I’ve reliably used the word “threat” to simply mean signaling some kind of intention of inflicting some kind punishment in response to some condition by the other person. Curi and other people from FI have done this repeatedly, and the “list of people who have evaded/lied/etc.” is exactly one of such threats, whether explicitly labeled as such or not.
This game-theoretic concept of “threat” is fine, but underdetermined: what counts as a threat in this sense depends on where the the “zero point” is; what counts as aggression versus self-defense depends on what the relevant “property rights” are. (Scare quotes on “property rights” because I’m not talking about legal claims, but “property rights” is an apt choice of words, because I’m claiming that the way people negotiate disputes that don’t rise to the level of dragging in the (slow, expensive) formal legal system, have a similar structure.)
If people have a “right” to not be publicly described as lying, evading, &c., then someone who puts up a “these people lied, evaded, &c.” page on their own website is engaging in a kind of aggression. The page functions as a threat: “If you don’t keep engaging in a way that satisfies my standards of discourse, I’ll publicly call you a liar, evader, &c..”
If people don’t have a “right” to not be publicly described as lying, evading, &c., then a website administrator who cites a user’s “these people lied, evaded, &c.” page on their own website as part of a rationale for banning that user, is engaging in a kind of aggression. The ban functions as a threat: “If you don’t cede your claim on being able to describe other people as lying, evading, &c., I won’t let you participate in this forum.”
The size of the website administrator’s threat depends on the website’s “market power.” Less Wrong is probably small enough and niche enough such that the threat doesn’t end up controlling anyone’s off-site behavior: anyone who perceives not being able to post on Less Wrong as a serious threat is probably already so deeply socially-embedded into our little robot cult, that they either have similar property-rights intuitions as the administrators, or are too loyal to the group to publicly accuse other group members as lying, evading, &c., even if they privately think they are lying, evading, &c.. (Nobody likes self-styled whistleblowers!) But getting kicked off a service with the market power of a Google, Facebook, Twitter, &c. is a sufficiently big deal to sufficiently many people such that those websites’ terms-of-service do exert some controlling pressure on the rest of Society.
What are the consequences of each of these “property rights” regimes?
Which regime better fulfills our charter of advancing the art of human rationality? I don’t think I’ve written this skillfully enough for you to not be able to guess what answer I lean towards, but you shouldn’t trust my answer if it seems like something I might lie or evade about! You need to think it through for yourself.
For what it’s worth, I think a decision to ban would stand on just his pursuit of conversational norms that reward stamina over correctness, in a way that I think makes LessWrong worse at intellectual progress. I didn’t check out this page, and it didn’t factor into my sense that curi shouldn’t be on LW.
I also find it somewhat worrying that, as I understand it, the page was a combination of “quit”, “evaded”, and “lied”, of which ‘quit’ is not worrying (I consider someone giving up on a conversation with curi understandable instead of shameful), and that getting wrapped up in the “&c.” instead of being the central example seems like it’s defining away my main crux.
To elaborate on this, I think there are two distinct issues: “do they have the right norms?” and “do they do norm enforcement?”. The second is normally good instead of problematic, but makes the first much more important than it would be otherwise. I see Zack_M_Davis as pointing out “hey, if we don’t let people enforce norms because that would make normbreakers feel threatened, do we even have norms?”, which is a valid point, but which feels somewhat irrelevant to the curi question.
This game-theoretic concept of “threat” is fine, but underdetermined: what counts as a threat in this sense depends on where the the “zero point” is; what counts as aggression versus self-defense depends on what the relevant “property rights” are. (Scare quotes on “property rights” because I’m not talking about legal claims, but “property rights” is an apt choice of words, because I’m claiming that the way people negotiate disputes that don’t rise to the level of dragging in the (slow, expensive) formal legal system, have a similar structure.)
If people have a “right” to not be publicly described as lying, evading, &c., then someone who puts up a “these people lied, evaded, &c.” page on their own website is engaging in a kind of aggression. The page functions as a threat: “If you don’t keep engaging in a way that satisfies my standards of discourse, I’ll publicly call you a liar, evader, &c..”
If people don’t have a “right” to not be publicly described as lying, evading, &c., then a website administrator who cites a user’s “these people lied, evaded, &c.” page on their own website as part of a rationale for banning that user, is engaging in a kind of aggression. The ban functions as a threat: “If you don’t cede your claim on being able to describe other people as lying, evading, &c., I won’t let you participate in this forum.”
The size of the website administrator’s threat depends on the website’s “market power.” Less Wrong is probably small enough and niche enough such that the threat doesn’t end up controlling anyone’s off-site behavior: anyone who perceives not being able to post on Less Wrong as a serious threat is probably already so deeply socially-embedded into our little robot cult, that they either have similar property-rights intuitions as the administrators, or are too loyal to the group to publicly accuse other group members as lying, evading, &c., even if they privately think they are lying, evading, &c.. (Nobody likes self-styled whistleblowers!) But getting kicked off a service with the market power of a Google, Facebook, Twitter, &c. is a sufficiently big deal to sufficiently many people such that those websites’ terms-of-service do exert some controlling pressure on the rest of Society.
What are the consequences of each of these “property rights” regimes?
In a world where people have a right to not be publicly described as lying, evading, &c., then people don’t have to be afraid of losing reputation on that account. But we also lose out on the possibility of having a public accounting of who has actually in fact lied, evaded, &c.. We give up on maintaining the coordination equilibrium such that words like “lie” have a literal meaning that can actually be true or false, rather than the word itself simply constituting an attack.
Which regime better fulfills our charter of advancing the art of human rationality? I don’t think I’ve written this skillfully enough for you to not be able to guess what answer I lean towards, but you shouldn’t trust my answer if it seems like something I might lie or evade about! You need to think it through for yourself.
For what it’s worth, I think a decision to ban would stand on just his pursuit of conversational norms that reward stamina over correctness, in a way that I think makes LessWrong worse at intellectual progress. I didn’t check out this page, and it didn’t factor into my sense that curi shouldn’t be on LW.
I also find it somewhat worrying that, as I understand it, the page was a combination of “quit”, “evaded”, and “lied”, of which ‘quit’ is not worrying (I consider someone giving up on a conversation with curi understandable instead of shameful), and that getting wrapped up in the “&c.” instead of being the central example seems like it’s defining away my main crux.
To elaborate on this, I think there are two distinct issues: “do they have the right norms?” and “do they do norm enforcement?”. The second is normally good instead of problematic, but makes the first much more important than it would be otherwise. I see Zack_M_Davis as pointing out “hey, if we don’t let people enforce norms because that would make normbreakers feel threatened, do we even have norms?”, which is a valid point, but which feels somewhat irrelevant to the curi question.