I encourage you to respond to any comment of mine that you believe...
...actively suppresses inconvenient questions with “fuck you, the truth is important.”
...ignores the arguments you made with “bro read the article.”
...leaves you in a fuzzy daze of maybe-disagreement and general malaise with ”?????”
...is hostile without indicating a concrete disagreement of substance with “that’s a lot of hot air”
...has citations that are of even possibly dubious quality with “legit?”. And if you dig through one of my citations and think either I am misleading by including it or it itself is misleading, demonstrate this fact, and then I don’t respond, you can call me a coward.
...belittles your concerns (on facebook or otherwise) with “don’t be a jerk.”
...professes a belief that is wholly incompatible with what I believe in private with “you’re lying.”
Since I expect readers of the comment chain to not have known that I gave you permission, I’ll take the work of linking to this post and assuring them that I quite literally asked for it. You’re also welcome to take liberties with the exact phrasing. For example, if you wanted to express a sharper sentiment in response to your general malaise, you might write ”???!!!!??!?!?!?”, which I would also encourage.
I doubt that this would work as a normative model for discourse since it would quickly devolve into namecalling and increase the heat of the arguments without actually shedding much light. I also think that if you were never beholden to the typical social rules that govern the EA forum and lesswrong, that you would lose some of the qualities that I most enjoy in your writing. But, if you see my name at the top of a comment, feel free to indulge yourself.
I don’t think I’ve told you before, but I like your writing. I appreciate the labor you put into your work to make it epistemically legible, which makes it obvious to me that you are seeking the truth. You engage with your commenters with kindness and curiosity, even when they are detracting from your work. Thank you.
Since I’m getting a fair number of confused reactions, I’ll add some probably-needed context:
Some of Elizabeth’s frustration with the EA Vegan discourse seems to stem from general commenting norms of lesswrong (and, relatedly, the EA forums). Specifically, the frustrations remind me of those of Duncan Sabien, who left lesswrong in part because he believed there was an asymmetry between commenters and posters wherein the commenters were allowed to take pot-shots at the main post, misrepresent the main post, and put forth claims they don’t really endorse that would take hours to deconstruct.
In the best case, this resulted in a discussion that exposed and resolved a real disagreement. In the worst case, this resulted in an asymmetric amount of time between main poster and commenter resolving a non-disagreement that would never have happened if the commenter put in the time to carefully read the parent post or express themselves clearly. Elizabeth’s post here touches on many similar themes, and although she bounds the scope of the post significantly (that she is only talking about EA Vegan advocacy and a general trend amongst commentators writ large instead of a problem of individuals), I suspect that she is at least at times annoyed/frustrated/reluctant to put forth the work involved in carefully disentangling confusing disagreements with commenters.
I can’t solve the big problem. I was hoping to give Elizabeth permission to engage with me in a way that feels less like work, and more like a casual conversation. The sort of permission I was giving is explicitly what Duncan was asking for (e.g. context-less links to the sequences) and I imagine I would want at least some of the time as a poster.
I realize that Elizabeth and Duncan are different people, and want different things, so sorry if I gave you something you didn’t want, Elizabeth.
TBC I voted against confusion because I found your comment easy to understand. But seems like lots of people didn’t, and I’m glad they had an easy way to express that. I have some hope for emojis doing exactly what you describe here, cheaply and without much inflammation. Elsewhere in the comments I’ve been able to mark specific claims as locally invalid, or ask for examples, or expressed appreciation, with it being a Whole Thing, and that’s been great.
Oh whoops, I misunderstood the UI. I saw your name under the confusion tag and thought it was a positive vote. I didn’t realize it listed emote-downvotes in red.
I encourage you to respond to any comment of mine that you believe...
...actively suppresses inconvenient questions with “fuck you, the truth is important.”
...ignores the arguments you made with “bro read the article.”
...leaves you in a fuzzy daze of maybe-disagreement and general malaise with ”?????”
...is hostile without indicating a concrete disagreement of substance with “that’s a lot of hot air”
...has citations that are of even possibly dubious quality with “legit?”. And if you dig through one of my citations and think either I am misleading by including it or it itself is misleading, demonstrate this fact, and then I don’t respond, you can call me a coward.
...belittles your concerns (on facebook or otherwise) with “don’t be a jerk.”
...professes a belief that is wholly incompatible with what I believe in private with “you’re lying.”
Since I expect readers of the comment chain to not have known that I gave you permission, I’ll take the work of linking to this post and assuring them that I quite literally asked for it. You’re also welcome to take liberties with the exact phrasing. For example, if you wanted to express a sharper sentiment in response to your general malaise, you might write ”???!!!!??!?!?!?”, which I would also encourage.
I doubt that this would work as a normative model for discourse since it would quickly devolve into namecalling and increase the heat of the arguments without actually shedding much light. I also think that if you were never beholden to the typical social rules that govern the EA forum and lesswrong, that you would lose some of the qualities that I most enjoy in your writing. But, if you see my name at the top of a comment, feel free to indulge yourself.
I don’t think I’ve told you before, but I like your writing. I appreciate the labor you put into your work to make it epistemically legible, which makes it obvious to me that you are seeking the truth. You engage with your commenters with kindness and curiosity, even when they are detracting from your work. Thank you.
Since I’m getting a fair number of confused reactions, I’ll add some probably-needed context:
Some of Elizabeth’s frustration with the EA Vegan discourse seems to stem from general commenting norms of lesswrong (and, relatedly, the EA forums). Specifically, the frustrations remind me of those of Duncan Sabien, who left lesswrong in part because he believed there was an asymmetry between commenters and posters wherein the commenters were allowed to take pot-shots at the main post, misrepresent the main post, and put forth claims they don’t really endorse that would take hours to deconstruct.
In the best case, this resulted in a discussion that exposed and resolved a real disagreement. In the worst case, this resulted in an asymmetric amount of time between main poster and commenter resolving a non-disagreement that would never have happened if the commenter put in the time to carefully read the parent post or express themselves clearly. Elizabeth’s post here touches on many similar themes, and although she bounds the scope of the post significantly (that she is only talking about EA Vegan advocacy and a general trend amongst commentators writ large instead of a problem of individuals), I suspect that she is at least at times annoyed/frustrated/reluctant to put forth the work involved in carefully disentangling confusing disagreements with commenters.
I can’t solve the big problem. I was hoping to give Elizabeth permission to engage with me in a way that feels less like work, and more like a casual conversation. The sort of permission I was giving is explicitly what Duncan was asking for (e.g. context-less links to the sequences) and I imagine I would want at least some of the time as a poster.
I realize that Elizabeth and Duncan are different people, and want different things, so sorry if I gave you something you didn’t want, Elizabeth.
Regardless, thank you for taking me up on my offer of responding with an emote expressing confusion rather than trying to resolve whatever confusion you had with a significant number of words, per https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/aW288uWABwTruBmgF/?commentId=hgx5vjXAYjYBGf32J.(misunderstood UI).TBC I voted against confusion because I found your comment easy to understand. But seems like lots of people didn’t, and I’m glad they had an easy way to express that. I have some hope for emojis doing exactly what you describe here, cheaply and without much inflammation. Elsewhere in the comments I’ve been able to mark specific claims as locally invalid, or ask for examples, or expressed appreciation, with it being a Whole Thing, and that’s been great.
Oh whoops, I misunderstood the UI. I saw your name under the confusion tag and thought it was a positive vote. I didn’t realize it listed emote-downvotes in red.
For the record, I also misunderstood the UI in the same way. Perhaps it should be made clearer somehow.
Oh huh, I also misunderstood that, I thought red meant OP or something
Yes, if the emote-downvotes are red, the emote-upvotes ought to be green.