Avoiding Selection Bias

In most circumstances this is how I try to approach things. One issue is that the private messaging system on LW2.0 is currently wonky (it works, but not in a way anyone would really want to use).

Another is that I feel like idealized LW culture would hopefully do some kind of "make people feel safe to politely criticize others." And part of that means that there should be public instances of people criticizing each other in a clear/constructive tone, and people taking the feedback to heart, and people who respond badly getting some pushback and people who respond well getting some kudos and people who try to take advantage of them system (either using "constructive criticism" as a thin veneer to attack people, or using "I accept your feedback!" as a way to dodge responsibility) getting called out... hopefully with an end result of "it actually feels safe to give and receive feedback."

We're not there yet (at least, not in all directions across all people on the site), but hopefully can be. In the meanwhile I think Lahwran's policy is a reasonable middle ground

I think that the benefit of criticizing publicly is that it allows your criticism to in turn be criticized.

Let us say that Alice writes a post. Bob finds the material too <adjective> to interest him. If he messages Alice privately, that is the extent of the feedback. If, however, he comments as such, Carol, Daniel, and Eve may all chime in saying that they found the material the right about of <adjective> to be interesting. The vocal minority inspires feedback from the silent majority, who might not have independently thought to give Alice feedback (because they didn't realize their views weren't universal, because they didn't believe they had actionable feedback, because they didn't have something they disagreed with).

Like all systems of voluntary feedback, there's a great deal of self-selection involved; moving from private to public feedback just affects who selects themselves. But I think it can do so in a valuable direction.

Private criticism from strangers can be particularly stressful if you have lots of readers, because there's an implicit request that you respond to it (and then maybe get in a stressful argument, etc). Public criticism you can avoid responding to if you don't have the emotional energy for it, and if you do respond it might be seen by everyone else who wants to make the same criticism.

Private criticism from friends is probably a good idea.

But a thing that strikes me here is this: the LW community really doesn't, so far as I can tell, have the reputation of being a place where ideas don't get frank enough criticism.

But the character of LW definitely has changed. In the early days when it was gaining its reputation, it seemed to be a place where you could often find lots of highly intense, vociferous debate over various philosophical topics. I feel that nowadays a lot of that character is gone. The community seems to have embraced a much softer and more inclusive discourse style, trying to minimize the overall amount of offense and anxiety one could feel when they are trying to engage here. And indeed, a large amount of the discussion topics these days are surrounding social norms and community norms, which is a pretty big difference from the original LW culture.

I'm not completely sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, we seem to have created a place that seems much more approachable (and the changes might probably be a factor in why I began to take part in the discussions somewhat recently), and less intimidating to newcomers. So I think that part of it is good. On the other hand, some of the best thinkers were people who had a pretty aggressive conversational style (such as EY himself). I think these people have mostly switched over to private discussions among people they trust with limited public engagement. It's unclear how much we are missing from them.

There are obvious situations where you would desire one style of discourse versus the other: In situations where you need to gather support from many groups with potentially competing interests and complex needs, you would definitely prefer to be as inclusive and inoffensive as possible, while limiting discussion to matters that relate to everyone. In the situation which amounts to casual debate among trusted people, it becomes a lot safer to be as frank and transparent as possible.

LW began very organically as conversations between many people who already interacted quite frequently sort of merged into a single locus. That meant that lively and open debate could happen somewhat safely at least initially, but that changed as soon as the space became more known outside of its bubble and grew.

There's nothing that can be done to prevent that from happening, I think, but one thing that can be done is to siphon aggressive conversations into separate locations, away from the front-facing side but still possible to enter if you're prepared.

I'm noticing a lot of anxiety in myself about your disagreement with the name. I realized that asking you for feedback on the name, and suggestions for what to change it to, would make my anxiety go away. What are your thoughts on better names for this, that still capture the essence of "I'm dropping this tidbit here because otherwise you won't even be able to know something is wrong, and/or what it is"?

I edited the post title. But I also notice that this discussion we're having is exactly the sort of thing that, when I anticipate, would normally lead me to not make a post at all; if that's not "de-silencing", what should it be?

I don't just mean for this to be about confrontations.

The viewpoint I'm about to express is in danger of being suppressed, so I'm bravely fighting against oppression by saying it

That is how I meant it, though "oppression" is maybe a bit stronger than I meant - I mean that people in a fairly common social attractor in mindspace tend to try to make anyone who disagrees with them into an argument target. I do this to prevent their credible threat of dismissing me if I try to tell them nicely from completely shutting me up.

frank enough criticism

That's not what I mean, though; the place I got this name is that I often notice that I want to give feedback about a way someone has done something that excluded me, and they won't be happy with me complaining. this policy is an attempt to make sure that some of the time, they still find out. I have found that it applies a bit more generally, and I execute this any time I worry that someone will be blackholed or ghosted or in some other way simply abandoned if they aren't told what's happening.

"informative" and "polite"

Yeah, I agree that there are things that I don't often have the energy for that would make things come across better, and possibly things I do have the energy for that I don't understand well enough to do easily/correctly. There may even be free actions I could take. These are all probably true of others. I'm interested in any comments you can make about how someone who's constantly background on guard against rejection can still minimize rudeness.

(Keep in mind that I'm not just oblivious.)