So I get this mail is bad PR, but people seem to object to it beyond that and it isn’t clear to me why. If it is because he claims that Blacks have a lower average IQ than mankind in general I think that would be a terrible reason as I am not aware of a single intelligence researcher who would dispute this. Or is it because he uses the word [edited: see moderators comment]?
I checked what strong forum norms Bostroms mail would have violated.
“Unnecessary rudeness or offensiveness”
This would make sense to me, although I will point out that his point back then was precisely that his offensiveness is not unnecessary.
“Hate speech or content that promotes hate based on identity.”
I don’t think he did this:
“They would think that I were a “racist”: that I _disliked_ black people and thought that it is fair if blacks are treated badly. I don’t.”
Just fyi, there is an extremely strong taboo (esp. in the US) against saying “the n-word” and most people are not sympathetic to use-mention distinction arguments in this particular case, even if they would be in theory. I strongly suspect this is why your comment was downvoted.
The reason why I don’t say “the n-word” as you did is because it can be misleading. I have seen people using it to quote somebody else who just said “negro”. So to me saying “the n-word” would violate another (to my mind much more important) norm:
“Be honest.
Don’t mislead or manipulate.”
I try to follow rules I disagree with. However if I violated any rules here then at least they should have been clearer, so I appreciate the ongoing effort.
I agree that the current norms are probably not clear enough to cover this situation, we are thinking about adding more specific ones.
As a non-american, I also initially found the lack of use-mention distinction to be very counterintuitive. But it’s culturally very important for a very large fraction of forum readers, so I would also ask you to edit your initial comment. If you don’t do that, we may just edit the comment for you.
Using “n-word” would definitely not count as “misleading or manipulating”. If you wanted to be absolutely precise I would recommend linking to the original source.
My initial comment seemed completely innocent to me. I didn’t expect the backlash and don’t want to clog this thread further with a discussion that isn’t really on topic, so this will be my last reply here. (DM me if you want)
thx @RAB for the reply
To all the people who downvoted. My comment was asking for clarification. If you then downvote it for presumably the same reason you took offense to the Bostrom comment without explaining why this isn’t very productive.
@moderators I edited my comment.
The effect that the rules will have won’t be that I(and I assume this is true for others as well) will act the way that you think is proper, instead I will just not engage at all. This isn’t just true for this instance (which would be trivial), but in general.
Thank you for editing the comment and really thank you for the feedback.
I agree, we will need to be very careful about striking a proper balance here, but I think we can find something that’s better than the status quo (which results in downvotes and off-topic discussions, and detracts from discussions on how to do the most good)
So I get this mail is bad PR, but people seem to object to it beyond that and it isn’t clear to me why. If it is because he claims that Blacks have a lower average IQ than mankind in general I think that would be a terrible reason as I am not aware of a single intelligence researcher who would dispute this. Or is it because he uses the word [edited: see moderators comment]?
I checked what strong forum norms Bostroms mail would have violated.
“Unnecessary rudeness or offensiveness”
This would make sense to me, although I will point out that his point back then was precisely that his offensiveness is not unnecessary.
“Hate speech or content that promotes hate based on identity.”
I don’t think he did this:
“They would think that I were a “racist”: that I _disliked_ black people and thought that it is fair if blacks are treated badly. I don’t.”
Just fyi, there is an extremely strong taboo (esp. in the US) against saying “the n-word” and most people are not sympathetic to use-mention distinction arguments in this particular case, even if they would be in theory. I strongly suspect this is why your comment was downvoted.
Speaking as a moderator: the Forum currently doesn’t have a policy banning any specific words, although we might change that.
But we do have norms about kindness, avoiding unnecessary offense, and behaving with civility, and many people (reasonably) find use of the n-word extremely hurtful or upsetting, even if it’s used as an example or in a quote.
Overall, I think the word’s use here is not helpful and violates those norms, so I ask you to remove it.
I’ll continue discussing with the moderation team, both to develop an overall policy and to see if they disagree with my decision here.
The reason why I don’t say “the n-word” as you did is because it can be misleading. I have seen people using it to quote somebody else who just said “negro”. So to me saying “the n-word” would violate another (to my mind much more important) norm:
“Be honest.
Don’t mislead or manipulate.”
I try to follow rules I disagree with. However if I violated any rules here then at least they should have been clearer, so I appreciate the ongoing effort.
I agree that the current norms are probably not clear enough to cover this situation, we are thinking about adding more specific ones.
As a non-american, I also initially found the lack of use-mention distinction to be very counterintuitive. But it’s culturally very important for a very large fraction of forum readers, so I would also ask you to edit your initial comment. If you don’t do that, we may just edit the comment for you.
Using “n-word” would definitely not count as “misleading or manipulating”. If you wanted to be absolutely precise I would recommend linking to the original source.
My initial comment seemed completely innocent to me. I didn’t expect the backlash and don’t want to clog this thread further with a discussion that isn’t really on topic, so this will be my last reply here. (DM me if you want)
thx @RAB for the reply
To all the people who downvoted. My comment was asking for clarification. If you then downvote it for presumably the same reason you took offense to the Bostrom comment without explaining why this isn’t very productive.
@moderators I edited my comment.
The effect that the rules will have won’t be that I(and I assume this is true for others as well) will act the way that you think is proper, instead I will just not engage at all. This isn’t just true for this instance (which would be trivial), but in general.
Thank you for editing the comment and really thank you for the feedback.
I agree, we will need to be very careful about striking a proper balance here, but I think we can find something that’s better than the status quo (which results in downvotes and off-topic discussions, and detracts from discussions on how to do the most good)