stupid to have this discussion with” is also an explanation about why you wouldn’t want to argue with somebody. One I’ve used, albeit with different words. But it also flies in the face of your argument about rudeness detracting from Less Wrong.