Sure. I am pretty baffled by the response to my comments. I agree the first was insufficiently careful about the fact that Mark is a new user, but even the second got downvotes.
In the past, users of the forum have said many times that posting on the EA Forum gives them anxiety as they are afraid of hostile criticism. So I think it is good to be on the lookout for posts and comments that might have this effect. Being ‘kind’ and ‘approaching disagreements with curiosity’ should protect against this risk.
But I ask the question: Is Tristan going to feel comfortable engaging in the Forum, in particular as a response to this post? I don’t think so.
Quotes I thought were problematic in that I think they would upset Tristan or put him off responding (or others who might work with him or agree with him):
I have a mini Nassim Taleb inside me that I let out for special occasions 😠. I’m sometimes rude to Tristan, Kevin Roose and others.
I read this as Mark proudly announcing that he likes to violate good discourse norms.
Others which I think will make feel Tristan accused and unwelcome (not ‘kind’ and not ‘approaching disagreements with curiosity’):
It is because he has been one of the most influential people in building a white hot moral panic, and frequently bends truth for the cause.
Tristan’s hyperbole sets the stage for drastic action.
Generally hostile:
To play by gentlemans rules is to their advantage—curtailing the tools in at my disposal to makes bullshit as costly as possible.
If the ‘Conflict can be an effective tactic for good’ section had not been written, I would not have downvoted, as it seems to add little to the content, while making Tristan likely feel very unwelcome.
There was a post which was similar in style to Mark’s post arguing against Will here and the response to that was pretty negative, so I am surprised that Mark’s post is being perceived so differently.
I only rarely downvote. There have been frequent requests in the past that it would be good if users generally explained why they downvoted. This has not come up before, but I took from that that the next time I downvote, it would be good if I explained why. So I did. And then got heavily downvoted myself for it.
I am not sure what to make of this—are the people requesting for downvoters to generally explain themselves just different people than the ones who downvoted my comment (apparently so, otherwise they would have explained themselves)? Whatever is the reason, I doubt I will explain my downvotes again in the future.
I wished that the initial comment had been more specific given the user’s status and the tone of the criticism (when I put myself in the author’s shoes, I could imagine being baffled, since the tone of “my” post was relatively tame by the standards of most online discussion spaces).
I downvoted that comment, because I didn’t see the explanation as helpful to the author and I want to discourage comments that attack an author’s motivations without evidence (“you are clearly deciding against both of these”—I wouldn’t call the post “kind”, but it seemed reasonably curious to me in that it closely engaged with Tristan’s work and acknowledged that he had achieved some of his aims, with plausibly good results).
I thought the third comment was really helpful, and is exactly what I hoped to see from the first comment. I upvoted it. Highlighting specific passages is great; it was also nice to see language like “I read X as the author intending Y” rather than “by X, the author intended Y”.
As for the post itself, I chose not to vote, as I was caught between upvoting and downvoting. I also objected to elements of the author’s tone, but I thought the content was a useful counterpoint to a widely-experienced piece of EA content and provided enough specific arguments for commentators to engage productively.
I expect that people interpreted the “You are clearly deciding against both of these” as an unkind/uncharitable phrase, since it reads like an accusation of deliberate wrongdoing. I expect that, if you’d instead said something like “Parts of your post seem unnecessarily inflammatory”, then it wouldn’t have received such a negative response.
I also personally tend to interpret the kindness guidelines as being primarily about how to engage with people who are on the forum, or who are likely to read forum posts. Of course we shouldn’t be rude in general, but it seems significantly less bad to critique external literature harshly than to directly critique people harshly.
I agree that the kindness guidelines are largely related to community management. I also think they apply more weakly to public figures than to other people who aren’t active on the Forum. When someone who has a Netflix special and influence over millions of listeners is making ostensibly bad/deceptive arguments, the stakes are higher than usual, and I’m more likely to think that criticism is valuable enough that even “unkind” responses are net-valuable.
That said, all of this is contextual; if people began to violate the norm more often, moderation would crack down more to arrest the slide. I haven’t seen this happening.
I also really appreciate your comments. I didn‘t downvote your initial comment, but my first reaction upon seeing it was something like „Hey, I felt really positive about a researcher coming to the forum and explaining why he disagrees with Tristan. I don’t want someone to discourage this from happening!“ I’ve initially read the parts you cited partly as tongue in cheek and maybe as a little unnecessary, but far from wanting to signal that the overall contribution was not welcome.
I appreciate that you explained your negative reaction a lot, especially given how rarely people do it. I did read over the parts you cited not even wondering much how Tristan would react to it and I think it’s great someone brought it up as I now think that new users of our forum should strive to communicate disagreements less confrontationally than is common on other platforms. So I think it’d be unfortunate if you feel discouraged from this experience.
Thank you all for your responses, I really appreciated them. Your perspectives make more sense to me now, though I have to say I still feel really confused.
[Following comment not exhaustively responding to everything you said.]
I hadn’t intended to communicate in my first comment that Mark deliberately intended to violate the forum guidelines, but that he deliberately decided against being kind and curious. (Thank you for pointing that out, I did not think of the alternative reading.)
I didn’t provide any evidence for this because I thought Mark said this very explicitly at the start of his post:
To play by gentlemans rules is to their advantage—curtailing the tools in at my disposal to makes bullshit as costly as possible.
I acknowledge there are some negative costs to this (e.g. polluting the information commons with avoidable conflict), and good people can disagree about if the tradeoff is worth it. But I believe it is.
Gentleman’s rules usually include things like being kind and curious I would guess, and Mark says explicitly that he ignores them because the tradeoff is worth it to him. I don’t understand how these lines can be interpreted in any other way, this seems like the literal reading to me.
I have to admit that even after all your kind elaborate explanations I struggle to understand how anything in the section ‘Conflict can be an effective tactic for good’ could be read as tongue-in-cheek, as it reads very openly hostile to me (...it’s right there in the title?) .
I don’t think it is that unlikely that interviewees on the 80k podcast would respond to a kind thoughtful critique on the EA Forum. That said, this is not just about Tristan, but everyone who might disagree with Mark, as the ‘Conflict can be an effective tactic for good’ section made me doubt they would be treated with curiosity and kindness.
I will take from this that people can have very different interpretations of the same content, even if I think the content is is very explicit and straightforward.
Sure. I am pretty baffled by the response to my comments. I agree the first was insufficiently careful about the fact that Mark is a new user, but even the second got downvotes.
In the past, users of the forum have said many times that posting on the EA Forum gives them anxiety as they are afraid of hostile criticism. So I think it is good to be on the lookout for posts and comments that might have this effect. Being ‘kind’ and ‘approaching disagreements with curiosity’ should protect against this risk. But I ask the question: Is Tristan going to feel comfortable engaging in the Forum, in particular as a response to this post? I don’t think so.
Quotes I thought were problematic in that I think they would upset Tristan or put him off responding (or others who might work with him or agree with him):
I read this as Mark proudly announcing that he likes to violate good discourse norms.
Others which I think will make feel Tristan accused and unwelcome (not ‘kind’ and not ‘approaching disagreements with curiosity’):
Generally hostile:
If the ‘Conflict can be an effective tactic for good’ section had not been written, I would not have downvoted, as it seems to add little to the content, while making Tristan likely feel very unwelcome.
There was a post which was similar in style to Mark’s post arguing against Will here and the response to that was pretty negative, so I am surprised that Mark’s post is being perceived so differently.
I only rarely downvote. There have been frequent requests in the past that it would be good if users generally explained why they downvoted. This has not come up before, but I took from that that the next time I downvote, it would be good if I explained why. So I did. And then got heavily downvoted myself for it. I am not sure what to make of this—are the people requesting for downvoters to generally explain themselves just different people than the ones who downvoted my comment (apparently so, otherwise they would have explained themselves)? Whatever is the reason, I doubt I will explain my downvotes again in the future.
My reaction was similar to Akash’s.
I wished that the initial comment had been more specific given the user’s status and the tone of the criticism (when I put myself in the author’s shoes, I could imagine being baffled, since the tone of “my” post was relatively tame by the standards of most online discussion spaces).
I downvoted that comment, because I didn’t see the explanation as helpful to the author and I want to discourage comments that attack an author’s motivations without evidence (“you are clearly deciding against both of these”—I wouldn’t call the post “kind”, but it seemed reasonably curious to me in that it closely engaged with Tristan’s work and acknowledged that he had achieved some of his aims, with plausibly good results).
I thought the third comment was really helpful, and is exactly what I hoped to see from the first comment. I upvoted it. Highlighting specific passages is great; it was also nice to see language like “I read X as the author intending Y” rather than “by X, the author intended Y”.
As for the post itself, I chose not to vote, as I was caught between upvoting and downvoting. I also objected to elements of the author’s tone, but I thought the content was a useful counterpoint to a widely-experienced piece of EA content and provided enough specific arguments for commentators to engage productively.
I expect that people interpreted the “You are clearly deciding against both of these” as an unkind/uncharitable phrase, since it reads like an accusation of deliberate wrongdoing. I expect that, if you’d instead said something like “Parts of your post seem unnecessarily inflammatory”, then it wouldn’t have received such a negative response.
I also personally tend to interpret the kindness guidelines as being primarily about how to engage with people who are on the forum, or who are likely to read forum posts. Of course we shouldn’t be rude in general, but it seems significantly less bad to critique external literature harshly than to directly critique people harshly.
I agree that the kindness guidelines are largely related to community management. I also think they apply more weakly to public figures than to other people who aren’t active on the Forum. When someone who has a Netflix special and influence over millions of listeners is making ostensibly bad/deceptive arguments, the stakes are higher than usual, and I’m more likely to think that criticism is valuable enough that even “unkind” responses are net-valuable.
That said, all of this is contextual; if people began to violate the norm more often, moderation would crack down more to arrest the slide. I haven’t seen this happening.
I also really appreciate your comments. I didn‘t downvote your initial comment, but my first reaction upon seeing it was something like „Hey, I felt really positive about a researcher coming to the forum and explaining why he disagrees with Tristan. I don’t want someone to discourage this from happening!“ I’ve initially read the parts you cited partly as tongue in cheek and maybe as a little unnecessary, but far from wanting to signal that the overall contribution was not welcome.
I appreciate that you explained your negative reaction a lot, especially given how rarely people do it. I did read over the parts you cited not even wondering much how Tristan would react to it and I think it’s great someone brought it up as I now think that new users of our forum should strive to communicate disagreements less confrontationally than is common on other platforms. So I think it’d be unfortunate if you feel discouraged from this experience.
Thank you all for your responses, I really appreciated them. Your perspectives make more sense to me now, though I have to say I still feel really confused.
[Following comment not exhaustively responding to everything you said.]
I hadn’t intended to communicate in my first comment that Mark deliberately intended to violate the forum guidelines, but that he deliberately decided against being kind and curious. (Thank you for pointing that out, I did not think of the alternative reading.) I didn’t provide any evidence for this because I thought Mark said this very explicitly at the start of his post:
Gentleman’s rules usually include things like being kind and curious I would guess, and Mark says explicitly that he ignores them because the tradeoff is worth it to him. I don’t understand how these lines can be interpreted in any other way, this seems like the literal reading to me.
I have to admit that even after all your kind elaborate explanations I struggle to understand how anything in the section ‘Conflict can be an effective tactic for good’ could be read as tongue-in-cheek, as it reads very openly hostile to me (...it’s right there in the title?) .
I don’t think it is that unlikely that interviewees on the 80k podcast would respond to a kind thoughtful critique on the EA Forum. That said, this is not just about Tristan, but everyone who might disagree with Mark, as the ‘Conflict can be an effective tactic for good’ section made me doubt they would be treated with curiosity and kindness.
I will take from this that people can have very different interpretations of the same content, even if I think the content is is very explicit and straightforward.