Responding to criticism of any kind is costly in time and emotional energy. Criticism may feel unpleasant to the recipient, or turn out to be incorrect or unimportant, and that’s OK to a certain extent. We need to tolerate a certain amount of net-negative criticism so that people feel like they can afford to make occasional mistakes when attempting to deliver constructive criticism. When an individual delivers a large amount of net-negative criticism (i.e. a mix of incorrect, unpelasant, and time consuming) over an extended period of time, then that eventually becomes a problem.
I wholly reject this entire framework.
We ought not even consider the question of whether criticism is “unpleasant”. That it’s unpleasant to receive criticism is just an obvious, banal fact about human psychology. We take it as a baseline assumption, but it’s completely misguided to endorse that reaction. It is a bias to be overcome. Otherwise… well, we’ve been over this.
If criticism is incorrect, then say why it’s incorrect. That’s the whole point of having a discussion. You speak as if everyone always knows in advance what is correct and what is not! If that were true, what the heck would be the point of… any of this? This whole website, the whole rationalist project?
(As for the notion that only “constructive” criticism is good—well, I’ve already addressed that.)
A policy of zero guardrails allows conversations to be routinely derailed by Gish gallops, and I claim this not only can happen, but that it’s common knowledge that this happens consistently. There are a number of strategies communities can use to impose guardrails that mitigate this problem, all of which do have substantial costs that those communities appear largely willing to bear because of the much higher cost of allowing Gish gallops to destroy spaces for meaningful discourse.
For one thing, I do not advocate, and have never advocated, a policy of having zero guardrails. There ought not to be personal insults, like “you’re an idiot and an asshole” (which is to say, such things should always receive moderator attention, with a view toward heavily discouraging them; I can conceive of exceptions where such comments may be allowed, but they ought to be exceedingly rare). There ought not to be vulgarity. There ought not to be doxxing. There ought not to be spam. The posting of dumb memes and similar low-value content should be discouraged. AI-written text should be heavily policed. Probably I could think of several other obvious sorts of “guardrails” if I gave it more thought, and doubtless you could also. So please refrain from claiming that I endorse a “zero guardrails” policy; I don’t.
As for Gish gallops (and similar things)—I agree that such things are bad! But you know what is a very easy way of dealing with them?
Posting a reply that says “that’s a Gish gallop”.
And then downvoting the comment, and moving on with your life.
(And, as described earlier, if your judgment on that question is mistaken, then other commenters can reply to say “actually, no, that comment makes good points, you’re wrong about it being a Gish gallop, and here’s why”.)
(Indeed, this seems like an excellent role for the moderators to take on: when someone posts bad content like Gish gallops, comment to point this out; when someone unfairly labels a good comment as a Gish gallop, comment to point that out, too.)
In certain situations, like Soviet Russia, brutal enforcement of excessive guardrails against true and important criticism can become a much bigger problem than the sort of Gish gallops that degrade online discourse and that we are discussing here. But I regard that as so different from the problem that we’re discussing here that it’s a red herring and I’m not interested in further discussing comparisons between guardrails in online discourse and anti-speech enforcement in totalitarian regimes.
You’re quite thoroughly mistaken about this. The problem is not the brutality of the enforcement (do you think that the problem went away when the punishment stopped being “straight to gulag” and became more like “you can kiss goodbye to any career advancement or professional accolades”?); the problem is the ideological approach itself—the “it’s Trotskyism!” reply. If that sort of thing is even allowed to stand without receiving the withering scorn that it deserves, and even more so if it is enforced as the officially sanctioned and presumed-to-be-correct reply, then it’s utterly corrosive to any kind of intellectual work or truth-seeking.
That you see this as a “red herring” is a huge mistake on your part. This kind of problem arises in many forms, and it is fatal to the sort of project that Less Wrong is ostensibly engaged in.
“For one thing, I do not advocate, and have never advocated, a policy of having zero guardrails.”
I’m glad to hear you are comfortable with at least some guardrails. But you did specifically say “it’s so important to have discussion in the comments to a post be as unconstrained as possible.”
“As constrained as possible” means “no guardrails.” If you meant something different, you should have said what you meant, or at least acknowledged that you made a mistake.
“As [un]constrained as possible” means “no guardrails.”
(Brackets correcting what I presume is a typo.)
Here is an easy test to see the incorrectness of that reading of my comment: if, on a literal reading, it seems like I really meant “no guardrails” in the sense that you claim to have taken me to mean, then this would mean that I’d be opposed to the moderators deleting obvious (e.g., Russian penis enlargement pill) spam. Does this seem remotely plausible to you?
And before you protest further, let me remind you that we’ve already had this conversation. The link is to a comment thread where I say, in direct response to you specifically, that I dislike and do not endorse vulgarity and name-calling.
Additionally, in this comment (posted in the comment section of the same post as the one linked above), I say:
Going all the way to “zero” [catering to people’s feelings] is not even what I am proposing, nor would propose (for example, I am entirely in favor of forbidding personal insults, vulgarity, etc., even if some hypothetical ideal reasoner would be entirely unfazed even by such things).
In this comment (in that same comment section), I say:
Like, “avoid vulgarity” and “don’t use direct personal attacks” can be made into rules. There generally isn’t any reason to break them, except perhaps in the most extreme, rare cases.
You’re positing a person who is posting things that aren’t, like… vulgarity, or personal insults, or anything bad or crazy like that (because if he were doing that, then the mods would presumably ban him outright—or should, anyway!). And he’s not doing anything else that is rightly ban-worthy (like, say, persistently lying about his interlocutors’ claims, or something along those lines).
I have consistently and unambiguously expressed opposition to such behaviors, and support for rules forbidding such behaviors, including (I emphasize again) in direct response to you, personally.
Perhaps you forgot about those past statements. If so, let this be a reminder. I hope that there will be no further confusion on your part about what my position on this matter is.
I wholly reject this entire framework.
We ought not even consider the question of whether criticism is “unpleasant”. That it’s unpleasant to receive criticism is just an obvious, banal fact about human psychology. We take it as a baseline assumption, but it’s completely misguided to endorse that reaction. It is a bias to be overcome. Otherwise… well, we’ve been over this.
If criticism is incorrect, then say why it’s incorrect. That’s the whole point of having a discussion. You speak as if everyone always knows in advance what is correct and what is not! If that were true, what the heck would be the point of… any of this? This whole website, the whole rationalist project?
(As for the notion that only “constructive” criticism is good—well, I’ve already addressed that.)
For one thing, I do not advocate, and have never advocated, a policy of having zero guardrails. There ought not to be personal insults, like “you’re an idiot and an asshole” (which is to say, such things should always receive moderator attention, with a view toward heavily discouraging them; I can conceive of exceptions where such comments may be allowed, but they ought to be exceedingly rare). There ought not to be vulgarity. There ought not to be doxxing. There ought not to be spam. The posting of dumb memes and similar low-value content should be discouraged. AI-written text should be heavily policed. Probably I could think of several other obvious sorts of “guardrails” if I gave it more thought, and doubtless you could also. So please refrain from claiming that I endorse a “zero guardrails” policy; I don’t.
As for Gish gallops (and similar things)—I agree that such things are bad! But you know what is a very easy way of dealing with them?
Posting a reply that says “that’s a Gish gallop”.
And then downvoting the comment, and moving on with your life.
(And, as described earlier, if your judgment on that question is mistaken, then other commenters can reply to say “actually, no, that comment makes good points, you’re wrong about it being a Gish gallop, and here’s why”.)
(Indeed, this seems like an excellent role for the moderators to take on: when someone posts bad content like Gish gallops, comment to point this out; when someone unfairly labels a good comment as a Gish gallop, comment to point that out, too.)
You’re quite thoroughly mistaken about this. The problem is not the brutality of the enforcement (do you think that the problem went away when the punishment stopped being “straight to gulag” and became more like “you can kiss goodbye to any career advancement or professional accolades”?); the problem is the ideological approach itself—the “it’s Trotskyism!” reply. If that sort of thing is even allowed to stand without receiving the withering scorn that it deserves, and even more so if it is enforced as the officially sanctioned and presumed-to-be-correct reply, then it’s utterly corrosive to any kind of intellectual work or truth-seeking.
That you see this as a “red herring” is a huge mistake on your part. This kind of problem arises in many forms, and it is fatal to the sort of project that Less Wrong is ostensibly engaged in.
“For one thing, I do not advocate, and have never advocated, a policy of having zero guardrails.”
I’m glad to hear you are comfortable with at least some guardrails. But you did specifically say “it’s so important to have discussion in the comments to a post be as unconstrained as possible.”
“As constrained as possible” means “no guardrails.” If you meant something different, you should have said what you meant, or at least acknowledged that you made a mistake.
(Brackets correcting what I presume is a typo.)
Here is an easy test to see the incorrectness of that reading of my comment: if, on a literal reading, it seems like I really meant “no guardrails” in the sense that you claim to have taken me to mean, then this would mean that I’d be opposed to the moderators deleting obvious (e.g., Russian penis enlargement pill) spam. Does this seem remotely plausible to you?
And before you protest further, let me remind you that we’ve already had this conversation. The link is to a comment thread where I say, in direct response to you specifically, that I dislike and do not endorse vulgarity and name-calling.
Additionally, in this comment (posted in the comment section of the same post as the one linked above), I say:
In this comment (in that same comment section), I say:
Finally, in this more recent comment (on the topic about “moderation tools” etc.), I say:
I have consistently and unambiguously expressed opposition to such behaviors, and support for rules forbidding such behaviors, including (I emphasize again) in direct response to you, personally.
Perhaps you forgot about those past statements. If so, let this be a reminder. I hope that there will be no further confusion on your part about what my position on this matter is.