“absolutely horrifying”, “[no] place in this community”, “recklessly flawed and reprehensible”
[...]
That tone and manner of speaking as the first thing you say on a topic[fn] feels pretty out of place to me within EA, and certainly isn’t what I want in the EA I would design.
Speaking locally to this point: I don’t think I agree! My first-pass take is that if something’s horrible, reprehensible, flawed, etc., then I think EAs should just say so. That strikes me as the default truth-seeking approach.[1]
There might be second-order reasons to be more cautious about when and how you report extreme negative evaluations (e.g., to keep forum discussions from degenerating as people emotionally trigger each other), but I would want to explicitly flag that this is us locally departing from the naive truth-seeking approach (“just say what seems true to you”) in the hope that the end result will be more truth-seeky via people having an easier time keeping a cool head.
(Note that I’m explicitly responding to the ‘extreme language’ side of this, not the ‘was this to some extent performative or strategic?’ side of things.)
With the caveat that maybe evaluative judgments in general get in the way of truth-seeking, unless they’re “owned” NVC-style, because of common confusions like “thinking my own evaluations are mind-independent properties of the world”. But if we’re allowing mild evaluative judgments like “OK” or “fine”, then I think there’s less philosophical basis for banning more extreme judgments like “awesome” or “terrible”.
I think I agree with your clarification and was in fact conflating the mere act of speaking with strong emotion with speaking in a way that felt more like a display. Yeah, I do think it’s a departure from naive truth-seeking.
In practice, I think it is hard, though I do think it is hard for the second order reasons you give and others. Perhaps an ideal is people share strong emotion when they feel it, but in some kind of format/container/manner that doesn’t shut down discussion or get things heated. “NVC” style, perhaps, as you suggest.
Fwiw, I do think “has no place in the community” without being owned as “no place in my community” or “shouldn’t have a place in the community” is probably too high a simulacrum level by default (though this isn’t necessarily a criticism of Shakeel, I don’t remember what exactly his original comment said.)
Cool. :) I think we broadly agree, and I don’t feel confident about what the ideal way to do this is, though I’d be pretty sad and weirded out by a complete ban on expressing strong feelings in any form.
Speaking locally to this point: I don’t think I agree! My first-pass take is that if something’s horrible, reprehensible, flawed, etc., then I think EAs should just say so. That strikes me as the default truth-seeking approach.[1]
There might be second-order reasons to be more cautious about when and how you report extreme negative evaluations (e.g., to keep forum discussions from degenerating as people emotionally trigger each other), but I would want to explicitly flag that this is us locally departing from the naive truth-seeking approach (“just say what seems true to you”) in the hope that the end result will be more truth-seeky via people having an easier time keeping a cool head.
(Note that I’m explicitly responding to the ‘extreme language’ side of this, not the ‘was this to some extent performative or strategic?’ side of things.)
With the caveat that maybe evaluative judgments in general get in the way of truth-seeking, unless they’re “owned” NVC-style, because of common confusions like “thinking my own evaluations are mind-independent properties of the world”. But if we’re allowing mild evaluative judgments like “OK” or “fine”, then I think there’s less philosophical basis for banning more extreme judgments like “awesome” or “terrible”.
I think I agree with your clarification and was in fact conflating the mere act of speaking with strong emotion with speaking in a way that felt more like a display. Yeah, I do think it’s a departure from naive truth-seeking.
In practice, I think it is hard, though I do think it is hard for the second order reasons you give and others. Perhaps an ideal is people share strong emotion when they feel it, but in some kind of format/container/manner that doesn’t shut down discussion or get things heated. “NVC” style, perhaps, as you suggest.
Fwiw, I do think “has no place in the community” without being owned as “no place in my community” or “shouldn’t have a place in the community” is probably too high a simulacrum level by default (though this isn’t necessarily a criticism of Shakeel, I don’t remember what exactly his original comment said.)
Cool. :) I think we broadly agree, and I don’t feel confident about what the ideal way to do this is, though I’d be pretty sad and weirded out by a complete ban on expressing strong feelings in any form.