Oops, I did the mistake of proposing a solution too soon. Well, in the name of greater positivity, I am now officially forgiving myself. ;-)
Meta: Not sure how frequent this is, but I often think better while talking aloud. (Or writing.) Just like today: I wrote something, later I thought about it, felt somewhat dissatisfied like I didn’t exactly express what I wanted to say, later it crystalized, so now I am going to write the conclusion.
I realized this: Politeness (or other communication norms) is a recursive problem. Like, imagine that someone says “let’s make it our community norm that we only talk politely”, and everyone is like “yeah, sounds great”. Later someone says something not perfectly polite, and someone else is like: “dude, that wasn’t cool, I thought we did have an agreement about politeness”. And the accused person is like: “hey, on the scale from perfect politeness to 4chan, my comment was far enough on the polite side.” And then they add: “you know what? using the small imperfection on my side as a pretext to attack me publicly, that’s the real impoliteness; that’s a behavior much more hostile than merely using ‘fuck you’ as a harmless idiom, so actually you are the bad guy”. -- So now we have a meta-discussion about politeness, and a problem to keep even this meta-discussion polite, which is quite difficult because ‘what exactly politeness means’ is the topic being currently discussed, so obviously there is no clear consensus yet.
Logically, this seems like an unsolvable problem. So how do normies deal with this stuff?
If I understand it correctly, there are a few rules of politeness that serve to prevent similar escalations of minor stuff. You should excuse small violations of polite behavior by literally pretending they didn’t happen. (Unless you are e.g. a parent of a child who violated the rules.) When it happens repeatedly, a gradually increasing reaction is allowed; the idea is probably to find the smallest possible reaction when the person will become aware of their transgression of the rules, and presumably will stop. (If it becomes obvious that they are aware of violating the rules and still want to continue, I guess you are allowed to get rid of them, using the smallest necessary force, and never invite them again.)
In other words, even if the other person violated the rules, it doesn’t give you a free pass to break the rules too. (This may contradict your instinct of fairness. Well, yeah, politeness does include a lot of ‘not acting on instinct’; get used to it.)
Another rule, or perhaps a special case of the previous rule, is that you don’t go meta about politeness. Except in situations specifically designed for this kind of debate. So what happens when two people have different opinions? If the difference is small, the small infractions will simply be ignored. When the difference becomes too big to ignore, I am not sure, but my guess is that both sides apologize for having different norms, and then try to find a compromise solution. If they can’t, they probably won’t meet again.
I’m thinking about this, because I would like to use the similar mechanism for creating a norm of more pleasant interactions among aspiring rationalists. And, analogically, mutual accusations of “not being pleasant enough” or endless attempts to “have a meta debate about what really counts as pleasant” can reliably kill the mood.
Therefore, to keep the debate pleasant, we also need to have a meta-rule that small violations of pleasant behavior cannot be reciprocated, should be ignored for the first time, and when repeated, they should be met with as pleasant corrective reaction as possible. (Unless it becomes obvious that the infractions are intentional. Then, the user is forcefully removed from the debate, with everyone else trying to make as little drama as possible.) A meta-debate on politeness can only appear in designated threads, separately from where the object-level debate happens.
I’ll think about it a bit more, and perhaps make an experimental “positive debate thread” when I will feel I have a good idea about the specific rules. Meanwhile, thanks for reading my “thinking aloud”, and of course feel free to comment.
Oops, I did the mistake of proposing a solution too soon. Well, in the name of greater positivity, I am now officially forgiving myself. ;-)
Meta: Not sure how frequent this is, but I often think better while talking aloud. (Or writing.) Just like today: I wrote something, later I thought about it, felt somewhat dissatisfied like I didn’t exactly express what I wanted to say, later it crystalized, so now I am going to write the conclusion.
I realized this: Politeness (or other communication norms) is a recursive problem. Like, imagine that someone says “let’s make it our community norm that we only talk politely”, and everyone is like “yeah, sounds great”. Later someone says something not perfectly polite, and someone else is like: “dude, that wasn’t cool, I thought we did have an agreement about politeness”. And the accused person is like: “hey, on the scale from perfect politeness to 4chan, my comment was far enough on the polite side.” And then they add: “you know what? using the small imperfection on my side as a pretext to attack me publicly, that’s the real impoliteness; that’s a behavior much more hostile than merely using ‘fuck you’ as a harmless idiom, so actually you are the bad guy”. -- So now we have a meta-discussion about politeness, and a problem to keep even this meta-discussion polite, which is quite difficult because ‘what exactly politeness means’ is the topic being currently discussed, so obviously there is no clear consensus yet.
Logically, this seems like an unsolvable problem. So how do normies deal with this stuff?
If I understand it correctly, there are a few rules of politeness that serve to prevent similar escalations of minor stuff. You should excuse small violations of polite behavior by literally pretending they didn’t happen. (Unless you are e.g. a parent of a child who violated the rules.) When it happens repeatedly, a gradually increasing reaction is allowed; the idea is probably to find the smallest possible reaction when the person will become aware of their transgression of the rules, and presumably will stop. (If it becomes obvious that they are aware of violating the rules and still want to continue, I guess you are allowed to get rid of them, using the smallest necessary force, and never invite them again.)
In other words, even if the other person violated the rules, it doesn’t give you a free pass to break the rules too. (This may contradict your instinct of fairness. Well, yeah, politeness does include a lot of ‘not acting on instinct’; get used to it.)
Another rule, or perhaps a special case of the previous rule, is that you don’t go meta about politeness. Except in situations specifically designed for this kind of debate. So what happens when two people have different opinions? If the difference is small, the small infractions will simply be ignored. When the difference becomes too big to ignore, I am not sure, but my guess is that both sides apologize for having different norms, and then try to find a compromise solution. If they can’t, they probably won’t meet again.
I’m thinking about this, because I would like to use the similar mechanism for creating a norm of more pleasant interactions among aspiring rationalists. And, analogically, mutual accusations of “not being pleasant enough” or endless attempts to “have a meta debate about what really counts as pleasant” can reliably kill the mood.
Therefore, to keep the debate pleasant, we also need to have a meta-rule that small violations of pleasant behavior cannot be reciprocated, should be ignored for the first time, and when repeated, they should be met with as pleasant corrective reaction as possible. (Unless it becomes obvious that the infractions are intentional. Then, the user is forcefully removed from the debate, with everyone else trying to make as little drama as possible.) A meta-debate on politeness can only appear in designated threads, separately from where the object-level debate happens.
I’ll think about it a bit more, and perhaps make an experimental “positive debate thread” when I will feel I have a good idea about the specific rules. Meanwhile, thanks for reading my “thinking aloud”, and of course feel free to comment.
Meta-debates on politeness also don’t have to happen publically.