I find the general response to the threat of a libel suit to be deeply concerning. It is true that libel suits, and lawsuits generally, are expensive, time consuming, and generally unpleasant for everyone involved, including the victors. That is why I think NL ultimately made the right decision not to sue. That said, I also think that it is important not to use social pressure to discourage lawsuits. And I think we can all see this when we look at other communities from an outside perspective. When a community mistreats its members badly enough, it is important that the law be there as an escape hatch, and attempting to interfere with that by creating norms against lawsuits is therefor likely to be very harmful. The Amish famously will never seek recourse in the secular legal system, no matter how bad the wrong or what the circumstances are. Does anyone here admire this aspect of the Amish culture? Cults also famously use all kinds of pressure tactics to prevent members from seeking out the law. This is bad. We should not be like this. So when I see the way Habryka for example talks about the threat of a libel suit in this case, or Gwern, or a number of others, that sets off alarm bells for me. I don’t think Habryka is a cult leader right now, but I do think he is veering uncomfortably in that direction and I hope he changes course.
I disagree with this but I found this a novel and compelling perspective. I agree that discouraging people from using legal tools to defend themselves can pretty strongly push towards insularity and creates opportunities for greater forms of exploitation, which is something I am quite concerned about these days.
I do think at least for me, libel suits are a very uniquely bad aspect of the law (especially in countries like the UK where the standards for libel are much lower), and their effects also seem particularly in-conflict with what I see as the central mission and values of the rationality and EA communities. I do think you make a decent case for a broad general norm here, and I would be interested in exploring it more.
The Amish famously will never seek recourse in the secular legal system, no matter how bad the wrong or what the circumstances are. Does anyone here admire this aspect of the Amish culture?
I do think that this is admirable.
Cults also famously use all kinds of pressure tactics to prevent members from seeking out the law. This is bad.
I agree that this is bad.
But there’s a critical point here: whether the pressure to eschew lawsuits and similar legal-system tactics boils down to “if you do this, we don’t consider you a member of this community anymore”, or whether instead it’s something more severe. In the case of cults, it does tend to be much worse than that! (Even if it’s just the threat of expulsion combined with various psychological pressure tactics to convince the member that expulsion is intolerably horrible.)
I think that it’s almost always impossible for one member of a community to involve the law in a dispute with another community member and for them both to remain in the community thereafter. Sometimes this is perfectly fine and is the normative outcome—for example, suppose that Dave physically assaults Ellen while they’re playing D&D at their local gaming club, and Ellen calls the police, and presses charges against Dave. Is Dave going to continue as a member of the gaming club? No way. And nor should he! But, conversely, if Dave is minding his own business, and Ellen calls the police on him because she finds him vaguely alarming for unclear reasons (perhaps bigotry of some sort), and Dave ends up being hassled (or worse) by the cops even though he did nothing wrong—well, then it’s Ellen who can expect to be disinvited from the club’s meetings thenceforth. Either way, you generally don’t involve the law in your community disputes and then expect all parties involved to remain community members in good standing. It’s simply an unrealistic expectation.
After Ben’s post, 38% of responses to Nathan’s poll disagreed that there should be a way for Nonlinear to continue doing charity work with the support of the community, while 22% agreed. It’s unclear to me that a six-month campaign to gather negative information and then warn people about a group in your community is any less divisive in that regard than a lawsuit.
I think you are using an inapplicable definition of “community”. Your example of a D&D group calls to mind a “community” in the sense of “a group of single digit number of people who are in the same room socially interacting on a recurring basis.” In this sense of the word, neither EA nor rationality is a community. I agree that we should not expect Ben/Alice/Chloe to be in the same community with Kat/Emerson, for this narrow sense of community. And my assumption is that they weren’t on the day before Ben made his post. And that is fine.
There is a broader sense of the word “community”, which we might define as “an extended social network with shared identity and values”, which does apply to EA and rationality. I don’t see a reason why two people in a legal dispute shouldn’t be able to remain in this sort of community.
There is a broader sense of the word “community”, which we might define as “an extended social network with shared identity and values”, which does apply to EA and rationality. I don’t see a reason why two people in a legal dispute shouldn’t be able to remain in this sort of community.
You are right that there are different sorts and scales of “communities”. (It seems clear to me that these exist on a continuum from the gaming group to “all of rationality and/or EA”, rather than a strict binary, but that does not materially alter your point.)
But the degree to which a “community” can be productive and efficient (in whatever sense is applicable to the community’s purpose) is highly correlated with the degree to which it more resembles the former sort of community than the latter (i.e., its position, on some relevant dimensions, along this continuum). A shared (and adhered-to) understanding that one does not employ libel suits to settle within-community grudges constitutes a position along one (and a very important one) of those dimensions.
Going from having that understanding, to not having it, is a huge break. It substantially degrades the community’s ability to accomplish anything useful. If such a thing truly becomes necessary (and it certainly might), it means that something has gone catastrophically wrong with the community. (One can then discuss which party or parties are to blame for this breakdown—but that a breakdown has occurred, with disastrous consequences for the community’s effectiveness at its purpose, is in that case inarguable.)
I agree that these different sorts of communities exist along a continuum. What startles me is that you seem to think that the intimacy of the something of the smaller community can and should be scaled to the larger sort of community. To my mind, it is inherently a property of the small size. Trying to scale it sets of loud alarm bells. I’m not sure to what extent I endorse this, but possibly one way of summarizing the problems of overly controlling organizations like cults is that they try to take the intimacy or something of a small community and scale it.
I also strongly disagree with your presumption that we are talking about “Going from having [the understanding that we do not use libel suits within the community], to not having it”. I have never understood the rationalist community to have such a norm. From where I am sitting, Habryka is trying to create such a norm out of nothing, and I am not ok with that.
As I believe I have said already, I agree that libel suits, and law suits generally, can be damaging, and I certainly do not encourage anyone to use them. I’m just pointing out that having a norm against using lawsuits can be even more damaging.
What startles me is that you seem to think that the intimacy of the something of the smaller community can and should be scaled to the larger sort of community. To my mind, it is inherently a property of the small size. Trying to scale it sets of loud alarm bells.
Indeed, as you scale a community, the costs of adhering to a norm like this proportionally increase. (The rate of this increase, and the final amount of it, of course depend on various aspect of the community.) The benefits, however, do not proportionally decrease. Certainly there are points in community-space where the costs outweigh the benefits. (For example, when the community is as large, and as diverse in ideology and temperament and other things, as a country…) Those points tend to occur with greater likelihood in the region toward the higher end of the scale dimensions. This is all true.
It does not follow from any of the above, however, that this community cannot adhere to such a norm, or hasn’t adhered to it, or shouldn’t adhere to it, etc.
I also strongly disagree with your presumption that we are talking about “Going from having [the understanding that we do not use libel suits within the community], to not having it”. I have never understood the rationalist community to have such a norm. From where I am sitting, Habryka is trying to create such a norm out of nothing, and I am not ok with that.
I think that Gwern said it well:
This is an civil-society-wide norm, not a LW-only thing: arguments get arguments, not lawsuits.
And empirically, we can observe that Less Wrong and the greater “rationalist” community has always operated in accordance with such a norm.
Can you articulate what exactly the property of small communities is that we are talking about, and what its benefits are? I still am not forming a coherent picture of what the heck you are talking about because, again, the thing I was trying to point to in making this distinction I think is inherently a property of small groups.
Are you seriously now claiming that all of society has a norm against lawsuits? I think that is just obviously wrong, particularly for the US. And the misappropriation of the more traditional “arguments get arguments, not bullets” is just astoundingly oblivious. Lawsuits are a kind of argument! They are an example of the thing we are supposed to do instead of bullets!
No, I cannot empirically observe that the rationalist community has operated by such a norm. I can empirically observe that I know of no instance where one rationalist has actually filed a libel suit against another, but this is much more likely to be due to either (1) my ignorance of such a suit, or (2) the low rate of actually filing libel lawsuits in society at large combined with the small size of the rationalist community. I know of no instance of a rationalist going to space either, but I’m pretty sure we don’t have a norm against it. I’d never heard anyone speak of such a norm until the NL drama. That is significant evidence that there is no such norm.
Can you articulate what exactly the property of small communities is that we are talking about, and what its benefits are? I still am not forming a coherent picture of what the heck you are talking about because, again, the thing I was trying to point to in making this distinction I think is inherently a property of small groups.
I am talking about the community norm of not using lawsuits to settle arguments (and, more generally, disputes that are… just about words, let’s say). It’s not exclusively a property of small communities—that’s my point.
As for what the benefits of this norm are—wow, that rather broadens the scope of the discussion! I’d rather not have this comment thread spiral out of all reason or proportion…
Are you seriously now claiming that all of society has a norm against lawsuits?
Obviously not.
And the misappropriation of the more traditional “arguments get arguments, not bullets” is just astoundingly oblivious. Lawsuits are a kind of argument! They are an example of the thing we are supposed to do instead of bullets!
No, I cannot empirically observe that the rationalist community has operated by such a norm. … I’d never heard anyone speak of such a norm until the NL drama. That is significant evidence that there is no such norm.
Please attend carefully to exactly what I wrote:
And empirically, we can observe that Less Wrong and the greater “rationalist” community has always operated in accordance with such a norm.
I chose my words quite deliberately. I did not claim that we have always had this norm. (That may be true, but it is not what I am claiming there.) I claimed that we have operated in accordance with such a norm. That might’ve been just coincidence! But the fact that we’ve not deviated from the behavior the norm would mandate, is evidence of the norm’s effective existence.
I am talking about the community norm of not using lawsuits to settle arguments (and, more generally, disputes that are… just about words, let’s say). It’s not exclusively a property of small communities—that’s my point.
Then you misunderstood what I was trying to point at when I brought up the distinction about the scale of a community. I was trying to point at the fact that when lawsuits occur, there is likely already too much negative feeling between the parties for them to enjoy direct interactions even in a small group context, and if there isn’t already, the lawsuit causes it. I was pointing to a fact about human psychology, which on a pragmatic level we need to arrange our social structures to deal with. I was not pointing to a norm about using libel lawsuits.
At this point, you’ve failed to engage with my point that having a norm against lawsuits is harmful, even though lawsuits themselves are also harmful. I’m guessing your case for having such a norm is that lawsuits are harmful, which is not something I dispute. Is there any more to say?
But the fact that we’ve not deviated from the behavior the norm would mandate, is evidence of the norm’s effective existence.
Negligible evidence, especially in comparison to the lack of any past discussion of such a norm. Your argument here is so bad, and your choice of language so ambiguous, that I have to question whether you are even arguing in good faith.
My guess is River was asking because it gives some context on where you encountered different community norms (though my sense is that in your case your model of the community is not very dependent on your physical location, though there are many others for which it would be).
Then you misunderstood what I was trying to point at when I brought up the distinction about the scale of a community. I was trying to point at the fact that when lawsuits occur, there is likely already too much negative feeling between the parties for them to enjoy direct interactions even in a small group context, and if there isn’t already, the lawsuit causes it.
I understood your point perfectly well. But your very argument, right here, contains its own refutation, on two points:
Firstly, you say
when lawsuits occur, there is likely already too much negative feeling between the parties for them to enjoy direct interactions even in a small group context
(italics added)
But “even” is precisely the wrong word to use here. Indeed, in a small group context, if feelings are soured enough to even contemplate a hypothetical lawsuit, then no direct interaction is possible—and in a small group context, it’s direct interaction or bust. But in a larger group this doesn’t apply. One does not need that sort of “intimacy” to interact productively, neither before nor after the dispute.
Then, you say:
if there isn’t already, the lawsuit causes it
Yes! Exactly! The lawsuit causes it! Which is a good reason not to employ lawsuits!
At this point, you’ve failed to engage with my point that having a norm against lawsuits is harmful
Why do you say that I’ve failed to engage? I responded to that point, in this earlier comment.
I’m guessing your case for having such a norm is that lawsuits are harmful, which is not something I dispute. Is there any more to say?
Presumably, the “more to say” is some hypothetical argument that having a norm against lawsuits is so harmful that it outweighs any benefits of such a norm. Do you have such an argument?
Negligible evidence, especially in comparison to the lack of any past discussion of such a norm. Your argument here is so bad, and your choice of language so ambiguous, that I have to question whether you are even arguing in good faith.
Let’s set aside for the moment the question of whether my argument is bad. But what do you mean by saying that my choice of language was ambiguous? I think I’ve been as clear as is reasonable to expect, in a discussion like this. Are there some claims or statements I’ve made that you would like me to clarify? I’ll be happy to do so, if I can.
That’s it. You continue to refuse to engage with the argument that a norm against lawsuits is harmful. You presume that such a norm exists, to try to illegitimately shift the burden to me to show that it does not. Now you presume that lawsuits are more harmful than a norm against lawsuits, to again try to illegitimately shift the burden to me to show the reverse. Even if your position were sound, your argumentative tactics are dirty, and I will not continue to engage with them.
Your conclusion doesn’t follow. A community is fully in its rights to use social pressure to discourage things it disagrees with (like libel suits), and others are fully in their rights to do those discouraged things anyway if they’re willing to bear the social costs.
Cults also famously use all kinds of pressure tactics to prevent members from seeking out the law. This is bad. We should not be like this.
This is fallacious reasoning. It equivocates social discouragement with the far more extreme pressure tactics of cults. It also equivocates “discouraging libel suits” with “prevent from seeking out the law”. And it implies that only cults do this kind of discouragement.
Separately, comparing Habryka to a cult-leader is a remarkable and remarkably unfounded non-sequitur.
What is up with the voting patterns on this post?_? My comment sits at 0 karma (3 votes) and −17 agreement karma (5 votes), and yet no-one bothered to reply or react to any part of it?
A lot of people have strong, competing opinions about this topic. The votes on my own comments have been all over the place, often careening wildly from one hour to the next.
When a community mistreats its members badly enough, it is important that the law be there as an escape hatch
I agree. But actually using the law is equal to making a statement that the community is too dysfunctional to solve the problem internally. (If that is true, it is a correct statement to make. If that is false, it is an incorrect statement to make.) There should be an option to escalate and people should not escalate needlessly.
As I see it, there are basically three things that can happen now:
Option 1 -- a few weeks later Ben (or someone else) will write an equally convincing response, which again will make most people update dramatically.
Option 2 -- Ben will write a public apology, admitting that he was wrong about most or all things. Then we will collectively brainstorm about how to make it up for Nonlinear and all individuals named, and how to make sure this never happens again.
Option 3 -- silence. This would be the most disappointing option, and because it doesn’t have a clear trigger, I guess unless by the end of January I get some information like “a thorough rebuttal is being written and it’s at least 40% done, some people have seen the working version and they think it is solid”, I will assume that this is what actually happened. In such case, either some high-profile person (Habryka?) will write the public apology on community’s behalf, and we continue like in Option 2… or I will conclude that we indeed are a dysfunctional community and I will be really sad about it. Also, in this case, I would approve of the lawsuit.
It’s the fact that these options realistically exist that makes it different from the cult analogy in my opinion. And if you decide to escalate before these options are exhausted, that’s kinda like jurisdiction shopping. You can be treated as a part of the community, or you can be treated as a faceless corporation, but you can’t just choose whatever is more convenient for you at the moment. (And yeah, maybe the community sucks and it’s not worth being its part.)
I find the general response to the threat of a libel suit to be deeply concerning. It is true that libel suits, and lawsuits generally, are expensive, time consuming, and generally unpleasant for everyone involved, including the victors. That is why I think NL ultimately made the right decision not to sue. That said, I also think that it is important not to use social pressure to discourage lawsuits. And I think we can all see this when we look at other communities from an outside perspective. When a community mistreats its members badly enough, it is important that the law be there as an escape hatch, and attempting to interfere with that by creating norms against lawsuits is therefor likely to be very harmful. The Amish famously will never seek recourse in the secular legal system, no matter how bad the wrong or what the circumstances are. Does anyone here admire this aspect of the Amish culture? Cults also famously use all kinds of pressure tactics to prevent members from seeking out the law. This is bad. We should not be like this. So when I see the way Habryka for example talks about the threat of a libel suit in this case, or Gwern, or a number of others, that sets off alarm bells for me. I don’t think Habryka is a cult leader right now, but I do think he is veering uncomfortably in that direction and I hope he changes course.
I disagree with this but I found this a novel and compelling perspective. I agree that discouraging people from using legal tools to defend themselves can pretty strongly push towards insularity and creates opportunities for greater forms of exploitation, which is something I am quite concerned about these days.
I do think at least for me, libel suits are a very uniquely bad aspect of the law (especially in countries like the UK where the standards for libel are much lower), and their effects also seem particularly in-conflict with what I see as the central mission and values of the rationality and EA communities. I do think you make a decent case for a broad general norm here, and I would be interested in exploring it more.
I do think that this is admirable.
I agree that this is bad.
But there’s a critical point here: whether the pressure to eschew lawsuits and similar legal-system tactics boils down to “if you do this, we don’t consider you a member of this community anymore”, or whether instead it’s something more severe. In the case of cults, it does tend to be much worse than that! (Even if it’s just the threat of expulsion combined with various psychological pressure tactics to convince the member that expulsion is intolerably horrible.)
I think that it’s almost always impossible for one member of a community to involve the law in a dispute with another community member and for them both to remain in the community thereafter. Sometimes this is perfectly fine and is the normative outcome—for example, suppose that Dave physically assaults Ellen while they’re playing D&D at their local gaming club, and Ellen calls the police, and presses charges against Dave. Is Dave going to continue as a member of the gaming club? No way. And nor should he! But, conversely, if Dave is minding his own business, and Ellen calls the police on him because she finds him vaguely alarming for unclear reasons (perhaps bigotry of some sort), and Dave ends up being hassled (or worse) by the cops even though he did nothing wrong—well, then it’s Ellen who can expect to be disinvited from the club’s meetings thenceforth. Either way, you generally don’t involve the law in your community disputes and then expect all parties involved to remain community members in good standing. It’s simply an unrealistic expectation.
After Ben’s post, 38% of responses to Nathan’s poll disagreed that there should be a way for Nonlinear to continue doing charity work with the support of the community, while 22% agreed. It’s unclear to me that a six-month campaign to gather negative information and then warn people about a group in your community is any less divisive in that regard than a lawsuit.
I think you are using an inapplicable definition of “community”. Your example of a D&D group calls to mind a “community” in the sense of “a group of single digit number of people who are in the same room socially interacting on a recurring basis.” In this sense of the word, neither EA nor rationality is a community. I agree that we should not expect Ben/Alice/Chloe to be in the same community with Kat/Emerson, for this narrow sense of community. And my assumption is that they weren’t on the day before Ben made his post. And that is fine.
There is a broader sense of the word “community”, which we might define as “an extended social network with shared identity and values”, which does apply to EA and rationality. I don’t see a reason why two people in a legal dispute shouldn’t be able to remain in this sort of community.
You are right that there are different sorts and scales of “communities”. (It seems clear to me that these exist on a continuum from the gaming group to “all of rationality and/or EA”, rather than a strict binary, but that does not materially alter your point.)
But the degree to which a “community” can be productive and efficient (in whatever sense is applicable to the community’s purpose) is highly correlated with the degree to which it more resembles the former sort of community than the latter (i.e., its position, on some relevant dimensions, along this continuum). A shared (and adhered-to) understanding that one does not employ libel suits to settle within-community grudges constitutes a position along one (and a very important one) of those dimensions.
Going from having that understanding, to not having it, is a huge break. It substantially degrades the community’s ability to accomplish anything useful. If such a thing truly becomes necessary (and it certainly might), it means that something has gone catastrophically wrong with the community. (One can then discuss which party or parties are to blame for this breakdown—but that a breakdown has occurred, with disastrous consequences for the community’s effectiveness at its purpose, is in that case inarguable.)
I agree that these different sorts of communities exist along a continuum. What startles me is that you seem to think that the intimacy of the something of the smaller community can and should be scaled to the larger sort of community. To my mind, it is inherently a property of the small size. Trying to scale it sets of loud alarm bells. I’m not sure to what extent I endorse this, but possibly one way of summarizing the problems of overly controlling organizations like cults is that they try to take the intimacy or something of a small community and scale it.
I also strongly disagree with your presumption that we are talking about “Going from having [the understanding that we do not use libel suits within the community], to not having it”. I have never understood the rationalist community to have such a norm. From where I am sitting, Habryka is trying to create such a norm out of nothing, and I am not ok with that.
As I believe I have said already, I agree that libel suits, and law suits generally, can be damaging, and I certainly do not encourage anyone to use them. I’m just pointing out that having a norm against using lawsuits can be even more damaging.
Indeed, as you scale a community, the costs of adhering to a norm like this proportionally increase. (The rate of this increase, and the final amount of it, of course depend on various aspect of the community.) The benefits, however, do not proportionally decrease. Certainly there are points in community-space where the costs outweigh the benefits. (For example, when the community is as large, and as diverse in ideology and temperament and other things, as a country…) Those points tend to occur with greater likelihood in the region toward the higher end of the scale dimensions. This is all true.
It does not follow from any of the above, however, that this community cannot adhere to such a norm, or hasn’t adhered to it, or shouldn’t adhere to it, etc.
I think that Gwern said it well:
And empirically, we can observe that Less Wrong and the greater “rationalist” community has always operated in accordance with such a norm.
Can you articulate what exactly the property of small communities is that we are talking about, and what its benefits are? I still am not forming a coherent picture of what the heck you are talking about because, again, the thing I was trying to point to in making this distinction I think is inherently a property of small groups.
Are you seriously now claiming that all of society has a norm against lawsuits? I think that is just obviously wrong, particularly for the US. And the misappropriation of the more traditional “arguments get arguments, not bullets” is just astoundingly oblivious. Lawsuits are a kind of argument! They are an example of the thing we are supposed to do instead of bullets!
No, I cannot empirically observe that the rationalist community has operated by such a norm. I can empirically observe that I know of no instance where one rationalist has actually filed a libel suit against another, but this is much more likely to be due to either (1) my ignorance of such a suit, or (2) the low rate of actually filing libel lawsuits in society at large combined with the small size of the rationalist community. I know of no instance of a rationalist going to space either, but I’m pretty sure we don’t have a norm against it. I’d never heard anyone speak of such a norm until the NL drama. That is significant evidence that there is no such norm.
May I ask which city you live in?
I am talking about the community norm of not using lawsuits to settle arguments (and, more generally, disputes that are… just about words, let’s say). It’s not exclusively a property of small communities—that’s my point.
As for what the benefits of this norm are—wow, that rather broadens the scope of the discussion! I’d rather not have this comment thread spiral out of all reason or proportion…
Obviously not.
Gwern has already addressed this.
Please attend carefully to exactly what I wrote:
I chose my words quite deliberately. I did not claim that we have always had this norm. (That may be true, but it is not what I am claiming there.) I claimed that we have operated in accordance with such a norm. That might’ve been just coincidence! But the fact that we’ve not deviated from the behavior the norm would mandate, is evidence of the norm’s effective existence.
I live in New York City. Why do you ask this?
Then you misunderstood what I was trying to point at when I brought up the distinction about the scale of a community. I was trying to point at the fact that when lawsuits occur, there is likely already too much negative feeling between the parties for them to enjoy direct interactions even in a small group context, and if there isn’t already, the lawsuit causes it. I was pointing to a fact about human psychology, which on a pragmatic level we need to arrange our social structures to deal with. I was not pointing to a norm about using libel lawsuits.
At this point, you’ve failed to engage with my point that having a norm against lawsuits is harmful, even though lawsuits themselves are also harmful. I’m guessing your case for having such a norm is that lawsuits are harmful, which is not something I dispute. Is there any more to say?
Negligible evidence, especially in comparison to the lack of any past discussion of such a norm. Your argument here is so bad, and your choice of language so ambiguous, that I have to question whether you are even arguing in good faith.
By the way, you haven’t answered:
What was the purpose of the question about my city of residence? What hinges on this?
My guess is River was asking because it gives some context on where you encountered different community norms (though my sense is that in your case your model of the community is not very dependent on your physical location, though there are many others for which it would be).
Indeed.
I understood your point perfectly well. But your very argument, right here, contains its own refutation, on two points:
Firstly, you say
(italics added)
But “even” is precisely the wrong word to use here. Indeed, in a small group context, if feelings are soured enough to even contemplate a hypothetical lawsuit, then no direct interaction is possible—and in a small group context, it’s direct interaction or bust. But in a larger group this doesn’t apply. One does not need that sort of “intimacy” to interact productively, neither before nor after the dispute.
Then, you say:
Yes! Exactly! The lawsuit causes it! Which is a good reason not to employ lawsuits!
Why do you say that I’ve failed to engage? I responded to that point, in this earlier comment.
Presumably, the “more to say” is some hypothetical argument that having a norm against lawsuits is so harmful that it outweighs any benefits of such a norm. Do you have such an argument?
Let’s set aside for the moment the question of whether my argument is bad. But what do you mean by saying that my choice of language was ambiguous? I think I’ve been as clear as is reasonable to expect, in a discussion like this. Are there some claims or statements I’ve made that you would like me to clarify? I’ll be happy to do so, if I can.
That’s it. You continue to refuse to engage with the argument that a norm against lawsuits is harmful. You presume that such a norm exists, to try to illegitimately shift the burden to me to show that it does not. Now you presume that lawsuits are more harmful than a norm against lawsuits, to again try to illegitimately shift the burden to me to show the reverse. Even if your position were sound, your argumentative tactics are dirty, and I will not continue to engage with them.
Your conclusion doesn’t follow. A community is fully in its rights to use social pressure to discourage things it disagrees with (like libel suits), and others are fully in their rights to do those discouraged things anyway if they’re willing to bear the social costs.
This is fallacious reasoning. It equivocates social discouragement with the far more extreme pressure tactics of cults. It also equivocates “discouraging libel suits” with “prevent from seeking out the law”. And it implies that only cults do this kind of discouragement.
Separately, comparing Habryka to a cult-leader is a remarkable and remarkably unfounded non-sequitur.
What is up with the voting patterns on this post?_? My comment sits at 0 karma (3 votes) and −17 agreement karma (5 votes), and yet no-one bothered to reply or react to any part of it?
A lot of people have strong, competing opinions about this topic. The votes on my own comments have been all over the place, often careening wildly from one hour to the next.
I agree. But actually using the law is equal to making a statement that the community is too dysfunctional to solve the problem internally. (If that is true, it is a correct statement to make. If that is false, it is an incorrect statement to make.) There should be an option to escalate and people should not escalate needlessly.
As I see it, there are basically three things that can happen now:
Option 1 -- a few weeks later Ben (or someone else) will write an equally convincing response, which again will make most people update dramatically.
Option 2 -- Ben will write a public apology, admitting that he was wrong about most or all things. Then we will collectively brainstorm about how to make it up for Nonlinear and all individuals named, and how to make sure this never happens again.
Option 3 -- silence. This would be the most disappointing option, and because it doesn’t have a clear trigger, I guess unless by the end of January I get some information like “a thorough rebuttal is being written and it’s at least 40% done, some people have seen the working version and they think it is solid”, I will assume that this is what actually happened. In such case, either some high-profile person (Habryka?) will write the public apology on community’s behalf, and we continue like in Option 2… or I will conclude that we indeed are a dysfunctional community and I will be really sad about it. Also, in this case, I would approve of the lawsuit.
It’s the fact that these options realistically exist that makes it different from the cult analogy in my opinion. And if you decide to escalate before these options are exhausted, that’s kinda like jurisdiction shopping. You can be treated as a part of the community, or you can be treated as a faceless corporation, but you can’t just choose whatever is more convenient for you at the moment. (And yeah, maybe the community sucks and it’s not worth being its part.)