Explanatory note: I gave this a mild downvote because thesis of the OP was “this has been a difficult week for Asian Americans” and I think an appropriate response would acknowledge that. I felt this response was unsympathetic.
I upvoted Dale’s comment instead, because if one reason “this has been a difficult week for Asian Americans” is a wrong or overly-confident belief that the Atlanta shooting was mainly motivated by anti-Asian bias or hatred, then pointing that out can be better than merely expressing sympathy (which others have already done), and certainly doesn’t constitute an “unsympathetic” response. Of course doing this may not be a good idea in all circumstances and for all audiences, but if bringing up alternative hypotheses and evidence to support them can’t even be done on EAF without risking social disapproval, I think something has gone seriously wrong.
“bringing up alternative hypotheses and evidence to support them can’t even be done on EAF without risking social disapproval”
That’s not a charitable reading of my comment. Alternative hypotheses can be raised sympathetically; in this case I unfortunately didn’t see that. I know there are different views on how people want posts to look on the Forum, but it’s important for people to know why their posts get downvoted, so I wanted to make sure I was clear.
Thanks for clarifying your position. I think in that case, my remaining disagreement with you is that I think stating an alternative hypothesis (along with supporting evidence) is a good thing in and of itself and should not be discouraged or met with social disapproval just because its writer did not do so with sufficient sympathy. Different people have different levels of skill and/or motivation for expressing sympathy, and should all be encouraged to participate on EAF as long as their comments have sufficient merit along other dimensions.
I think it’s good for people to point out ways that criticism can be phrased more sympathetically, and even aligned with your goal of encouraging more critical discussion (which I am also in favor of). As someone who often gives criticism, sometimes unpopular criticism, I both appreciate when people point out ways I could phrase it better but also strongly desire people to be forgiving when I fail to do so. If no one took the time to point these out to me, I would be less capable of offering effective criticism.
Along these lines, my guess is that you and Khorton are interpreting downvotes differently? I didn’t take Khorton’s downvote to be claiming “You should not be posting this on the forum” but instead “Next time you post something like this I wish you’d spend a bit more effort exercising empathy”. And if Dale totally ignores this advice, the penalty is… mild social disapproval from Khorton and lots of upvotes from other people, as far as I can tell.
I didn’t downvote Dale, nor do I wish to express social disapproval of his post (I worry that the length of this thread might lead Dale to feel otherwise, so I want to be explicit that I don’t feel that way).
To your question, if I were writing a post similar to Dale, what I would do differently is be more careful to make sure I was responding to the actual content of the post. The OP asked people to support Asian community members who were upset, while at least the last paragraph of Dale’s post seemed to assume that OP was arguing that we should be searching for ways to reduce violence against Asians. Whenever I engage on an emotionally charged topic I re-read the original post and my draft response to make sure that I actually understood the original post’s argument, and I think this is good practice.
Another mistake I think Dale’s post makes is assuming that whether the Atlanta attacks are racially motivated is a crux for most people’s emotional response. I think Dale’s claim may well be correct (I could see both arguments), but the larger context is a significant increase in violent incidents against Asians, at least some of which seem obviously racially motivated (the increase is also larger than other races). These have taken a constant emotional toll on Asians for a while now, and the particular Atlanta shootings are simply the first instance where it actually penetrated the broader public consciousness.
I can’t think of an easy-to-implement rule that would avoid this mistake. The best would be “try harder to think from the perspective of the listener”, but this is of course very difficult especially when there is a large gap in experience between the speaker and the listener. If I were trying super-hard I would run the post by an Asian friend to see if they felt like it engaged with the key arguments, but I think it would be unreasonable to expect, or expend, that level of effort for forum comments.
Again, I think people make communication mistakes like this all the time and do not find them particularly blameworthy and would normally not bother to comment on them. I am only pointing them out in detail because you asked me to.
The OP asked people to support Asian community members who were upset, while at least the last paragraph of Dale’s post seemed to assume that OP was arguing that we should be searching for ways to reduce violence against Asians.
It seems totally reasonable to interpret the OP as arguing for the latter as well as the former:
The title of the post references “the Asian diaspora” instead of just “Asian community members”
The OP also wrote “As a community, we should stand against the intolerance and unnecessary suffering caused by these hate crimes” and a reasonable interpretation of this is to oppose the intolerance and suffering in concrete ways, not just performatively in front of other community members. For example, when someone writes “Biden and Harris visit Atlanta after shooting rampage, vowing to stand against racism and xenophobia” is the reader not supposed to infer that Biden and Harris will try to do some concrete things against racism and xenophobia?
If Dale was trying to interpret the OP as charitably as possible, is it really more charitable to interpret it as not arguing that we should be searching for ways to reduce violence against Asians? It seems like you yourself interpret it that way, otherwise why did you respond by asking for recommendations for organizations to support?
but the larger context is a significant increase in violent incidents against Asians
Dale actually did also address the larger context/trend, in the paragraph starting with “Despite the lack of good data, I suspect that it is indeed the case that anti-asian crimes have risen significantly this year.”
The best would be “try harder to think from the perspective of the listener”, but this is of course very difficult especially when there is a large gap in experience between the speaker and the listener. If I were trying super-hard I would run the post by an Asian friend to see if they felt like it engaged with the key arguments, but I think it would be unreasonable to expect, or expend, that level of effort for forum comments.
This paragraph seems to have worse “communication mistakes” than anything I can see in Dale’s comment, at least if the listener is someone like myself. (I’ll avoid explaining more explicitly unless you want me to, for the same reason you mentioned.)
On further reflection, I think ultimately all this back and forth is dancing around the question of whether, if some group of people think they’re being victimized or being deliberately targeted for hatred, is it ok to say that maybe they’re not being targeted as much as they think they are. I could be wrong, but my guess is that given today’s overall political environment, your social-emotional intelligence is telling you that it’s not ok to say that, and making you feel an aversion to a comment like Dale’s which does in effect say that. But consciously or unconsciously you feel like you can’t say this explicitly either (it’s a norm that loses much of its power if stated explicitly, and also contrary to the spirit of EA) so you and others in a similar position end up rationalizing various “sayable” criticisms of Dale’s comment that (since they’re just rationalizations and not the real underlying reasons) don’t really stand up on examination.
I think your characterization of my thought process is completely false for what it’s worth. I went out of my way multiple times to say that I was not expressing disapproval of Dale’s comment.
Edit: Maybe it’s helpful for me to clarify that I think it’s both good for Dale to write his comment, and for Khorton to write hers.
I think your characterization of my thought process is completely false for what it’s worth. I went out of my way multiple times to say that I was not expressing disapproval of Dale’s comment.
That’s certainly better news than the alternative, but I hope you find it understandable that I don’t update to 100% believing your claim, given that you may not have full introspective access to all of your own cognitive processes, and what appears to me to be a series of anomalies that is otherwise hard to explain. But I’m certainly willing to grant this for the purposes of further discussion.
Edit: Maybe it’s helpful for me to clarify that I think it’s both good for Dale to write his comment, and for Khorton to write hers.
It’s helpful and confusing at the same time. If you think it was good for Dale to write his comment, the existence of Khorton’s downvote and highly upvoted (at the time) comment giving a very short explanation of the downvote serves as a clear discouragement for Dale or others against writing a similar comment in the future (given what a downvote means to most EAF participants and what Khorton usually means to convey by a downvote according to her own words). Perhaps you actually mean something like either of the following?
It would have been good if Khorton just suggested that Dale be more sympathetic without the downvoting.
It would have been good for Khorton to write her comment if Dale and others interpreted Khorton’s downvote and comment the way you interpreted it (i.e., as merely a suggestion to do better next time, as opposed to a judgment that the overall merit of the comment isn’t high enough to belong to the forum).
I think we just disagree about what a downvote means, but I’m not really that excited to argue about something that meta :).
As another data point, I appreciated Dicentra’s comment elsewhere in the thread. I haven’t decided whether I agree with it, but I thought it demonstrated empathy for all sides of a difficult issue even while disagreeing with the OP, and articulated an important perspective.
The series of seemingly elementary errors in Jacob’s recent comments, which were puzzling to me given his obviously high level of reasoning abilities. I tried to point them out in my earlier comments and don’t want to repeat them all again, but for example, his insistent defense/support of Khorton’s downvote based on his own very mild interpretation of what a downvote means, when it seems clear that what’s more important in judging the consequences and appropriateness of the downvote is how Khorton, Dale, and most other EAF participants are likely to understand it, and then ignoring my arguments and evidence around this after I pointed them out to him.
Thanks for explaining. I don’t wish to engage further here [feel free to reply though of course], but FWIW I don’t agree that there are any reasoning errors in Jacob’s post or any anomalies to explain. I think you are strongly focused on a part of the conversation that is of particular importance to you (something along the lines of whether people who are not motivated or skilled at expressing sympathy will be welcome here), while Jacob is mostly focused on other aspects.
I think you are strongly focused on a part of the conversation that is of particular importance to you (something along the lines of whether people who are not motivated or skilled at expressing sympathy will be welcome here), while Jacob is mostly focused on other aspects.
This seems clearly true to me, but I don’t see how it explains the things that I’m puzzled by. I will stop here as well, as my previous comment answering your question was downvoted to negative karma, perhaps indicating that such discussion (or my specific way of discussing it) is not appropriate for this forum.
Thanks for this I think that all makes a lot of sense.
FWIW I wasn’t necessarily asking you to provide this feedback to Dale. I was just noting that such feedback hadn’t yet been provided. I interpreted your earlier comment as implying that it had.
I have been assuming that EAF follows the same norm as LW with regard to downvotes, namely that it means “I’d like to see fewer comments like this one.” Just in case EAF follows a different norm, I did a quick search and happened across a comment by Khorton herself (which was highly upvoted, so I think is likely representative of typical understanding of downvotes on EAF):
In order of frequency:
-I strong downvote spam (weekly)
-I downvote people for antisocial behaviour, like name calling (monthly)
-I sometimes downvote comments that are obviously unhelpful or wrong (I’ll usually explain why, if no one else has) (every couple of months)
-I occasionally downvote posts if I don’t think they’re the type of thing that should be on the Forum (for example, they’re very poorly written, very incorrect, or offensive) (a couple times a year)
So it seems basically the same, i.e., a downvote means that on net the voter would prefer not to see a comment like it on the forum. Given that some people may not be very good at or very motivated to express sympathy in connection with stating an alternative hypothesis, this seems equivalent to saying that she would prefer such people not post such alternative hypotheses on the forum.
And if Dale totally ignores this advice, the penalty is… mild social disapproval from Khorton and lots of upvotes from other people, as far as I can tell.
Sure, this seems to be the current norm, but as Khorton’s comment had garnered substantial upvotes before I disagreed with it (I don’t remember exactly but I think it was comparable to Dale’s initial comment at that point), I was worried about her convincing others to her position and thereby moving the forum towards a new norm.
Anyway, I do agree with “I think it’s good for people to point out ways that criticism can be phrased more sympathetically” and would have no objections to any comments along those lines. I note however that is not what Khorton did and her comment in fact did not point out any specific ways that Dale’s comment could have been phrased more sympathetically.
I think my position is compatible with xccf’s. Some people (like xccf) may choose to try to alleviate negative feelings by expressing sympathy, “standing with”, or otherwise providing social/emotional support, while others (like Dale) may choose to do so by pointing out why some of the feelings may be excessive given the actual facts. Both of these seem reasonable strategies to me. IRL perhaps you could decide to deploy one or the other (or both) based in part on which is likely to work better on the particular person you’re talking to, but that’s not possible in a public forum, in which case it seems reasonable to welcome/encourage both types of commenters.
Fair enough. I agree that Dale perhaps could have included words along the lines of “I understand the hurt the Asian community must be feeling but...”.
This might be a minor point, but personally I think it’s better to avoid making generalizations of how an entire community must be feeling. Some members of the Asian community are unaware of recent events, while others may not be particularly affected by them. Perhaps something more along the lines of “I understand many people in the Asian community are feeling hurt right now” would be generally better.
Explanatory note: I gave this a mild downvote because thesis of the OP was “this has been a difficult week for Asian Americans” and I think an appropriate response would acknowledge that. I felt this response was unsympathetic.
I upvoted Dale’s comment instead, because if one reason “this has been a difficult week for Asian Americans” is a wrong or overly-confident belief that the Atlanta shooting was mainly motivated by anti-Asian bias or hatred, then pointing that out can be better than merely expressing sympathy (which others have already done), and certainly doesn’t constitute an “unsympathetic” response. Of course doing this may not be a good idea in all circumstances and for all audiences, but if bringing up alternative hypotheses and evidence to support them can’t even be done on EAF without risking social disapproval, I think something has gone seriously wrong.
“bringing up alternative hypotheses and evidence to support them can’t even be done on EAF without risking social disapproval”
That’s not a charitable reading of my comment. Alternative hypotheses can be raised sympathetically; in this case I unfortunately didn’t see that. I know there are different views on how people want posts to look on the Forum, but it’s important for people to know why their posts get downvoted, so I wanted to make sure I was clear.
Thanks for clarifying your position. I think in that case, my remaining disagreement with you is that I think stating an alternative hypothesis (along with supporting evidence) is a good thing in and of itself and should not be discouraged or met with social disapproval just because its writer did not do so with sufficient sympathy. Different people have different levels of skill and/or motivation for expressing sympathy, and should all be encouraged to participate on EAF as long as their comments have sufficient merit along other dimensions.
I think it’s good for people to point out ways that criticism can be phrased more sympathetically, and even aligned with your goal of encouraging more critical discussion (which I am also in favor of). As someone who often gives criticism, sometimes unpopular criticism, I both appreciate when people point out ways I could phrase it better but also strongly desire people to be forgiving when I fail to do so. If no one took the time to point these out to me, I would be less capable of offering effective criticism.
Along these lines, my guess is that you and Khorton are interpreting downvotes differently? I didn’t take Khorton’s downvote to be claiming “You should not be posting this on the forum” but instead “Next time you post something like this I wish you’d spend a bit more effort exercising empathy”. And if Dale totally ignores this advice, the penalty is… mild social disapproval from Khorton and lots of upvotes from other people, as far as I can tell.
Neither you nor Khorton appear to have done this for Dale, at least not very clearly.
I didn’t downvote Dale, nor do I wish to express social disapproval of his post (I worry that the length of this thread might lead Dale to feel otherwise, so I want to be explicit that I don’t feel that way).
To your question, if I were writing a post similar to Dale, what I would do differently is be more careful to make sure I was responding to the actual content of the post. The OP asked people to support Asian community members who were upset, while at least the last paragraph of Dale’s post seemed to assume that OP was arguing that we should be searching for ways to reduce violence against Asians. Whenever I engage on an emotionally charged topic I re-read the original post and my draft response to make sure that I actually understood the original post’s argument, and I think this is good practice.
Another mistake I think Dale’s post makes is assuming that whether the Atlanta attacks are racially motivated is a crux for most people’s emotional response. I think Dale’s claim may well be correct (I could see both arguments), but the larger context is a significant increase in violent incidents against Asians, at least some of which seem obviously racially motivated (the increase is also larger than other races). These have taken a constant emotional toll on Asians for a while now, and the particular Atlanta shootings are simply the first instance where it actually penetrated the broader public consciousness.
I can’t think of an easy-to-implement rule that would avoid this mistake. The best would be “try harder to think from the perspective of the listener”, but this is of course very difficult especially when there is a large gap in experience between the speaker and the listener. If I were trying super-hard I would run the post by an Asian friend to see if they felt like it engaged with the key arguments, but I think it would be unreasonable to expect, or expend, that level of effort for forum comments.
Again, I think people make communication mistakes like this all the time and do not find them particularly blameworthy and would normally not bother to comment on them. I am only pointing them out in detail because you asked me to.
It seems totally reasonable to interpret the OP as arguing for the latter as well as the former:
The title of the post references “the Asian diaspora” instead of just “Asian community members”
The OP also wrote “As a community, we should stand against the intolerance and unnecessary suffering caused by these hate crimes” and a reasonable interpretation of this is to oppose the intolerance and suffering in concrete ways, not just performatively in front of other community members. For example, when someone writes “Biden and Harris visit Atlanta after shooting rampage, vowing to stand against racism and xenophobia” is the reader not supposed to infer that Biden and Harris will try to do some concrete things against racism and xenophobia?
If Dale was trying to interpret the OP as charitably as possible, is it really more charitable to interpret it as not arguing that we should be searching for ways to reduce violence against Asians? It seems like you yourself interpret it that way, otherwise why did you respond by asking for recommendations for organizations to support?
Dale actually did also address the larger context/trend, in the paragraph starting with “Despite the lack of good data, I suspect that it is indeed the case that anti-asian crimes have risen significantly this year.”
This paragraph seems to have worse “communication mistakes” than anything I can see in Dale’s comment, at least if the listener is someone like myself. (I’ll avoid explaining more explicitly unless you want me to, for the same reason you mentioned.)
On further reflection, I think ultimately all this back and forth is dancing around the question of whether, if some group of people think they’re being victimized or being deliberately targeted for hatred, is it ok to say that maybe they’re not being targeted as much as they think they are. I could be wrong, but my guess is that given today’s overall political environment, your social-emotional intelligence is telling you that it’s not ok to say that, and making you feel an aversion to a comment like Dale’s which does in effect say that. But consciously or unconsciously you feel like you can’t say this explicitly either (it’s a norm that loses much of its power if stated explicitly, and also contrary to the spirit of EA) so you and others in a similar position end up rationalizing various “sayable” criticisms of Dale’s comment that (since they’re just rationalizations and not the real underlying reasons) don’t really stand up on examination.
I think your characterization of my thought process is completely false for what it’s worth. I went out of my way multiple times to say that I was not expressing disapproval of Dale’s comment.
Edit: Maybe it’s helpful for me to clarify that I think it’s both good for Dale to write his comment, and for Khorton to write hers.
That’s certainly better news than the alternative, but I hope you find it understandable that I don’t update to 100% believing your claim, given that you may not have full introspective access to all of your own cognitive processes, and what appears to me to be a series of anomalies that is otherwise hard to explain. But I’m certainly willing to grant this for the purposes of further discussion.
It’s helpful and confusing at the same time. If you think it was good for Dale to write his comment, the existence of Khorton’s downvote and highly upvoted (at the time) comment giving a very short explanation of the downvote serves as a clear discouragement for Dale or others against writing a similar comment in the future (given what a downvote means to most EAF participants and what Khorton usually means to convey by a downvote according to her own words). Perhaps you actually mean something like either of the following?
It would have been good if Khorton just suggested that Dale be more sympathetic without the downvoting.
It would have been good for Khorton to write her comment if Dale and others interpreted Khorton’s downvote and comment the way you interpreted it (i.e., as merely a suggestion to do better next time, as opposed to a judgment that the overall merit of the comment isn’t high enough to belong to the forum).
I think we just disagree about what a downvote means, but I’m not really that excited to argue about something that meta :).
As another data point, I appreciated Dicentra’s comment elsewhere in the thread. I haven’t decided whether I agree with it, but I thought it demonstrated empathy for all sides of a difficult issue even while disagreeing with the OP, and articulated an important perspective.
What do you believe needs explaining?
The series of seemingly elementary errors in Jacob’s recent comments, which were puzzling to me given his obviously high level of reasoning abilities. I tried to point them out in my earlier comments and don’t want to repeat them all again, but for example, his insistent defense/support of Khorton’s downvote based on his own very mild interpretation of what a downvote means, when it seems clear that what’s more important in judging the consequences and appropriateness of the downvote is how Khorton, Dale, and most other EAF participants are likely to understand it, and then ignoring my arguments and evidence around this after I pointed them out to him.
Thanks for explaining. I don’t wish to engage further here [feel free to reply though of course], but FWIW I don’t agree that there are any reasoning errors in Jacob’s post or any anomalies to explain. I think you are strongly focused on a part of the conversation that is of particular importance to you (something along the lines of whether people who are not motivated or skilled at expressing sympathy will be welcome here), while Jacob is mostly focused on other aspects.
This seems clearly true to me, but I don’t see how it explains the things that I’m puzzled by. I will stop here as well, as my previous comment answering your question was downvoted to negative karma, perhaps indicating that such discussion (or my specific way of discussing it) is not appropriate for this forum.
.
Thanks for this jsteinhardt, I agree with the above.
Thanks for this I think that all makes a lot of sense.
FWIW I wasn’t necessarily asking you to provide this feedback to Dale. I was just noting that such feedback hadn’t yet been provided. I interpreted your earlier comment as implying that it had.
I have been assuming that EAF follows the same norm as LW with regard to downvotes, namely that it means “I’d like to see fewer comments like this one.” Just in case EAF follows a different norm, I did a quick search and happened across a comment by Khorton herself (which was highly upvoted, so I think is likely representative of typical understanding of downvotes on EAF):
So it seems basically the same, i.e., a downvote means that on net the voter would prefer not to see a comment like it on the forum. Given that some people may not be very good at or very motivated to express sympathy in connection with stating an alternative hypothesis, this seems equivalent to saying that she would prefer such people not post such alternative hypotheses on the forum.
Sure, this seems to be the current norm, but as Khorton’s comment had garnered substantial upvotes before I disagreed with it (I don’t remember exactly but I think it was comparable to Dale’s initial comment at that point), I was worried about her convincing others to her position and thereby moving the forum towards a new norm.
Anyway, I do agree with “I think it’s good for people to point out ways that criticism can be phrased more sympathetically” and would have no objections to any comments along those lines. I note however that is not what Khorton did and her comment in fact did not point out any specific ways that Dale’s comment could have been phrased more sympathetically.
I’m curious how xccf’s comment elsewhere on this thread fits in with your position as expressed here.
I think my position is compatible with xccf’s. Some people (like xccf) may choose to try to alleviate negative feelings by expressing sympathy, “standing with”, or otherwise providing social/emotional support, while others (like Dale) may choose to do so by pointing out why some of the feelings may be excessive given the actual facts. Both of these seem reasonable strategies to me. IRL perhaps you could decide to deploy one or the other (or both) based in part on which is likely to work better on the particular person you’re talking to, but that’s not possible in a public forum, in which case it seems reasonable to welcome/encourage both types of commenters.
In theory at least, pointing out that someone may be mistaken about something that has been troubling them can be comforting.
Whether or not this works in practice I’m less sure about.
Totally agree, that just wasn’t my view of this situation.
Fair enough. I agree that Dale perhaps could have included words along the lines of “I understand the hurt the Asian community must be feeling but...”.
This might be a minor point, but personally I think it’s better to avoid making generalizations of how an entire community must be feeling. Some members of the Asian community are unaware of recent events, while others may not be particularly affected by them. Perhaps something more along the lines of “I understand many people in the Asian community are feeling hurt right now” would be generally better.