Mm, I think sometimes I’d rather judge on the standard of whether the outcome is good, rather than exclusively on the rules of behavior.
This made my blood go cold, despite thinking it would be good if Said left LessWrong.
My first thoughts when I read “judge on the standard of whether the outcome is good” is that this lets you cherrypick your favorite outcomes without justifying them. My second is that it knowing if something is good can be very complicated even after the fact, so predicting it ahead of time is challenging even if you are perfectly neutral.
I think it’s good LessWrong(’s admins) allows authors to moderate their own posts (and I’ve used that to ban Said from my own posts). I think it’s good LessWrong mostly doesn’t allow explicit insults (and wish this was applied more strongly). I think it’s good LessWrong evaluates commenting patterns, not just individual comments. But “nothing that makes authors feel bad about bans” is way too far.
It’s extremely common for all judicial systems to rely on outcome assessments instead of process assessments! In many domains this is obviously the right standard! It is very common to create environments where someone can sue for damages and not just have the judgement be dependent on negligence (and both thresholds are indeed commonly relevant for almost any civil case).
Like sure, it comes with various issues, but it seems obviously wrong to me to request that no part of the LessWrong moderation process relies on outcome assessments.
Okay. But I nonetheless believe it’s necessary that we have to judge communication sometimes by outcomes rather than by process.
Like, as a lower stakes examples, sometimes you try to teasingly make a joke at your friend’s expense, but they just find it mean, and you take responsibility for that and apologize. Just because you thought you were behaving right and communicating well doesn’t mean you were, and sometimes you accept feedback from others that says you misjudged a situation. I don’t have all the rules written down such that if you follow them your friend will read your comments as intended, sometimes I just have to check.
Similarly sometimes you try to criticize an author, but they take it as implying you’ll push back whenever they enforce boundaries on LessWrong, and then you apologize and clarify that you do respect them enforcing boundaries in general but stand by the local criticism. (Or you don’t and then site-mods step in.) I don’t have all the rules written down such that if you follow them the author will read your comments as intended, sometimes I just have to check.
Obviously mod powers can be abused, and having to determine on a case by case basis is a power that can be abused. Obviously it involves judgment calls. I did not disclaim this, I’m happy for anyone to point it out, perhaps nobody has mentioned it so far in this thread so it’s worth making sure the consideration is mentioned. And yeah, if you’re asking, I don’t endorse “nothing that makes authors feel bad about bans”, and there are definitely situations where I think it would be appropriate for us to reverse someone’s bans (e.g. if someone banned all of the top 20 authors in the LW review, I would probably think this is just not workable on LW and reverse that).
Sure, but “is my friend upset” is very different than “is the sum total of all the positive and negative effects of this, from first order until infinite order, positive”
This made my blood go cold, despite thinking it would be good if Said left LessWrong.
My first thoughts when I read “judge on the standard of whether the outcome is good” is that this lets you cherrypick your favorite outcomes without justifying them. My second is that it knowing if something is good can be very complicated even after the fact, so predicting it ahead of time is challenging even if you are perfectly neutral.
I think it’s good LessWrong(’s admins) allows authors to moderate their own posts (and I’ve used that to ban Said from my own posts). I think it’s good LessWrong mostly doesn’t allow explicit insults (and wish this was applied more strongly). I think it’s good LessWrong evaluates commenting patterns, not just individual comments. But “nothing that makes authors feel bad about bans” is way too far.
It’s extremely common for all judicial systems to rely on outcome assessments instead of process assessments! In many domains this is obviously the right standard! It is very common to create environments where someone can sue for damages and not just have the judgement be dependent on negligence (and both thresholds are indeed commonly relevant for almost any civil case).
Like sure, it comes with various issues, but it seems obviously wrong to me to request that no part of the LessWrong moderation process relies on outcome assessments.
Okay. But I nonetheless believe it’s necessary that we have to judge communication sometimes by outcomes rather than by process.
Like, as a lower stakes examples, sometimes you try to teasingly make a joke at your friend’s expense, but they just find it mean, and you take responsibility for that and apologize. Just because you thought you were behaving right and communicating well doesn’t mean you were, and sometimes you accept feedback from others that says you misjudged a situation. I don’t have all the rules written down such that if you follow them your friend will read your comments as intended, sometimes I just have to check.
Similarly sometimes you try to criticize an author, but they take it as implying you’ll push back whenever they enforce boundaries on LessWrong, and then you apologize and clarify that you do respect them enforcing boundaries in general but stand by the local criticism. (Or you don’t and then site-mods step in.) I don’t have all the rules written down such that if you follow them the author will read your comments as intended, sometimes I just have to check.
Obviously mod powers can be abused, and having to determine on a case by case basis is a power that can be abused. Obviously it involves judgment calls. I did not disclaim this, I’m happy for anyone to point it out, perhaps nobody has mentioned it so far in this thread so it’s worth making sure the consideration is mentioned. And yeah, if you’re asking, I don’t endorse “nothing that makes authors feel bad about bans”, and there are definitely situations where I think it would be appropriate for us to reverse someone’s bans (e.g. if someone banned all of the top 20 authors in the LW review, I would probably think this is just not workable on LW and reverse that).
Sure, but “is my friend upset” is very different than “is the sum total of all the positive and negative effects of this, from first order until infinite order, positive”
I don’t really know what we’re talking about right now.