this description, as written, could equally be applied to any norm or set of norms, including such basic ones as making and keeping promises (!!).
What? No, it can’t be applied equally. The norm of “Keep your promises” serves the function of making it possible for people to plan around each other’s behavior. (When I say, “I’ll be there,” you can confidently predict that I’ll be there.) It’s a very general and powerful social technology.
The norm of “Take the Petrov Day game on our website very seriously” is a lot more arbitrary because it doesn’t serve that general function. If people had to proactively sign up for the game and sign a sworn statement saying that they promise not to press the button, then someone who subsequently pressed the button could be busted on the grounds of violating the more basic norm of breaking a promise that they proactively and voluntarily made—but that would be a different, and much less interesting, game. In the actual game, the mods unilaterally send out codes to users whom they predict will take the game seriously. If the mods guess wrong about that, many observers would say that’s “on them.”
attempt to convey ingroup membership while simultaneously signaling disdain and disappointment
I mean, to be fair, the ingroup is a massive disappointment that is genuinely worthy of disdain.
On a purely factual level: note that what I wrote was that the description as written could be applied equally to such things as “keeping promises”. Once more, the quoted description:
Then getting upset at other people when they don’t a take strange ritual as seriously as you do? As you’ve decided to, seemingly arbitrarily? When you’ve deliberately given them the means to upset you? It’s tantamount to emotional blackmail. It’s just obnoxious and strange behaviour.
This description indeed does nothing to distinguish between different norms like “keeping promises” or “taking the Petrov Day game seriously” (or, in fact, other, stupider norms such as “giving yourself electric shocks eight hours a day”). Every norm involves expecting people to choose to do something they are not [counterfactually] constrained to do, meaning every norm involves “giving someone else the means to upset you”. Every norm carries with it the expectation that people will comply with it without explicit enforcement, meaning every norm is a “ritual that needs to be taken seriously”. And every norm starts out being “seemingly arbitrary”, until and unless it is adopted more generally, at which point it becomes “the way things are”.
In other words, the OP’s description is a list of conditions that always returns true, regardless of input. And as an argument that does not produce differing outputs given different inputs provides no discriminatory power, such an argument should be highlighted as bad regardless of whether you happen to agree or disagree with its target in any particular case.
(This much you know, because this much you have argued yourself elsewhere. If we are to speak of “disappointment”, then I am indeed dismayed and disappointed that you in particular appear to be applying significantly less of a critical eye to comments with which you happen to share a premise, given what you’ve written in the past.)
Regarding the (separate and additional) argument that the Petrov Day game, and the norms surrounding it, are perhaps ill-thought-out: I don’t necessarily have a strong opinion on that argument. It is plausible to me that the mods did not properly communicate the level of seriousness they expected participants to attach to the game, the last time it was played; but conversely, if their initial communications caused participants to systematically underestimate the seriousness of the game, then it is also plausible to me their response to the outcome (the website getting taken down) was a reasonable way to correct that misestimation.
There are also separate arguments to be had about whether the game ought to be treated so seriously, about its potential reputational effects and whether they are worth it, etc. etc. I am open to hearing any of those arguments. What I am not open to is the suggestion that the OP’s initial description was anything but what it was: a list of conditions that apply equally to any norm, regardless of what it is, and hence an invalid line of argumentation.
This description indeed does nothing to distinguish between different norms like “keeping promises” or “taking the Petrov Day game seriously” (or, in fact, other, stupider norms such as “giving yourself electric shocks eight hours a day”)
Okay, I think I’m reading a lot more into Sullyj3′s use of the phrase “seemingly arbitrarily” than you are.
Very specific things like “taking the Petrov Day game seriously” or “giving yourself electric shocks eight hours a day” are the kind of cognitive content that we expect to come with attached justifications: depending on the game and the community, I could see either of “Take this game seriously; it’s a ritual” or “Don’t take this game seriously; it’s just a game” being the norm. On encountering a community with such a norm, I would expect to be able to ask why they do things that way and receive a non-circular answer other than an appeal to “the way things are” (here).
In contrast, the very concept of a “promise” seems to have an inherent asymmetry to it; I’m not sure what making a “promise” would mean in a world where the norm is “You shouldn’t keep promises.” (This feels like the enactive analogue of the asymmetry between truth and lies, where you need a convention grounding the “true” meaning of a signal in order to even contemplate sending the signal “falsely”.)
What? No, it can’t be applied equally. The norm of “Keep your promises” serves the function of making it possible for people to plan around each other’s behavior. (When I say, “I’ll be there,” you can confidently predict that I’ll be there.) It’s a very general and powerful social technology.
The norm of “Take the Petrov Day game on our website very seriously” is a lot more arbitrary because it doesn’t serve that general function. If people had to proactively sign up for the game and sign a sworn statement saying that they promise not to press the button, then someone who subsequently pressed the button could be busted on the grounds of violating the more basic norm of breaking a promise that they proactively and voluntarily made—but that would be a different, and much less interesting, game. In the actual game, the mods unilaterally send out codes to users whom they predict will take the game seriously. If the mods guess wrong about that, many observers would say that’s “on them.”
I mean, to be fair, the ingroup is a massive disappointment that is genuinely worthy of disdain.
On a purely factual level: note that what I wrote was that the description as written could be applied equally to such things as “keeping promises”. Once more, the quoted description:
This description indeed does nothing to distinguish between different norms like “keeping promises” or “taking the Petrov Day game seriously” (or, in fact, other, stupider norms such as “giving yourself electric shocks eight hours a day”). Every norm involves expecting people to choose to do something they are not [counterfactually] constrained to do, meaning every norm involves “giving someone else the means to upset you”. Every norm carries with it the expectation that people will comply with it without explicit enforcement, meaning every norm is a “ritual that needs to be taken seriously”. And every norm starts out being “seemingly arbitrary”, until and unless it is adopted more generally, at which point it becomes “the way things are”.
In other words, the OP’s description is a list of conditions that always returns
true, regardless of input. And as an argument that does not produce differing outputs given different inputs provides no discriminatory power, such an argument should be highlighted as bad regardless of whether you happen to agree or disagree with its target in any particular case.(This much you know, because this much you have argued yourself elsewhere. If we are to speak of “disappointment”, then I am indeed dismayed and disappointed that you in particular appear to be applying significantly less of a critical eye to comments with which you happen to share a premise, given what you’ve written in the past.)
Regarding the (separate and additional) argument that the Petrov Day game, and the norms surrounding it, are perhaps ill-thought-out: I don’t necessarily have a strong opinion on that argument. It is plausible to me that the mods did not properly communicate the level of seriousness they expected participants to attach to the game, the last time it was played; but conversely, if their initial communications caused participants to systematically underestimate the seriousness of the game, then it is also plausible to me their response to the outcome (the website getting taken down) was a reasonable way to correct that misestimation.
There are also separate arguments to be had about whether the game ought to be treated so seriously, about its potential reputational effects and whether they are worth it, etc. etc. I am open to hearing any of those arguments. What I am not open to is the suggestion that the OP’s initial description was anything but what it was: a list of conditions that apply equally to any norm, regardless of what it is, and hence an invalid line of argumentation.
Okay, I think I’m reading a lot more into Sullyj3′s use of the phrase “seemingly arbitrarily” than you are.
Very specific things like “taking the Petrov Day game seriously” or “giving yourself electric shocks eight hours a day” are the kind of cognitive content that we expect to come with attached justifications: depending on the game and the community, I could see either of “Take this game seriously; it’s a ritual” or “Don’t take this game seriously; it’s just a game” being the norm. On encountering a community with such a norm, I would expect to be able to ask why they do things that way and receive a non-circular answer other than an appeal to “the way things are” (here).
In contrast, the very concept of a “promise” seems to have an inherent asymmetry to it; I’m not sure what making a “promise” would mean in a world where the norm is “You shouldn’t keep promises.” (This feels like the enactive analogue of the asymmetry between truth and lies, where you need a convention grounding the “true” meaning of a signal in order to even contemplate sending the signal “falsely”.)