I very much believe âuproars contain informationâ and donât believe âuproars are always directionally correctâ. Iâm not sure where Iâd stand on âuproars are usually directionally correctâ, but in any case they are often enough directionally wrong that I donât think youâre obligated to accept their conclusions just because they happened.
I guess I just donât believe that people are capable of assembling decision-making committees that are so robust to making misjudgements that people trying to attack your decisions from outside can be safely assumed to be in error and ignored. Whatever you think youâve done to come up with good rules and a good process, sometimes youâll have missed something big or not appreciated the importance of some angle, and people being upset with you will be how you find that out. If you want the best shot you can get at achieving your own goals, you notice all that stuff, and you take it into consideration, and you ask questions like âam I making a mistake here?â and âis it possible I have a blind spot thatâs clouding my judgement on this?â. Importantly, also, youâll ask âeven if I think all these people are being unreasonable in many ways, are there nevertheless kernels of truth to take away here? Is there something to learn from how this unfolded?â. Sometimes even then the answer will be no! As long as you made a genuine best effort to look for the truth in what people said, thatâs enough for me.
My take is that for every outrage thatâs basically a restatement of the culture war (and thereby ~useless), thereâs another thatâs basically someone overlooking something that is obviously correct in retrospect, that they wish theyâd thought of six months ago, but somehow slipped through. And thereâs, of course, a spectrum in between. This stuff is hard, and I believe in the collaborative process of developing our knowledge and experience around it.
I think if someone believed either that committees and structures are much more effective than I think they are, or that outrages are much less often right than I think they are, then that would be a good reason to disagree with this take. Though I would caution against an availability bias that makes incorrect outrages more noticeable than correct ones, both because you are likely to have a stronger reaction to the incorrect ones and because the correct ones are more quickly resolved.
Suppose Manifest was to publish a set of rules theyâre going to follow and ask for community feedback, and the community says the rules look good. Then 6 months later the Guardian or Fox News writes a hit piece on Manifest, and their hit piece accuses a Manifest attendee of something within the agreed-upon rules, and some people in the community are up in arms. Doesnât that seem a little suspicious? Perhaps in this hypothetical, the uproar is more of a preference cascade than a considered judgement?
FWIW I have not actually read the Guardian article and made all my judgements based on the direct reported experiences and attitudes of people on the Forum. I think (though not confidently) that most people are overstating the importance of the Guardian article in what happened here. I think most of the people who are now objecting to (say) Richard Hanania at Manifest would have objected just as much if theyâd heard about it sooner, and only didnât because they didnât notice (or didnât think there was a good opportunity to be heard about it).
I very much believe âuproars contain informationâ and donât believe âuproars are always directionally correctâ. Iâm not sure where Iâd stand on âuproars are usually directionally correctâ, but in any case they are often enough directionally wrong that I donât think youâre obligated to accept their conclusions just because they happened.
I guess I just donât believe that people are capable of assembling decision-making committees that are so robust to making misjudgements that people trying to attack your decisions from outside can be safely assumed to be in error and ignored. Whatever you think youâve done to come up with good rules and a good process, sometimes youâll have missed something big or not appreciated the importance of some angle, and people being upset with you will be how you find that out. If you want the best shot you can get at achieving your own goals, you notice all that stuff, and you take it into consideration, and you ask questions like âam I making a mistake here?â and âis it possible I have a blind spot thatâs clouding my judgement on this?â. Importantly, also, youâll ask âeven if I think all these people are being unreasonable in many ways, are there nevertheless kernels of truth to take away here? Is there something to learn from how this unfolded?â. Sometimes even then the answer will be no! As long as you made a genuine best effort to look for the truth in what people said, thatâs enough for me.
My take is that for every outrage thatâs basically a restatement of the culture war (and thereby ~useless), thereâs another thatâs basically someone overlooking something that is obviously correct in retrospect, that they wish theyâd thought of six months ago, but somehow slipped through. And thereâs, of course, a spectrum in between. This stuff is hard, and I believe in the collaborative process of developing our knowledge and experience around it.
I think if someone believed either that committees and structures are much more effective than I think they are, or that outrages are much less often right than I think they are, then that would be a good reason to disagree with this take. Though I would caution against an availability bias that makes incorrect outrages more noticeable than correct ones, both because you are likely to have a stronger reaction to the incorrect ones and because the correct ones are more quickly resolved.
FWIW I have not actually read the Guardian article and made all my judgements based on the direct reported experiences and attitudes of people on the Forum. I think (though not confidently) that most people are overstating the importance of the Guardian article in what happened here. I think most of the people who are now objecting to (say) Richard Hanania at Manifest would have objected just as much if theyâd heard about it sooner, and only didnât because they didnât notice (or didnât think there was a good opportunity to be heard about it).