The dynamics in this post seem weird. John is very well-respected within EA for his work on climate change, and having this report commissioned by Will makes it even more likely to be disseminated quickly and widely throughout the community.
In my opinion that means it’s particularly essential that thoughtful critiques are brought up earlier rather than later. Of course the report has already been reviewed by a lot of people I respect, but in general I’m in favour of people asking questions and raising concerns here, even though I would expect most concerns to have already been thought about and be relatively easily addressed, or in some cases not worth addressing.
So I’d like to encourage people to post these questions, concerns and critiques, but I think the environment in these comments hasn’t always been encouraging. People have been significantly downvoted for reasons I don’t understand, and John has in one case accused someone of misrepresenting their identity which I don’t think was helpful.
Do people agree with me that we should encourage people to post their questions and concerns here, even if you don’t agree with the specific questions? Do people agree the current environment isn’t ideal for that?
I didn’t downvote any of the criticisms but I can understand why people would downvote the following quote as it is quite close to assuming intention:
“Either you are aware that this characterisation is highly inaccurate and unfair, or you are not. If the former, I am disappointed by your (apparent) dismissiveness and willingness to mischaracterise.”
I may be missing something here, but how is ‘either you have acted in way x or way y’ “quite close” to assuming ‘x’?
The sentence was constructed to deliberately hold open both possibilities (i.e. aware or not), and you have cut off the quote before the latter of the possibilities was spelt out.
“‘Either this animal is a cat or a dog’ is quite close to assuming that the animal is a cat.”
In formal logic, a statement like “either you are aware that you are a terrible person, or you are not.” exhaustively covers all possibilities. It can’t be seen as an attack, because it is literally a tautology. However, this is not how most people read common language. This is because (if we read things only on the formal level), a clear fraction of the probability space of “I am not aware I’m a terrible person” comes from “I am not aware I’m a terrible person, because I’m not a terrible person.”
However, given the way that most humans reason, most people will in fact not interpret “either you are aware that you are a terrible person, or you are not” neutrally.
What you say is true, but is not a response to what I said.
I didn’t say Halstead was a terrible person: there is a difference between disapproving of actions and damning persons. In any case, leaving open a significant possibility space for poor intent is not in any way close to ‘assuming intent’ and if someone reads it as such, they are wrong.
The comment was not meant to be neutral, but again, disapproving of an action is not the same as assuming poor intent, never mind calling the actor a ‘terrible person’.
I’m starting to see the ways in which tone-policing is selectively employed in this community (well, Forum, at least) to shut down criticism.
I don’t think many of the people who do it are conscious of what they’re doing, but there does seem to be an assumption that strong criticism (i.e. what is necessary if something is very wrong or someone has acted badly) is by default aggressive and thus in violation of group norms.
Thus, all criticism must be stated in the most faux-friendly, milquetoast way possible, imposing significant effort demands on the critic and allowing them to be disregarded if they ever slip up and actually straightforwardly say that a bad thing is bad.
Naturally this is far more likely to be applied when the criticism is directed at big or semi-big figures in the community or orthodox viewpoints.
And we wonder why EA is so terminally upper-middle class...
Thus, all criticism must be stated in the most faux-friendly, milquetoast way possible, imposing significant effort demands on the critic and allowing them to be disregarded if they ever slip up and actually straightforwardly say that a bad thing is bad.
I’m speaking for the moderation team right now. We enforce civility on the Forum and don’t view this property as opposed to criticism or disagreement.
That’s good to know, but I wonder how much change you personally can make. It’ll be significant, for sure, but I think a lot of this is cultural: a sort of EA-accelerated chunk of the class-coded aspects of the Hidden Curriculum.
I apologize if I was too quick to misdiagnose the issue. FWIW, I think I’d have trouble responding dispassionately to “Either you are aware that this characterisation is highly inaccurate and unfair, or you are not.” To be clear, I think I also would have trouble dispassionately responding to claims that I’m a sock puppet, and I do think it’s reasonable for you to be quite upset about this.
I don’t think many of the people who do it are conscious of what they’re doing, but there does seem to be an assumption that strong criticism (i.e. what is necessary if something is very wrong or someone has acted badly) is by default aggressive and thus in violation of group norms.
Thus, all criticism must be stated in the most faux-friendly, milquetoast way possible, imposing significant effort demands on the critic and allowing them to be disregarded if they ever slip up and actually straightforwardly say that a bad thing is bad.
I agree that if someone is genuinely a terrible person, especially if that someone is a big or semi-big figure in the community, our politeness norms may make it more annoying to criticize them harshly than if we had more combative norms. I agree that this is pretty bad inasomuch as it makes things harder to unearth real problems, and this is a plausible hypothesis.
I think I still want to defend some fraction of such norms however, because I think our online norms are still fairly aggressive compared to what most people are used to offline, and I suspect if our online culture is substantially more aggressive (especially in unkind ways) than it currently is, this will make it harder for people to engage and address real problems, rather than just disengage.
The dynamics in this post seem weird. John is very well-respected within EA for his work on climate change, and having this report commissioned by Will makes it even more likely to be disseminated quickly and widely throughout the community.
In my opinion that means it’s particularly essential that thoughtful critiques are brought up earlier rather than later. Of course the report has already been reviewed by a lot of people I respect, but in general I’m in favour of people asking questions and raising concerns here, even though I would expect most concerns to have already been thought about and be relatively easily addressed, or in some cases not worth addressing.
So I’d like to encourage people to post these questions, concerns and critiques, but I think the environment in these comments hasn’t always been encouraging. People have been significantly downvoted for reasons I don’t understand, and John has in one case accused someone of misrepresenting their identity which I don’t think was helpful.
Do people agree with me that we should encourage people to post their questions and concerns here, even if you don’t agree with the specific questions? Do people agree the current environment isn’t ideal for that?
I didn’t downvote any of the criticisms but I can understand why people would downvote the following quote as it is quite close to assuming intention:
“Either you are aware that this characterisation is highly inaccurate and unfair, or you are not. If the former, I am disappointed by your (apparent) dismissiveness and willingness to mischaracterise.”
I’ve seen every question or critique be below zero at some point in the last 24 hours, not just one!
I may be missing something here, but how is ‘either you have acted in way x or way y’ “quite close” to assuming ‘x’?
The sentence was constructed to deliberately hold open both possibilities (i.e. aware or not), and you have cut off the quote before the latter of the possibilities was spelt out.
“‘Either this animal is a cat or a dog’ is quite close to assuming that the animal is a cat.”
In formal logic, a statement like “either you are aware that you are a terrible person, or you are not.” exhaustively covers all possibilities. It can’t be seen as an attack, because it is literally a tautology. However, this is not how most people read common language. This is because (if we read things only on the formal level), a clear fraction of the probability space of “I am not aware I’m a terrible person” comes from “I am not aware I’m a terrible person, because I’m not a terrible person.”
However, given the way that most humans reason, most people will in fact not interpret “either you are aware that you are a terrible person, or you are not” neutrally.
What you say is true, but is not a response to what I said.
I didn’t say Halstead was a terrible person: there is a difference between disapproving of actions and damning persons. In any case, leaving open a significant possibility space for poor intent is not in any way close to ‘assuming intent’ and if someone reads it as such, they are wrong.
The comment was not meant to be neutral, but again, disapproving of an action is not the same as assuming poor intent, never mind calling the actor a ‘terrible person’.
I’m starting to see the ways in which tone-policing is selectively employed in this community (well, Forum, at least) to shut down criticism.
I don’t think many of the people who do it are conscious of what they’re doing, but there does seem to be an assumption that strong criticism (i.e. what is necessary if something is very wrong or someone has acted badly) is by default aggressive and thus in violation of group norms.
Thus, all criticism must be stated in the most faux-friendly, milquetoast way possible, imposing significant effort demands on the critic and allowing them to be disregarded if they ever slip up and actually straightforwardly say that a bad thing is bad.
Naturally this is far more likely to be applied when the criticism is directed at big or semi-big figures in the community or orthodox viewpoints.
And we wonder why EA is so terminally upper-middle class...
I’m speaking for the moderation team right now. We enforce civility on the Forum and don’t view this property as opposed to criticism or disagreement.
That’s good to know, but I wonder how much change you personally can make. It’ll be significant, for sure, but I think a lot of this is cultural: a sort of EA-accelerated chunk of the class-coded aspects of the Hidden Curriculum.
I apologize if I was too quick to misdiagnose the issue. FWIW, I think I’d have trouble responding dispassionately to “Either you are aware that this characterisation is highly inaccurate and unfair, or you are not.” To be clear, I think I also would have trouble dispassionately responding to claims that I’m a sock puppet, and I do think it’s reasonable for you to be quite upset about this.
I agree that if someone is genuinely a terrible person, especially if that someone is a big or semi-big figure in the community, our politeness norms may make it more annoying to criticize them harshly than if we had more combative norms. I agree that this is pretty bad inasomuch as it makes things harder to unearth real problems, and this is a plausible hypothesis.
I think I still want to defend some fraction of such norms however, because I think our online norms are still fairly aggressive compared to what most people are used to offline, and I suspect if our online culture is substantially more aggressive (especially in unkind ways) than it currently is, this will make it harder for people to engage and address real problems, rather than just disengage.
Strong upvote, I thought I was going crazy. Thank you!