For Better Commenting, Stop Out Loud

The key difference between the student vs. policeman examples is that the policeman (in a country of laws) operates within a well-defined framework for using their powers that they are explicitly told they should put first and foremost in their job duties.

By contrast, there is much more ambiguity as to what constitutes appropriate feedback from teacher to student, and from student to teacher. There is also (in the example I gave) a fairly unambiguous breach of teacher communication norms with the student, in that the teacher is depicted as "systematically making fun of" the student's entire story. Navigating these breaches and ambiguities is the heart of the argument here.

A more apt comparison, in my mind, would be an example of an American policeman deciding to use force to arrest someone when that policeman can see that the person they're arresting was in the middle of attacking them. In America, it would not be appropriate to use force to arrest someone who was not resisting arrest. Sometimes, police officers do use force in ways that are widely viewed as inappropriate or criminal. However, we still rely on those officers to make judgment calls about whether force is appropriate, and can meaningfully discuss what officers should do in various types of concrete scenarios (i.e. "what if the arrestee is already on the ground and in cuffs, but still struggling?"), despite realizing that in an actual scenario, we have to take the cop's word for it that the person was "still struggling."

I would like to note that I disagree strongly with you on when and how, in your analogy on science-fiction and and a teacher, the conflict is likely to be occurring. I see it more as, the teacher says something about science-fiction being inherently unrealistic (likely without having even mentioned they would give lower grades on science-fiction) when giving a student a B- on an otherwise well-written assignment involving writing a coherent and realistic story, and the student fires back about the kinds of writing the teacher favors as being unrealistic (which may even be true), so the B- is clearly invalid, and refuses to take any feedback on the issue. Other students may then copy the technique of just ignoring what the teacher says too, feeling fully justified.

You seem like a Kantian - searching for a universalizable law that makes society operate well. For Kant, it was never permissible to lie. In his view, behaviors were either permissible in all contexts, or permissible in no contexts. The moral code that society should follow was the set of rules that could be universally imposed, context-free, and still have society function well. He bit the bullet: if an axe murder was at the door, demanding you tell him where his intended victim was hiding, you were morally forbidden from lying to him - although I don't know if it was required to tell him what he wanted to know.

Hence, when I offer a situation which (in my mind), the student was clearly the victim of a year-long campaign of degrading his literary talents and preferences by a teacher with an axe to grind, your response is to consider a different situation in which the student is rejecting sound advice, or at least advice worthy of consideration, by a teacher with a respectful tone.

If SOL helps in protecting one's well-being the axe-grinding teacher, but also impairs our ability to receive useful feedback from constructive criticism, and if the common good depends more on receptivity to constructive criticism than to defense against destructive criticism, then we have to reject SOL entirely. It is not universalizable.

I'm a utilitarian, not a Kantian.

As a utilitarian, I allow that we shouldn't always evaluate individual actions on their own merits. Instead, we sometimes need to create rules that are net utility enhancing. However, I think that it's best when rules are as contextually-informed as possible, while Kant thought they should be minimally contextually informed, or really evaluated in a context-free manner, as in the axe murderer scenario.

Sometimes, we deal with the problem where contexts are misinterpreted, deliberately or accidentally. In situations like this, I think the right thing to do is lean toward more general, "outside-view," less contextual rules. Sometimes, the problem of context interpretation is so huge that we have to impose a crude, context-free rule to deal with the problem.

For example, the vast majority of people who might like to bring sharp objects onto an airplane are probably people who want them for nonviolent purposes. We could consider a rule that it's permissible to bring sharp objects onto planes, as long as you don't intend to hijack the aircraft. However, the problem of terrorism is so important that we impose a blanket ban on sharp objects, entirely ignoring contexts like "this is an old lady with her knitting needles, she obviously wants to pass the time on the plane knitting a sweater." This is the right thing to do to make rules about what you can bring on planes, in my view. It happens to align with the Kantian tendency to make blanket rules.

By contrast, in the school setting, I think that there exist both students who reject constructive criticism, and teachers who treat their students badly. I think that ultimately, both student and teacher, in collaboration with their social networks, must interpret context and decide what behaviors seem right and wrong in fielding conflicts. Hence, I think that the decision for students in these situations to SOL is neither obviously right nor obviously wrong. It would be contextual, and I think that the student and teacher have to be the interpreters of that context.

Likewise in internet comments. There is typically no outside authority to appeal to, and the aspects of the conversation that inform its overall context are ambiguous. Participants therefore must ultimately make contextual decisions for themselves, to decide whether or not SOL is appropriate.

Since I can see contexts where SOL would be both appropriate and inappropriate, I think it is basically morally neutral, and feels to me like a status-neutral move that is not inherently rude. The key, then, is to parse these contexts and try to generalize to identify when SOL is appropriate. If it is not a common/visible technique in situations where it would be appropriate and helpful, then the thing to do is to raise awareness of how to apply it in that context. This is why I wrote the post. I didn't describe the context too elaborately, because I thought that to most readers, the problem was coming up with the SOL technique, not figuring out what sort of context I meant.

As a note, I engage with fight-related metaphors partly because I am trying to engage with previous LW-linked writings on the subject, and partly because it has taken a while to figure out a more appropriate metaphor that captures how I think about these issues. Now that I have, I would probably prefer to drop the fight metaphor, because I think that an "intimidation" and "context interpretation" metaphor captures better how I parse this whole issue.