Some experimental thoughts on how to moderate / facilitate sensitive conversations
Drawn from talking to a few people who I think do this well. Written in a personal capacity.
Go meta—talk about where you’re at and what you’re grappling with. Do circling-y things. Talk about your goals for the discussion.
Be super clear about the way in which your thing is or isn’t a safe space and for what
Be super clear about what bayesian updates people might make
Consider starting with polls to get calibrated on where people are
Go meta on what the things people are trying to protect are, or what the confusion you think is at play is
Aim first to create common knowledge
Distinguish between what’s thinkable and what’s sayable in this space and why that distinction matters
Reference relevant norms around cooperative spaces or whatever space you’ve set up here
If you didn’t set up specific norms but want to now, apologize for not doing so until that point in a “no fault up to this point but no more” way
If someone says something you wish they hadn’t:
Do many of the above
Figure out what your goals are—who are you trying to protect / make sure you have their back
If possible, strategize with the person/people who are hurt, get their feedback (though don’t precommit to doing what they say)
Have 1:1s with people able
If you want to dissociate with someone or criticize them, explain the history and connection to them, don’t memoryhole stuff, give people context for understanding
Display courage.
Be specific about what you’re criticizing
Cheerlead and remind yourself and others of the values you’re trying to hold to
People are mad for reasonable and unreasonable reasons, you can speak to the reasonable things you overlap on with strength
In my experience, the most important parts of a sensitive discussion is to display kindness, empathy, and common ground.
It’s disheartening to write something on a sensitive topic based on upsetting personal experiences, only to be met with seemingly stonehearted critique or dismissal. Small displays of empathy and gratitude can go a long way towards this, to make people feel like their honesty and vulnerability has been rewarded rather than punished.
I think your points are good, but if deployed wrongly could make things worse. For example, if a non-rationalist friend of yours tells you about their experiences with harassment, immediately jumping into a bayesian analysis of the situation is ill-advised and may lose you a friend.
(Written in a personal capacity) Yeah, agree, and your comment made me realize that some of these are actually my experimental thoughts on something like “facilitating / moderating” sensitive conversations. I don’t know if what you’re pointing at is common knowledge, but I’d hope it is, and in my head it’s firmly in “nonexperimental”, standard and important wisdom (as contained, I believe, in some other written advice on this for EA group leaders and others who might be in this position).
From my perspective, a hard thing is how much work is done by tone and presence—I know people who can do the “talk about a bayesian analysis of harassment” with non-rationalists with sensitivity, warmth, care, and people who do “displaying kindness, empathy and common ground” in a way that leaves people more tense than before. But that doesn’t mean the latter isn’t generally better advice, I think it probably is for most people—and I hope it’s in people’s standard toolkits.
Some experimental thoughts on how to moderate / facilitate sensitive conversations
Drawn from talking to a few people who I think do this well. Written in a personal capacity.
Go meta—talk about where you’re at and what you’re grappling with. Do circling-y things. Talk about your goals for the discussion.
Be super clear about the way in which your thing is or isn’t a safe space and for what
Be super clear about what bayesian updates people might make
Consider starting with polls to get calibrated on where people are
Go meta on what the things people are trying to protect are, or what the confusion you think is at play is
Aim first to create common knowledge
Distinguish between what’s thinkable and what’s sayable in this space and why that distinction matters
Reference relevant norms around cooperative spaces or whatever space you’ve set up here
If you didn’t set up specific norms but want to now, apologize for not doing so until that point in a “no fault up to this point but no more” way
If someone says something you wish they hadn’t:
Do many of the above
Figure out what your goals are—who are you trying to protect / make sure you have their back
If possible, strategize with the person/people who are hurt, get their feedback (though don’t precommit to doing what they say)
Have 1:1s with people able
If you want to dissociate with someone or criticize them, explain the history and connection to them, don’t memoryhole stuff, give people context for understanding
Display courage.
Be specific about what you’re criticizing
Cheerlead and remind yourself and others of the values you’re trying to hold to
People are mad for reasonable and unreasonable reasons, you can speak to the reasonable things you overlap on with strength
In my experience, the most important parts of a sensitive discussion is to display kindness, empathy, and common ground.
It’s disheartening to write something on a sensitive topic based on upsetting personal experiences, only to be met with seemingly stonehearted critique or dismissal. Small displays of empathy and gratitude can go a long way towards this, to make people feel like their honesty and vulnerability has been rewarded rather than punished.
I think your points are good, but if deployed wrongly could make things worse. For example, if a non-rationalist friend of yours tells you about their experiences with harassment, immediately jumping into a bayesian analysis of the situation is ill-advised and may lose you a friend.
(Written in a personal capacity) Yeah, agree, and your comment made me realize that some of these are actually my experimental thoughts on something like “facilitating / moderating” sensitive conversations. I don’t know if what you’re pointing at is common knowledge, but I’d hope it is, and in my head it’s firmly in “nonexperimental”, standard and important wisdom (as contained, I believe, in some other written advice on this for EA group leaders and others who might be in this position).
From my perspective, a hard thing is how much work is done by tone and presence—I know people who can do the “talk about a bayesian analysis of harassment” with non-rationalists with sensitivity, warmth, care, and people who do “displaying kindness, empathy and common ground” in a way that leaves people more tense than before. But that doesn’t mean the latter isn’t generally better advice, I think it probably is for most people—and I hope it’s in people’s standard toolkits.