I admit that I’m puzzled by your comment. What is it that you think I might be hiding, or that I might wish to (plausibly) deny…? I thought I’d made myself reasonably clear, but if some part of my comment’s meaning seems obscure to you, I’d be glad to clarify…
(As a side note, and more generally, I’d like to note my very strong distaste for any community / site discourse norms that required commenters to hold to “prosocial wording” at all times. There is a difference between respectfulness and common decency, on the one hand, and on the other, this sort of stifling tone policing.)
I agree: it doesn’t read at all like an attack hidden behind plausible deniability, it reads like an attack that isn’t hidden at all.
But what’s it for?
Unless you think there are a lot of LW-adjacent people who regard “X comes from CFAR” as evidence against X being useful (my guess is that there are not, though there are probably a fair few who think “X comes from CFAR” is no evidence to speak of that it actually is useful), it’s not doing anything to resolve Raemon’s curiosity about why the technique hasn’t become popular. (I think the rest of what you wrote, however, does an admirable job of that, and I agree that it seems like a sufficient explanation.)
And, if in fact doublecruxing’s CFAR origins are a problem for any reason, it’s not like there’s much anyone can actually do about them.
The immediate impression I get from your remark about CFAR is this: “Said Achmiz really doesn’t like CFAR, and he wants everyone to know it, so much so that he puts anti-CFAR jabs into comments where they add nothing and probably serve only to antagonize people who might otherwise listen more willingly to what he’s saying”. It’s the same feeling I get from the similar jabs some people like to make at one another’s political or (ir)religious positions. I think they (and I am very much including yours here) tend to push discussions in the direction of tribal warfare (are you on Team CFAR-is-Good or Team CFAR-is-Bad?) and make them less productive.
There absolutely should not be any sort of obligation to be “prosocial” here. And if you wrote a post about why you think CFAR does more harm than good, I would read it with interest and probably upvote it. (My main reservation would be that communities like this tend to spend too much time discussing themselves and not enough time discussing actual issues, and this might be heading in the same direction.) But, while I’m not sure I can endorse the specific complaint lahwran made, I very much do endorse a slightly different one: your comment about CFAR was gratuitously rude and largely irrelevant, and what you wrote would have been better without it.
I am concerned about a fairly mild anti-CFAR comment getting this much criticism. I do think “part of the reason I haven’t adopted double crux is that I don’t trust CFAR” is a relevant comment. Even if it wasn’t, I worry that motivated reasoning will cause people to be far more upset about criticism of respected rationalist organizations than they are of other institutions, and for this to lead to a dynamic where people are quiet about their feelings about CFAR for fear of being dogpiled. This seems harmful both as a community norm and to CFAR itself.
To be clear, I am not complaining about SA’s comment because it’s anti-CFAR. I’m pretty skeptical about CFAR myself; I wouldn’t go as far as SA does, but the fact that CFAR recommends something doesn’t seem to me very good evidence for it.
I’m complaining about SA’s comment because it seems to me irrelevant, un-called-for, and likely to annoy or upset some readers (of whom I am not one) with no offsetting benefit to make it worth while.
But I very much hope that no one feels unable to criticize CFAR or MIRI or any other entity for fear of being dogpiled, and (as one alleged dog in the alleged pile) promise that if I see such dogpiling happening to someone for relevant criticism then I will be right there on the barricades defending them.
Here’s a more general comment re: the relevance of my aside—not about this issue in particular, but this general class of things.
I have, quite a few times in the past, had the experience of bringing up something like this, and having the responses of other participants or potential-participants in the discussion be split along lines as follows:
Some people: That was unnecessary! And irrelevant. No one else feels this way, why bring your grudge into this unrelated matter?
Other people: Thank you for saying that. I, too, feel this way, and agree that this is highly relevant, but didn’t want to say anything.
Those in the first category are usually oblivious to the existence and the prevalence of those in the second.
So yes, I think that it is not only absolutely permissible, but indeed mandatory, to insert just such asides into just such discussions. If there’s no uptake—well, then I simply drop the matter. Saying it once, or at least once in a long while, is sufficient; I have no problem changing the subject. But pervasive silence in such cases is how echo chambers form.
I can very well believe that remarks like this get exactly those sorts of comments, but I don’t think the existence of the Other People is good evidence that the remarks are a good idea. All it need show is that there are people who are cross about X (in this case X=CFAR) and feel that their views are underrepresented, which is not sufficient to make anti-X jabs helpful contributions to any given discussion.
If your opinion is that CFAR is a fraud or a scam or just inept and want to reassure others who hold similar views, then make a post actually about that explaining why you think that. It’ll be far more effective in showing those people that they have allies, it’ll provide a venue for others who agree to explain why (and for those who disagree to explain why, which should also be important if we’re trying to arrive at the truth), and it’ll have some chance of persuading others (which at-most-marginally-relevant jabs will not).
If going to the effort of writing a whole post about a concern is a prerequisite to ever mentioning the concern at all, then I think that’s an entirely unreasonable barrier, and certain to create a chilling effect on discussions of that concern. I oppose such a policy unreservedly.
All it need show is that there are people who are cross about X (in this case X=CFAR) and feel that their views are underrepresented, which is not sufficient to make anti-X jabs helpful contributions to any given discussion.
I thought that “and the concern in question is relevant to the current discussion” was implied. But consider it now stated outright! Append that, mentally, to what I said in the grandparent. (Certainly, as I made clear in the parallel thread, I think that the CFAR issue is relevant to this discussion.)
Perhaps I wasn’t clear: I don’t think you are, or should be, forbidden to mention your opinions of / attitude to CFAR if you aren’t willing to make a whole post explaining them. That would be crazy.
What I do think (which seems to me much less crazy) is this: 1. If, as you say three comments upthread from here, you feel that you have an obligation to say bad things about CFAR in public so that LW2 doesn’t become a pro-CFAR echo chamber, then what you’ve done here is not a very effective way of doing it, and writing something more substantial would be much more effective. And: 2. Dropping boo-to-CFAR asides into discussions of something else is likely to do more harm than good (even conditional on CFAR being bad in whatever ways you consider it bad; in fact, probably more so if it is) because its most likely effect is to make fans of CFAR defensive, people who dislike CFAR gloaty, and people who frankly don’t care much about CFAR annoyed at having what seem like political rivalries injected into otherwise-interesting discussions.
Of course, what’s ended up happening is that there’s been a ton of discussion and you may end up expending as much effort as if you’d written a whole post about why you are unimpressed by CFAR, but without the actual benefits of having done so. For the avoidance of doubt, that wasn’t my intention, and I doubt it was anyone else’s either, but it’s not exactly a surprising outcome either; gratuitously inflammatory asides tend to have such consequences...
Very enthusiastic +1 to this. I also don’t want to have a policy (that, empirically, I currently have, I guess?) of making people who say things like what you said, end up having to defend their views for hours in replies.
Unless you think there are a lot of LW-adjacent people who regard “X comes from CFAR” as evidence against X being useful
I do think that, in fact. (Caveat: I don’t know about “a lot”; I couldn’t speak to percentages of the user base or anything. Certainly not just me, though.)
If you took my comment as merely a political jab, feel free to ignore it. I am not certainly not interested in discussing CFAR-in-general in this thread (though would be happy to discuss it elsewhere). But that part of my comment was fully intended to be as substantive and on-point as the rest of it.
There absolutely should not be any sort of obligation to be “prosocial” here.
I think that it might be productive for the moderation team to comment on this point in particular. It seems like this might be a genuine difference in expectations between segments of the user base, and between the moderators and some of said segments.
(I think the rest of what you wrote, however, does an admirable job of that, and I agree that it seems like a sufficient explanation.)
I admit that I’m puzzled by your comment. What is it that you think I might be hiding, or that I might wish to (plausibly) deny…? I thought I’d made myself reasonably clear, but if some part of my comment’s meaning seems obscure to you, I’d be glad to clarify…
(As a side note, and more generally, I’d like to note my very strong distaste for any community / site discourse norms that required commenters to hold to “prosocial wording” at all times. There is a difference between respectfulness and common decency, on the one hand, and on the other, this sort of stifling tone policing.)
I agree: it doesn’t read at all like an attack hidden behind plausible deniability, it reads like an attack that isn’t hidden at all.
But what’s it for?
Unless you think there are a lot of LW-adjacent people who regard “X comes from CFAR” as evidence against X being useful (my guess is that there are not, though there are probably a fair few who think “X comes from CFAR” is no evidence to speak of that it actually is useful), it’s not doing anything to resolve Raemon’s curiosity about why the technique hasn’t become popular. (I think the rest of what you wrote, however, does an admirable job of that, and I agree that it seems like a sufficient explanation.)
And, if in fact doublecruxing’s CFAR origins are a problem for any reason, it’s not like there’s much anyone can actually do about them.
The immediate impression I get from your remark about CFAR is this: “Said Achmiz really doesn’t like CFAR, and he wants everyone to know it, so much so that he puts anti-CFAR jabs into comments where they add nothing and probably serve only to antagonize people who might otherwise listen more willingly to what he’s saying”. It’s the same feeling I get from the similar jabs some people like to make at one another’s political or (ir)religious positions. I think they (and I am very much including yours here) tend to push discussions in the direction of tribal warfare (are you on Team CFAR-is-Good or Team CFAR-is-Bad?) and make them less productive.
There absolutely should not be any sort of obligation to be “prosocial” here. And if you wrote a post about why you think CFAR does more harm than good, I would read it with interest and probably upvote it. (My main reservation would be that communities like this tend to spend too much time discussing themselves and not enough time discussing actual issues, and this might be heading in the same direction.) But, while I’m not sure I can endorse the specific complaint lahwran made, I very much do endorse a slightly different one: your comment about CFAR was gratuitously rude and largely irrelevant, and what you wrote would have been better without it.
I am concerned about a fairly mild anti-CFAR comment getting this much criticism. I do think “part of the reason I haven’t adopted double crux is that I don’t trust CFAR” is a relevant comment. Even if it wasn’t, I worry that motivated reasoning will cause people to be far more upset about criticism of respected rationalist organizations than they are of other institutions, and for this to lead to a dynamic where people are quiet about their feelings about CFAR for fear of being dogpiled. This seems harmful both as a community norm and to CFAR itself.
To be clear, I am not complaining about SA’s comment because it’s anti-CFAR. I’m pretty skeptical about CFAR myself; I wouldn’t go as far as SA does, but the fact that CFAR recommends something doesn’t seem to me very good evidence for it.
I’m complaining about SA’s comment because it seems to me irrelevant, un-called-for, and likely to annoy or upset some readers (of whom I am not one) with no offsetting benefit to make it worth while.
But I very much hope that no one feels unable to criticize CFAR or MIRI or any other entity for fear of being dogpiled, and (as one alleged dog in the alleged pile) promise that if I see such dogpiling happening to someone for relevant criticism then I will be right there on the barricades defending them.
I’m actually confused that you think my comment was bad—I was thinking the same thing you ended up saying.
I’m confused too. I don’t think your comment was bad, though as I wrote I’m not sure I could quite endorse the exact complaint it originally made.
Here’s a more general comment re: the relevance of my aside—not about this issue in particular, but this general class of things.
I have, quite a few times in the past, had the experience of bringing up something like this, and having the responses of other participants or potential-participants in the discussion be split along lines as follows:
Some people: That was unnecessary! And irrelevant. No one else feels this way, why bring your grudge into this unrelated matter?
Other people: Thank you for saying that. I, too, feel this way, and agree that this is highly relevant, but didn’t want to say anything.
Those in the first category are usually oblivious to the existence and the prevalence of those in the second.
So yes, I think that it is not only absolutely permissible, but indeed mandatory, to insert just such asides into just such discussions. If there’s no uptake—well, then I simply drop the matter. Saying it once, or at least once in a long while, is sufficient; I have no problem changing the subject. But pervasive silence in such cases is how echo chambers form.
I can very well believe that remarks like this get exactly those sorts of comments, but I don’t think the existence of the Other People is good evidence that the remarks are a good idea. All it need show is that there are people who are cross about X (in this case X=CFAR) and feel that their views are underrepresented, which is not sufficient to make anti-X jabs helpful contributions to any given discussion.
If your opinion is that CFAR is a fraud or a scam or just inept and want to reassure others who hold similar views, then make a post actually about that explaining why you think that. It’ll be far more effective in showing those people that they have allies, it’ll provide a venue for others who agree to explain why (and for those who disagree to explain why, which should also be important if we’re trying to arrive at the truth), and it’ll have some chance of persuading others (which at-most-marginally-relevant jabs will not).
If going to the effort of writing a whole post about a concern is a prerequisite to ever mentioning the concern at all, then I think that’s an entirely unreasonable barrier, and certain to create a chilling effect on discussions of that concern. I oppose such a policy unreservedly.
I thought that “and the concern in question is relevant to the current discussion” was implied. But consider it now stated outright! Append that, mentally, to what I said in the grandparent. (Certainly, as I made clear in the parallel thread, I think that the CFAR issue is relevant to this discussion.)
Perhaps I wasn’t clear: I don’t think you are, or should be, forbidden to mention your opinions of / attitude to CFAR if you aren’t willing to make a whole post explaining them. That would be crazy.
What I do think (which seems to me much less crazy) is this: 1. If, as you say three comments upthread from here, you feel that you have an obligation to say bad things about CFAR in public so that LW2 doesn’t become a pro-CFAR echo chamber, then what you’ve done here is not a very effective way of doing it, and writing something more substantial would be much more effective. And: 2. Dropping boo-to-CFAR asides into discussions of something else is likely to do more harm than good (even conditional on CFAR being bad in whatever ways you consider it bad; in fact, probably more so if it is) because its most likely effect is to make fans of CFAR defensive, people who dislike CFAR gloaty, and people who frankly don’t care much about CFAR annoyed at having what seem like political rivalries injected into otherwise-interesting discussions.
Of course, what’s ended up happening is that there’s been a ton of discussion and you may end up expending as much effort as if you’d written a whole post about why you are unimpressed by CFAR, but without the actual benefits of having done so. For the avoidance of doubt, that wasn’t my intention, and I doubt it was anyone else’s either, but it’s not exactly a surprising outcome either; gratuitously inflammatory asides tend to have such consequences...
Very enthusiastic +1 to this. I also don’t want to have a policy (that, empirically, I currently have, I guess?) of making people who say things like what you said, end up having to defend their views for hours in replies.
I do think that, in fact. (Caveat: I don’t know about “a lot”; I couldn’t speak to percentages of the user base or anything. Certainly not just me, though.)
If you took my comment as merely a political jab, feel free to ignore it. I am not certainly not interested in discussing CFAR-in-general in this thread (though would be happy to discuss it elsewhere). But that part of my comment was fully intended to be as substantive and on-point as the rest of it.
I think that it might be productive for the moderation team to comment on this point in particular. It seems like this might be a genuine difference in expectations between segments of the user base, and between the moderators and some of said segments.
Thank you.