At some point we really do have to enforce community norms to prevent the level of discourse from deteriorating. Antisocial and obnoxious behavior are perfectly valid reasons to downvote a comment, I have a hard time believing you really think they aren’t, and I’m reasonably confident that most of LW is okay with the idea, judging by other comments I’ve seen receive downvotes (not to pick on him, but Annoyance has gotten some of this) for no obvious reason other than tone.
The issues are where to draw the lines, and how to handle it when the community is sharply divded on what constitutes “polite, respectful discussion”. Frankly, the main person I see drawing “us vs. them” lines here is you.
Antisocial and obnoxious behavior are perfectly valid reasons to downvote a comment, I have a hard time believing you really think they aren’t,
Well I think that if the comment is specifically aimed at being obnoxious, e.g.
“you are a loser and a piece of sh*t”
Then that should be killed.
and how to handle it when the community is sharply divded on what constitutes “polite, respectful discussion”.
But if a comment expresses a true proposition about the world, and the main purpose of the comment is to express that comment, e.g. “blacks are dumber than whites, look at all this data I have, and this list of biases about western culture which shows that we are massively prone to ignore the data” (disclaimer: I do not advocate that position), but as a side effect happens to offend someone, then it should not get deleted.
At least this seems to be to me the algorithm which will empirically lead to truest community beliefs.
Most of the juiciest truths will offend someone, and if we allow the truth to be suppressed because it “causes offence”, we will end up with false beliefs.
At some point we really do have to enforce community norms to prevent the level of discourse from deteriorating. Antisocial and obnoxious behavior are perfectly valid reasons to downvote a comment, I have a hard time believing you really think they aren’t, and I’m reasonably confident that most of LW is okay with the idea, judging by other comments I’ve seen receive downvotes (not to pick on him, but Annoyance has gotten some of this) for no obvious reason other than tone.
The issues are where to draw the lines, and how to handle it when the community is sharply divded on what constitutes “polite, respectful discussion”. Frankly, the main person I see drawing “us vs. them” lines here is you.
Well I think that if the comment is specifically aimed at being obnoxious, e.g.
Then that should be killed.
But if a comment expresses a true proposition about the world, and the main purpose of the comment is to express that comment, e.g. “blacks are dumber than whites, look at all this data I have, and this list of biases about western culture which shows that we are massively prone to ignore the data” (disclaimer: I do not advocate that position), but as a side effect happens to offend someone, then it should not get deleted.
At least this seems to be to me the algorithm which will empirically lead to truest community beliefs.
Most of the juiciest truths will offend someone, and if we allow the truth to be suppressed because it “causes offence”, we will end up with false beliefs.
This seems utterly obvious to me.