Hi Stuart! Swimmer is correct; ChrisHallquist posted a link to this on my facebook wall. Personally, I’m glad Eugine is gone, because even without the downvoting he was an asshole. And having anti-feminist or biorealist assholes running around is a great way to drive off women and minorities.
Anyways, I prefer the walled garden, and the conversational tone, and the positive emotional support that Facebook provides, so I doubt I’ll come back to posting here.
I’m still extremely active in the meatspace community though, and I have a friend who will be posting some very exciting news here in a couple days about a new rationality non-profit! Also, I’m moving to NYC, and a group of us are starting up a new rationalist house there.
ETA: Another upside of posting on facebook is that it does a better job of raising the general sanity waterline than posting here. It exposes rationality ideas and conversations in a friendly/humanising way to people who would never have sought them out (all my non-rationality friends), and it allows them to participate and interact with those ideas in a much more supportive way. :)
Personally, I’m glad Eugine is gone, because even without the downvoting he was an asshole. And having anti-feminist or biorealist assholes running around is a great way to drive off women and minorities.
I applaud the decision to ban Eugine_Nier for abusing the karma system, but I’m a bit disturbed by the idea
that espousing certain views could be a valid reason for banning a user. I agree with the goal of attracting more women and minorities, but I think there are good reasons to believe this is not best accomplished by thought policing.
(Upon reading your comment more carefully, it is now unclear to me whether you are saying that having anti-feminist and biorealist views could be a valid reason for banning someone. It seems you are kind of suggesting that, though I’m not sure.)
I’m currently driving cross country and typing this on my phone at a rest stop so I can’t comment as much as I would like, but I DO want to clarify that my post meant what it said and nothing more. Eugine himself was an asshole. He ALSO was a biorealist and an anti feminist. When you combine those traits in a prolific user they’re likely to drive away women and minorities.
Even if it’s epistemically true, discussing those issues in an assholey way is instrumentally unhelpful (for people with goals at all similar to mine).
Too much censorship is dangerous, but too little censorship is dangerous too. It’s true that Less Wrong would die if every dissenting opinion were to be culled. However, if Less Wrong were to be overrun by irrational jerks without moderators taking some sort of action, Less Wrong would die too. Would you really oppose banning literal Nazis from posting their views on this forum? Because if so, I find your lack of censorship disturbing.
Asking “should we ban people for their views or should we have freedom of speech?” is a false dilemma. The correct question is: “how much censorship should we have relative to freedom of speech, and which views should we ban if any?”
Jokes aside, I actually think it’s that kind of post that we should have a community norm against. Saying “Neo reactionaries are evil racists” or “Socialist regimes killed the most people!” is just as inflammatory as “black people are less intelligent than whites”. And what use does it serve?
A single comment is no cause for a ban of course, but if someone will look for any excuse to say that neoreactionaries are evil or blacks are inferior or socialists suck, and they post about it in every thread they can, then don’t you think they should be banned?
Let me explain my background. I grew up in a socialist country. Luckily, no one from my family or friends was a target of the regime, and it ended when I was 13. Only then I learned about what happened to other people. (You know, stuff like: secret police knocks on your door at midnight, they take your family member away, and you never seem them again. Later someone unofficially tells you they died during interrogation. They warn you that unless you shut up, you could be next. Also, you, your children, and your grandchildren will never be allowed to get to university or have a decent job, because you are relatives of a traitor, therefore politically unreliable. The regime hates you, but you are not allowed to leave the country, and will be killed if you try.) There was censorship to prevent me from learning sooner. I believed I was living in a happy paradise. Many people believe it today. (Many people also believe holocaust was a hoax, for similar psychological reasons.)
I remember a teacher at elementary school telling me: “Viliam, you think independently. You will have a lot of problems when you grow up.” I didn’t quite understand that, then. Now I do. So I guess I was lucky. Even my childhood experience with what you can and cannot say would be enough to predict that if someone in my country would write the Sequences, they would be inviting trouble. It’s difficult to explain why exactly; my neural network understands the rules, but they were never made explicit. It’s something like: merely saying “politics is the mind-killed” could be, under unlucky circumstances, be perceived as a criticism of the regime. You never say things that could be perceived as a criticism of the regime, because then you could have hard time explaining that you didn’t mean it that way.
The way I see it, the main difference between nazis and socialists is this: Nazis lost the war; their leaders were killed or put in prisons, their crimes publicly exposed and shamed. Socialists won the war, they were allowed to rule for decades, to eliminate free speech and spread their propaganda. After they killed and intimidated everyone who opposed them, and their rule was secured, they calmed down, and life under their rule became more peaceful during the following decades. Who knows; maybe in the parallel universe where nazis won the war, the nazis of 1980s were also less violent than the nazis of 1840s. (Maybe neoreactionaries are the moderate post-nazis from the parallel universe, where some later Führer hired Steve Jobs as the CEO.)
Anyway… the thing is, censorship “triggers” me. Censorship is the meta-evil that other evils can safely hide behind. Speaking about whether we need more or less censorship sounds like speaking about whether we need more or less secret police knocking on people’s doors at midnight. (Yeah, I can imagine a very exceptional situation, such as someone really constructing a nuclear bomb at their home… but that’s far from the typical scenario.) Censoring the bourgeois pseudoscience? Uhm, I’d rather have scientific questions answered by scientific means.
I generally try not to write off-topic comments. I consider exposing crimes of socialists highly relevant to the topic of censorship, because censorship was a critically important part of their regime; without censorship, it would fall apart. So the best way to keep me quiet about this topic is to stop proposing censorship on LW. Do we have a deal?
Thank you for taking the time to write all that, it helps me see where you are coming from. You clearly have a large framework which you are basing your views on, but the thing you have to keep in mind is that I do, too. I have several partially-written posts about this which I hope to post on Less Wrong one day, but I’m very worried they’ll be misconstrued because it’s such a difficult subject. The last thing I want to do is defend the practices of oppressive regimes, believe me. I’m worried that people just read my posts thinking “oh he is defending censorship, censorship is evil, downvote” without thinking about what I’m actually saying. “Censorship” is just a word. All of my arguments work just as well for “having a community norm against” something as opposed to “censoring” it.
The problem is a framing issue, I think. People keep seeing something like censorship as a bad thing period, because it is something that’s used by oppressive regimes. However, killing people is also used by oppressive regimes, and yet I still wouldn’t promote total pacifism. Your post reads to me like Ghandi saying that the Nazi’s should be opposed non-violently: I do believe that there is wisdom in what you say, but that’s going much too far. The thing you have to realize is that if all the nice and reasonable people in the world go around worrying that if they fight monsters they will themselves become monsters, the monsters always win because they’re the only ones willing to fight.
My view on killing is this: The crucial issue is who is being killed and why, and what principle you are using to determine who to kill. My view on censorship is this: The crucial issue is what view is being censored and why, and what principle you are using to determine what to censor. Censoring a view just because you disagree with it is just as wrong as killing someone just because they disagree with you. Getting everybody who disagrees with me to shut up wouldn’t actually make for the kind of world I want to live in. So what views do I think should be censored? Only those ones which seem to serve no purpose other than to destroy everything that’s good and right in this world.
Imagine you are the leader of Utopialand. Everything is going swimmingly: People are working hard, people are happy, and everyone is largely free to do and say as they please. Then one day, a foreign missionary enters your country in order to start spreading his religion among the naïve and carefree people of your land. His religion states things that not strictly illegal but which are incredibly harmful: You have to believe everything it says or you will be burned to death, you have to verbally abuse your children daily to raise them properly, you must reject anyone from society who holds ideas the religion disagree with, science and critical thinking are wicked, and so on and so forth. This religion goes against everything you value and what’s worse, it seems to be catching on. What is your reaction?
1) “Well if he wants to spread ideas that destroy everything I love and cherish that’s his right as a citizen. Who am I to tell him he can’t destroy the world? I mean it’s a free country. “ 2) “AAAAAAGHHH IT’S A VICTIM OF A MEMETIC PLAGUE! QUICK, ISOLATE HIM BEFORE HE INFECTS THE OTHERS.”
The way I see it, there is a war of ideas spanning across all of human history, with good and helpful ideas on the one side and horrible memetic plagues which destroy everything they touch on the other. The civilisations that have prospered so far are the ones which fought for the good ideas and won. I submit that if your reaction to the above is option 1) and not 2), you are essentially choosing to lose the war of ideas on purpose. There will be nothing left of your empire but fire and ash.
Your post reads to me like Ghandi saying that the Nazi’s should be opposed non-violently:
Uhm, no. I mean, this is exaggerating; we are not having any physical violence here. Worst case: poisoning of minds. (I believe Yvain handled the case of neo-reactionaries sufficiently, if that’s what we are talking about here.)
Then one day, a foreign missionary enters your country in order to start spreading his religion among the naïve and carefree people of your land. His religion states things that not strictly illegal but which are incredibly harmful:
What if there are two competing religions; each one of them evil in a different way. And one missionary approaches you with an offer that if you help him establish the holy inquisition, he will rid you of those evil heretics from the other side. Is it a good idea to give him the power?
Uhm, no. I mean, this is exaggerating; we are not having any physical violence here. Worst case: poisoning of minds.
Yes of course it’s an exaggeration, but it’s the same meta-type of error: Seeing X used for evil and therefore declaring that all X is evil and anyone who says X isn’t always evil is either evil or stupid themselves. It’s the same mistake as the one Neoreactionaries always complain about: “Perceived differences based on race or sex have been used to excuse evil, therefore anyone who says there are differences between races or sexes is evil!”
And poisoning of minds is very, very bad. People always seem to assume that physical violence is somehow worse than mental violence, but it’s just not true. Ideas can can be a lot more dangerous than guns.
(of course all of this is a bit moot since I’m not actually proposing banning democrats/republicans/race research/feminism or anything like that)
What if there are two competing religions; each one of them evil in a different way. And one missionary approaches you with an offer that if you help him establish the holy inquisition, he will rid you of those evil heretics from the other side. Is it a good idea to give him the power?
Of course not, why would I? Why are you asking this? Are you implying that in the real world, both sides to any conflict are always equally evil? Because that definitely isn’t the case in my experience.
Are you implying that in the real world, both sides to any conflict are always equally evil?
Didn’t say “equally”.
Seems to me that so far we had two significant attempts at suppressing opinions on LW.
1) Eugine’s one-person guerilla war of mass downvoting. Had some success for a few months, resulted in a ban.
2) Repeated suggestions that we should remove politically incorrect speech, because allegedly women don’t like it. Multiple proponents, no success yet.
I’m not sure which one of these is more dangerous; I could find arguments for either side. Eugine actually did censor the site for a while. However, he was finally banned, and if someone tries to do the same thing, they will probably get banned, too (hopefully much sooner). Also, his actions didn’t have popular support. On the other hand, censhorship of politically incorrect ideas is proposed repeatedly, by multiple people, openly in public. They demand that their norms become the official norms of the website, enforced by moderators.
Then I believe most people here want to have a debate without any political group dominating the website. About half of them don’t want to see here any politics at all, and I guess the other half would be okay with occassional, as rational as possible, polite debate about political topics.
Then one day, a foreign missionary enters your country in order to start spreading his religion among the naïve and carefree people of your land. His religion states things that not strictly illegal but which are incredibly harmful: You have to believe everything it says or you will be burned to death, you have to verbally abuse your children daily to raise them properly, you must reject anyone from society who holds ideas the religion disagree with, science and critical thinking are wicked, and so on and so forth. This religion goes against everything you value and what’s worse, it seems to be catching on.
If the religion is so obviously harmful why is it catching on? To paraphrase Kaj, why is it the place of individual people to decide that this religion needs censorship?
Saying “Neo reactionaries are evil racists” or “Socialist regimes killed the most people!” is just as inflammatory as “black people are less intelligent than whites”. And what use does it serve?
Well, two of those three statements are falsifiable statements that are useful for making predictions about the future.
Well. All three of them are falsifiable, barring quibbles over definition.
“Socialist regimes killed the most people!” may or may not be useful for making predictions—it’s not useful for making predictions about, say, the USSR—because it doesn’t exist now. But on the other hand, it created chains of cause and effect still in existence, and we would like to predict those.
“Neo reactionaries are evil racists” seems the most subjective, in that we are more confused about “evil” than “killing” or “intelligence”. But as long as we taboo “evil”, I don’t see how it could possibly be a useless-for-prediction, impossible-to-falsify statement.
“black people are less intelligent than whites” pretty clearly has the most confounders and controversy, but it’s certainly falsifiable in principle, and both sides would argue that it has already been tested, I think.
On the gripping hand, all three seem like prime candidates for political mind-killing.
“Neo reactionaries are evil racists” seems the most subjective, in that we are more confused about “evil” than “killing” or “intelligence”. But as long as we taboo “evil”, I don’t see how it could possibly be a useless-for-prediction, impossible-to-falsify statement.
You’d have to taboo “racists” too though.
(And tabooing “evil” is an almost FAI-complete problem, anyway.)
Fair enough—the value of free speech needs to be weighed against other values that might be promoted by censoring specific viewpoints. Still, I think there are good rule-utilitarian grounds for making free speech the default position and for requiring a high standard of proof for deviating from that default in a particular case. The considerations for censoring nazism probably meet that standard, whereas I don’t think that standard is met in the case of anti-feminism or biorealism. (The latter, in particular, seems to consist primarily in certain factual rather than normative claims, and there are particularly strong reasons against censoring views of that sort.)
Note, too, that the karma system might in most cases allow the community to discourage certain viewpoints from being expressed without the need to resort to censorship.
If I understand it correctly, the tradition of “not providing Nazis platforms for free speech” came from history when Nazis used violence against their opponents. I mean… it sounds crazy if you are polite and fair enough to invite them to a debate table, they use it to debate with you and express their beliefs… and on the way home from the debate they kill you.
So it’s something like: “Don’t try to cooperate with a known DefectBot”.
The question is, these days, which people use extra-debate tools to silence their opponents?
Yes, precisely! This is what I think should be the golden standard for censorship. Ask yourself if the other person would try to censor you if they thought they could get away with it even if you were nice to them, and if the answer is yes it is acceptable (but not necessarily desirable!) to censor them. So an honest and reasonable bio-realist should not be censored, but Eugine Nier should be. It’s simply a matter of memetic self-defence.
The same way you distinguish between someone who murders a person in order to steal their money and someone who kills a person in self defence: By evaluating on a case-by-case basis to the best of your ability. It’s not always easy, but it sure beats not bothering to make the distinction.
(In this case I think it’s quite obvious that Eugine Nier is the DefectBot and not Kaj_Sotala.)
Imagine the distance to the “cooperate” button is slightly higher than the “defect” button. Someone who can’t reach the cooperate button might not mean any harm. But from your point of view, they might as well be a defectbot.
Ask yourself if the other person would try to censor you if they thought they could get away with it even if you were nice to them, and if the answer is yes it is acceptable (but not necessarily desirable!) to censor them.
That isn’t what a DefectBot is. A DefectBot is an agent that would defect in every position, including this one.
For example, the Nazis might do everything in their power to hurt you now (such as attacking you on the way home), and when they are in power (such as, well, I think we all know the canonical example of that.)
On the other hand, they might act nice now but, you suspect, defect when they find themselves in power. Or they might attack as hard as they can now, but be generous in victory. Neither of those are DefectBot.
That’s funny because I view progressives as the exact group that would instantly throw me under the bus the moment I didn’t want to help them against someone else. Neoreactionaries at least propose to leave me alone.
I’m not excited about the NR plans for gay people if they ever come to power. Moldbug is charmingly neutral on the issue, but many of the others most certainly are not.
It is my impression that neoreactionaries want a non-democratic government. Surely this non-democratic government will make laws that you are required to obey, right?
Most neo reactionaries I read believe in something called Exit whereby if you want you can get the hell out. Contrast this to the ussr or how America will continue to tax you for something like 10 years if you want to emigrate.
Exiting isn’t cost-free, though. Most people won’t even exit by moving to a different state in the US, just because of all the direct and indirect costs of moving.
I think you’re confusing “responding to a point someone is trying to make” and “making fun of someone”.
Maybe the average progressive has neither the power or the inclination to put me in a gulag but the side of things that they historically have lent their power and rhetoric to sure does. I don’t feel it’s particularly likely to happen in the near future but I also recognize that no one seemed to have predicted the outcome ahead of time the last time.
Or to put it another way: Stalinists are on a continuum with progressives. They are not a different kind of thing.
I think you’re confusing “responding to a point someone is trying to make” and “making fun of someone”.
Fair point. My comment was unnecessarily snarky.
Maybe the average progressive has neither the power or the inclination to put me in a gulag but the side of things that they historically have lent their power and rhetoric to sure does.
There have been sections of the progressive left that lent their power and rhetoric to support Soviet communism. There have also been significant sections of the progressive left that lent their power and rhetoric to vociferously oppose Soviet communism. Andrei Sakharov, Vaclav Havel, Isaiah Berlin, Albert Camus and George Orwell—a few big names that come to mind immediately—all had political views that would probably classify them as “progressive” in today’s political climate. In addition, progressives have been at the forefront of most movements to expand civil liberties in the 20th century.
If you just focus on progressivism’s criticisms of capitalism and conservatism, then yeah, it doesn’t seem like a different kind of thing from Stalinism. But that ignores another prominent tendency in the history of the movement—a strong strain of civil libertarianism (the ACLU, for instance, is regarded by many as a progressive institution) -- which is qualitatively distinct from Stalinism.
Or to put it another way: Stalinists are on a continuum with progressives. They are not a different kind of thing.
I’m not sure what you mean by “progressives”, but it seems to me that “liberals” or “social-democrats” are actually closer to libertarians in terms of personal freedoms, while Soviet-style socialists are closer to fascists and theocrats on these issues.
The political spectrum has at least two dimensions: personal freedoms and economic freedoms.
I would probably put it as “The more power progressives get, the more they tend to evolve towards stalinists”. After all you’ve got to protect the people against the horrors of capitalism.
I was under the impression that “Exit” was the means by which they were going to establish their own utopia, that is, by exiting whichever one they were living in currently, rather than a fundamental right for us unlucky proles.
Ask yourself if the other person would try to censor you if they thought they could get away with it even if you were nice to them,
I think you are going to run into problems here. I suspect that most adherents of many ideologies would censor opposing views if they could get away with it.
Yes, that’s a very reasonable position to take, and I’m leaning the same way. I see the issue as being very similar to the question of whether or not a society should condone killing people: It makes perfect sense to have a general rule that says you can’t, but sometimes you have no choice. Pacifism is not the solution here.
The karma system does not solve this problem because a small number of people can have a disproportionate impact simply by voting more. And of course, extremists care more and so are more likely to vote. My post above is now at −3: Is this because the community disapproves? Or is it because 3 bio realists felt threatened by the notion that we should ban literal nazis because it might extend to them as well? I am not at all convinced it’s the former.
Daenerys, since there seems to be some uncertainty:
Are you saying that you would prefer if LessWrong increased the height of it’s metaphorical wall, keeping out “anti-feminist or biorealist assholes”?
Or are you saying that the model of a public forum is inherently “a great way to drive off women and minorities”, and thus you don’t use LessWrong and don’t care about the moderation policy much?
I’ve seen different people reading your comment different ways.
Daenerys, since there seems to be some uncertainty:
Are you saying that you would prefer if LessWrong increased the height of it’s metaphorical wall, keeping out “anti-feminist or biorealist assholes”?
Or are you saying that the model of a public forum is inherently “a great way to drive off women and minorities”, and thus you don’t use LessWrong and don’t care about the moderation policy much?
I’ve seen different people reading your comment different ways.
Much closer to the latter. I am not making any policy recommendations about LW moderation. I don’t really care, since I’m not on LW anymore (except for things like this where people ask me specifically something).
I said that one of the reasons I prefer Facebook is that it’s a walled garden. I did NOT say that I want LessWrong to be a walled garden. I would think neo-reactionaries would support the idea of just going to the place that has the rules you like/ voting with your feet.
I do think there can be public forums that do not drive off women and minorities, which is where I disagree with your second statement.
I do not think all biorealists or antifeminists are assholes. I thought EUGINE was an asshole. He was also a biorealist. So he was a biorealist asshole. I’ve already made a comment about that, but people keep saying that I said that anyways. And quoting only me saying “biorealist assholes”. I DO think biorealists and anitfeminists have to be especially epistemically polite (and generally polite) if they want to have any chance of people actually engaging with their ideas.
As an example:
Christian asshole: Fred Phelps Christian not-an-asshole: Leah Libresco
Skeptic asshole: Penn Jilette Skeptic not-an-asshole: All the CFAR people
See how I consider “assholeness” as an unrelated trait to whether or not I agree with a viewpoint. If there were prolific skeptic assholes, they would drive off religious users. If there were prolific Christian assholes they would drive of skeptic and LGBTQ users. All assholes tend to drive off all non-assholes.
This whole “OMG! daenerys says all biorealists are assholes and should be banned11!!!!!1” reaction feels like people are willfully misinterpreting me, putting words in my mouth, and using tiny quotes completely out of context (like “biorealist asshole”) Especially AFTER I wrote a comment clarifying that I meant ONLY what I said an nothing else. This is another reason I don’t LW. Commenting on LW is like reading the comments on a general website. Sometimes you get the impulse to do it, but as soon as you do you immediately remember why you don’t. Note that I’m again, only EXPLAINING why I don’t use LW, and am NOT demanding moderation changes.
ETA: Also, MugaSofer, I commend (and upvote) you for doing the Right Thing… When a discussion partner says something that you could interpret two ways, and Interpretation A is sane, but Interpretation B would cause you to get super-offended and launch a multi-comment barrage, the polite (non-asshole) thing to do is just to ask if they meant A or B, and NOT to just assume B and get offended and launch the multi-comment barrage. Especially when A is the literal interpretation and B requires quite a bit of twistiness to get to.
I did NOT say that I want LessWrong to be a walled garden.
[...]
I do think there can be public forums that do not drive off women and minorities, which is where I disagree with your second statement.
I do not think all biorealists or antifeminists are assholes. I thought EUGINE was an asshole. He was also a biorealist. So he was a biorealist asshole.
Excellent, I agree wholeheartedly. Thank you for clarifying.
MugaSofer, I commend (and upvote) you for doing the Right Thing… When a discussion partner says something that you could interpret two ways, and Interpretation A is sane, but Interpretation B would cause you to get super-offended and launch a multi-comment barrage, the polite (non-asshole) thing to do is just to ask if they meant A or B, and NOT to just assume B and get offended and launch the multi-comment barrage.
Now, in fairness, I wouldn’t characterize people misunderstanding as willful, assholeish misunderstanding. Applying the Principle of Charity is the reason I understood you in the first place, right?
As I said, different people interpreted your phrasing in different ways; your phrasing was genuinely ambiguous regarding whether the operative word was “asshole” or “biorealist”. I guess this shows our default assumptions about … sentences?
Thanks for the Rationality Compliment, I’m flattered :)
ETA: Another upside of posting on facebook is that it does a better job of raising the general sanity waterline than posting here. It exposes rationality ideas and conversations in a friendly/humanising way to people who would never have sought them out (all my non-rationality friends), and it allows them to participate and interact with those ideas in a much more supportive way. :)
“Heinrich HIMMLER,” said Himself, “was a foul, Jew-exterminating, Nazi fiend whom your grandmother’s parents and their whole generation fought a world war to defeat in order that she could sit here 70 years later and be called racist by her sanctimonious and ungrateful grandchildren. Anyone for crumble?”
Personally, I’m glad Eugine is gone, because even without the downvoting he was an asshole.And having anti-feminist or biorealist assholes running around
A fine example of “asshole” = “those who disagree with my values”.
Should those who disagree similarly start whooping it up for banning feminists and biodenialists? Or should they just be similarly denigrating them as a matter of course?
More and more, I’m thinking they need to fight back in kind.
It’s strange that the supposedly evil, nasty reactionaries are social pacifists who refuse to respond with a little tit for the incessant tat they receive.
Charming to see all the karma upvotes going to a post which denigrated a whole swath of users as “assholes” because of their beliefs. Real “friendly/humanising”.
No way you could have seen this comment when you wrote this, so here’s a heads up—it turns out that’s not how it was meant.
The emphasis was intended on “asshole”, not “biorealist”, if you see what I mean—“biorealist” is the reason it drives off “women and minorities” specifically, not the reason he was an asshole.
I do not think all biorealists or antifeminists are assholes. I thought EUGINE was an asshole. He was also a biorealist. So he was a biorealist asshole. I’ve already made a comment about that, but people keep saying that I said that anyways. And quoting only me saying “biorealist assholes”. I DO think biorealists and anitfeminists have to be especially epistemically polite (and generally polite) if they want to have any chance of people actually engaging with their ideas.
As an example:
Christian asshole: Fred Phelps
Christian not-an-asshole: Leah Libresco
Skeptic asshole: Penn Jilette
Skeptic not-an-asshole: All the CFAR people
See how I consider “assholeness” as an unrelated trait to whether or not I agree with a viewpoint. If there were prolific skeptic assholes, they would drive off religious users. If there were prolific Christian assholes they would drive of skeptic and LGBTQ users.
The emphasis was intended on “asshole”, not “biorealist”
Yes, but I get the impression that the assholiness threshold/criterion is different for biorealists and antifeminists on the one hand and SJWs on the other.
I just realized the non-asshole examples list didn’t include an attempt of naming a non-asshole biorealist. Then started wondering how it would go if you tried giving examples of non-asshole biorealists or even assert the possibility of one existing on a SJ-friendly forum.
No way you could have seen this comment when you wrote this,
I did not. I had a lot of direct replies that were taking my attention.
so here’s a heads up—it turns out that’s not how it was meant.
That’s an inference you might make from the available data. Perhaps it is even true.
I think that by the ordinary usage of the English language, my interpretation of the text is more consistent with what was written than the interpretation you quote. If you really want to hear my close textual analysis, I would oblige, but I don’t see a lot of mileage in it.
(Penn Jillette an asshole? Really? To me, he seems incredibly gracious to others, often to the point of being overly deferential.)
I did not. I had a lot of direct replies that were taking my attention.
Also, it was posted three days after you wrote your comment. I can see how that might present a bit of a challenge.
That’s an inference you might make from the available data. Perhaps it is even true.
I think that by the ordinary usage of the English language, my interpretation of the text is more consistent with what was written than the interpretation you quote.
I was genuinely confused to see someone interpreting it another way, if that helps your analysis—the other interpretation hadn’t occurred to me.
But yes, I suppose it’s definitely possible they simply leaped on a convenient excuse.
It’s strange that the supposedly evil, nasty reactionaries are social pacifists who refuse to respond with a little tit for the incessant tat they receive.
Not that I’m a fan of the asshole == ideological opponent mentality, but we are talking about a guy who spent probably cumulative days of his time downvoting people in a self-confessed effort to drive them away from the forum. That doesn’t sound like the behavior of a social pacifist to me. Indeed, it sounds quite a bit like the behavior of an asshole.
How peculiar. I could have sworn I quoted you talking about “evil, nasty reactionaries”, as typified in this context by Eugine_Nier.
I’m not trying to endorse Daenerys’ apparent opinion re: biorealists and antifeminists, as you may have gleaned from the fact that I directly said I disagree with it. But you’re going too far in the other direction. You may, of course, make whatever assertions you please regarding the general behavior of groups he may belong to, but I feel it’s somewhat disingenuous to cast any of those groups as entirely innocent of social wrongdoing (“social pacifists”) when this entire friggin’ thread is about social wrongdoing by a member of those groups. If you’re instead going for some kind of No True Scotsman deal, it’d help to say that Eugine’s not a true Scotsman.
I could have sworn I quoted you talking about “evil, nasty reactionaries”,
The sarcastic, not using my own voice tone didn’t come through, even from the context? Did you genuinely think I was earnestly calling reactionaries evil? If not, this seems like a complete red herring.
this entire friggin’ thread is about social wrongdoing by a member of those groups.
He’s a member of LessWrong too. Is everyone here an asshole?
Two very different cases.
Eugine, at least by his own argument, was voting down people with a low rationality quotient. He has been widely condemned by all, including the evil reactionaries, and was banned.
daenerys called a lot of people on the list assholes based on them having opinions she disagreed with, and suggested they be banned for the same. She was widely upvoted.
cast any of those groups as entirely innocent
Generalizations are about general trends, and not absolute truths admitting of no exceptions.
Which side heaps abuse on the other, and suggests sanctions against the other? Which side defends their own? What’s the broad trend?
You keep coming back to Eugine, but neither daenerys nor I were predominantly talking about Eugine.
Go to my previous comment in this thread. Currently, two downvotes for an accurate correction of your misrepresentation of her original statement. Do you want to further debate that point, or will you grant my reading? If so, isn’t it odd that a couple of people on the list are downvoting a clearly accurate interpretation of the text that corrects a clearly inaccurate misinterpretation.
Upvotes for calling people assholes and suggesting they be banned for their beliefs, downvotes for accurate analysis. The voting seems to align better with ideology than truth, and is positive for one ideology, and negative for the other. Which is the trend I’m pointing out.
daenerys called a lot of people on the list assholes based on them having opinions she disagreed with, and suggested they be banned for the same. She was widely upvoted.
Point of order: can you quote where they said being reactionary should be a banning offence? Because I don’t see it.
Personally, I’m glad Eugine is gone, because even without the downvoting he was an asshole. And having anti-feminist or biorealist assholes running around is a great way to drive off women and minorities.
Anyways, I prefer the walled garden, and the conversational tone, and the positive emotional support that Facebook provides, so I doubt I’ll come back to posting here.
She prefers that “anti-feminist or biorealist assholes” aren’t here, she prefers “a walled garden”. Is that a literal statement of “I want the anti-feminist or biorealist assholes through over the wall and kept out”? No, but it’s not too hard to do the math.
“Will no one rid me of these turbulent assholes?” (In case the reference is too obscure, see Saint Thomas of Canterbury for details.)
I get the reference. Not because I get references, as a rule, but because Blackadder used it :-)
I read that as saying that they were glad he was gone, but that it didn’t matter much to them—because they had moved to the self-selected “garden” of one’s Facebook feed.
But I suppose I can see how that might be read as an ideal for us to be aspiring to, now that you say it. Which … is bad, yeah. Hmm.
Just ran into Eugine on Gab. The name looked familiar, so I did a quick search, came onto this thread, and saw that my comment giving the quote requested to back up my point had been downvoted into being hidden.
It’s interesting. I’d be embarrassed to downvote to oblivion someone delivering evidence requested to back up their claim, especially on LW.
The banning of Eugine was just part of the trend that today has me banned from Twitter and reading Eugine’s posts on Gab. Such is the asymmetry of the social war. I keep wondering if the Right will ever fight back.
Should those who disagree similarly start whooping it up for banning feminists and biodenialists? Or should they just be similarly denigrating them as a matter of course?
I’m not sure what ‘biodenialists’ are exactly but on the basis that the word ends with “ists” it’s reasonably unlikely that any particular social-politically active ‘*ist’ will be of net value, given the change such agendas have on thought.
I believe that she is aware of it thanks to someone sharing the link to this post on Facebook.
You want to check to be sure?
Hi Stuart! Swimmer is correct; ChrisHallquist posted a link to this on my facebook wall. Personally, I’m glad Eugine is gone, because even without the downvoting he was an asshole. And having anti-feminist or biorealist assholes running around is a great way to drive off women and minorities.
Anyways, I prefer the walled garden, and the conversational tone, and the positive emotional support that Facebook provides, so I doubt I’ll come back to posting here.
I’m still extremely active in the meatspace community though, and I have a friend who will be posting some very exciting news here in a couple days about a new rationality non-profit! Also, I’m moving to NYC, and a group of us are starting up a new rationalist house there.
ETA: Another upside of posting on facebook is that it does a better job of raising the general sanity waterline than posting here. It exposes rationality ideas and conversations in a friendly/humanising way to people who would never have sought them out (all my non-rationality friends), and it allows them to participate and interact with those ideas in a much more supportive way. :)
I applaud the decision to ban Eugine_Nier for abusing the karma system, but I’m a bit disturbed by the idea that espousing certain views could be a valid reason for banning a user. I agree with the goal of attracting more women and minorities, but I think there are good reasons to believe this is not best accomplished by thought policing.
(Upon reading your comment more carefully, it is now unclear to me whether you are saying that having anti-feminist and biorealist views could be a valid reason for banning someone. It seems you are kind of suggesting that, though I’m not sure.)
I’m currently driving cross country and typing this on my phone at a rest stop so I can’t comment as much as I would like, but I DO want to clarify that my post meant what it said and nothing more. Eugine himself was an asshole. He ALSO was a biorealist and an anti feminist. When you combine those traits in a prolific user they’re likely to drive away women and minorities.
Even if it’s epistemically true, discussing those issues in an assholey way is instrumentally unhelpful (for people with goals at all similar to mine).
Too much censorship is dangerous, but too little censorship is dangerous too. It’s true that Less Wrong would die if every dissenting opinion were to be culled. However, if Less Wrong were to be overrun by irrational jerks without moderators taking some sort of action, Less Wrong would die too. Would you really oppose banning literal Nazis from posting their views on this forum? Because if so, I find your lack of censorship disturbing.
Asking “should we ban people for their views or should we have freedom of speech?” is a false dilemma. The correct question is: “how much censorship should we have relative to freedom of speech, and which views should we ban if any?”
I nominate socialists. Socialist regimes killed more people than nazi regimes.
(Just joking. I mean, the numbers are correct, but I actually don’t support censorship.)
Per unit time per capita or totally?
Also, the ones the Nazis killed were better ;-)
I think that the Khmer Rouge hold the per capita record, and the Soviets (*) the total one. Dunno about per unit time.
( * I’m not counting the Great Chinese Famine, since it was apparently caused by incompetence rather than deliberate malice.)
Jokes aside, I actually think it’s that kind of post that we should have a community norm against. Saying “Neo reactionaries are evil racists” or “Socialist regimes killed the most people!” is just as inflammatory as “black people are less intelligent than whites”. And what use does it serve?
A single comment is no cause for a ban of course, but if someone will look for any excuse to say that neoreactionaries are evil or blacks are inferior or socialists suck, and they post about it in every thread they can, then don’t you think they should be banned?
Let me explain my background. I grew up in a socialist country. Luckily, no one from my family or friends was a target of the regime, and it ended when I was 13. Only then I learned about what happened to other people. (You know, stuff like: secret police knocks on your door at midnight, they take your family member away, and you never seem them again. Later someone unofficially tells you they died during interrogation. They warn you that unless you shut up, you could be next. Also, you, your children, and your grandchildren will never be allowed to get to university or have a decent job, because you are relatives of a traitor, therefore politically unreliable. The regime hates you, but you are not allowed to leave the country, and will be killed if you try.) There was censorship to prevent me from learning sooner. I believed I was living in a happy paradise. Many people believe it today. (Many people also believe holocaust was a hoax, for similar psychological reasons.)
I remember a teacher at elementary school telling me: “Viliam, you think independently. You will have a lot of problems when you grow up.” I didn’t quite understand that, then. Now I do. So I guess I was lucky. Even my childhood experience with what you can and cannot say would be enough to predict that if someone in my country would write the Sequences, they would be inviting trouble. It’s difficult to explain why exactly; my neural network understands the rules, but they were never made explicit. It’s something like: merely saying “politics is the mind-killed” could be, under unlucky circumstances, be perceived as a criticism of the regime. You never say things that could be perceived as a criticism of the regime, because then you could have hard time explaining that you didn’t mean it that way.
The way I see it, the main difference between nazis and socialists is this: Nazis lost the war; their leaders were killed or put in prisons, their crimes publicly exposed and shamed. Socialists won the war, they were allowed to rule for decades, to eliminate free speech and spread their propaganda. After they killed and intimidated everyone who opposed them, and their rule was secured, they calmed down, and life under their rule became more peaceful during the following decades. Who knows; maybe in the parallel universe where nazis won the war, the nazis of 1980s were also less violent than the nazis of 1840s. (Maybe neoreactionaries are the moderate post-nazis from the parallel universe, where some later Führer hired Steve Jobs as the CEO.)
Anyway… the thing is, censorship “triggers” me. Censorship is the meta-evil that other evils can safely hide behind. Speaking about whether we need more or less censorship sounds like speaking about whether we need more or less secret police knocking on people’s doors at midnight. (Yeah, I can imagine a very exceptional situation, such as someone really constructing a nuclear bomb at their home… but that’s far from the typical scenario.) Censoring the bourgeois pseudoscience? Uhm, I’d rather have scientific questions answered by scientific means.
I generally try not to write off-topic comments. I consider exposing crimes of socialists highly relevant to the topic of censorship, because censorship was a critically important part of their regime; without censorship, it would fall apart. So the best way to keep me quiet about this topic is to stop proposing censorship on LW. Do we have a deal?
Thank you for taking the time to write all that, it helps me see where you are coming from. You clearly have a large framework which you are basing your views on, but the thing you have to keep in mind is that I do, too. I have several partially-written posts about this which I hope to post on Less Wrong one day, but I’m very worried they’ll be misconstrued because it’s such a difficult subject. The last thing I want to do is defend the practices of oppressive regimes, believe me. I’m worried that people just read my posts thinking “oh he is defending censorship, censorship is evil, downvote” without thinking about what I’m actually saying. “Censorship” is just a word. All of my arguments work just as well for “having a community norm against” something as opposed to “censoring” it.
The problem is a framing issue, I think. People keep seeing something like censorship as a bad thing period, because it is something that’s used by oppressive regimes. However, killing people is also used by oppressive regimes, and yet I still wouldn’t promote total pacifism. Your post reads to me like Ghandi saying that the Nazi’s should be opposed non-violently: I do believe that there is wisdom in what you say, but that’s going much too far. The thing you have to realize is that if all the nice and reasonable people in the world go around worrying that if they fight monsters they will themselves become monsters, the monsters always win because they’re the only ones willing to fight.
My view on killing is this: The crucial issue is who is being killed and why, and what principle you are using to determine who to kill. My view on censorship is this: The crucial issue is what view is being censored and why, and what principle you are using to determine what to censor. Censoring a view just because you disagree with it is just as wrong as killing someone just because they disagree with you. Getting everybody who disagrees with me to shut up wouldn’t actually make for the kind of world I want to live in. So what views do I think should be censored? Only those ones which seem to serve no purpose other than to destroy everything that’s good and right in this world.
Imagine you are the leader of Utopialand. Everything is going swimmingly: People are working hard, people are happy, and everyone is largely free to do and say as they please. Then one day, a foreign missionary enters your country in order to start spreading his religion among the naïve and carefree people of your land. His religion states things that not strictly illegal but which are incredibly harmful: You have to believe everything it says or you will be burned to death, you have to verbally abuse your children daily to raise them properly, you must reject anyone from society who holds ideas the religion disagree with, science and critical thinking are wicked, and so on and so forth. This religion goes against everything you value and what’s worse, it seems to be catching on. What is your reaction?
1) “Well if he wants to spread ideas that destroy everything I love and cherish that’s his right as a citizen. Who am I to tell him he can’t destroy the world? I mean it’s a free country. “
2) “AAAAAAGHHH IT’S A VICTIM OF A MEMETIC PLAGUE! QUICK, ISOLATE HIM BEFORE HE INFECTS THE OTHERS.”
The way I see it, there is a war of ideas spanning across all of human history, with good and helpful ideas on the one side and horrible memetic plagues which destroy everything they touch on the other. The civilisations that have prospered so far are the ones which fought for the good ideas and won. I submit that if your reaction to the above is option 1) and not 2), you are essentially choosing to lose the war of ideas on purpose. There will be nothing left of your empire but fire and ash.
Uhm, no. I mean, this is exaggerating; we are not having any physical violence here. Worst case: poisoning of minds. (I believe Yvain handled the case of neo-reactionaries sufficiently, if that’s what we are talking about here.)
What if there are two competing religions; each one of them evil in a different way. And one missionary approaches you with an offer that if you help him establish the holy inquisition, he will rid you of those evil heretics from the other side. Is it a good idea to give him the power?
Yes of course it’s an exaggeration, but it’s the same meta-type of error: Seeing X used for evil and therefore declaring that all X is evil and anyone who says X isn’t always evil is either evil or stupid themselves. It’s the same mistake as the one Neoreactionaries always complain about: “Perceived differences based on race or sex have been used to excuse evil, therefore anyone who says there are differences between races or sexes is evil!”
And poisoning of minds is very, very bad. People always seem to assume that physical violence is somehow worse than mental violence, but it’s just not true. Ideas can can be a lot more dangerous than guns.
(of course all of this is a bit moot since I’m not actually proposing banning democrats/republicans/race research/feminism or anything like that)
Of course not, why would I? Why are you asking this? Are you implying that in the real world, both sides to any conflict are always equally evil? Because that definitely isn’t the case in my experience.
Didn’t say “equally”.
Seems to me that so far we had two significant attempts at suppressing opinions on LW.
1) Eugine’s one-person guerilla war of mass downvoting. Had some success for a few months, resulted in a ban.
2) Repeated suggestions that we should remove politically incorrect speech, because allegedly women don’t like it. Multiple proponents, no success yet.
I’m not sure which one of these is more dangerous; I could find arguments for either side. Eugine actually did censor the site for a while. However, he was finally banned, and if someone tries to do the same thing, they will probably get banned, too (hopefully much sooner). Also, his actions didn’t have popular support. On the other hand, censhorship of politically incorrect ideas is proposed repeatedly, by multiple people, openly in public. They demand that their norms become the official norms of the website, enforced by moderators.
Then I believe most people here want to have a debate without any political group dominating the website. About half of them don’t want to see here any politics at all, and I guess the other half would be okay with occassional, as rational as possible, polite debate about political topics.
If the religion is so obviously harmful why is it catching on? To paraphrase Kaj, why is it the place of individual people to decide that this religion needs censorship?
Farmville must be an excellent game because so many people play it.
Well, two of those three statements are falsifiable statements that are useful for making predictions about the future.
Well. All three of them are falsifiable, barring quibbles over definition.
“Socialist regimes killed the most people!” may or may not be useful for making predictions—it’s not useful for making predictions about, say, the USSR—because it doesn’t exist now. But on the other hand, it created chains of cause and effect still in existence, and we would like to predict those.
“Neo reactionaries are evil racists” seems the most subjective, in that we are more confused about “evil” than “killing” or “intelligence”. But as long as we taboo “evil”, I don’t see how it could possibly be a useless-for-prediction, impossible-to-falsify statement.
“black people are less intelligent than whites” pretty clearly has the most confounders and controversy, but it’s certainly falsifiable in principle, and both sides would argue that it has already been tested, I think.
On the gripping hand, all three seem like prime candidates for political mind-killing.
You’d have to taboo “racists” too though.
(And tabooing “evil” is an almost FAI-complete problem, anyway.)
Fair enough—the value of free speech needs to be weighed against other values that might be promoted by censoring specific viewpoints. Still, I think there are good rule-utilitarian grounds for making free speech the default position and for requiring a high standard of proof for deviating from that default in a particular case. The considerations for censoring nazism probably meet that standard, whereas I don’t think that standard is met in the case of anti-feminism or biorealism. (The latter, in particular, seems to consist primarily in certain factual rather than normative claims, and there are particularly strong reasons against censoring views of that sort.)
Note, too, that the karma system might in most cases allow the community to discourage certain viewpoints from being expressed without the need to resort to censorship.
If I understand it correctly, the tradition of “not providing Nazis platforms for free speech” came from history when Nazis used violence against their opponents. I mean… it sounds crazy if you are polite and fair enough to invite them to a debate table, they use it to debate with you and express their beliefs… and on the way home from the debate they kill you.
So it’s something like: “Don’t try to cooperate with a known DefectBot”.
The question is, these days, which people use extra-debate tools to silence their opponents?
Yes, precisely! This is what I think should be the golden standard for censorship. Ask yourself if the other person would try to censor you if they thought they could get away with it even if you were nice to them, and if the answer is yes it is acceptable (but not necessarily desirable!) to censor them. So an honest and reasonable bio-realist should not be censored, but Eugine Nier should be. It’s simply a matter of memetic self-defence.
The problem is how does one distinguish someone defecting because he’s dealing with a DefectBot with someone defecting because he is a DefectBot.
The same way you distinguish between someone who murders a person in order to steal their money and someone who kills a person in self defence: By evaluating on a case-by-case basis to the best of your ability. It’s not always easy, but it sure beats not bothering to make the distinction.
(In this case I think it’s quite obvious that Eugine Nier is the DefectBot and not Kaj_Sotala.)
And it wasn’t the people Eugine Nier was downvoting?
No, it wasn’t. Do you have any reason to think it was?
Well Eugine seemed to think so.
He seemed to think they were not rational enough to participate on this site. That’s not the same as being a DefectBot.
Imagine the distance to the “cooperate” button is slightly higher than the “defect” button. Someone who can’t reach the cooperate button might not mean any harm. But from your point of view, they might as well be a defectbot.
That isn’t what a DefectBot is. A DefectBot is an agent that would defect in every position, including this one.
For example, the Nazis might do everything in their power to hurt you now (such as attacking you on the way home), and when they are in power (such as, well, I think we all know the canonical example of that.)
On the other hand, they might act nice now but, you suspect, defect when they find themselves in power. Or they might attack as hard as they can now, but be generous in victory. Neither of those are DefectBot.
That’s funny because I view progressives as the exact group that would instantly throw me under the bus the moment I didn’t want to help them against someone else. Neoreactionaries at least propose to leave me alone.
I’m not excited about the NR plans for gay people if they ever come to power. Moldbug is charmingly neutral on the issue, but many of the others most certainly are not.
It is my impression that neoreactionaries want a non-democratic government. Surely this non-democratic government will make laws that you are required to obey, right?
Most neo reactionaries I read believe in something called Exit whereby if you want you can get the hell out. Contrast this to the ussr or how America will continue to tax you for something like 10 years if you want to emigrate.
Exiting isn’t cost-free, though. Most people won’t even exit by moving to a different state in the US, just because of all the direct and indirect costs of moving.
this is true, and one reason why I’m not a neoreactionary. But I’d still rather be deported than gulagged.
I think you’re confusing progressives with Stalinists.
I think you’re confusing “responding to a point someone is trying to make” and “making fun of someone”.
Maybe the average progressive has neither the power or the inclination to put me in a gulag but the side of things that they historically have lent their power and rhetoric to sure does. I don’t feel it’s particularly likely to happen in the near future but I also recognize that no one seemed to have predicted the outcome ahead of time the last time.
Or to put it another way: Stalinists are on a continuum with progressives. They are not a different kind of thing.
Fair point. My comment was unnecessarily snarky.
There have been sections of the progressive left that lent their power and rhetoric to support Soviet communism. There have also been significant sections of the progressive left that lent their power and rhetoric to vociferously oppose Soviet communism. Andrei Sakharov, Vaclav Havel, Isaiah Berlin, Albert Camus and George Orwell—a few big names that come to mind immediately—all had political views that would probably classify them as “progressive” in today’s political climate. In addition, progressives have been at the forefront of most movements to expand civil liberties in the 20th century.
If you just focus on progressivism’s criticisms of capitalism and conservatism, then yeah, it doesn’t seem like a different kind of thing from Stalinism. But that ignores another prominent tendency in the history of the movement—a strong strain of civil libertarianism (the ACLU, for instance, is regarded by many as a progressive institution) -- which is qualitatively distinct from Stalinism.
I’m not sure what you mean by “progressives”, but it seems to me that “liberals” or “social-democrats” are actually closer to libertarians in terms of personal freedoms, while Soviet-style socialists are closer to fascists and theocrats on these issues.
The political spectrum has at least two dimensions: personal freedoms and economic freedoms.
I would probably put it as “The more power progressives get, the more they tend to evolve towards stalinists”. After all you’ve got to protect the people against the horrors of capitalism.
I was under the impression that “Exit” was the means by which they were going to establish their own utopia, that is, by exiting whichever one they were living in currently, rather than a fundamental right for us unlucky proles.
I think you are going to run into problems here. I suspect that most adherents of many ideologies would censor opposing views if they could get away with it.
Yes, that’s a very reasonable position to take, and I’m leaning the same way. I see the issue as being very similar to the question of whether or not a society should condone killing people: It makes perfect sense to have a general rule that says you can’t, but sometimes you have no choice. Pacifism is not the solution here.
The karma system does not solve this problem because a small number of people can have a disproportionate impact simply by voting more. And of course, extremists care more and so are more likely to vote. My post above is now at −3: Is this because the community disapproves? Or is it because 3 bio realists felt threatened by the notion that we should ban literal nazis because it might extend to them as well? I am not at all convinced it’s the former.
But the clear implication is that people having those views are “assholes”.
Daenerys, since there seems to be some uncertainty:
Are you saying that you would prefer if LessWrong increased the height of it’s metaphorical wall, keeping out “anti-feminist or biorealist assholes”?
Or are you saying that the model of a public forum is inherently “a great way to drive off women and minorities”, and thus you don’t use LessWrong and don’t care about the moderation policy much?
I’ve seen different people reading your comment different ways.
Much closer to the latter. I am not making any policy recommendations about LW moderation. I don’t really care, since I’m not on LW anymore (except for things like this where people ask me specifically something).
I said that one of the reasons I prefer Facebook is that it’s a walled garden. I did NOT say that I want LessWrong to be a walled garden. I would think neo-reactionaries would support the idea of just going to the place that has the rules you like/ voting with your feet.
I do think there can be public forums that do not drive off women and minorities, which is where I disagree with your second statement.
I do not think all biorealists or antifeminists are assholes. I thought EUGINE was an asshole. He was also a biorealist. So he was a biorealist asshole. I’ve already made a comment about that, but people keep saying that I said that anyways. And quoting only me saying “biorealist assholes”. I DO think biorealists and anitfeminists have to be especially epistemically polite (and generally polite) if they want to have any chance of people actually engaging with their ideas.
As an example:
Christian asshole: Fred Phelps
Christian not-an-asshole: Leah Libresco
Skeptic asshole: Penn Jilette
Skeptic not-an-asshole: All the CFAR people
See how I consider “assholeness” as an unrelated trait to whether or not I agree with a viewpoint. If there were prolific skeptic assholes, they would drive off religious users. If there were prolific Christian assholes they would drive of skeptic and LGBTQ users. All assholes tend to drive off all non-assholes.
This whole “OMG! daenerys says all biorealists are assholes and should be banned11!!!!!1” reaction feels like people are willfully misinterpreting me, putting words in my mouth, and using tiny quotes completely out of context (like “biorealist asshole”) Especially AFTER I wrote a comment clarifying that I meant ONLY what I said an nothing else. This is another reason I don’t LW. Commenting on LW is like reading the comments on a general website. Sometimes you get the impulse to do it, but as soon as you do you immediately remember why you don’t. Note that I’m again, only EXPLAINING why I don’t use LW, and am NOT demanding moderation changes.
ETA: Also, MugaSofer, I commend (and upvote) you for doing the Right Thing… When a discussion partner says something that you could interpret two ways, and Interpretation A is sane, but Interpretation B would cause you to get super-offended and launch a multi-comment barrage, the polite (non-asshole) thing to do is just to ask if they meant A or B, and NOT to just assume B and get offended and launch the multi-comment barrage. Especially when A is the literal interpretation and B requires quite a bit of twistiness to get to.
Excellent, I agree wholeheartedly. Thank you for clarifying.
Now, in fairness, I wouldn’t characterize people misunderstanding as willful, assholeish misunderstanding. Applying the Principle of Charity is the reason I understood you in the first place, right?
As I said, different people interpreted your phrasing in different ways; your phrasing was genuinely ambiguous regarding whether the operative word was “asshole” or “biorealist”. I guess this shows our default assumptions about … sentences?
Thanks for the Rationality Compliment, I’m flattered :)
ETA: Another upside of posting on facebook is that it does a better job of raising the general sanity waterline than posting here. It exposes rationality ideas and conversations in a friendly/humanising way to people who would never have sought them out (all my non-rationality friends), and it allows them to participate and interact with those ideas in a much more supportive way. :)
Heinrich Himmler is a racist. Eugene_Nier, not so much.
Non-central fallacy or focusing on disputing definitions possibly?
I’m pretty sure (but don’t feel like spending time tracking down examples, so I could be wrong) that I’ve seen Eugine saying biorealist things.
I changed “racist” to “biorealist” in my comment, if you don’t think the two should be equated.
I commend you for your reasonableness, which quality seems increasingly rare in the modern world.
Are you implying that none of EN’s contributions were much more problematic than saying “Negro spirituals”?
My laugh for the evening.
A fine example of “asshole” = “those who disagree with my values”.
Should those who disagree similarly start whooping it up for banning feminists and biodenialists? Or should they just be similarly denigrating them as a matter of course?
More and more, I’m thinking they need to fight back in kind.
It’s strange that the supposedly evil, nasty reactionaries are social pacifists who refuse to respond with a little tit for the incessant tat they receive.
Charming to see all the karma upvotes going to a post which denigrated a whole swath of users as “assholes” because of their beliefs. Real “friendly/humanising”.
No way you could have seen this comment when you wrote this, so here’s a heads up—it turns out that’s not how it was meant.
The emphasis was intended on “asshole”, not “biorealist”, if you see what I mean—“biorealist” is the reason it drives off “women and minorities” specifically, not the reason he was an asshole.
Yes, but I get the impression that the assholiness threshold/criterion is different for biorealists and antifeminists on the one hand and SJWs on the other.
I just realized the non-asshole examples list didn’t include an attempt of naming a non-asshole biorealist. Then started wondering how it would go if you tried giving examples of non-asshole biorealists or even assert the possibility of one existing on a SJ-friendly forum.
I did not. I had a lot of direct replies that were taking my attention.
That’s an inference you might make from the available data. Perhaps it is even true.
I think that by the ordinary usage of the English language, my interpretation of the text is more consistent with what was written than the interpretation you quote. If you really want to hear my close textual analysis, I would oblige, but I don’t see a lot of mileage in it.
(Penn Jillette an asshole? Really? To me, he seems incredibly gracious to others, often to the point of being overly deferential.)
Also, it was posted three days after you wrote your comment. I can see how that might present a bit of a challenge.
I was genuinely confused to see someone interpreting it another way, if that helps your analysis—the other interpretation hadn’t occurred to me.
But yes, I suppose it’s definitely possible they simply leaped on a convenient excuse.
Not that I’m a fan of the asshole == ideological opponent mentality, but we are talking about a guy who spent probably cumulative days of his time downvoting people in a self-confessed effort to drive them away from the forum. That doesn’t sound like the behavior of a social pacifist to me. Indeed, it sounds quite a bit like the behavior of an asshole.
See the original quote:
We’re not talking about downvoting, we’re talking about biorealists and antifeminists. They’re the assholes.
How peculiar. I could have sworn I quoted you talking about “evil, nasty reactionaries”, as typified in this context by Eugine_Nier.
I’m not trying to endorse Daenerys’ apparent opinion re: biorealists and antifeminists, as you may have gleaned from the fact that I directly said I disagree with it. But you’re going too far in the other direction. You may, of course, make whatever assertions you please regarding the general behavior of groups he may belong to, but I feel it’s somewhat disingenuous to cast any of those groups as entirely innocent of social wrongdoing (“social pacifists”) when this entire friggin’ thread is about social wrongdoing by a member of those groups. If you’re instead going for some kind of No True Scotsman deal, it’d help to say that Eugine’s not a true Scotsman.
The sarcastic, not using my own voice tone didn’t come through, even from the context? Did you genuinely think I was earnestly calling reactionaries evil? If not, this seems like a complete red herring.
He’s a member of LessWrong too. Is everyone here an asshole?
Two very different cases.
Eugine, at least by his own argument, was voting down people with a low rationality quotient. He has been widely condemned by all, including the evil reactionaries, and was banned.
daenerys called a lot of people on the list assholes based on them having opinions she disagreed with, and suggested they be banned for the same. She was widely upvoted.
Generalizations are about general trends, and not absolute truths admitting of no exceptions.
Which side heaps abuse on the other, and suggests sanctions against the other? Which side defends their own? What’s the broad trend?
You keep coming back to Eugine, but neither daenerys nor I were predominantly talking about Eugine.
Go to my previous comment in this thread. Currently, two downvotes for an accurate correction of your misrepresentation of her original statement. Do you want to further debate that point, or will you grant my reading? If so, isn’t it odd that a couple of people on the list are downvoting a clearly accurate interpretation of the text that corrects a clearly inaccurate misinterpretation.
Upvotes for calling people assholes and suggesting they be banned for their beliefs, downvotes for accurate analysis. The voting seems to align better with ideology than truth, and is positive for one ideology, and negative for the other. Which is the trend I’m pointing out.
Point of order: can you quote where they said being reactionary should be a banning offence? Because I don’t see it.
That’s because it’s not there.
She prefers that “anti-feminist or biorealist assholes” aren’t here, she prefers “a walled garden”. Is that a literal statement of “I want the anti-feminist or biorealist assholes through over the wall and kept out”? No, but it’s not too hard to do the math.
“Will no one rid me of these turbulent assholes?” (In case the reference is too obscure, see Saint Thomas of Canterbury for details.)
I get the reference. Not because I get references, as a rule, but because Blackadder used it :-)
I read that as saying that they were glad he was gone, but that it didn’t matter much to them—because they had moved to the self-selected “garden” of one’s Facebook feed.
But I suppose I can see how that might be read as an ideal for us to be aspiring to, now that you say it. Which … is bad, yeah. Hmm.
Just ran into Eugine on Gab. The name looked familiar, so I did a quick search, came onto this thread, and saw that my comment giving the quote requested to back up my point had been downvoted into being hidden.
It’s interesting. I’d be embarrassed to downvote to oblivion someone delivering evidence requested to back up their claim, especially on LW.
The banning of Eugine was just part of the trend that today has me banned from Twitter and reading Eugine’s posts on Gab. Such is the asymmetry of the social war. I keep wondering if the Right will ever fight back.
I’m not sure what ‘biodenialists’ are exactly but on the basis that the word ends with “ists” it’s reasonably unlikely that any particular social-politically active ‘*ist’ will be of net value, given the change such agendas have on thought.
Post I was replying to used the term