The reason that I think some memetic immune response is appropriate to things of this shape is something like: if they became (semi-)normalized, it could become strategically correct for people trying to play social games to write puff pieces, and to get others to write puff pieces about them. I think it’s better to live in a world where that isn’t incentivized. So even though that isn’t what I think is happening here, I don’t think that will be reliably transparent to all readers, so I think it’s maybe good for precedent-setting if the post gets some pushback on these grounds?
That said, I do feel good about more appreciating-positive type discussions (and think my above comment may sound too negative on anything about celebrating good things). I just want people to find ways that don’t also create the bad incentives. Things I think might be helpful for this: primarily celebrating virtues, but also naming multiple people who do a job embodying the virtue; marrying discussion of positives with negatives (something which this post did some, which helps); creating canonical times for low-key sharing of positives (so that there’s less information carried in the speech act of sharing, and more in the content of what’s shared).
For the social fabric stuff it seems more important whether it’s legibly not a puff piece. Had I downvoted (and honestly I was closer to upvoting), the intended signal would have been something like “small ding for failing to adequately signal that it’s not a puff piece” (such signalling is cheaper for things that actually aren’t puff pieces, so asking for it is relatively cheap and does some work to maintain a boundary against actual puff pieces). It would have warranted a bigger ding if I’d thought it was a puff piece.
It’s still possible I’m miscalibrated and this is transparently not a puff piece to ~everyone. (Although the voting pattern on my comment suggests that my feeling was not an outlier … I guess this is unsurprising to me as one of the reasons I wrote the comment was seeing that your post had some downvotes and thinking it might be helpful to voice my guess about why.)
Yeah the tone makes sense for a personal blog (and in general the piece makes more sense for an audience who can mostly be expected to know Katja already).
I think it could have signalled more not-being-a-puff-piece by making the frame less centrally about Katja and more about the virtues you wanted to draw attention to. It’s something like: those, rather than the person, are the proper object-of-consideration for these large internet audiences. Then you could also mention that the source of inspiration was the person.
Yeah that seems right. Not sure what options one can click on crossposting to point that out. (I think the forum has a personal blog option, but I’m not sure that’s so appropriate on LessWrong)
The reason that I think some memetic immune response is appropriate to things of this shape is something like: if they became (semi-)normalized, it could become strategically correct for people trying to play social games to write puff pieces, and to get others to write puff pieces about them. I think it’s better to live in a world where that isn’t incentivized. So even though that isn’t what I think is happening here, I don’t think that will be reliably transparent to all readers, so I think it’s maybe good for precedent-setting if the post gets some pushback on these grounds?
That said, I do feel good about more appreciating-positive type discussions (and think my above comment may sound too negative on anything about celebrating good things). I just want people to find ways that don’t also create the bad incentives. Things I think might be helpful for this: primarily celebrating virtues, but also naming multiple people who do a job embodying the virtue; marrying discussion of positives with negatives (something which this post did some, which helps); creating canonical times for low-key sharing of positives (so that there’s less information carried in the speech act of sharing, and more in the content of what’s shared).
I agree it’s sort of a red flag, but it seems relevant whether this is a puff piece, right?
Extremely relevant for my personal assessment!
For the social fabric stuff it seems more important whether it’s legibly not a puff piece. Had I downvoted (and honestly I was closer to upvoting), the intended signal would have been something like “small ding for failing to adequately signal that it’s not a puff piece” (such signalling is cheaper for things that actually aren’t puff pieces, so asking for it is relatively cheap and does some work to maintain a boundary against actual puff pieces). It would have warranted a bigger ding if I’d thought it was a puff piece.
It’s still possible I’m miscalibrated and this is transparently not a puff piece to ~everyone. (Although the voting pattern on my comment suggests that my feeling was not an outlier … I guess this is unsurprising to me as one of the reasons I wrote the comment was seeing that your post had some downvotes and thinking it might be helpful to voice my guess about why.)
How could it have better signalled it wasn’t a puff piece?
It sort of is a bit of a puff piece. I tried to talk about some negatives but I don’t know that it’s particularly even handed.
I tend to get quite a lot of downvotes in general, so some is probably that.
Beyond that, the title is quite provocative—I just used the title on my blog, but I guess I could have chosen something more neutral
Yeah the tone makes sense for a personal blog (and in general the piece makes more sense for an audience who can mostly be expected to know Katja already).
I think it could have signalled more not-being-a-puff-piece by making the frame less centrally about Katja and more about the virtues you wanted to draw attention to. It’s something like: those, rather than the person, are the proper object-of-consideration for these large internet audiences. Then you could also mention that the source of inspiration was the person.
Yeah that seems right. Not sure what options one can click on crossposting to point that out. (I think the forum has a personal blog option, but I’m not sure that’s so appropriate on LessWrong)
Your post is tagged personal blog on LessWrong, idk if you tagged it that way explicitly or if it was done by mods.
For cross-posts to the EA forum, I think you might have an option in the … menu at the top, or you can ask mods to move it to personal blog
Okay, this should be a personal blog then I think
Good point, I hadn’t appreciated that. Thanks!
Those do seem like good compromises.