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.
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.