I have to say, it makes me a little uncomfortable to see how strongly this post has been downvoted, and how negative and emotional the reaction to it has been. My objection to this planned event (as I said in my other comment) was about format, not substance; but it seems to me that other people are reading this as some sort of malicious, personal attack against Scott, which I just don’t see.
For instance—
Sometimes it’s the right call to coordinate against a person in your community, but only as a last resort after the peaceful options have been tried, and this post seems to have immediately jumped to coordinating a group against a person.
Reading this, I would’ve thought that the thing you’re commenting on is some sort of attempt to personally denounce, ostracize, shun, or shame Scott… but that doesn’t seem to be the OP’s intent (I doubt it’s even the intent of this “Jordan” fellow, but of course I can’t be as certain about that).
I mean… is sitting around and discussing someone’s ideas really not peaceful?
I agree Evan’s intentions are good, and I’m glad that someone interesting who wants to criticize my writing is getting a chance to speak. I’m surprised this is downvoted as much as it has been, and I haven’t downvoted it myself.
My main concern is with the hyperbolic way this was pitched and the name of the meetup, which I understand were intended kind of as jokes but which sound kind of creepy to me when I am the person being joked about. I don’t think Evan needs to change these if he doesn’t want to, but I do just want to register the concern.
I’m surprised this is downvoted as much as it has been, and I haven’t downvoted it myself.
This is partly an effect of the recently introduced “strong votes” feature, where users with karma can pay a trivial inconvenience to make their up- or down-votes be more points. My own strong-downvote was −7 points.
I’m genuinely curious what you expect the very bad effects might end up being after you read this comment clarifying the nature, background and details of the planned meetup.
I think you’re still underestimating how stressful this sort of thing is for writers.
I totally believe you have good intent here and that the meetup itself will be pretty inoccuous, and were talking about it in your usual kind of “is Evan serious I dunno man let the Dankness flow!?” way, but in this case the joke fell flat and felt mean spirited. Regardless of how the meetup plays out, the opening post is written in a way that’s making a spectacle of Scott without regard to his feelings.
Being moderately internet-famous is actually really stressful, since you’re visible enough to periodically attract internet hate groups but not actually really powerful enough to do much about it. (Scott has already attracted internet hate groups and this post is basically written in their style)
(I have slightly different opinions than Jim and maybe Ben of exactly what felt wrong here. I think holding the meetup was basically fine – local meetup groups can hold random meetups about whatever. But the presentation, and the way you’re gathering questions here, seems like it’s hyping it up to Be An Internet Event that Scott will have to pay a bunch of attention to, while setting a tone that in the OP was a) bad intellectually for the reasons others have described, b) just mean)
[Meta: I think there are some complicated questions around when it’s okay to attack a person that I haven’t gone into in detail about here. This comment is just for Evan because he asked me and I wanted to write down a few things that might seem useful/important to him. I don’t plan to write further comments in this thread.]
*nods*
Here’s my understanding of the points you were making in that comment:
The event will primarily be criticising Scott’s ideas
You will criticise some community norms, and your friend will argue that there are some systematic biases in the writing at SSC
You personally like a lot of Scott’s writing
The tone of the event was intentionally facetious, not literal
The attendees of the event will largely be fans of Scott, and so it’s not accurate to call it an event coordinating people around how bad Scott is. Both speakers will be fighting against the consensus, not for it.
You’re recording it because lots of people asked, not as part of any weird marketing campaign.
Yep, I believe all these points are true, and I feel of the utmost confidence when I say you had zero intention with this event of doing something to hurt or oust another member of this community. I want to mention that I’m personally quite interested to read whatever essay you write about how some of the community norms that Scott has written about might be wrong.
Also, and forgive me for psychologising a bit, but my guess is that when you wrote the title and summary of the event, my very rough model of you was combining the absurd with the rationalist culture, and that was the cause of the style, not any weird or subtle aggression. Y’know, you were being dank.
However, and this is again only a rough guess, I think that when you combined the absurdity with the culture, you forgot that you were writing a post about a person. It wasn’t a post being silly-hostile toward a concept (‘bayes theorem is dumb’) or a brand (‘LessWrong looks stupid’), or a building (‘the CFAR office smells bad’) - this was being silly-hostile toward a person (‘Scott is a pseudo-intellectual’). There was no countersignalling in this post (e.g. “I’m only critiquing Scott because I love him”) or any sign that you were friends with Scott and so that he’d be okay with you writing an openly hostile post about him (e.g. imagine me writing a post about how Oli is a terrible site designer and we’re meeting for me to list all the ways he’s terrible). My problem here isn’t with criticism, but that this kind of post would make anyone feel like the community doesn’t want them in it.
Anyway, I might be wrong about how exactly this post got written, and as I said, I am quite curious to know what your criticism of certain community norms (that Scott and others have written about) are.
Thanks. We indeed have no intent, malicious or otherwise, to do any of the things it reads as though we’re insinuated as intending to do. I think what Ben might be referring to is not the chance of a literal, physical violence, even as exaggeration, but “violence” given a thicker definition of the word than its common, everyday usage implies. The Berkeley rationality community has embraced a variety of novel models/theories of communication style, including Nonviolent Communication (NVC). From Wikipedia [emphasis added]:
Nonviolent Communication (abbreviated NVC, also called Compassionate Communication or Collaborative Communication[1][2]) is an approach to nonviolent living developed by Marshall Rosenberg beginning in the 1960s.[3] It is based on the idea that all human beings have the capacity for compassion and only resort to violence or behavior that harms themselves and others when they do not recognize more effective strategies for meeting needs.[4] Habits of thinking and speaking that lead to the use of violence (social, psychological and physical) are learned through culture. NVC theory supposes all human behavior stems from attempts to meet universal human needs and that these needs are never in conflict. Rather, conflict arises when strategies for meeting needs clash. NVC proposes that people identify shared needs, revealed by the thoughts and feelings that surround these needs, and collaborate to develop strategies that meet them. This creates both harmony and learning for future cooperation.[5]
NVC supports change on three interconnected levels: with self, with others, and with groups and social systems. As such it is particularly present in the areas of personal development, relationships, and social change. NVC is ostensibly taught as a process of interpersonal communication designed to improve compassionate connection to others. However, due to its far-reaching impact it has also been interpreted as a spiritual practice, a set of values, a parenting technique, a method of social change, a mediation tool, an educational orientation, and a worldview.
1. acting with or characterized by uncontrolled, strong, rough force:
aviolentearthquake.
So in this sense a ‘violent’ wind could pick up, as it’s rougher than a ‘calm’ or ‘soft’ wind. Using NVC as a conflict resolution methodology is odd when most people might assume something like that when using the word ‘violent’ refers to physical violence. And, technically, it makes sense physical violence is likelier to result from the escalation of tension in verbal conflict rather than the deescalation of verbal conflict. So even in a tenuous sense a link between ‘violent’ in its everyday parlance, and how it’s use is extended beyond the normal range in NVC, can be made.
I don’t think the thick conception of violence given by NVC is the same as the connotation made by some social justice activists or others about how words or verbal abuse alone can be as bad as physical violence. Though this connotation of the word ‘violent’ may have been loaned from NVC to social justice movements, since NVC has been popular for decades.
That this appears odd wouldn’t mean much to me if NVC achieves the goals it’s applied to achieve, as that’s the story with plenty of stuff in the rationality community. But to understand how it works or what to use NVC for, someone would have to convey it to me. Perhaps Ben thought I understood NVC from the inside. I don’t. It appears hard to transfer NVC skills over the internet, which is why like other memes it maybe hasn’t spread among the rationality community as widely.
Unless a comment was edited or deleted before I got the chance to read it, nobody but you has used the word “violence” in this thread. So I don’t understand how an argument about the definition of “violence” is in any way relevant.
I was contrasting it with Ben’s use of the word ‘peaceful,’ and making some background assumptions as to what the context for using the word was (Said remarked on the odd diction). Apparently those assumptions were wrong.
I have to say, it makes me a little uncomfortable to see how strongly this post has been downvoted, and how negative and emotional the reaction to it has been. My objection to this planned event (as I said in my other comment) was about format, not substance; but it seems to me that other people are reading this as some sort of malicious, personal attack against Scott, which I just don’t see.
For instance—
Reading this, I would’ve thought that the thing you’re commenting on is some sort of attempt to personally denounce, ostracize, shun, or shame Scott… but that doesn’t seem to be the OP’s intent (I doubt it’s even the intent of this “Jordan” fellow, but of course I can’t be as certain about that).
I mean… is sitting around and discussing someone’s ideas really not peaceful?
I agree, I don’t think Evan’s intent is bad, and I didn’t say otherwise. But the effect of good intentions can easily be very bad.
I agree Evan’s intentions are good, and I’m glad that someone interesting who wants to criticize my writing is getting a chance to speak. I’m surprised this is downvoted as much as it has been, and I haven’t downvoted it myself.
My main concern is with the hyperbolic way this was pitched and the name of the meetup, which I understand were intended kind of as jokes but which sound kind of creepy to me when I am the person being joked about. I don’t think Evan needs to change these if he doesn’t want to, but I do just want to register the concern.
This is partly an effect of the recently introduced “strong votes” feature, where users with karma can pay a trivial inconvenience to make their up- or down-votes be more points. My own strong-downvote was −7 points.
I’m genuinely curious what you expect the very bad effects might end up being after you read this comment clarifying the nature, background and details of the planned meetup.
I think you’re still underestimating how stressful this sort of thing is for writers.
I totally believe you have good intent here and that the meetup itself will be pretty inoccuous, and were talking about it in your usual kind of “is Evan serious I dunno man let the Dankness flow!?” way, but in this case the joke fell flat and felt mean spirited. Regardless of how the meetup plays out, the opening post is written in a way that’s making a spectacle of Scott without regard to his feelings.
Being moderately internet-famous is actually really stressful, since you’re visible enough to periodically attract internet hate groups but not actually really powerful enough to do much about it. (Scott has already attracted internet hate groups and this post is basically written in their style)
(I have slightly different opinions than Jim and maybe Ben of exactly what felt wrong here. I think holding the meetup was basically fine – local meetup groups can hold random meetups about whatever. But the presentation, and the way you’re gathering questions here, seems like it’s hyping it up to Be An Internet Event that Scott will have to pay a bunch of attention to, while setting a tone that in the OP was a) bad intellectually for the reasons others have described, b) just mean)
[Meta: I think there are some complicated questions around when it’s okay to attack a person that I haven’t gone into in detail about here. This comment is just for Evan because he asked me and I wanted to write down a few things that might seem useful/important to him. I don’t plan to write further comments in this thread.]
*nods*
Here’s my understanding of the points you were making in that comment:
The event will primarily be criticising Scott’s ideas
You will criticise some community norms, and your friend will argue that there are some systematic biases in the writing at SSC
You personally like a lot of Scott’s writing
The tone of the event was intentionally facetious, not literal
The attendees of the event will largely be fans of Scott, and so it’s not accurate to call it an event coordinating people around how bad Scott is. Both speakers will be fighting against the consensus, not for it.
You’re recording it because lots of people asked, not as part of any weird marketing campaign.
Yep, I believe all these points are true, and I feel of the utmost confidence when I say you had zero intention with this event of doing something to hurt or oust another member of this community. I want to mention that I’m personally quite interested to read whatever essay you write about how some of the community norms that Scott has written about might be wrong.
Also, and forgive me for psychologising a bit, but my guess is that when you wrote the title and summary of the event, my very rough model of you was combining the absurd with the rationalist culture, and that was the cause of the style, not any weird or subtle aggression. Y’know, you were being dank.
However, and this is again only a rough guess, I think that when you combined the absurdity with the culture, you forgot that you were writing a post about a person. It wasn’t a post being silly-hostile toward a concept (‘bayes theorem is dumb’) or a brand (‘LessWrong looks stupid’), or a building (‘the CFAR office smells bad’) - this was being silly-hostile toward a person (‘Scott is a pseudo-intellectual’). There was no countersignalling in this post (e.g. “I’m only critiquing Scott because I love him”) or any sign that you were friends with Scott and so that he’d be okay with you writing an openly hostile post about him (e.g. imagine me writing a post about how Oli is a terrible site designer and we’re meeting for me to list all the ways he’s terrible). My problem here isn’t with criticism, but that this kind of post would make anyone feel like the community doesn’t want them in it.
Anyway, I might be wrong about how exactly this post got written, and as I said, I am quite curious to know what your criticism of certain community norms (that Scott and others have written about) are.
Thanks. We indeed have no intent, malicious or otherwise, to do any of the things it reads as though we’re insinuated as intending to do. I think what Ben might be referring to is not the chance of a literal, physical violence, even as exaggeration, but “violence” given a thicker definition of the word than its common, everyday usage implies. The Berkeley rationality community has embraced a variety of novel models/theories of communication style, including Nonviolent Communication (NVC). From Wikipedia [emphasis added]:
And from Dictionary.com:
So in this sense a ‘violent’ wind could pick up, as it’s rougher than a ‘calm’ or ‘soft’ wind. Using NVC as a conflict resolution methodology is odd when most people might assume something like that when using the word ‘violent’ refers to physical violence. And, technically, it makes sense physical violence is likelier to result from the escalation of tension in verbal conflict rather than the deescalation of verbal conflict. So even in a tenuous sense a link between ‘violent’ in its everyday parlance, and how it’s use is extended beyond the normal range in NVC, can be made.
I don’t think the thick conception of violence given by NVC is the same as the connotation made by some social justice activists or others about how words or verbal abuse alone can be as bad as physical violence. Though this connotation of the word ‘violent’ may have been loaned from NVC to social justice movements, since NVC has been popular for decades.
That this appears odd wouldn’t mean much to me if NVC achieves the goals it’s applied to achieve, as that’s the story with plenty of stuff in the rationality community. But to understand how it works or what to use NVC for, someone would have to convey it to me. Perhaps Ben thought I understood NVC from the inside. I don’t. It appears hard to transfer NVC skills over the internet, which is why like other memes it maybe hasn’t spread among the rationality community as widely.
Unless a comment was edited or deleted before I got the chance to read it, nobody but you has used the word “violence” in this thread. So I don’t understand how an argument about the definition of “violence” is in any way relevant.
I was contrasting it with Ben’s use of the word ‘peaceful,’ and making some background assumptions as to what the context for using the word was (Said remarked on the odd diction). Apparently those assumptions were wrong.