I have a few objections against the way PUA and feminism are present at LW, but I think that could be fixed by presenting them in a different way.
My problem with PUA is that its discussion does not happen at a separate article, but rather as huge threads within articles about something else. So I am annoyed with the discussion being off-topic, long, repeating the same points over dozen different articles, never reaching any conclusion, threatening to happen again and again forever. Also, even the basic terms are never defined, so people just talk past each other, each one having a completely different understanding what “PUA” means.
This could be solved by having one article, written by someone who understands the topic, but is not mindkilled by it. Someone who could shortly describe the history and evolution of the movement, its most important schools, and what is considered the state of the art today: specific techniques and beliefs, with some evidence that this is what many PUA’s really believe today. So the critics can focus on the core, instead on what some guy said 20 years ago and almost nobody agrees with him today. Having different beliefs properly attributed to different schools, we could perhaps reach a conclusion that some aspect X is unethical, and that X is part of the A’s teachings, but is not present or even is explicitly opposed by B’s teaching. -- This would be much saner than a discussion where “PUA” is de facto defined by its critics as “whatever any man said on internet about getting women, especially if it sounds ofensive”, and the defenders object that “not all PUAs are like that” without being any more specific.
My problem with feminism is… actually, pretty similar. There is never a definition. (Yeah, we are kind of supposed to find it elsewhere. Guess what: most sources about feminism do not provide a definition nor a pointer to a definition. You are supposed to already know it, otherwise you are a bad person.) And I guess if someone finds a definition, it would not be up to the LW rationality standards. Actually, I consider it pretty unlikely that if you have a huge movement, all of its beliefs, without exception, happen to be true and rational. So it would be nice if someone could present a subset of feminism which is rationally defensible, along with the rational defense.
The current sequence of “LW women”… I don’t exactly understand the point of it. There are some opinions and experiences of some women, LW members. I get that. But I guess there is supposed to be some connotation, some conclusion that a sensitive reader is supposed to get after reading them—and I am not sure what it is, and I would prefer it to be more explicit. Because it is difficult to agree or disagree or just analyze something that wasn’t actually said. I mean, the last piece is about horrible things that happened to some women. Okay, but what is the lesson we should take from this? -- “Horrible things happen to people.” “Horrible things happen only to women.” “Horrible things happen to women more frequently than to men.” “LessWrong somehow contributes to these horrible things happening.” “Preventing these horrible things should be given higher priority on LW than raising the sanity waterline, constructing our new AI overlords, etc.”—Note that the data is filtered; if something similar happened to a man, it wouldn’t be included as the part of the series. In absence of a clear message, of course the discussion is chaotic.
So here are some recommendations for people who want to discuss these topics:
Make it a separate article, instead of hijacking discussions in dozen other articles.
Start with a reasonable definition of what are you talking about, just to make sure we use the same words to mean approximately the same things.
Make your point obvious, e.g. by writing a summary at the end of the article.
Don’t announce that you are going to write a series of articles on a topic. Choose one thing, write a standalone article about it. Later, choose another topic, write another article, linking the previous one when necessary.
This could be solved by having one article, written by someone who understands the topic, but is not mindkilled by it. Someone who could shortly describe the history and evolution of the movement, its most important schools, and what is considered the state of the art today: specific techniques and beliefs, with some evidence that this is what many PUA’s really believe today.
I have a few objections against the way PUA and feminism are present at LW, but I think that could be fixed by presenting them in a different way.
My problem with PUA is that its discussion does not happen at a separate article, but rather as huge threads within articles about something else. So I am annoyed with the discussion being off-topic, long, repeating the same points over dozen different articles, never reaching any conclusion, threatening to happen again and again forever. Also, even the basic terms are never defined, so people just talk past each other, each one having a completely different understanding what “PUA” means.
This could be solved by having one article, written by someone who understands the topic, but is not mindkilled by it. Someone who could shortly describe the history and evolution of the movement, its most important schools, and what is considered the state of the art today: specific techniques and beliefs, with some evidence that this is what many PUA’s really believe today. So the critics can focus on the core, instead on what some guy said 20 years ago and almost nobody agrees with him today. Having different beliefs properly attributed to different schools, we could perhaps reach a conclusion that some aspect X is unethical, and that X is part of the A’s teachings, but is not present or even is explicitly opposed by B’s teaching. -- This would be much saner than a discussion where “PUA” is de facto defined by its critics as “whatever any man said on internet about getting women, especially if it sounds ofensive”, and the defenders object that “not all PUAs are like that” without being any more specific.
My problem with feminism is… actually, pretty similar. There is never a definition. (Yeah, we are kind of supposed to find it elsewhere. Guess what: most sources about feminism do not provide a definition nor a pointer to a definition. You are supposed to already know it, otherwise you are a bad person.) And I guess if someone finds a definition, it would not be up to the LW rationality standards. Actually, I consider it pretty unlikely that if you have a huge movement, all of its beliefs, without exception, happen to be true and rational. So it would be nice if someone could present a subset of feminism which is rationally defensible, along with the rational defense.
The current sequence of “LW women”… I don’t exactly understand the point of it. There are some opinions and experiences of some women, LW members. I get that. But I guess there is supposed to be some connotation, some conclusion that a sensitive reader is supposed to get after reading them—and I am not sure what it is, and I would prefer it to be more explicit. Because it is difficult to agree or disagree or just analyze something that wasn’t actually said. I mean, the last piece is about horrible things that happened to some women. Okay, but what is the lesson we should take from this? -- “Horrible things happen to people.” “Horrible things happen only to women.” “Horrible things happen to women more frequently than to men.” “LessWrong somehow contributes to these horrible things happening.” “Preventing these horrible things should be given higher priority on LW than raising the sanity waterline, constructing our new AI overlords, etc.”—Note that the data is filtered; if something similar happened to a man, it wouldn’t be included as the part of the series. In absence of a clear message, of course the discussion is chaotic.
So here are some recommendations for people who want to discuss these topics:
Make it a separate article, instead of hijacking discussions in dozen other articles.
Start with a reasonable definition of what are you talking about, just to make sure we use the same words to mean approximately the same things.
Make your point obvious, e.g. by writing a summary at the end of the article.
Don’t announce that you are going to write a series of articles on a topic. Choose one thing, write a standalone article about it. Later, choose another topic, write another article, linking the previous one when necessary.
ie. We need HughRistik to write it.