Furthermore, if authors had been willing to put a disclaimer at the top of their posts along the lines of “This is just a hypothesis I’m considering. Please help me develop it further rather than criticizing it, because it’s not ready for serious scrutiny yet.” my impression is that Said would have been completely willing to cooperate.
Out of curiosity, I clicked on the first post that Said received a moderation warning for, which is this Ray’s post on ‘Musings on Double Crux (and “Productive Disagreement”)’. You might notice the very first line of that post:
Epistemic Status: Thinking out loud, not necessarily endorsed, more of a brainstorm and hopefully discussion-prompt.
It’s not the exact kind of disclaimer you proposed here (it importantly doesn’t say that readers shouldn’t criticize it) but it also clearly isn’t claiming some kind of authority or fully worked-out theory, and is very explicit about the draft status of it. This didn’t change anything about Said’s behavior as far as I can tell, resulting in a heavily-downvoted comment with a resulting moderator warning.
This is a thoroughly disingenuous response—so misleading as to be indistinguishable from a lie.
Consider the comment of mine to which Habryka refers. Here is its text in its entirety:
My take on “why isn’t Double Crux getting more uptake”:
This ‘Double Crux’ thing seems like a complicated technique/process/something, with:
benefits that are nothing close to manifestly clear from the description
no clear, public examples of anyone using it (much less, successfully)
no endorsements from anyone whose opinion I respect (like Scott Alexander or Eliezer—or perhaps Eliezer did endorse it? but then I guess I wouldn’t ever know about it; such is the downside of using Facebook…)
There does not seem to be any reason why I should pay attention it. That it’s not getting uptake seems to require little explanation; it’s the default outcome that I would expect.
(Also, it comes from CFAR, which is an anti-endorsement. This probably wouldn’t matter if all, or even any, of the above three things were different; but as is, for me, it’s the only thing influencing my inclination to really look deeply into the whole matter, and that influence is in the downward direction…)
Why did I write this comment? Because the post began by asking:
Double Crux has been making the rounds lately (mostly on Facebook but I hope for this to change). It seems like the technique has failed to take root as well as it should. What’s up with that?
In other words, the OP asked a question. And I answered it.
Note that:
I explicitly marked my answer to the OP as “my take”, said that Double Crux “seems like” a certain thing, that there “does not seem to be” a reason to pay attention to it, and that it not getting uptake is the default outcome “that I would expect”. Even my parenthetical about CFAR was explicitly and repeatedly noted to be my personal opinion.
There are all the disclaimers that people keep saying I should add! And yet, somehow, this turns out to make no difference at all, and still incurred a visit from the “Sunshine Regiment”.
My comment does not criticize the post at all. There is nothing in the comment that is at all critical of the post itself, or of its author (@Raemon) for writing it. On the contrary, I take the post at face value, and provide a good faith answer directly to the central question which the post asks.
In other words, this comment is the most cooperative possible engagement with the post, precisely as the post itself requests (“discussion-prompt”).
And yet, despite all that, it was heavily downvoted, and incurred a moderator warning.
I can conclude only that when the moderators talk about what behavior they would like to see, what is rewarded, and what is punished, they are simply lying.
Note, in particular, that @Elizabeth’s “Note from the Sunshine Regiment” (i.e., the moderator judgment on the linked comment) says:
sharing a negative opinion is not in and of itself anti-social.
But as several people have pointed out, this opinion was shared in a way that generated a lot of unnecessary friction. A simple “I think that...” or ”...for me” would have done a great deal to resolve this problem.
This despite the fact that the comment in question was in fact filled with precisely such disclaimers—which the mods simply ignored, writing the moderator judgment as though no such disclaimers were there at all!
The most charitable interpretation I can think of is that Elizabeth meant you should have added “I think that...” or ”...for me” specifically to the line “Also, it comes from CFAR, which is an anti-endorsement.”
But regardless, it seems crazy that your comment was downvoted to −17 (-16 now, someone just upvoted it by 1) and got a negative mod judgment for this.
Crazy indeed. And—as in several other of these example cases—I will note that the author of the post himself evidently had no problem with my comment, and had no difficulty writing a perfectly reasonable reply, which resulted in an entirely civil and productive discussion.
Which makes this yet another example of the pattern where, if the mods had simply left it alone, it would’ve been fine. (Even better would’ve been for them to write something like “yes of course it’s ok to write polite, clearly cooperative, mildly critical comments like this, don’t be silly”, but we can’t expect miracles…)
In response to a comment by @clone of saturn, @habryka writes:
This is a thoroughly disingenuous response—so misleading as to be indistinguishable from a lie.
Consider the comment of mine to which Habryka refers. Here is its text in its entirety:
Why did I write this comment? Because the post began by asking:
In other words, the OP asked a question. And I answered it.
Note that:
I explicitly marked my answer to the OP as “my take”, said that Double Crux “seems like” a certain thing, that there “does not seem to be” a reason to pay attention to it, and that it not getting uptake is the default outcome “that I would expect”. Even my parenthetical about CFAR was explicitly and repeatedly noted to be my personal opinion.
There are all the disclaimers that people keep saying I should add! And yet, somehow, this turns out to make no difference at all, and still incurred a visit from the “Sunshine Regiment”.
My comment does not criticize the post at all. There is nothing in the comment that is at all critical of the post itself, or of its author (@Raemon) for writing it. On the contrary, I take the post at face value, and provide a good faith answer directly to the central question which the post asks.
In other words, this comment is the most cooperative possible engagement with the post, precisely as the post itself requests (“discussion-prompt”).
And yet, despite all that, it was heavily downvoted, and incurred a moderator warning.
I can conclude only that when the moderators talk about what behavior they would like to see, what is rewarded, and what is punished, they are simply lying.
Note, in particular, that @Elizabeth’s “Note from the Sunshine Regiment” (i.e., the moderator judgment on the linked comment) says:
This despite the fact that the comment in question was in fact filled with precisely such disclaimers—which the mods simply ignored, writing the moderator judgment as though no such disclaimers were there at all!
The most charitable interpretation I can think of is that Elizabeth meant you should have added “I think that...” or ”...for me” specifically to the line “Also, it comes from CFAR, which is an anti-endorsement.”
But regardless, it seems crazy that your comment was downvoted to −17 (-16 now, someone just upvoted it by 1) and got a negative mod judgment for this.
Crazy indeed. And—as in several other of these example cases—I will note that the author of the post himself evidently had no problem with my comment, and had no difficulty writing a perfectly reasonable reply, which resulted in an entirely civil and productive discussion.
Which makes this yet another example of the pattern where, if the mods had simply left it alone, it would’ve been fine. (Even better would’ve been for them to write something like “yes of course it’s ok to write polite, clearly cooperative, mildly critical comments like this, don’t be silly”, but we can’t expect miracles…)