I think you’re dramatically underestimating how your responses are being read by third parties. Your style of response to handoflixue specifically has made at least one person I’ve spoken to decide to avoid giving you well thought out criticism out of fear of you yelling at them and being very confrontational.
If you stumble upon a schoolyard fight, and immediately assume that the person you see punching is fundamentally violent and has high odds of attacking you, I think you’re skipping an important step of checking to see whether they’re the bully or whether they’re defending themselves. Most of us have had the experience (either direct or vicarious) of being absolutely infuriated by the people who try to pretend like there’s a perfect symmetry between the punch thrown by the aggressor and the punch thrown by the defender—it’s not hypocritical to both support “not starting fights” and “being willing to end them.”
I am aware of the risk of losing people around the edges, yeah. But I can’t do anything except point to the scores and scores of other responses (it might be over a hundred by now) in which I’ve thanked people for critique, responded in depth, updated visibly in real time, etc.
People get anxious, and maybe they disengage. But anyone who’s not going to be openly and unjustifiably uncharitable has nothing to fear from me in particular. I’m not going to not stand up for myself against bullies and trolls, even if it costs me some quiet whispers that would’ve contained good content.
Everything is tradeoffs. To put it another way: The person who’s refusing to give me their well-thought-out criticism is either a) unable because of costs/time constraints to look further and see that my claim they have nothing to fear is credible, or b) themselves jumping to unfounded conclusions based on less data than they have available to them.
If a), then fair play—this is nobody’s first priority except mine, and I don’t feel entitled to everyone’s opinions; it’s perfectly reasonable to have a policy of not spending a lot of time if your first impression is strongly negative.
If b), and they have time to look but are choosing not to and running with a strawman without questioning their own conclusions, then … well … it probably wouldn’t have gone well anyway.
If c), they’ve followed the whole chain in chronological order and they still think I’m at fault, then that just means we have strongly differing priors on right and wrong/acceptable and unacceptable, and once you get down to values on that level, I don’t know how well we’d be able to pass one another’s ITTs anyway.
To the best of my ability to judge, handoflixue’s earlier comments (e.g. above and below this comment) were absolutely dripping with assumption-of-evil-intent, outright insults, unfounded leaps to Harsh Judgments of my fundamental character, poor logic, fallacious smears, and so on and so forth. They dropped into the thread after there were already over a hundred comments, including many where I’d demonstrated credible evidence of good faith and willingness to change my mind, which they completely ignored. They continued to ask loaded, unfair questions and set up strawmans over and over and over, with at least a dozen posts containing both deontological hostility and bad epistemics. They then offered a single token apology conditional on “if” their tone had been too harsh (rather than just saying sorry, I crossed the line, as I myself have done in these comments at least twice), and dropped the overtly hostile tone while continuing to subtly insinuate that I’m a bad actor in every post.
Given that my stated role model is Ender Wiggin, if somebody thinks handoflixue’s approach is okay, or thinks that I shouldn’t have defended myself, then it shouldn’t be surprising that I claim, as my personal opinion, that their moral compass is drastically askew. There’s a different question about whether I’ve marginally erred, e.g. by being 15% too defensive, but that shouldn’t trigger someone who’s not going to be hostile in the first place to be afraid.
To put it another way: The person who’s refusing to give me their well-thought-out criticism is either a) unable because of costs/time constraints to look further and see that my claim they have nothing to fear is credible, or b) themselves jumping to unfounded conclusions based on less data than they have available to them.
If a), then fair play—this is nobody’s first priority except mine, and I don’t feel entitled to everyone’s opinions; it’s perfectly reasonable to have a policy of not spending a lot of time if your first impression is strongly negative.
If b), and they have time to look but are choosing not to and running with a strawman without questioning their own conclusions, then … well … it probably wouldn’t have gone well anyway.
If c), they’ve followed the whole chain in chronological order and they still think I’m at fault, then that just means we have strongly differing priors on right and wrong/acceptable and unacceptable, and once you get down to values on that level, I don’t know how well we’d be able to pass one another’s ITTs anyway.
handoflixue’s earlier comments were absolutely dripping with assumption-of-evil-intent, outright insults, unfounded leaps to harsh judgments of my fundamental character, poor logic, fallacious smears, and so on and so forth. They dropped into the thread after there were already over a hundred comments, including many where I’d demonstrated credible evidence of good faith and willingness to change my mind, which they completely ignored. They continued to ask loaded, unfair questions and set up strawmans over and over and over, with at least a dozen posts containing both deontological hostility and bad epistemics. They then offered a single apology conditional on an “if” (rather than just saying, sorry, I was too harsh, as I myself have done in these comments at least twice), and dropped the overtly hostile tone while continuing to subtly insinuate that I’m a bad actor in every post.
If somebody thinks that’s okay, or thinks that I shouldn’t have defended myself, then that’s somebody whose moral framework is, in my personal opinion, drastically askew. There’s a different question about whether I’ve marginally erred, e.g. by being 15% too defensive, but that shouldn’t trigger someone who’s not going to be hostile in the first place to be afraid.
handoflixue’s earlier comments were absolutely dripping with assumption-of-evil-intent, outright insults, unfounded leaps to harsh judgments of my fundamental character, poor logic, fallacious smears, and so on and so forth. They dropped into the thread after there were already over a hundred comments, including many where I’d demonstrated credible evidence of good faith and willingness to change my mind, which they completely ignored. They continued to ask loaded, unfair questions and set up strawmans over and over and over, with at least a dozen posts containing both deontological hostility and bad epistemics.
Duncan,
I think you’re dramatically underestimating how your responses are being read by third parties. Your style of response to handoflixue specifically has made at least one person I’ve spoken to decide to avoid giving you well thought out criticism out of fear of you yelling at them and being very confrontational.
shrug
If you stumble upon a schoolyard fight, and immediately assume that the person you see punching is fundamentally violent and has high odds of attacking you, I think you’re skipping an important step of checking to see whether they’re the bully or whether they’re defending themselves. Most of us have had the experience (either direct or vicarious) of being absolutely infuriated by the people who try to pretend like there’s a perfect symmetry between the punch thrown by the aggressor and the punch thrown by the defender—it’s not hypocritical to both support “not starting fights” and “being willing to end them.”
I am aware of the risk of losing people around the edges, yeah. But I can’t do anything except point to the scores and scores of other responses (it might be over a hundred by now) in which I’ve thanked people for critique, responded in depth, updated visibly in real time, etc.
People get anxious, and maybe they disengage. But anyone who’s not going to be openly and unjustifiably uncharitable has nothing to fear from me in particular. I’m not going to not stand up for myself against bullies and trolls, even if it costs me some quiet whispers that would’ve contained good content.
Everything is tradeoffs. To put it another way: The person who’s refusing to give me their well-thought-out criticism is either a) unable because of costs/time constraints to look further and see that my claim they have nothing to fear is credible, or b) themselves jumping to unfounded conclusions based on less data than they have available to them.
If a), then fair play—this is nobody’s first priority except mine, and I don’t feel entitled to everyone’s opinions; it’s perfectly reasonable to have a policy of not spending a lot of time if your first impression is strongly negative.
If b), and they have time to look but are choosing not to and running with a strawman without questioning their own conclusions, then … well … it probably wouldn’t have gone well anyway.
If c), they’ve followed the whole chain in chronological order and they still think I’m at fault, then that just means we have strongly differing priors on right and wrong/acceptable and unacceptable, and once you get down to values on that level, I don’t know how well we’d be able to pass one another’s ITTs anyway.
To the best of my ability to judge, handoflixue’s earlier comments (e.g. above and below this comment) were absolutely dripping with assumption-of-evil-intent, outright insults, unfounded leaps to Harsh Judgments of my fundamental character, poor logic, fallacious smears, and so on and so forth. They dropped into the thread after there were already over a hundred comments, including many where I’d demonstrated credible evidence of good faith and willingness to change my mind, which they completely ignored. They continued to ask loaded, unfair questions and set up strawmans over and over and over, with at least a dozen posts containing both deontological hostility and bad epistemics. They then offered a single token apology conditional on “if” their tone had been too harsh (rather than just saying sorry, I crossed the line, as I myself have done in these comments at least twice), and dropped the overtly hostile tone while continuing to subtly insinuate that I’m a bad actor in every post.
(I note that in the places where they didn’t do this, I answered them in the same way I was answering everyone else, up until deciding to disengage on a policy level.)
Given that my stated role model is Ender Wiggin, if somebody thinks handoflixue’s approach is okay, or thinks that I shouldn’t have defended myself, then it shouldn’t be surprising that I claim, as my personal opinion, that their moral compass is drastically askew. There’s a different question about whether I’ve marginally erred, e.g. by being 15% too defensive, but that shouldn’t trigger someone who’s not going to be hostile in the first place to be afraid.
To put it another way: The person who’s refusing to give me their well-thought-out criticism is either a) unable because of costs/time constraints to look further and see that my claim they have nothing to fear is credible, or b) themselves jumping to unfounded conclusions based on less data than they have available to them.
If a), then fair play—this is nobody’s first priority except mine, and I don’t feel entitled to everyone’s opinions; it’s perfectly reasonable to have a policy of not spending a lot of time if your first impression is strongly negative.
If b), and they have time to look but are choosing not to and running with a strawman without questioning their own conclusions, then … well … it probably wouldn’t have gone well anyway.
If c), they’ve followed the whole chain in chronological order and they still think I’m at fault, then that just means we have strongly differing priors on right and wrong/acceptable and unacceptable, and once you get down to values on that level, I don’t know how well we’d be able to pass one another’s ITTs anyway.
handoflixue’s earlier comments were absolutely dripping with assumption-of-evil-intent, outright insults, unfounded leaps to harsh judgments of my fundamental character, poor logic, fallacious smears, and so on and so forth. They dropped into the thread after there were already over a hundred comments, including many where I’d demonstrated credible evidence of good faith and willingness to change my mind, which they completely ignored. They continued to ask loaded, unfair questions and set up strawmans over and over and over, with at least a dozen posts containing both deontological hostility and bad epistemics. They then offered a single apology conditional on an “if” (rather than just saying, sorry, I was too harsh, as I myself have done in these comments at least twice), and dropped the overtly hostile tone while continuing to subtly insinuate that I’m a bad actor in every post.
If somebody thinks that’s okay, or thinks that I shouldn’t have defended myself, then that’s somebody whose moral framework is, in my personal opinion, drastically askew. There’s a different question about whether I’ve marginally erred, e.g. by being 15% too defensive, but that shouldn’t trigger someone who’s not going to be hostile in the first place to be afraid.
Just pondering this passage. Interesting.