The essential problem is that with the (spectacular) deletion of the Forbidden Post, LessWrong turned into the sort of place where posts get disappeared. Those are not good places to be on the Internet. They are places where honesty is devalued and statements of fact must be reviewed for their political nature.
So it can happen here—because it did happen. It’s no longer in the class “things that are unthinkable”. This is itself a major credibility hit for LW.
And when a Roko post disappears—well, it was one of his posts that was disappeared before.
With this being the situation, assumptions of bad faith are going to happen. (And “stupidity” is actually the assumption of good faith.)
Your problem now is to restore trust in LW’s intellectual integrity, because SIAI broke it good and hard. Note that this is breaking an expectation, which is much worse than breaking a rule—if you break a rule you can say “we broke this rule for this reason”, but if you break expectations, people feel the ground moving under their feet, and get very upset.
There are lots of suggestions in this thread as to what people think might restore their trust in LW’s intellectual integrity, SIAI needs to go through them and work out precisely what expectations they broke and how to come clean on this.
I suspect you could at this point do with an upside to all this. Fortunately, there’s an excellent one: no-one would bother making all this fuss if they didn’t really care about LW. People here really care about LW and will do whatever they can to help you make it better.
(And the downside is that this is separate from caring about SIAI, but oh well ;-) )
(and yes, this sort of discussion around WP/WMF has been perennial since it started.)
The essential problem is that with the (spectacular) deletion of the Forbidden Post, LessWrong turned into the sort of place where posts get disappeared. Those are not good places to be on the Internet. They are places where honesty is devalued and statements of fact must be reviewed for their political nature.
I’ve seen several variations of this expressed about this topic, and it’s interesting to me, because this sort of view is somewhat foreign to me. I wouldn’t say I’m pro-censorship, but as an attorney trained in U.S. law, I think I’ve very much internalized the idea that the most serious sorts of censorship actions are those taken by the government (i.e., this is what the First Amendment free speech right is about, and that makes sense because of the power of the government), and that there are various levels of seriousness/danger beyond that, with say, big corporate censorship also being somewhat serious because of corporate power, and censorship by the owner of a single blog (even a community one) not being very serious at all, because a blogowner is not very powerful compared to the government or a major corporation, and shutting down one outlet of communication on the Internet is comparatively not a big deal because it’s a big internet where there are lots of other places to express one’s views. If a siteowner exercises his or her right to delete something on a website, it’s just not the sort of harm that I weigh very heavily.
What I’m totally unsure of is where the average LW reader falls on the scale between you and me, and therefore, despite the talk about the Roko incident being such a public relations disaster and a “spectacular” deletion, I just don’t know how true that is and I’m curious what the answer would be. People who feel like me may just not feel the need to weigh in on the controversy, whereas people who are very strongly anti-censorship in this particular context do.
If a siteowner exercises his or her right to delete something on a website, it’s just not the sort of harm that I weigh very heavily.
That’s not really the crux of the issue (for me, at least, and probably not for others). As David Gerard put it, the banning of Roko’s post was a blow to people’s expectations, which was why it was so shocking. In other words, it was like discovering that LW wasn’t what everyone thought it was (and not in a good way).
Note: I personally wouldn’t classify the incident as a “disaster,” but was still very alarming.
The essential problem is that with the (spectacular) deletion of the Forbidden Post, LessWrong turned into the sort of place where posts get disappeared. Those are not good places to be on the Internet. They are places where honesty is devalued and statements of fact must be reviewed for their political nature.
Like Airedale, I don’t have that impression—my impression is that 1) Censorship by website’s owner doesn’t have the moral problems associated with censorship by governments (or corporations), and 2) in online communities, dictatorship can work quite well, as long as the dictator isn’t a complete dick.
I’ve seen quite functional communities where the moderators would delete posts without warning if they were too stupid, offensive, repetitive or immoral (such as bragging about vandalizing wikipedia).
So personally, I don’t see a need for “restoring trust”. Of course, as your post attests, my experience doesn’t seem to generalize to other posters.
Y’know, one of the actual problems with LW is that I read it in my Internet as Television time, but there’s a REALLY PROMINENT SCORE COUNTER at the top left. This does not help in not treating it as a winnable video game.
(That said, could the people mass-downvoting waitingforgodel please stop? It’s tiresome. Please try to go by comment, not poster.)
The essential problem is that with the (spectacular) deletion of the Forbidden Post, LessWrong turned into the sort of place where posts get disappeared. Those are not good places to be on the Internet. They are places where honesty is devalued and statements of fact must be reviewed for their political nature.
So it can happen here—because it did happen. It’s no longer in the class “things that are unthinkable”. This is itself a major credibility hit for LW.
And when a Roko post disappears—well, it was one of his posts that was disappeared before.
With this being the situation, assumptions of bad faith are going to happen. (And “stupidity” is actually the assumption of good faith.)
Your problem now is to restore trust in LW’s intellectual integrity, because SIAI broke it good and hard. Note that this is breaking an expectation, which is much worse than breaking a rule—if you break a rule you can say “we broke this rule for this reason”, but if you break expectations, people feel the ground moving under their feet, and get very upset.
There are lots of suggestions in this thread as to what people think might restore their trust in LW’s intellectual integrity, SIAI needs to go through them and work out precisely what expectations they broke and how to come clean on this.
I suspect you could at this point do with an upside to all this. Fortunately, there’s an excellent one: no-one would bother making all this fuss if they didn’t really care about LW. People here really care about LW and will do whatever they can to help you make it better.
(And the downside is that this is separate from caring about SIAI, but oh well ;-) )
(and yes, this sort of discussion around WP/WMF has been perennial since it started.)
I’ve seen several variations of this expressed about this topic, and it’s interesting to me, because this sort of view is somewhat foreign to me. I wouldn’t say I’m pro-censorship, but as an attorney trained in U.S. law, I think I’ve very much internalized the idea that the most serious sorts of censorship actions are those taken by the government (i.e., this is what the First Amendment free speech right is about, and that makes sense because of the power of the government), and that there are various levels of seriousness/danger beyond that, with say, big corporate censorship also being somewhat serious because of corporate power, and censorship by the owner of a single blog (even a community one) not being very serious at all, because a blogowner is not very powerful compared to the government or a major corporation, and shutting down one outlet of communication on the Internet is comparatively not a big deal because it’s a big internet where there are lots of other places to express one’s views. If a siteowner exercises his or her right to delete something on a website, it’s just not the sort of harm that I weigh very heavily.
What I’m totally unsure of is where the average LW reader falls on the scale between you and me, and therefore, despite the talk about the Roko incident being such a public relations disaster and a “spectacular” deletion, I just don’t know how true that is and I’m curious what the answer would be. People who feel like me may just not feel the need to weigh in on the controversy, whereas people who are very strongly anti-censorship in this particular context do.
That’s not really the crux of the issue (for me, at least, and probably not for others). As David Gerard put it, the banning of Roko’s post was a blow to people’s expectations, which was why it was so shocking. In other words, it was like discovering that LW wasn’t what everyone thought it was (and not in a good way).
Note: I personally wouldn’t classify the incident as a “disaster,” but was still very alarming.
Like Airedale, I don’t have that impression—my impression is that 1) Censorship by website’s owner doesn’t have the moral problems associated with censorship by governments (or corporations), and 2) in online communities, dictatorship can work quite well, as long as the dictator isn’t a complete dick.
I’ve seen quite functional communities where the moderators would delete posts without warning if they were too stupid, offensive, repetitive or immoral (such as bragging about vandalizing wikipedia).
So personally, I don’t see a need for “restoring trust”. Of course, as your post attests, my experience doesn’t seem to generalize to other posters.
Great post. It confuses me why this isn’t at 10+ karma
+5 is fine!
Y’know, one of the actual problems with LW is that I read it in my Internet as Television time, but there’s a REALLY PROMINENT SCORE COUNTER at the top left. This does not help in not treating it as a winnable video game.
(That said, could the people mass-downvoting waitingforgodel please stop? It’s tiresome. Please try to go by comment, not poster.)
So true!
(Except it’s at the top right. At least, the one I’m thinking of.)
The other left.
(Yes, I actually just confused left and right. STOP POSTING.)
Probably because its buried in the middle of an enormous discussion that very few people have read and will read.
Lol. right, that’d do it