I’d suggest that we should be more trusting that when someone in the community criticises someone else not in the community, they’re doing it for good reasons. However, writing that out is almost self-refuting—that’s what all insular communities are doing.
Yes, insofar communities do that, but typically in emotive and highly biased ways. EA at least has more constructive norms for how these things are discussed. It’s not perfect, and it’s not fast, but here I see people taking pains to be as fair-minded as they can be. (We achieve that to different degrees, but the effort is expected.)
Perhaps appointing a small group of moderators for the community to whom we trust.
My System 1 doesn’t like this. Giving this power to a group of people and suggesting that we accept their guidance… that feels cultish, and not very compatible with a community of critical thinkers.
Scientific departments have ethics boards. Good online communities (e.g. Hacker News) have moderators. Society as a whole has a justice part of governance, and other groups that check on the decisions made by the courts. Suggesting that it feels cult-y to outsource some of our community norm-enfacement (so as to save the community as a whole significant time input, and make the process more efficient and effective) is… I’m just confused every time someone calls something totally normal ‘cult-y’.
I deliberately said “My System 1 doesn’t like this.” and “that feels cultish” – on an intuitive level, I feel uncomfortable, and I’m trying to work out why. I do see value in having effective gatekeepers.
I’m not even sure what it means to be “banned” from a movement consisting of multiple organisations and many individuals. It may be that if the process is clearly defined, and we know who is making the decision, on whose behalf, I’d be more comfortable with it.
Just in case you’re interested: I think the word ‘cultish’ is massively overloaded (with negative connotations) and mis-used. I’d also point out that saying that a statement is one’s gut feeling isn’t equivalent to saying one doesn’t endorse the feeling, and so I felt pretty defensive when you suggested my idea was cultish and not compatible with our community.
I wrote this because I thought you might prefer to know the impacts of your comments rather than not hearing negative feedback. My apologies in advance if that was a false assumption.
Thanks – helpful feedback (and from Owen also). In hindsight I would probably have kept the word “cultish” while being much more explicit about not completely endorsing the feeling.
Something went wrong with the communication channel if you ended up feeling defensive.
However, despite generally agreeing with you about problems with the world “cultish”, I actually think this is a reasonable use-case. It has a lot of connotations, and it was being reported that the description was triggering some of those connotations in the reader. That’s useful information that it may be worth some effort to avoiding it being perceived that way if the idea is pursued (your stack of examples make it pretty clear that it is avoidable).
Yes, insofar communities do that, but typically in emotive and highly biased ways. EA at least has more constructive norms for how these things are discussed. It’s not perfect, and it’s not fast, but here I see people taking pains to be as fair-minded as they can be. (We achieve that to different degrees, but the effort is expected.)
My System 1 doesn’t like this. Giving this power to a group of people and suggesting that we accept their guidance… that feels cultish, and not very compatible with a community of critical thinkers.
Scientific departments have ethics boards. Good online communities (e.g. Hacker News) have moderators. Society as a whole has a justice part of governance, and other groups that check on the decisions made by the courts. Suggesting that it feels cult-y to outsource some of our community norm-enfacement (so as to save the community as a whole significant time input, and make the process more efficient and effective) is… I’m just confused every time someone calls something totally normal ‘cult-y’.
I deliberately said “My System 1 doesn’t like this.” and “that feels cultish” – on an intuitive level, I feel uncomfortable, and I’m trying to work out why. I do see value in having effective gatekeepers.
I’m not even sure what it means to be “banned” from a movement consisting of multiple organisations and many individuals. It may be that if the process is clearly defined, and we know who is making the decision, on whose behalf, I’d be more comfortable with it.
Thanks for clarifying!
Just in case you’re interested: I think the word ‘cultish’ is massively overloaded (with negative connotations) and mis-used. I’d also point out that saying that a statement is one’s gut feeling isn’t equivalent to saying one doesn’t endorse the feeling, and so I felt pretty defensive when you suggested my idea was cultish and not compatible with our community.
I wrote this because I thought you might prefer to know the impacts of your comments rather than not hearing negative feedback. My apologies in advance if that was a false assumption.
Thanks – helpful feedback (and from Owen also). In hindsight I would probably have kept the word “cultish” while being much more explicit about not completely endorsing the feeling.
Something went wrong with the communication channel if you ended up feeling defensive.
However, despite generally agreeing with you about problems with the world “cultish”, I actually think this is a reasonable use-case. It has a lot of connotations, and it was being reported that the description was triggering some of those connotations in the reader. That’s useful information that it may be worth some effort to avoiding it being perceived that way if the idea is pursued (your stack of examples make it pretty clear that it is avoidable).