What you’re doing here is conflating contempt based on group membership with contempt based on specific behaviors. Sneer-clubbers will sneer at anyone they identify as a Rationalist simply for being a Rationalist. Said Achmiz, in contrast, expresses some amount of contempt for people who do fairly specific and circumscribed things like write posts that are vague or self-contradictory or that promote religion or woo. 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. But possible norms like that were never seriously considered because, in my opinion, LW’s issue is not not the “LinkedIn attractor” but the “luminary attractor”. I think certain authors here see how Eliezer Yudkowsky is treated by his fans and want some of that sweet acclamation for themselves, but without legitimately earning it. They want to make a show of encouraging criticism, but only in a kayfabe, neutered form that allows them to smoothly answer in a way that only reinforces their status. And Oliver Habryka and the other mods apparently approve of this behavior, or at least are unwilling to take any effective steps to curb it, which I find very disappointing.
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.
There are also multiple other threads (which I don’t have the time to dig up) in which Said made his position clear that indeed it is most important for him to provide feedback at the formative stages of an idea, for if he does not criticize it at close to the earliest possible time, the idea will have found enough social momentum to be incorrigible. This makes me in-general very skeptical that any such disclaimers would be successful. My best guess someone trawling through the archives would find someone who attempted this technique, and that this did little to ward of the usual results.
(I don’t super want to litigate this in much more detail, but I figured I would share these two datapoints that I could easily share that make me think your model of the dynamics here is off. I am not here claiming for either of these two that there is some kind of closed-and-shut case)
That’s fair enough, but it only demonstrates that he wasn’t willing to unilaterally and proactively do this, not that he wouldn’t have cooperated if you had imposed it on him. It’s baffling to me that you spent hundreds of hours on this issue without (apparently) even attempting to impose a compromise that would have brought out the best in both Said and his detractors.
That’s not true! Did you read the very first moderation conversation that we had with Said that is quoted in the OP?
After the comment above, we reached out to Said privately and Elizabeth had something like an hour long chat conversation with him asking him what we need to do to get him to change his behavior, to which his response was:
Buuuut what’s going on here is that—and this is imo unfortunate—the website you guys have built is such that posting or commenting on it provides me with a fairly low amount of value
This is something I really do find disappointing, but it is what it is (for now? things change, of course)
So again it’s not that I disagree with you about anything you’ve said
But the sort of care / attention / effort w.r.t. tone and wording and tact and so on, that you’re asking, raises the cost of participation for me above the benefit
(Another aspect of this is that if I have to NOT say what I actually think, even on e.g. the CFAR thing w.r.t. Double Crux, well, again, what then is the point)
(I can say things I don’t really believe anywhere)
[...]
If the takeaway here is that I have to learn things or change my behavior, well—I’m not averse in principle to doing that ever under any circumstances, but it has to be worth my while, if you see what I mean
Currently it is not
I hope to see that change, of course!
What do you suggest we do after such a response? The response seems to me pretty clearly show that he wasn’t/isn’t interested in compromising on these dimensions.
This is a response to asking him to be, in full generality, more tactful or “prosocial,” not to asking him to follow a clear bright-line rule. I’ll grant that Said may not be willing or able to be tactful enough in all situations, yet there seems to be rough consensus that his comments have a lot of value in other situations, so my suggestion would be to try to delineate those situations.
Random thought: maybe there could have been disproportional gains got by getting Said to involve more humor in his messaging and branding him the official Fool of Lesswrong.com?
It seems the community indeed gets service out of Said shooting down low quality communication, and limiting that form of communication socially to his specific role maybe would have insulated the wider social implications, so that most value would have been preserved each way, maybe?
My model of Said would have been offended by being asked to take on a Jester role as a condition of staying on LessWrong, but perhaps he would have been interested?
I do think the background culture that we’re in is one that doesn’t really have this role anymore, because comedians are sometimes major public figures whose opinions are treated with respect; people don’t dismiss what they say just because they’re frivolous.
Unfortunately I do not think there are clear bright-line rules that would fix these problems, as clear bright-line rules are close to non-existent in social situations like this (what is the clear and ambiguous bright line rule that would delineate a sufficient note at the top?). The closest that I found was to allow authors to moderate their own post, which we did implement and Said has been vehemently opposed to in ways I talk about in the OP.
Beyond that, I also don’t think your characterization that this was in response to a fully-general request to be more tactful or “prosocial” is accurate. The question Elizabeth asked just before most of the quote above is:[1]
But if you’re saying “it’s comment exactly as you are, or nothing”… I honestly don’t know what our decision is, I’d have to talk with the other mods
To which Said responded with most of the quoted section above. Like, yeah, Elizabeth didn’t propose a specific clear line rule, but this exchange to me does not leave the door open for suggesting such clear rules, or suggesting further compromises.
Of course you’re right that there are no perfectly clear bright-line rules that would completely fix these problems, the question is whether there is a clear enough rule that would ameliorate the problems. You would have substituted a judgment call on whether all of Said’s comments across the whole site were on net beneficial, with a much easier judgment call on whether a given note is sufficient or not. And whether Said’s comments were net beneficial was evidently such a close call that you dithered about this decision for literal years, which would seem to indicate that a relatively small nudge would have tipped his contributions to the positive side.
Also, if the door to Said changing his behavior was so completely closed, I’m really confused about what all those hundreds of hours were spent on.
which would seem to indicate that a relatively small nudge would have tipped his contributions to the positive side.
Just to be clear, this overall does not strike me as a close call. The situation seems to me more related to the section on “Crimes that are harder to catch should be more socially punished” plus some other dynamics. My epistemic state changed a lot over the years, but not in a way that would result in thin margins, but in a way where some important consideration, or some part of my model would shift, and this would switch things from “in expectation this is extremely costly” to “in expectation what Said is doing is quite important”.
Something being a difficult call to make does not generally mean that it also needed to be a close call.
Also, if the door to Said changing his behavior was so completely closed, I’m really confused about what all those hundreds of hours were spent on.
I mean, we tried anyways, but I do think it was overall a mistake and a reasonable thing to do at the time would have been to respond with “well, sorry, if you as a commenter are already pre-empting that you are not willing to change basically at all based on moderator feedback, then yeah, goodbye, farewell, goodluck, we really need more cooperation than that”. Elizabeth advocated for this IIRC, and I instead tried to make things work out. I think Elizabeth was ultimately right here.
I think the people who talk as though the contested issue here is Said’s disagreeableness combined with him having high standards are missing the point.
Said Achmiz, in contrast, expresses some amount of contempt for people who do fairly specific and circumscribed things like write posts that are vague or self-contradictory or that promote religion or woo.
If it was just that (and if by “posts that are vague” you mean “posts that are so vague that they are bad, or posts that are vague in ways that defeat the point of the post”), I’d be sympathetic to your take. However, my impression is that a lot more posts would trigger Said’s “questioning mode.” (Personally I’m hesitant to use the word “contempt,” but it’s fair to say it made engaging more difficult for authors and they did involve what I think of as “sneer tone” sometimes.)
The way I see it, there are posts that might be a bit vague in some ways but they’re still good and valuable. This could even be because the post was gesturing at a phenomeon with nuances where it would require a lot of writing (and disentanglement work) to make it completely concise and comprehensive, or it could be because an author wanted to share an idea what wasn’t 100% fleshed out but might have already been pointing at something valuable. I feel like Said not only has a personal distaste of that sort of “post that contains bits that aren’t pinned down,” but it also seemed like he wouldn’t get any closer to seeing the point of those posts or comments when it was explained in additional detail. (Or, in case he did eventually see the points, he’d rarely say thanks or acknowledged that he got it now). That’s pretty frustrating to deal with for authors and other commenters.
(Having said all that, I have not had any problems with Said’s commenting in the last two years—though I did find it strongly negative and off-putting before that point. And to end with something positive, I liked that Said was one of the few LessWrongers who steered back a bit against Zvi’s very one-sided takes on homeschooling—context here.)
I feel like Said not only has a personal distaste of that sort of “post that contains bits that aren’t pinned down,” but it also seemed like he wouldn’t get any closer to seeing the point of those posts or comments when it was explained in additional detail.
If a post starts off vague and exploratory, on a topic that isn’t very easy to think/write about, it would make sense that it usually couldn’t be clarified enough to meet Said’s standards within a few back-and-forth comments.
That’s pretty frustrating to deal with for authors and other commenters.
Yes, but I think that’s in part because of the nature of intellectual progress, and in part because there are so few people like Said who is incentivized (by his own personality) to push back hard and persistently on this kind of post (so people are not used to it). I think it’s also in part due to the tone that he typically employs, which he theoretically could change, but that seems connected with his personality in a way that we seemingly couldn’t get one without the other.
Sure, I don’t mean to imply that Said is beyond reproach, or that all his comments were necessarily good. Just that I think insofar as this post was an attempt to address the reasons Said-defenders felt he needed so much defending, it has failed.
What you’re doing here is conflating contempt based on group membership with contempt based on specific behaviors. Sneer-clubbers will sneer at anyone they identify as a Rationalist simply for being a Rationalist. Said Achmiz, in contrast, expresses some amount of contempt for people who do fairly specific and circumscribed things like write posts that are vague or self-contradictory or that promote religion or woo. 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. But possible norms like that were never seriously considered because, in my opinion, LW’s issue is not not the “LinkedIn attractor” but the “luminary attractor”. I think certain authors here see how Eliezer Yudkowsky is treated by his fans and want some of that sweet acclamation for themselves, but without legitimately earning it. They want to make a show of encouraging criticism, but only in a kayfabe, neutered form that allows them to smoothly answer in a way that only reinforces their status. And Oliver Habryka and the other mods apparently approve of this behavior, or at least are unwilling to take any effective steps to curb it, which I find very disappointing.
You say:
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:
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.
There are also multiple other threads (which I don’t have the time to dig up) in which Said made his position clear that indeed it is most important for him to provide feedback at the formative stages of an idea, for if he does not criticize it at close to the earliest possible time, the idea will have found enough social momentum to be incorrigible. This makes me in-general very skeptical that any such disclaimers would be successful. My best guess someone trawling through the archives would find someone who attempted this technique, and that this did little to ward of the usual results.
(I don’t super want to litigate this in much more detail, but I figured I would share these two datapoints that I could easily share that make me think your model of the dynamics here is off. I am not here claiming for either of these two that there is some kind of closed-and-shut case)
That’s fair enough, but it only demonstrates that he wasn’t willing to unilaterally and proactively do this, not that he wouldn’t have cooperated if you had imposed it on him. It’s baffling to me that you spent hundreds of hours on this issue without (apparently) even attempting to impose a compromise that would have brought out the best in both Said and his detractors.
That’s not true! Did you read the very first moderation conversation that we had with Said that is quoted in the OP?
After the comment above, we reached out to Said privately and Elizabeth had something like an hour long chat conversation with him asking him what we need to do to get him to change his behavior, to which his response was:
What do you suggest we do after such a response? The response seems to me pretty clearly show that he wasn’t/isn’t interested in compromising on these dimensions.
This is a response to asking him to be, in full generality, more tactful or “prosocial,” not to asking him to follow a clear bright-line rule. I’ll grant that Said may not be willing or able to be tactful enough in all situations, yet there seems to be rough consensus that his comments have a lot of value in other situations, so my suggestion would be to try to delineate those situations.
Random thought: maybe there could have been disproportional gains got by getting Said to involve more humor in his messaging and branding him the official Fool of Lesswrong.com?
It seems the community indeed gets service out of Said shooting down low quality communication, and limiting that form of communication socially to his specific role maybe would have insulated the wider social implications, so that most value would have been preserved each way, maybe?
My model of Said would have been offended by being asked to take on a Jester role as a condition of staying on LessWrong, but perhaps he would have been interested?
I do think the background culture that we’re in is one that doesn’t really have this role anymore, because comedians are sometimes major public figures whose opinions are treated with respect; people don’t dismiss what they say just because they’re frivolous.
I think it still sounds intriguing to try it out sometime. (With a different user who is funnier than Said.)
I volunteer as tributeUnfortunately I do not think there are clear bright-line rules that would fix these problems, as clear bright-line rules are close to non-existent in social situations like this (what is the clear and ambiguous bright line rule that would delineate a sufficient note at the top?). The closest that I found was to allow authors to moderate their own post, which we did implement and Said has been vehemently opposed to in ways I talk about in the OP.
Beyond that, I also don’t think your characterization that this was in response to a fully-general request to be more tactful or “prosocial” is accurate. The question Elizabeth asked just before most of the quote above is:[1]
To which Said responded with most of the quoted section above. Like, yeah, Elizabeth didn’t propose a specific clear line rule, but this exchange to me does not leave the door open for suggesting such clear rules, or suggesting further compromises.
If Said and Elizabeth both agree I could share the full transcript, but don’t want to do so unilaterally.
Of course you’re right that there are no perfectly clear bright-line rules that would completely fix these problems, the question is whether there is a clear enough rule that would ameliorate the problems. You would have substituted a judgment call on whether all of Said’s comments across the whole site were on net beneficial, with a much easier judgment call on whether a given note is sufficient or not. And whether Said’s comments were net beneficial was evidently such a close call that you dithered about this decision for literal years, which would seem to indicate that a relatively small nudge would have tipped his contributions to the positive side.
Also, if the door to Said changing his behavior was so completely closed, I’m really confused about what all those hundreds of hours were spent on.
Just to be clear, this overall does not strike me as a close call. The situation seems to me more related to the section on “Crimes that are harder to catch should be more socially punished” plus some other dynamics. My epistemic state changed a lot over the years, but not in a way that would result in thin margins, but in a way where some important consideration, or some part of my model would shift, and this would switch things from “in expectation this is extremely costly” to “in expectation what Said is doing is quite important”.
Something being a difficult call to make does not generally mean that it also needed to be a close call.
I mean, we tried anyways, but I do think it was overall a mistake and a reasonable thing to do at the time would have been to respond with “well, sorry, if you as a commenter are already pre-empting that you are not willing to change basically at all based on moderator feedback, then yeah, goodbye, farewell, goodluck, we really need more cooperation than that”. Elizabeth advocated for this IIRC, and I instead tried to make things work out. I think Elizabeth was ultimately right here.
I think the people who talk as though the contested issue here is Said’s disagreeableness combined with him having high standards are missing the point.
If it was just that (and if by “posts that are vague” you mean “posts that are so vague that they are bad, or posts that are vague in ways that defeat the point of the post”), I’d be sympathetic to your take. However, my impression is that a lot more posts would trigger Said’s “questioning mode.” (Personally I’m hesitant to use the word “contempt,” but it’s fair to say it made engaging more difficult for authors and they did involve what I think of as “sneer tone” sometimes.)
The way I see it, there are posts that might be a bit vague in some ways but they’re still good and valuable. This could even be because the post was gesturing at a phenomeon with nuances where it would require a lot of writing (and disentanglement work) to make it completely concise and comprehensive, or it could be because an author wanted to share an idea what wasn’t 100% fleshed out but might have already been pointing at something valuable. I feel like Said not only has a personal distaste of that sort of “post that contains bits that aren’t pinned down,” but it also seemed like he wouldn’t get any closer to seeing the point of those posts or comments when it was explained in additional detail. (Or, in case he did eventually see the points, he’d rarely say thanks or acknowledged that he got it now). That’s pretty frustrating to deal with for authors and other commenters.
(Having said all that, I have not had any problems with Said’s commenting in the last two years—though I did find it strongly negative and off-putting before that point. And to end with something positive, I liked that Said was one of the few LessWrongers who steered back a bit against Zvi’s very one-sided takes on homeschooling—context here.)
If a post starts off vague and exploratory, on a topic that isn’t very easy to think/write about, it would make sense that it usually couldn’t be clarified enough to meet Said’s standards within a few back-and-forth comments.
Yes, but I think that’s in part because of the nature of intellectual progress, and in part because there are so few people like Said who is incentivized (by his own personality) to push back hard and persistently on this kind of post (so people are not used to it). I think it’s also in part due to the tone that he typically employs, which he theoretically could change, but that seems connected with his personality in a way that we seemingly couldn’t get one without the other.
Sure, I don’t mean to imply that Said is beyond reproach, or that all his comments were necessarily good. Just that I think insofar as this post was an attempt to address the reasons Said-defenders felt he needed so much defending, it has failed.