Comment section from 05/19/2019

one voice with an agenda which, if implemented, would put me in physical danger

Okay, I think I have a right to respond to this.

People being in physical danger is a bad thing. I don't think of myself as having a lot of strong political beliefs, but I'm going to take a definite stand here: I am against people being in physical danger.

If someone were to present me with a persuasive argument that my writing elsewhere is increasing the number of physical-danger observer-moments in the multiverse on net, then I would seriously consider revising or retracting some of it! But I'm not aware of any such argument.

Meta-level abstractions are by definition not real. So there's no arguing whether one is right or wrong. Any "agreement" on an abstraction is about what parts of reality it helps to predict. Without object-level examples, what is there to discuss?

I do take objection to the assumption in this post that decoupling norms are the obvious and only correct way to deal with things.

Zack didn't say this. What he said was:

Like, maybe statistics is part of the common interest of many causes, such that, as a matter of local validity, you should assess arguments about statistics on their own merits in the context that those arguments are presented, without worrying about how those arguments might or might not be applied in other contexts?

Which is compatible with thinking more details should be taken into account when the statistical arguments are applied in other contexts (in fact, I'm pretty sure this is what Zack thinks).

Discussion of abstract epistemology principles, which generalize across different contexts, is perhaps most of the point of this website...

Your points 1,2,3 have nothing to do with the epistemic problem of decoupling vs contextualizing, they have to do with political tradeoffs in moderating a forum; they apply to people doing contextualization in their analysis, too. I hate that the phrase "contextualizing norms" is being used to conflate between "all sufficiently relevant information should be used" and "everything should be about politics".

Thanks, these are some great points on some of the costs of decoupling norms! (As you've observed, I'm generally pretty strongly in favor of decoupling norms, but policy debates should not appear one-sided [LW · GW].)

someone brings it up all the time

I would want to distinguish "brings it up all the time" in the sense of "this user posts about this topic when it's not relevant" (which I agree is bad and warrants moderator action) versus the sense of "this user posts about this topic a lot, and not on other topics" (which I think is generally OK).

If someone is obsessively focused on their narrow special interest—let's say, algebraic topology—and occasionally comments specifically when they happen to think of an application of algebraic topology to the forum topic, I think that's fine, because people reading that particular thread get the benefit of a relevant algebraic topology application—even if looking at that user's posting history leaves one with an unsettling sense of, "Wow, this person is creepily obsessed with their hobbyhorse."

tries to twist other people's posts towards a discussion of their thing

I agree that this would be bad, but I think it's usually possible to distinguish "twist[ing] other people's posts towards a discussion of their thing" from a genuinely relevant mention of the thing that couldn't (or shouldn't) be reasonably expected to derail the discussion?

In the present case, my great-great-grandparent comment notes that the list-of-koans format lends itself to readers contributing their own examples in the comments, and I tried to give two such examples (trying to mimic the æsthetic of the OP by continuing the numbered list and Alice/Bob/Charlie/&c. character name sequence), one of which related the theme of the OP to the main point of one of my recent posts.

In retrospect, maybe I should've thought more carefully about how to phrase the proposed example in a way that makes the connection to the OP more explicit/obvious? (Probably-better version: "A meaningful 'Yes' answer to the question 'Is G an H?' requires a definition of H such that the answer could be 'No'.")

It's true that, while composing the great-great-grandparent, I was kind of hoping that some readers would click through the link and read my earlier post, which I worked really hard on and which I think is filling in a gap in "A Human's Guide to Words" [? · GW] that I've seen people be confused about. But I don't see how this can reasonably be construed as an attempt to derail the discussion? Like, I ordinarily wouldn't expect a brief comment of the form "Great post! Here's a couple more examples that occurred to me, personally" to receive any replies in the median case.

(Although unfortunately, it empirically looks like the discussion did, in fact, get derailed. I feel bad for Scott G. that we're cluttering up his comment section like this, but I can't think of anything I wish I had done differently other than wording the great-great grandparent more clearly, as mentioned in the paragraph-before-last. Given Vanessa's reply [LW(p) · GW(p)], I felt justified in writing my counterreply [LW(p) · GW(p)] ... and here we are.)

It would be perfectly alright for moderators who didn't want to drive away their visitors to ask this person to stop.

Agreed, the moderators are God and their will must be obeyed.

kick out someone who has a bad reputation that makes important posters unable to post on your website because they don't want to associate with that person, even IF that person has good behavior

So, the dynamic you describe here definitely exists, but I actually think it's a pretty serious problem for our collective sanity: if some truths happen to lie outside of Society's Overton window, then systematic truthseekers (who want to collect all the truths, not just the majority of them that are safely within the Overton window) will find themselves on the wrong side of Respectability, and if people who care about being Respectable (and thereby having power in Society) can't even talk to people outside the Overton window (not even agree with—just talk to, using, for example, a website), then that could have negative instrumental consequences in the form of people with power in Society making bad policy decisions on account of having inaccurate beliefs.

I want to write more about this in the future (albeit not on Less Wrong), but in the meantime, maybe see the immortal Scott Alexander's "Kolmogorov Complicity And The Parable Of Lightning" for an expression of similar concerns:

Some other beliefs will be found to correlate heavily with lightning-heresy. Maybe atheists are more often lightning-heretics; maybe believers in global warming are too. The enemies of these groups will have a new cudgel to beat them with, "If you believers in global warming are so smart and scientific, how come so many of you believe in lightning, huh?" Even the savvy Kolmogorovs within the global warming community will be forced to admit that their theory just seems to attract uniquely crappy people. It won't be very convincing. Any position correlated with being truth-seeking and intelligent will be always on the retreat, having to forever apologize that so many members of their movement screw up the lightning question so badly.

I've read Zack's blog (the one that is not under the name Zack M. Davis), and his hobbyhorse has to do with transgender issues and gender categories. However, even when he is writing directly about the matter on his own blog, I am unclear what he is actually saying about these issues. There is still a certain abstractness and distance from the object level.

Just FYI.

I had hard time to track down what is the refefrent to the abuse mentioned in the parent post.

It does seem that the concept was employed in a political context. To my brain politizing is a particular kind of use. I get that if you effectively employ any kind of argument towards a political end it becomes politically relevant. However it would be weird if any tool employed would automatically become part of politics.

If beliefs are to pay rent and this particular point is established / marketed to establish a specific another point I could get on board with a expectation to disclose such "financial ties". Up to this point I know that this belief is sponsored by another belief but I do not know which belief and I don't fully get why it would be troublesome to reveal this belief.

I don’t really have a dog in whatever fight this is, but looking at Zack’s [LW · GW] posts [LW · GW] and [LW(p) · GW(p)] comments [LW(p) · GW(p)] recently, I see nothing but interesting and correct insights and analysis, devoid of any explicit politics (but perhaps yielding insights about such?). How can you call this “abuse”? The overwhelming majority of the content that gets posts to Less Wrong these days should aspire to the level of quality of the stuff I just linked!

The entire HBD community is seen as racist pseudoscientists by many.

Are the HBD community respected themselves?

Thanks for asking! So, a Straussian reading was actually intended there.

(Sorry, I know this is really obnoxious. My only defense is that, unlike some more cowardly authors, on the occasions when I stoop to esotericism, I actually explain [LW(p) · GW(p)] the Straussian reading when questioned.)

In context, I'm trying to defend the principle that we shouldn't derail discussions about philosophy on account of the author's private reason for being interested in that particular area of philosophy having to do with a contentious object-level topic. I first illustrated my point with an Occam's-razor/atheism example, but, as I said, I was worried that that might come off as self-serving: I want my point to be accepted because the principle I'm advancing is a good one, not due to the rhetorical trick of associating my interlocutor with something locally considered low-status, like religion. So I tried to think of another illustration where my stance (in favor of local validity [LW · GW], or "decoupling norms" [LW · GW]) would be associated with something low-status, and what I came up with was statistics-of-the-normal-distribution/human-biodiversity. Having chosen the illustration on the basis of the object-level topic being disreputable, it felt like effective rhetoric to link to an example and performatively "lean in" to the disrepute with a denunciation ("crank racist psuedoscientist").

In effect, the function of denouncing du Lion was not to denounce du Lion (!), but as a "showpiece" while protecting the principle that we need the unrestricted right to talk about math on this website. Explicitly Glomarizing [LW · GW] my views on the merits of HBD rather than simply denouncing would have left an opening for further derailing the conversation on that. This was arguably intellectually dishonest of me, but I felt comfortable doing it because I expected many readers to "get the joke."

It sounds more like a defense of discussing a political specific by means of abstraction.

Zack said:

Like, maybe statistics is part of the common interest of many causes, such that, as a matter of local validity, you should assess arguments about statistics on their own merits in the context that those arguments are presented, without worrying about how those arguments might or might not be applied in other contexts?

What, realistically, do you expect the atheist—or the racist, or me—to do? Am I supposed to just passively accept that all of my thoughts about epistemology are tainted and unfit for this forum, because I happen to be interested in applying epistemology to other topics (on a separate website, under a pseudonym)?

Which isn't saying specifics should be discussed by discussing abstracts, it says abstracts should be discussed, even when part of the motivation for discussing the abstract is specific. Like, people should be able to collaborate on statistics textbooks even if they don't agree with their co-authors' specific applications of statistics to their non-statistical domains. (It would be pretty useless to discuss abstracts if there we no specific motivations, after all...)

I've noted in at least some of your posts that I don't find your abstractions very compelling without examples, and I that I don't much care for the examples I can think of to reify your abstractions.

"Where to Draw the Boundaries?" [LW · GW] includes examples about dolphins, geographic and political maps, poison, heaps of sand, and job titles. In the comment section, I gave more examples about Scott Alexander's critique of neoreactionary authors [LW(p) · GW(p)], Müllerian mimickry in snakes [LW(p) · GW(p)], chronic fatigue syndrome [LW(p) · GW(p)], and accent recognition [LW(p) · GW(p)].

I agree that it's reasonable for readers to expect authors to provide examples, which is why I do in fact provide examples. What do you want from me, exactly??

You're right that "feelings are information, not numbers to maximize" and that hiding a user's posts is often not a good solution because of this.

I don't think Christian is making this mistake though.

When someone is suffering from an injury they cannot heal, there are two problems, not one. The first is the injury itself — the broken leg, the loss of a relationship, whatever it may be. The second is that incessant alarm saying “THIS IS BAD THIS IS BAD THIS IS BAD” even when there’s nothing you can do.

If you want to help someone in this situation, it’s important to distinguish (and help them distinguish) between the two problem and come to agreement about which one it is that you should be trying to solve: are we trying to fix the injury here, or are we just trying to become more comfortable with the fact that we’re injured? Even asking this question can literally transform the sensation of pain, if the resulting reflection concludes “yeah, there’s nothing else to do about this injury” and “yeah, actually the sensation of pain itself isn’t a problem”.

Earlier in this discussion, Vanessa said “I feel X”, and the response she got was taking the problem to be about the “X” part, and arguing that X is not true. This is a great and satisfying response so long as the perceived problem is definitely “X” and not at all “I feel”. The response wasn’t satisfying though, and she responded by saying that she thought “I feel” was enough to be worth saying.

Since it has already been said that “if the problem is X, we can discuss whether X is actually true, and solve it if it is”, Christian’s contribution was to add “and if it’s not that you think X is actually true and just want help with your feelings, here’s a way that can help”. It’s helpful in the case where Vanessa decides “yes, the problem is primarily the feeling itself, which is maladaptive here”, and it’s also helpful in clarifying (to her and to others) that if she isn’t interested in taking the nerve block, her objection must be a factual claim about X itself, which can then be dealt with as we deal with factual claims (without special regards to feelings, which have been decided to be “not the problem”).

It’s not the most warm and welcoming way to deal with feelings (which may or may not reflect accurate/perceived as accurate upon reflection information), but not every space has to be warm and welcoming. There is a risk of conflating “it helps build community to help people manage their feelings” with “catering to feelings takes precedence over recognizing fact”, and that’s a nasty failure mode to fall into. If we want to manage that rule with a hard and fast “no emotional labor will be supplied here, you must manage your feelings in your own time”, that is a valid approach. And if there is a real threat of that conflation taking over, it’s probably the right one. However, there are better (more pleasant, welcoming/community building, and yes, truth-finding) methods to that we can play with once we’re comfortable that we’re safe from feelings becoming a negative utility monster problem. It’s just that in order to play with them safely, we must be very clear about the distinction between “I feel X, and this is valid evidence which you need to deal with” and “I feel X, and this is my problem, which I would appreciate assistance with even though you’re obviously not obligated to fix it for me”.

I like "I feel language". I think nonviolent communication is good. It's however a huge misunderstand of violent communication that it's simply about exchanging a few words without exchanging the meaning. It cheapens the language. It has an aspect of dishonesty. People engaging in that kind of dishonesty is the reason that there are articles written about how nonviolent communication doesn't work.

The institution of trigger warning exists because some people don't want to be exposed to certain information that makes them feel bad. Banning users on LW who write posts that make you feel bad is similar.

I think it's important to give people ways to avoid situations that make them feel bad if that's their desire.

I thought that was what the personal feature is about. It feels to me like "banned users all" also needs a tooltip.

Ah, apparently I wrote exactly this at the same time you made this comment. See this [LW(p) · GW(p)] comment of mine.

My sibling comment [LW(p) · GW(p)] may be relevant to your interests.

Note: you can generally talk about political stuff on your personal blog section. Part of the point of the frontpage/personal-blog distinction is so that there can be a bit of soft-pressure there without actually preventing people from talking about things.

There are certain areas that we might need to make individual judgement calls about (see Vaniver's comment elsethread). And in general when discussing hot-button political issues I'd suggest you reflect on your goals and life choices (since I think it's an easy domain to think you're discussing something important when you're mostly not). But that's different from a ban.

the meta level is too vague. That is, the error is in the way the abstract reasoning is applied to case X (it's just not the right model), rather than in the abstract reasoning itself

Why not write a meta-level post about the general class of problem for which the abstract reasoning doesn't apply? That could be an interesting post!

I'm guessing you might be thinking something along the lines of, "The 'draw category boundaries around clusters of high density in configuration space' moral doesn't apply straightfowardly to things that are socially constructed by collective agreement"? (Examples: money, or Christmas. These things exist, but only because everyone agrees that they exist.)

I personally want to do more thinking about how social construction works (I have some preliminary thoughts on the matter that I haven't finished fleshing out yet), and might write such a post myself eventually!

Given that Zack chose "Easy Going - I just delete obvious spam and trolling" as the commenting guidelines, I don't see how it's not allowed to write an object level comment about "this principle A is often wrongly applied in case X, but it shouldn't be applied in case X as case X is different for reasons".

If you actually add something interesting in for reasons* I would be very surprised if your posts gets downvoted. If you actually are able to articulate reasons that address blindspots that people have when thinking about principle A, such a comment would also likely be strongly upvoted given how LW functions even if it would partly political.

*and in this case it would be good to have object level reasons and not appeal to personal feelings.

Do you have a blog? If so, discussing the matter there may be sensible.

If you have no blog (or only have one that’s purposed for technical / professional / etc. topics), then it may be worthwhile to set up a third-party LessWrongMeta forum, for discussions of topics like this one. (There would, of course, be many challenges surrounding such a project, but it seems worth trying, and from a technical perspective the barriers to the attempt are low.)

(Reminder that I am not endorsing anything Said has been arguing against in this thread either)

I agree that it's possible for feelings to be relevant (or for factual beliefs to be relevant). But discouragement of discussion shouldn't be enacted through feelings, feelings should just be info that prompts further activity, which might have nothing to do with discouragement of discussion. So there is no issue with Vanessa's first comment and parts of the rest of the discussion that clarified the situation. A lot of the rest of it though wasn't constructive in building any sort of valid argument that rests on the foundation of info about feelings.

I don't get the impression Said was describing or channeling a particular culture. Rather, he was making specific observations that are primarily concerned with what they actually refer to. There is a difference between the hypothesis that such claims implicitly suggest a general point about some guiding principles that the author endorses, and the hypothesis that their style pattern-matches such a general point and thus perpetuates norms that you consider undesirable.

In the context where the resulting norms are undesirable, the impact of these options is the same, but arguments that are valid for them are different, which is important for nudging the style of discussion in the direction you hope for. To prevent a norm from taking hold, it's crucial to understand what the norm is, so that you won't unintentionally fuel it.