The argument I’m trying to make is that conflict resolution is hard in a particular way that approximately nothing else in running events or communities is hard; it’s potentially adversarial, therefore taking the advice of people with strongly held and seemingly sensible advice can be a trap.
The bullet pointed personas are not a load bearing part of this thesis. If it would help, try dropping everything from “let’s be reductive” to “what they might do about it”. I think the only other part I’m directly referencing them is the parenthesis in section III about how the position of overseeing the resolution process is a position of interest for a bad actor, therefore you might even try random lot.
There is a mistake I’m trying to warn about where someone thinks conflict handling should be simple, why don’t we all sit down and come up with a simple setup, and I do not think they are actually envisioning how any part of this will work in the face of someone with a mind to get away with something. There is a second mistake I’m trying to warn about where someone makes confident assertions about how conflict handling should work, and people do not notice the ulterior motive. I recognize the weirdness around me trying to point out the second mistake—as I said in the post, “Okay, but why should you trust me? Professional interest since complaint handling is part of my role, but good question and don’t be satisfied by that.” I am trying design a setup that would work even if I was a problem even as I was designing the setup.
I do not think the logic you’re talking about is the logic I’m using. I will very cheerfully bet you my hundred bucks against your dollar that every police force does not criminalize everyone who makes any move towards trying to change the system, unless you’re using some non-standard definitions of police force and criminalize. I’m going to assume that “every” is colloquial, not literal, and that paragraph is rhetoric, but even if the section in quotes was how police forces and authoritarian enforcement organizations were, I don’t think their logic ends by suggesting constant vigilance against themselves.
That “professionals” are much more likely than anyone else to be bad actors is another fact that drastically undermines the OP’s thesis—and this blind spot is not an accident.
That would undermine my thesis if my thesis was that everyone should just trust the professionals, which seems to be the thing you claim is my thesis. That’s not my thesis, and bad actors turning out to be more likely “professionals”[1] than any other category would not undermine my actual thesis.
I am not sure whether “this blind spot is not an accident” is suggesting that I’m making a good faith effort but a predictable mistake, or that I am deliberately leaving information which I know to be true and relevant out in an effort to make my argument stronger, or some third thing. Would you please clarify this? As you might imagine, if it’s the second I’m going to say that’s not what I’m trying to do.
I do think it would help to have a better name for this bucket, since in my contexts a lot of people aren’t getting paid a regular paycheck to do this and don’t have a lot of training or background. The obvious and central examples are- divorce lawyers are, CEA’s community health team comes to mind as well- but a lot of the time it’s a local meetup organizer in some random town that’s had an issue.
The idea that situations/problems that involve conflicts, and require resolving conflicts, are more challenging than situations/problems that don’t involve conflicts, is trivial. If someone thinks that conflict handling should be simple then of course that person is an idiot. If this were all that you were saying, then it would hardly be worthy of a post.
However. In the OP you write:
Now let’s say that the bad actor is not an idiot. They have considered what and who might stop them, and what they might do about it.
It is an obvious, straightforward move to accuse whatever system is responsible for catching them of being corrupt and the people running that system to be horrible or incompetent.
But a more realistic scenario would be:
“Now let’s say that the system is already full of bad actors (as it probably is). They have considered what and who might stop them, and what they might do about it. The system will, of course, be corrupt, and the people running that system will be horrible or incompetent. It is an obvious, straightforward move to promote memes that prevent this from being rectified.”
(You might protest that sure, this happens, but you know that you are not a bad actor, right? Even if nobody else can be sure of this, you at least can! And you’re talking to people who also know that they are not bad actors. And I say that even this is false. You don’t know this. The people in your target audience—other organizers, etc.—also don’t know this about themselves. And certainly nobody else should take your (or their) word for it.)
You write:
I recognize the weirdness around me trying to point out the second mistake—as I said in the post, “Okay, but why should you trust me? Professional interest since complaint handling is part of my role, but good question and don’t be satisfied by that.”
But in fact this should read more like this:
“Okay, but why should you trust me? Good question; the answer is that you definitely shouldn’t trust me—especially since complaint handling is part of my role, so I have a professional interest, which makes me exceptionally likely to be a bad actor. Do not trust! Verify! If you can’t verify, assume treachery until proven otherwise!”
I am trying design a setup that would work even if I was a problem even as I was designing the setup.
This is an admirable goal and I applaud it. My comments are aimed precisely at this goal also. You can read them as saying “your setup does not and cannot succeed at this, so long as you take the approach described in the OP”.
I will very cheerfully bet you my hundred bucks against your dollar that every police force does not criminalize everyone who makes any move towards trying to change the system, unless you’re using some non-standard definitions of police force and criminalize.
I… didn’t claim that any police force criminalizes everyone who makes any move towards trying to change the system, so… no bet! (This is especially a nonsensical formulation since police forces do not criminalize anything; governments—in systems like that of the United States, specifically legislatures—criminalize things. But police forces have many, many tools available to them to apply differential treatment on the basis of evaluated threat level. Heck, even actual criminals can be harrassed and pressured in many ways other than arresting, indicting, and convicting them of a crime.)
I’m going to assume that “every” is colloquial, not literal, and that paragraph is rhetoric, but even if the section in quotes was how police forces and authoritarian enforcement organizations were, I don’t think their logic ends by suggesting constant vigilance against themselves.
It’s not literal only to the extent that I anticipate reasonable disagreements about what qualifies as a “police force”, “security service”, or “authoritarian enforcement organization”. Otherwise, I can’t think of any exceptions.
And their logic certainly doesn’t end by suggesting constant vigilance against themselves. Of course it doesn’t! They’re the ingroup; why should they guard against themselves?
(Although I will point out that the pattern is fractal. The cops treat “civilians” in this way, but then cops-within-the-cops organizations like “Internal Affairs” divisions and the like treat regular cops in this way. Similar patterns involving the relationship of ordinary people, spies, and counter-intelligence agencies are also well known. I don’t know offhand of any examples of this pattern going up another level, but I expect that they exist.)
I do think it would help to have a better name for this bucket, since in my contexts a lot of people aren’t getting paid a regular paycheck to do this and don’t have a lot of training or background. The obvious and central examples are- divorce lawyers are, CEA’s community health team comes to mind as well- but a lot of the time it’s a local meetup organizer in some random town that’s had an issue.
To be clear, this is how I assumed you were using the term as well.
I am not sure whether “this blind spot is not an accident” is suggesting that I’m making a good faith effort but a predictable mistake, or that I am deliberately leaving information which I know to be true and relevant out in an effort to make my argument stronger, or some third thing. Would you please clarify this? As you might imagine, if it’s the second I’m going to say that’s not what I’m trying to do.
First one.
EDIT: I really should clarify this one, sorry. It’s not the second one or any third thing—that’s what my response meant. My comment about “this blind spot is not an accident” was not meant as an accusation of deliberate bad faith argument in your post, in other words—nothing like that!
But your first interpretation isn’t quite right either, because it takes an entirely too mistake-theoretic approach. It would be more correct to say something like: the blind spot in question is a predictable consequence of the logic and incentives of the situation, such that it might be that your intentions are pure, or it might be that your intentions are not pure, but either way the result is ultimately the same, and the distinction usually moot in any case (due to self-deception).
(I am happy to assume perfectly good intentions on the part of actual-you, the actual person I am talking to, for the purposes of this and similar discussions. It’s just that we have to keep in mind the possibility of a hypothetical-you who is in the same situation and is writing the same things but who does not have good intentions.)
“Now let’s say that the system is already full of bad actors (as it probably is). They have considered what and who might stop them, and what they might do about it. The system will, of course, be corrupt, and the people running that system will be horrible or incompetent. It is an obvious, straightforward move to promote memes that prevent this from being rectified.”
I think that happens sometimes, and higher pressure scenarios are more likely to be targets for this. Most of my disagreement is that I think most people are trying to do the right thing; dealing with occasional bad actors who are outnumbered is easier than dealing with lots of bad actors who outnumber everyone else. A system that works for the latter I’d expect to work for the former though.
But in fact this should read more like this:
“Okay, but why should you trust me? Good question; the answer is that you definitely shouldn’t trust me—especially since complaint handling is part of my role, so I have a professional interest, which makes me exceptionally likely to be a bad actor. Do not trust! Verify! If you can’t verify, assume treachery until proven otherwise!”
Hrm. I don’t agree with that much emphasis and I’m not sure how much of that is interpretation. I do feel a little bit of refreshment at encountering someone with even more CONSTANT VIGILANCE than I have, it’s a nice change of pace. Do you happen to work in computer security by any chance?
More seriously, I don’t think the systems around me work well if they need to verify every step, so there’s some spot checking and trust extended instead. Paying more attention to this over the last couple years has made me more aware of all the gaps where someone could cause problems if they had a mind to.
My comments are aimed precisely at this goal also. You can read them as saying “your setup does not and cannot succeed at this, so long as you take the approach described in the OP”.
Hrm. I have a small objection here, which is that I don’t view the main post as laying out an approach for dealing with this. I said I don’t have a solution. To use a chess analogy, I’m not saying “use the Italian Game opening, then look to control the centre.” I’m saying “don’t move f3 as a starter, and if you feel compelled to do it anyway really don’t move g4, it’s an embarrassing way to lose.” If someone showed up in the comments and said hey, I do think there’s a solution, here it is- well, I’d read their solution carefully and be happy if it turned out to be correct.
I… didn’t claim that any police force criminalizes everyone who makes any move towards trying to change the system, so… no bet!
Ah, I may have misinterpreted you. I read
The logic in the OP is easily recognizable as the logic of every police force, every security service, and every authoritarian enforcement organization. It’s the logic that says “if you’re not one of us, then you’re either a clueless normie who will unthinkingly submit to our authority, or else you’re probably a criminal—unless you can, with great effort and in the face of considerable skepticism, prove to us (and yes, the burden of proof is entirely on you) that you’re one of the rare harmless weirdoes (emphasis on the ‘harmless’; if you give any hint that you’re challenging our authority, or make any move toward trying to change the system, then the ‘harmless’ qualifier is immediately stripped from you, and you move right back into the ‘criminal’ category)”.
and the bolded parts (bolding mine) seemed to say every police force does criminalized everyone who makes any move towards trying to change the system. I. . . do see a distinction between “moved into the criminal category” and “criminalized according to the written legal code” but that does seem a thin distinction. Still, my misinterpretation.
> Would you please clarify this? As you might imagine, if it’s the second I’m going to say that’s not what I’m trying to do.
First one.
I appreciate the clarification, including the edit!
(I am happy to assume perfectly good intentions on the part of actual-you, the actual person I am talking to, for the purposes of this and similar discussions. It’s just that we have to keep in mind the possibility of a hypothetical-you who is in the same situation and is writing the same things but who does not have good intentions.)
Yep, noted and agreed. And likewise the possibility of a hypothetical-you who is trying to make sure whatever process gets used isn’t going to catch them. Neither of you might go to meetups much but LessWrong moderation decisions are probably relevant. (To be clear I don’t make those, I’m not a mod here and I don’t even make moderation decisions on ACX comments, I can just see the same line.)
Most of my disagreement is that I think most people are trying to do the right thing; dealing with occasional bad actors who are outnumbered is easier than dealing with lots of bad actors who outnumber everyone else.
Yes, perhaps most people are trying to do the right thing, but (a) they are mostly not trying very hard, and (b) trying to do the right thing is just not anywhere close to sufficient for actually doing the right thing.
It is extremely easy to just find yourself doing the wrong thing, if you are not systematically and effectively avoiding all the things that nudge you toward doing the wrong thing. This is why I have emphasized, throughout this discussion, that I am not accusing anyone in particular of bad faith or bad character, and that not only should you trust no one, you should not even trust yourself, because “trying to do the right thing” is not sufficient even from your own perspective.
Do you happen to work in computer security by any chance?
I do not, but I will take the question as a compliment.
More seriously, I don’t think the systems around me work well if they need to verify every step, so there’s some spot checking and trust extended instead.
Yes. But there is a difference between making a considered judgment not to verify every step of some process, or not to check every instance, etc., and simply not having thought about it. (At the very least, the former decision can be revisited, re-evaluated, updated—the latter decision cannot even be acknowledged or accounted for, because it was never made in the first place!)
And, of course—as per my other comment—it may well be that the answer to “if we had to do this the ‘proper’ way, then we couldn’t do it at all” is “then you shouldn’t do it at all”.
Re: the “every police force” commentary—the whole “make any move toward trying to change the system” was mostly intended to qualify the “harmless weirdoes” scenario, not to necessarily apply to all people of any sort. (But also, the “moved into the criminal category” distinction is pretty important. But this is a tangent at this point, so let’s table it for now…)
Yep, noted and agreed. And likewise the possibility of a hypothetical-you who is trying to make sure whatever process gets used isn’t going to catch them. Neither of you might go to meetups much but LessWrong moderation decisions are probably relevant. (To be clear I don’t make those, I’m not a mod here and I don’t even make moderation decisions on ACX comments, I can just see the same line.)
FWIW, I think that approaches to conflict resolution in in-person meetups and on online forums should differ considerably, for many reasons, but certainly in large part due to the different ways in which evaluation of bad actors / problems / etc. can/must happen in those two types of contexts. I would not give the same advice to operators of a web forum as to organizers of a meetup, and I would be suspicious of anyone who insisted on applying the same approach to both contexts.
That is not the argument I’m trying to make.
The argument I’m trying to make is that conflict resolution is hard in a particular way that approximately nothing else in running events or communities is hard; it’s potentially adversarial, therefore taking the advice of people with strongly held and seemingly sensible advice can be a trap.
The bullet pointed personas are not a load bearing part of this thesis. If it would help, try dropping everything from “let’s be reductive” to “what they might do about it”. I think the only other part I’m directly referencing them is the parenthesis in section III about how the position of overseeing the resolution process is a position of interest for a bad actor, therefore you might even try random lot.
There is a mistake I’m trying to warn about where someone thinks conflict handling should be simple, why don’t we all sit down and come up with a simple setup, and I do not think they are actually envisioning how any part of this will work in the face of someone with a mind to get away with something. There is a second mistake I’m trying to warn about where someone makes confident assertions about how conflict handling should work, and people do not notice the ulterior motive. I recognize the weirdness around me trying to point out the second mistake—as I said in the post, “Okay, but why should you trust me? Professional interest since complaint handling is part of my role, but good question and don’t be satisfied by that.” I am trying design a setup that would work even if I was a problem even as I was designing the setup.
I do not think the logic you’re talking about is the logic I’m using. I will very cheerfully bet you my hundred bucks against your dollar that every police force does not criminalize everyone who makes any move towards trying to change the system, unless you’re using some non-standard definitions of police force and criminalize. I’m going to assume that “every” is colloquial, not literal, and that paragraph is rhetoric, but even if the section in quotes was how police forces and authoritarian enforcement organizations were, I don’t think their logic ends by suggesting constant vigilance against themselves.
That would undermine my thesis if my thesis was that everyone should just trust the professionals, which seems to be the thing you claim is my thesis. That’s not my thesis, and bad actors turning out to be more likely “professionals”[1] than any other category would not undermine my actual thesis.
I am not sure whether “this blind spot is not an accident” is suggesting that I’m making a good faith effort but a predictable mistake, or that I am deliberately leaving information which I know to be true and relevant out in an effort to make my argument stronger, or some third thing. Would you please clarify this? As you might imagine, if it’s the second I’m going to say that’s not what I’m trying to do.
I do think it would help to have a better name for this bucket, since in my contexts a lot of people aren’t getting paid a regular paycheck to do this and don’t have a lot of training or background. The obvious and central examples are- divorce lawyers are, CEA’s community health team comes to mind as well- but a lot of the time it’s a local meetup organizer in some random town that’s had an issue.
The idea that situations/problems that involve conflicts, and require resolving conflicts, are more challenging than situations/problems that don’t involve conflicts, is trivial. If someone thinks that conflict handling should be simple then of course that person is an idiot. If this were all that you were saying, then it would hardly be worthy of a post.
However. In the OP you write:
But a more realistic scenario would be:
“Now let’s say that the system is already full of bad actors (as it probably is). They have considered what and who might stop them, and what they might do about it. The system will, of course, be corrupt, and the people running that system will be horrible or incompetent. It is an obvious, straightforward move to promote memes that prevent this from being rectified.”
(You might protest that sure, this happens, but you know that you are not a bad actor, right? Even if nobody else can be sure of this, you at least can! And you’re talking to people who also know that they are not bad actors. And I say that even this is false. You don’t know this. The people in your target audience—other organizers, etc.—also don’t know this about themselves. And certainly nobody else should take your (or their) word for it.)
You write:
But in fact this should read more like this:
“Okay, but why should you trust me? Good question; the answer is that you definitely shouldn’t trust me—especially since complaint handling is part of my role, so I have a professional interest, which makes me exceptionally likely to be a bad actor. Do not trust! Verify! If you can’t verify, assume treachery until proven otherwise!”
This is an admirable goal and I applaud it. My comments are aimed precisely at this goal also. You can read them as saying “your setup does not and cannot succeed at this, so long as you take the approach described in the OP”.
I… didn’t claim that any police force criminalizes everyone who makes any move towards trying to change the system, so… no bet! (This is especially a nonsensical formulation since police forces do not criminalize anything; governments—in systems like that of the United States, specifically legislatures—criminalize things. But police forces have many, many tools available to them to apply differential treatment on the basis of evaluated threat level. Heck, even actual criminals can be harrassed and pressured in many ways other than arresting, indicting, and convicting them of a crime.)
It’s not literal only to the extent that I anticipate reasonable disagreements about what qualifies as a “police force”, “security service”, or “authoritarian enforcement organization”. Otherwise, I can’t think of any exceptions.
And their logic certainly doesn’t end by suggesting constant vigilance against themselves. Of course it doesn’t! They’re the ingroup; why should they guard against themselves?
(Although I will point out that the pattern is fractal. The cops treat “civilians” in this way, but then cops-within-the-cops organizations like “Internal Affairs” divisions and the like treat regular cops in this way. Similar patterns involving the relationship of ordinary people, spies, and counter-intelligence agencies are also well known. I don’t know offhand of any examples of this pattern going up another level, but I expect that they exist.)
To be clear, this is how I assumed you were using the term as well.
First one.
EDIT: I really should clarify this one, sorry. It’s not the second one or any third thing—that’s what my response meant. My comment about “this blind spot is not an accident” was not meant as an accusation of deliberate bad faith argument in your post, in other words—nothing like that!
But your first interpretation isn’t quite right either, because it takes an entirely too mistake-theoretic approach. It would be more correct to say something like: the blind spot in question is a predictable consequence of the logic and incentives of the situation, such that it might be that your intentions are pure, or it might be that your intentions are not pure, but either way the result is ultimately the same, and the distinction usually moot in any case (due to self-deception).
(I am happy to assume perfectly good intentions on the part of actual-you, the actual person I am talking to, for the purposes of this and similar discussions. It’s just that we have to keep in mind the possibility of a hypothetical-you who is in the same situation and is writing the same things but who does not have good intentions.)
I disagree your scenario is more realistic.
I think that happens sometimes, and higher pressure scenarios are more likely to be targets for this. Most of my disagreement is that I think most people are trying to do the right thing; dealing with occasional bad actors who are outnumbered is easier than dealing with lots of bad actors who outnumber everyone else. A system that works for the latter I’d expect to work for the former though.
Hrm. I don’t agree with that much emphasis and I’m not sure how much of that is interpretation. I do feel a little bit of refreshment at encountering someone with even more CONSTANT VIGILANCE than I have, it’s a nice change of pace. Do you happen to work in computer security by any chance?
More seriously, I don’t think the systems around me work well if they need to verify every step, so there’s some spot checking and trust extended instead. Paying more attention to this over the last couple years has made me more aware of all the gaps where someone could cause problems if they had a mind to.
Hrm. I have a small objection here, which is that I don’t view the main post as laying out an approach for dealing with this. I said I don’t have a solution. To use a chess analogy, I’m not saying “use the Italian Game opening, then look to control the centre.” I’m saying “don’t move f3 as a starter, and if you feel compelled to do it anyway really don’t move g4, it’s an embarrassing way to lose.” If someone showed up in the comments and said hey, I do think there’s a solution, here it is- well, I’d read their solution carefully and be happy if it turned out to be correct.
Ah, I may have misinterpreted you. I read
and the bolded parts (bolding mine) seemed to say every police force does criminalized everyone who makes any move towards trying to change the system. I. . . do see a distinction between “moved into the criminal category” and “criminalized according to the written legal code” but that does seem a thin distinction. Still, my misinterpretation.
I appreciate the clarification, including the edit!
Yep, noted and agreed. And likewise the possibility of a hypothetical-you who is trying to make sure whatever process gets used isn’t going to catch them. Neither of you might go to meetups much but LessWrong moderation decisions are probably relevant. (To be clear I don’t make those, I’m not a mod here and I don’t even make moderation decisions on ACX comments, I can just see the same line.)
Yes, perhaps most people are trying to do the right thing, but (a) they are mostly not trying very hard, and (b) trying to do the right thing is just not anywhere close to sufficient for actually doing the right thing.
It is extremely easy to just find yourself doing the wrong thing, if you are not systematically and effectively avoiding all the things that nudge you toward doing the wrong thing. This is why I have emphasized, throughout this discussion, that I am not accusing anyone in particular of bad faith or bad character, and that not only should you trust no one, you should not even trust yourself, because “trying to do the right thing” is not sufficient even from your own perspective.
I do not, but I will take the question as a compliment.
Yes. But there is a difference between making a considered judgment not to verify every step of some process, or not to check every instance, etc., and simply not having thought about it. (At the very least, the former decision can be revisited, re-evaluated, updated—the latter decision cannot even be acknowledged or accounted for, because it was never made in the first place!)
And, of course—as per my other comment—it may well be that the answer to “if we had to do this the ‘proper’ way, then we couldn’t do it at all” is “then you shouldn’t do it at all”.
Re: the “every police force” commentary—the whole “make any move toward trying to change the system” was mostly intended to qualify the “harmless weirdoes” scenario, not to necessarily apply to all people of any sort. (But also, the “moved into the criminal category” distinction is pretty important. But this is a tangent at this point, so let’s table it for now…)
FWIW, I think that approaches to conflict resolution in in-person meetups and on online forums should differ considerably, for many reasons, but certainly in large part due to the different ways in which evaluation of bad actors / problems / etc. can/must happen in those two types of contexts. I would not give the same advice to operators of a web forum as to organizers of a meetup, and I would be suspicious of anyone who insisted on applying the same approach to both contexts.