At present, however, participants aren’t given any way of opting out without deeply hurting their friends, regardless of whether this ritual reflects their values, which undermines the value of the ritual.
It seems like anyone who received codes who didn’t want to participate could easily just ignore the email and not participate without any negative consequence. I don’t understand why you think opting out would lead to one’s friends being hurt.
Ah yes. I don’t consider ignoring the email to be opting out. As soon as I’ve read the email, inaction is one of my two options. If I delete the email, there will be a post that says something like, “We won! Everyone we emailed decided to cooperate!” even though I didn’t choose to cooperate, I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to be involved in the first place.
If you had to opt-in, not opting in would be one of your two options. If you don’t opt-in, there would be a post that says something like “We won! Everyone who could opt in decided to cooperate!”
I think there’s an important difference between ’100 people opted-in to our community ritual, and all successfully coordinated’ and 200, but where 100 paid attention and 100 totally ignored the email. I don’t feel any notion of trust or coordination from people ignoring an email, or just not being interested.
That’s genuinely fine with me, I hope all the people who decide to embrace this shared ritual find it meaningful and fulfilling :)
Edit: Also then I would have 3 options, opting out, opting in and cooperating or opting in and defecting, which was exactly my point? Here the only way to signal that I’m not interested is by blowing up LessWrong.
I agree with you, although someone might still opt in treating it like a game and not initially taking it as seriously as others in the community are, and then take the site down. Last year, a user was manipulated into taking down LW by someone claiming the user had to enter their code to save LW.
I agree with pretty much everything except:
It seems like anyone who received codes who didn’t want to participate could easily just ignore the email and not participate without any negative consequence. I don’t understand why you think opting out would lead to one’s friends being hurt.
Ah yes. I don’t consider ignoring the email to be opting out. As soon as I’ve read the email, inaction is one of my two options. If I delete the email, there will be a post that says something like, “We won! Everyone we emailed decided to cooperate!” even though I didn’t choose to cooperate, I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to be involved in the first place.
If you had to opt-in, not opting in would be one of your two options. If you don’t opt-in, there would be a post that says something like “We won! Everyone who could opt in decided to cooperate!”
I think there’s an important difference between ’100 people opted-in to our community ritual, and all successfully coordinated’ and 200, but where 100 paid attention and 100 totally ignored the email. I don’t feel any notion of trust or coordination from people ignoring an email, or just not being interested.
That’s genuinely fine with me, I hope all the people who decide to embrace this shared ritual find it meaningful and fulfilling :)
Edit: Also then I would have 3 options, opting out, opting in and cooperating or opting in and defecting, which was exactly my point? Here the only way to signal that I’m not interested is by blowing up LessWrong.
It seems like you are successfully signalling your lack of interest without blowing up LessWrong!
I think it would read something closer to “We won! Everyone who opted in decided to cooperate!”
I agree with you, although someone might still opt in treating it like a game and not initially taking it as seriously as others in the community are, and then take the site down. Last year, a user was manipulated into taking down LW by someone claiming the user had to enter their code to save LW.