Meta-meta point: the fact that you used your own post as an example, rather than a post where you weren’t involved, made a very large difference in how I engaged with this Moderating LessWrong article. It prevented me from finishing it. Specifically, when I got to the point where you quoted Benquo, I felt honor-bound to stop reading and go check the source material, which turned out to be voluminous and ambiguous enough that I ran out of time before I came back. This is because, long ago, I made it a bright-line rule to never read someone quoting someone they disagree with in a potentially-hostile manner without checking the original context. That wouldn’tve felt necessary if the examples were drawn from discussions where you weren’t involved.
Upvoted; I think this is an entirely reasonable heuristic, and that it probably validly protects you in somewhere between three-out-of-four and ninety-nine-out-of-a-hundred instances.
However, I don’t think that it’s impossible to do the thing correctly/in a principled manner (obviously, since I attempted it). I’d be interested in a follow-up from you later in which you share your impression of something like “this is an example of why I have that heuristic in the first place” versus “my heuristic fired correctly, given starting conditions, but this ended up not being an example of why I have that policy.”
Although, it occurs to me that if you’re holding to this heuristic in all cases, this also would’ve prevented you from reading a significant chunk of benquo’s comments (which also were quoting someone they disagreed with in a potentially-hostile manner) without first making sure you had my original post fresh in your mind.
I don’t think I have it nailed down quite precisely what triggers the TAP—in practice it’s actually more like a pattern-match with things I was seeing and thinking about when I established the TAP years ago, and descriptively speaking I think the trigger condition involves my information about a narrative having been filtered through a single author. I will say that, when I later made a serious effort to sort out what happened in detail (partly written up, not yet posted), it involved a lot of switching back and forth between tabs and little to no reliance on quotations.
Meta-meta point: the fact that you used your own post as an example, rather than a post where you weren’t involved, made a very large difference in how I engaged with this Moderating LessWrong article. It prevented me from finishing it. Specifically, when I got to the point where you quoted Benquo, I felt honor-bound to stop reading and go check the source material, which turned out to be voluminous and ambiguous enough that I ran out of time before I came back. This is because, long ago, I made it a bright-line rule to never read someone quoting someone they disagree with in a potentially-hostile manner without checking the original context. That wouldn’tve felt necessary if the examples were drawn from discussions where you weren’t involved.
Upvoted; I think this is an entirely reasonable heuristic, and that it probably validly protects you in somewhere between three-out-of-four and ninety-nine-out-of-a-hundred instances.
However, I don’t think that it’s impossible to do the thing correctly/in a principled manner (obviously, since I attempted it). I’d be interested in a follow-up from you later in which you share your impression of something like “this is an example of why I have that heuristic in the first place” versus “my heuristic fired correctly, given starting conditions, but this ended up not being an example of why I have that policy.”
(Including detail, if you feel like offering it.)
Although, it occurs to me that if you’re holding to this heuristic in all cases, this also would’ve prevented you from reading a significant chunk of benquo’s comments (which also were quoting someone they disagreed with in a potentially-hostile manner) without first making sure you had my original post fresh in your mind.
I don’t think I have it nailed down quite precisely what triggers the TAP—in practice it’s actually more like a pattern-match with things I was seeing and thinking about when I established the TAP years ago, and descriptively speaking I think the trigger condition involves my information about a narrative having been filtered through a single author. I will say that, when I later made a serious effort to sort out what happened in detail (partly written up, not yet posted), it involved a lot of switching back and forth between tabs and little to no reliance on quotations.