Thanks, these are some great points on some of the costs of decoupling norms! (As you’ve observed, I’m generally pretty strongly in favor of decoupling norms, but policy debates should not appear one-sided.)
someone brings it up all the time
I would want to distinguish “brings it up all the time” in the sense of “this user posts about this topic when it’s not relevant” (which I agree is bad and warrants moderator action) versus the sense of “this user posts about this topic a lot, and not on other topics” (which I think is generally OK).
If someone is obsessively focused on their narrow special interest—let’s say, algebraic topology—and occasionally comments specifically when they happen to think of an application of algebraic topology to the forum topic, I think that’s fine, because people reading that particular thread get the benefit of a relevant algebraic topology application—even if looking at that user’s posting history leaves one with an unsettling sense of, “Wow, this person is creepily obsessed with their hobbyhorse.”
tries to twist other people’s posts towards a discussion of their thing
I agree that this would be bad, but I think it’s usually possible to distinguish “twist[ing] other people’s posts towards a discussion of their thing” from a genuinely relevant mention of the thing that couldn’t (or shouldn’t) be reasonably expected to derail the discussion?
In the present case, my great-great-grandparent comment notes that the list-of-koans format lends itself to readers contributing their own examples in the comments, and I tried to give two such examples (trying to mimic the æsthetic of the OP by continuing the numbered list and Alice/Bob/Charlie/&c. character name sequence), one of which related the theme of the OP to the main point of one of my recent posts.
In retrospect, maybe I should’ve thought more carefully about how to phrase the proposed example in a way that makes the connection to the OP more explicit/obvious? (Probably-better version: “A meaningful ‘Yes’ answer to the question ‘Is G an H?’ requires a definition of H such that the answer could be ‘No’.”)
It’s true that, while composing the great-great-grandparent, I was kind of hoping that some readers would click through the link and read my earlier post, which I worked really hard on and which I think is filling in a gap in “A Human’s Guide to Words” that I’ve seen people be confused about. But I don’t see how this can reasonably be construed as an attempt to derail the discussion? Like, I ordinarily wouldn’t expect a brief comment of the form “Great post! Here’s a couple more examples that occurred to me, personally” to receive any replies in the median case.
(Although unfortunately, it empirically looks like the discussion did, in fact, get derailed. I feel bad for Scott G. that we’re cluttering up his comment section like this, but I can’t think of anything I wish I had done differently other than wording the great-great grandparent more clearly, as mentioned in the paragraph-before-last. GivenVanessa’s reply, I felt justified in writing my counterreply … and here we are.)
It would be perfectly alright for moderators who didn’t want to drive away their visitors to ask this person to stop.
Agreed, the moderators are God and their will must be obeyed.
kick out someone who has a bad reputation that makes important posters unable to post on your website because they don’t want to associate with that person, even IF that person has good behavior
So, the dynamic you describe here definitely exists, but I actually think it’s a pretty serious problem for our collective sanity: if some truths happen to lie outside of Society’s Overton window, then systematic truthseekers (who want to collect all the truths, not just the majority of them that are safely within the Overton window) will find themselves on the wrong side of Respectability, and if people who care about being Respectable (and thereby having power in Society) can’t even talk to people outside the Overton window (not even agree with—just talk to, using, for example, a website), then that could have negative instrumental consequences in the form of people with power in Society making bad policy decisions on account of having inaccurate beliefs.
I want to write more about this in the future (albeit not on Less Wrong), but in the meantime, maybe see the immortal Scott Alexander’s “Kolmogorov Complicity And The Parable Of Lightning” for an expression of similar concerns:
Some other beliefs will be found to correlate heavily with lightning-heresy. Maybe atheists are more often lightning-heretics; maybe believers in global warming are too. The enemies of these groups will have a new cudgel to beat them with, “If you believers in global warming are so smart and scientific, how come so many of you believe in lightning, huh?” Even the savvy Kolmogorovs within the global warming community will be forced to admit that their theory just seems to attract uniquely crappy people. It won’t be very convincing. Any position correlated with being truth-seeking and intelligent will be always on the retreat, having to forever apologize that so many members of their movement screw up the lightning question so badly.
Regarding “Kolmogorov complicity”, I just want to make clear that I don’t want to censor your opinion on the political question. Such censorship would only serve to justify your notion that “we only refuse to believe X because it’s heresy, while any systematic truthseeker would believe X”, which is something I very much disagree with. I might be interested in discussing the political question if we were allowed to do it. It is the double bind of, not being able to allowed to argue with you on the political quesiton while having to listen to you constantly hinting at it, is what bugging me. Then again, I don’t really have a good solution.
Thanks, these are some great points on some of the costs of decoupling norms! (As you’ve observed, I’m generally pretty strongly in favor of decoupling norms, but policy debates should not appear one-sided.)
I would want to distinguish “brings it up all the time” in the sense of “this user posts about this topic when it’s not relevant” (which I agree is bad and warrants moderator action) versus the sense of “this user posts about this topic a lot, and not on other topics” (which I think is generally OK).
If someone is obsessively focused on their narrow special interest—let’s say, algebraic topology—and occasionally comments specifically when they happen to think of an application of algebraic topology to the forum topic, I think that’s fine, because people reading that particular thread get the benefit of a relevant algebraic topology application—even if looking at that user’s posting history leaves one with an unsettling sense of, “Wow, this person is creepily obsessed with their hobbyhorse.”
I agree that this would be bad, but I think it’s usually possible to distinguish “twist[ing] other people’s posts towards a discussion of their thing” from a genuinely relevant mention of the thing that couldn’t (or shouldn’t) be reasonably expected to derail the discussion?
In the present case, my great-great-grandparent comment notes that the list-of-koans format lends itself to readers contributing their own examples in the comments, and I tried to give two such examples (trying to mimic the æsthetic of the OP by continuing the numbered list and Alice/Bob/Charlie/&c. character name sequence), one of which related the theme of the OP to the main point of one of my recent posts.
In retrospect, maybe I should’ve thought more carefully about how to phrase the proposed example in a way that makes the connection to the OP more explicit/obvious? (Probably-better version: “A meaningful ‘Yes’ answer to the question ‘Is G an H?’ requires a definition of H such that the answer could be ‘No’.”)
It’s true that, while composing the great-great-grandparent, I was kind of hoping that some readers would click through the link and read my earlier post, which I worked really hard on and which I think is filling in a gap in “A Human’s Guide to Words” that I’ve seen people be confused about. But I don’t see how this can reasonably be construed as an attempt to derail the discussion? Like, I ordinarily wouldn’t expect a brief comment of the form “Great post! Here’s a couple more examples that occurred to me, personally” to receive any replies in the median case.
(Although unfortunately, it empirically looks like the discussion did, in fact, get derailed. I feel bad for Scott G. that we’re cluttering up his comment section like this, but I can’t think of anything I wish I had done differently other than wording the great-great grandparent more clearly, as mentioned in the paragraph-before-last. Given Vanessa’s reply, I felt justified in writing my counterreply … and here we are.)
Agreed, the moderators are God and their will must be obeyed.
So, the dynamic you describe here definitely exists, but I actually think it’s a pretty serious problem for our collective sanity: if some truths happen to lie outside of Society’s Overton window, then systematic truthseekers (who want to collect all the truths, not just the majority of them that are safely within the Overton window) will find themselves on the wrong side of Respectability, and if people who care about being Respectable (and thereby having power in Society) can’t even talk to people outside the Overton window (not even agree with—just talk to, using, for example, a website), then that could have negative instrumental consequences in the form of people with power in Society making bad policy decisions on account of having inaccurate beliefs.
I want to write more about this in the future (albeit not on Less Wrong), but in the meantime, maybe see the immortal Scott Alexander’s “Kolmogorov Complicity And The Parable Of Lightning” for an expression of similar concerns:
Regarding “Kolmogorov complicity”, I just want to make clear that I don’t want to censor your opinion on the political question. Such censorship would only serve to justify your notion that “we only refuse to believe X because it’s heresy, while any systematic truthseeker would believe X”, which is something I very much disagree with. I might be interested in discussing the political question if we were allowed to do it. It is the double bind of, not being able to allowed to argue with you on the political quesiton while having to listen to you constantly hinting at it, is what bugging me. Then again, I don’t really have a good solution.