There was a particular subset of LessWrong and Tumblr that objected rather … stridently … to even considering something like Dragon Army
Well, I feel called out :)
So, first off: Success should count for a lot and I have updated on how reliable and trust-worthy you are. Part of this is that you now have a reputation to me, whereas before you were just Anonymous Internet Dude.
I’m not going to be as loud about “being wrong” because success does not mean I was wrong about there *being* a risk, merely that you successfully navigated it. I do think drawing attentions to certain risks was more important than being polite. I think you and I disagree about that, and it makes sense—my audience was “people who might join this project”, not you.
That said, I do think that if I had more spoons to spend, I could have communicated better AND more politely. I wish I had possessed the spoons to do your idea more justice, because it was a cool and ambitious idea that pushes the community forward.
I still think it’s important to temper that ambition with more concern for safety than you’re showing. I think dismissing the risks of abuse / the risks to emotional health as “chicken little” is a dangerous norm. I think it encourages dangerous experiments that can harm both the participants, and the community. I think having a norm of dangerous experiments expects far too much from the rationality of this community.
I think a norm of dismissing *assholes* and *rudeness*, on the other hand, is healthy. I think with a little effort, you could easily shift your tone from “dismissing safety concerns” to “holding people to a higher standard of etiquette.” I personally prefer a very blunt environment which puts little stock in manners—I have a geek tact filter (http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/tact.html), but I realize not everyone thrives in that environment.
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I myself was wrong to engage with them as if their beliefs had cruxes that would respond to things like argument and evidence.
I suspect I failed heavily at making this clear in the past, but my main objection was your lack of evidence. You said you’d seen the skulls, but you weren’t providing *evidence*. Maybe you saw some of the skulls I saw, maybe you saw all of them, but I simply did not have the data to tell. That feels like an *important* observation, especially in a community all about evidence and rational decisions.
I may well be wrong about this, but I feel like you were asking commenters to put weight in your reputation. You did not seem happy to be held to the standard of Anonymous Internet Dude and expected to *show your work* regarding safety. I think it is, again, an *important* community standard that we hold people accountable to *demonstrate* safety instead of just asking us to assume it, especially when it’s a high-visibility experiment that is actively using the community as a recruiting tool.
(I could say a lot more about this, but we start to wander back in to “I do not have the spoons to do this justice”. If I ever find the spoons, expect a top-level post about the topic, though—I feel like Dragon Army should have sparked a discussion on community norms and whether we want to be a community that focuses on meeting Duncan or Lixue’s needs. I think the two of us are genuinely looking for different things from this community, and the community would be better for drawing establishing a common knowledge instead of the muddled mess that the draft thread turned in to.)
(I’m hesitant to add this last bit, but I think it’s important: I think you’re assuming a norm that does not *yet* exist in this community. I think there’s some good discussion to be had about conversational norms here. I very stridently disagree that petty parenthetical namecalling and insults is the way to do it, though. I think you have some strong points to make, and you undermine them with this behavior. Were it a more-established social norm here, I’d feel differently, but I don’t feel like I violated the *existing* norms of the community with my responses)
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As an aside: I really like the concepts you discussed in this post—Stag Hunts, the various archetypal roles, ways to do this better. It seems like the experiment was a solid success in gathering information. The archetypes strike me as a really useful interpersonal concept, and I appreciate you taking the time to share them, and to write this retrospective.
Well, I feel called out :)
So, first off: Success should count for a lot and I have updated on how reliable and trust-worthy you are. Part of this is that you now have a reputation to me, whereas before you were just Anonymous Internet Dude.
I’m not going to be as loud about “being wrong” because success does not mean I was wrong about there *being* a risk, merely that you successfully navigated it. I do think drawing attentions to certain risks was more important than being polite. I think you and I disagree about that, and it makes sense—my audience was “people who might join this project”, not you.
That said, I do think that if I had more spoons to spend, I could have communicated better AND more politely. I wish I had possessed the spoons to do your idea more justice, because it was a cool and ambitious idea that pushes the community forward.
I still think it’s important to temper that ambition with more concern for safety than you’re showing. I think dismissing the risks of abuse / the risks to emotional health as “chicken little” is a dangerous norm. I think it encourages dangerous experiments that can harm both the participants, and the community. I think having a norm of dangerous experiments expects far too much from the rationality of this community.
I think a norm of dismissing *assholes* and *rudeness*, on the other hand, is healthy. I think with a little effort, you could easily shift your tone from “dismissing safety concerns” to “holding people to a higher standard of etiquette.” I personally prefer a very blunt environment which puts little stock in manners—I have a geek tact filter (http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/tact.html), but I realize not everyone thrives in that environment.
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I suspect I failed heavily at making this clear in the past, but my main objection was your lack of evidence. You said you’d seen the skulls, but you weren’t providing *evidence*. Maybe you saw some of the skulls I saw, maybe you saw all of them, but I simply did not have the data to tell. That feels like an *important* observation, especially in a community all about evidence and rational decisions.
I may well be wrong about this, but I feel like you were asking commenters to put weight in your reputation. You did not seem happy to be held to the standard of Anonymous Internet Dude and expected to *show your work* regarding safety. I think it is, again, an *important* community standard that we hold people accountable to *demonstrate* safety instead of just asking us to assume it, especially when it’s a high-visibility experiment that is actively using the community as a recruiting tool.
(I could say a lot more about this, but we start to wander back in to “I do not have the spoons to do this justice”. If I ever find the spoons, expect a top-level post about the topic, though—I feel like Dragon Army should have sparked a discussion on community norms and whether we want to be a community that focuses on meeting Duncan or Lixue’s needs. I think the two of us are genuinely looking for different things from this community, and the community would be better for drawing establishing a common knowledge instead of the muddled mess that the draft thread turned in to.)
(I’m hesitant to add this last bit, but I think it’s important: I think you’re assuming a norm that does not *yet* exist in this community. I think there’s some good discussion to be had about conversational norms here. I very stridently disagree that petty parenthetical namecalling and insults is the way to do it, though. I think you have some strong points to make, and you undermine them with this behavior. Were it a more-established social norm here, I’d feel differently, but I don’t feel like I violated the *existing* norms of the community with my responses)
---
As an aside: I really like the concepts you discussed in this post—Stag Hunts, the various archetypal roles, ways to do this better. It seems like the experiment was a solid success in gathering information. The archetypes strike me as a really useful interpersonal concept, and I appreciate you taking the time to share them, and to write this retrospective.