It’s not easy to have a conversation while someone takes every opportunity to [...]
Isn’t it, though? You can just keep talking! Why would them implying you’re a fool end the conversation?
Okay, maybe if your only goal in the conversation is to persuade the other person, them appearing “closed-minded” (by implying you’re a fool) implies that you won’t succeed in persuading them, so you shouldn’t bother? But it can still be worth talking if you have other goals, like persuading third parties or (this is an important one!) being persuaded yourself if you’re wrong.
It’s a common failure mode on the Internet (and, by extension, on LW) that people believe a public response to/a criticism of an author’s writing or ideas is meant to convince the author that they’re wrong. It’s not. as a general matter, people believe what they believe and it takes a tremendous amount of time and effort to get them to change their minds, regardless of how smart or LW-”rational” they are.[1] It’s very rarely worth it to try to convince any single person of anything, unless they are super high-status or have a ton of decision-making power. And in any case, if I want to personally convince someone of something, I just PM them; humans more readily admit to mistakes when they’re not blasted in public from the outset.
On the contrary, explaining in public why someone is wrong is emphatically for the benefit of the audience. It is inherently performative. The author is just one guy,[2] but the audience is a usually a lot more guys. “This author’s argument here is wrong and you shouldn’t believe them” and “this author’s argumentative flaws illustrate why they’re fundamentally confused/epistemically broken/dumb and you shouldn’t listen to them again in the future” are both significantly higher-impact and therefore more worthwhile than “you made a mistake here, please change your mind.”
Of course, one man’s bug is another man’s feature. I called it a “failure mode” above, but that’s only relative to a specific set of end goals.[3] Another very common set of goals contains desires like “increase subjective hedonic enjoyment of online social interactions, as an end goal in and of itself.” If one subscribes to this, it’s not hard to figure out why others calling you a fool is something to be avoided and proactively guarded against.
Such as promoting epistemic hygiene, increasing map-territory correspondence, rewarding proper reasoning and disincentivizing sloppy thinking… you know, all the good stuff LW pretends it’s about
It’s a common failure mode on the Internet (and, by extension, on LW) that people believe a public response to/a criticism of an author’s writing or ideas is meant to convince the author that they’re wrong. It’s not. as a general matter, people believe what they believe and it takes a tremendous amount of time and effort to get them to change their minds, regardless of how smart or LW-”rational” they are.[1] It’s very rarely worth it to try to convince any single person of anything, unless they are super high-status or have a ton of decision-making power. And in any case, if I want to personally convince someone of something, I just PM them; humans more readily admit to mistakes when they’re not blasted in public from the outset.
That’s a fair point, but if someone is fully on the side of “I’m not actually trying to have a conversation with the author, I’m writing for the rest of the readership” then it is bad faith to write as though you are having a conversation with them e.g. addressing them with ‘you’ and writing to them questions and so forth, which I also think is a common bad discourse pattern.
… if someone is fully on the side of “I’m not actually trying to have a conversation with the author, I’m writing for the rest of the readership” then it is bad faith to write as though you are having a conversation with them …
This is a strawman of @sunwillrise’s point. He did not say anything about “not trying to have a conversation with” someone. What he said was:
… people believe a public response to/a criticism of an author’s writing or ideas is meant to convince the author that they’re wrong. It’s not.
It is entirely possible to have a conversation with someone without any intent or expectation of convincing that person that they’re wrong. (Indeed, it’s by far the more common scenario.)
Your response, on the other hand, implies that the only reason to have a conversation with someone who you think is wrong, is to try to convince them that they’re wrong. I hope you can see how silly that is. (I don’t think that you actually think this—but what you wrote implies it.)
I am not strawmanning sunwillrise’s position, I am making an additional related point.
Your response, on the other hand, implies that the only reason to have a conversation with someone who you think is wrong, is to try to convince them that they’re wrong.
I do not believe it is the only reason, but it is a common reason, and it is costly for people to repeatedly come to believe (based on the common social cues) that it is what is happening and engage on those terms, only to find out later that it is not and that they were engaged in a different social game they would rather not be playing where the goal is to make them look bad and for them to defend themselves.
I am not strawmanning sunwillrise’s position, I am making an additional related point.
You wrote:
if someone is fully on the side of “I’m not actually trying to have a conversation with the author, I’m writing for the rest of the readership”
Whom does this describe? Who has expressed any such sentiment?
The implicature of your comment was that the quoted bit was a restatement of the point to which you were responding. You were absolutely strawmanning sunwillrise’s position.
I do not believe it is the only reason, but it is a common reason, and it is costly for people to repeatedly come to believe (based on the common social cues) that it is what is happening and engage on those terms
If someone mistakenly believes that their interlocutor in a public conversation on a public discussion forum is just trying to convince them, personally, to change their minds, then this is almost certainly an error on their part. As a moderator of said forum, it would behoove you to spread awareness of the fact that such is not the default or the usual motivation for people to have public conversations on said public forum.
only to find out later that it is not and the person is substantially motivated by wanting to make them look bad.
This, too, is a strawman: “substantially motivated by wanting to make them look bad” is a tendentious description, and is certainly not one which most people would endorse, as applied to their own contributions to such conversations.
Insofar as conversations are 100% about communicating information on the object level about a topic, of course social information about status and personal hostilities are irrelevant to the point of a conversation. Insofar as one is not blinding oneself to the other dynamics but also living in them, then calling someone a fool a lot is quite relevant to whether to continue interacting with someone, as I’m pretty sure you’re aware.
Our comment threads are going in circles, and these perspectives are not being bridged. I expect more comments like this are not going to change much.
It would be a great mistake to suppose that it is sufficient not to become personal yourself. For by showing a man quite quietly that he is wrong, and that what he says and thinks is incorrect—a process which occurs in every dialectical victory—you embitter him more than if you used some rude or insulting expression. Why is this? Because, as Hobbes observes,17 all mental pleasure consists in being able to compare oneself with others to one’s own advantage. Nothing is of greater moment to a man than the gratification of his vanity, and no wound is more painful than that which is inflicted on it. Hence such phrases as “Death before dishonour,” and so on. The gratification of vanity arises mainly by comparison of oneself with others, in every respect, but chiefly in respect of one’s intellectual powers; and so the most effective and the strongest gratification of it is to be found in controversy. Hence the embitterment of defeat, apart from any question of injustice; and hence recourse to that last weapon, that last trick, which you cannot evade by mere politeness. A cool demeanour may, however, help you here, if, as soon as your opponent becomes personal, you quietly reply, “That has no bearing on the point in dispute,” and immediately bring the conversation back to it, and continue to show him that he is wrong, without taking any notice of his insults. Say, as Themistocles said to Eurybiades—Strike, but hear me. But such demeanour is not given to every one.
I have much work to do other than replying to these long threads with you and your allies under the clouds of this political conflict around whether to ban you from LessWrong. Do not expect many more replies any time soon.
Isn’t it, though? You can just keep talking! Why would them implying you’re a fool end the conversation?
Okay, maybe if your only goal in the conversation is to persuade the other person, them appearing “closed-minded” (by implying you’re a fool) implies that you won’t succeed in persuading them, so you shouldn’t bother? But it can still be worth talking if you have other goals, like persuading third parties or (this is an important one!) being persuaded yourself if you’re wrong.
It’s a common failure mode on the Internet (and, by extension, on LW) that people believe a public response to/a criticism of an author’s writing or ideas is meant to convince the author that they’re wrong. It’s not. as a general matter, people believe what they believe and it takes a tremendous amount of time and effort to get them to change their minds, regardless of how smart or LW-”rational” they are.[1] It’s very rarely worth it to try to convince any single person of anything, unless they are super high-status or have a ton of decision-making power. And in any case, if I want to personally convince someone of something, I just PM them; humans more readily admit to mistakes when they’re not blasted in public from the outset.
On the contrary, explaining in public why someone is wrong is emphatically for the benefit of the audience. It is inherently performative. The author is just one guy,[2] but the audience is a usually a lot more guys. “This author’s argument here is wrong and you shouldn’t believe them” and “this author’s argumentative flaws illustrate why they’re fundamentally confused/epistemically broken/dumb and you shouldn’t listen to them again in the future” are both significantly higher-impact and therefore more worthwhile than “you made a mistake here, please change your mind.”
Of course, one man’s bug is another man’s feature. I called it a “failure mode” above, but that’s only relative to a specific set of end goals.[3] Another very common set of goals contains desires like “increase subjective hedonic enjoyment of online social interactions, as an end goal in and of itself.” If one subscribes to this, it’s not hard to figure out why others calling you a fool is something to be avoided and proactively guarded against.
And even when they do change their minds, it’s usually in private over days or weeks of mulling over the problem in the comfort of their own abode
Not meant to imply any specific gender
Such as promoting epistemic hygiene, increasing map-territory correspondence, rewarding proper reasoning and disincentivizing sloppy thinking… you know, all the good stuff LW pretends it’s about
That’s a fair point, but if someone is fully on the side of “I’m not actually trying to have a conversation with the author, I’m writing for the rest of the readership” then it is bad faith to write as though you are having a conversation with them e.g. addressing them with ‘you’ and writing to them questions and so forth, which I also think is a common bad discourse pattern.
This is a strawman of @sunwillrise’s point. He did not say anything about “not trying to have a conversation with” someone. What he said was:
It is entirely possible to have a conversation with someone without any intent or expectation of convincing that person that they’re wrong. (Indeed, it’s by far the more common scenario.)
Your response, on the other hand, implies that the only reason to have a conversation with someone who you think is wrong, is to try to convince them that they’re wrong. I hope you can see how silly that is. (I don’t think that you actually think this—but what you wrote implies it.)
I am not strawmanning sunwillrise’s position, I am making an additional related point.
I do not believe it is the only reason, but it is a common reason, and it is costly for people to repeatedly come to believe (based on the common social cues) that it is what is happening and engage on those terms, only to find out later that it is not and that they were engaged in a different social game they would rather not be playing where the goal is to make them look bad and for them to defend themselves.
You wrote:
Whom does this describe? Who has expressed any such sentiment?
The implicature of your comment was that the quoted bit was a restatement of the point to which you were responding. You were absolutely strawmanning sunwillrise’s position.
If someone mistakenly believes that their interlocutor in a public conversation on a public discussion forum is just trying to convince them, personally, to change their minds, then this is almost certainly an error on their part. As a moderator of said forum, it would behoove you to spread awareness of the fact that such is not the default or the usual motivation for people to have public conversations on said public forum.
This, too, is a strawman: “substantially motivated by wanting to make them look bad” is a tendentious description, and is certainly not one which most people would endorse, as applied to their own contributions to such conversations.
Insofar as conversations are 100% about communicating information on the object level about a topic, of course social information about status and personal hostilities are irrelevant to the point of a conversation. Insofar as one is not blinding oneself to the other dynamics but also living in them, then calling someone a fool a lot is quite relevant to whether to continue interacting with someone, as I’m pretty sure you’re aware.
Our comment threads are going in circles, and these perspectives are not being bridged. I expect more comments like this are not going to change much.
I have much work to do other than replying to these long threads with you and your allies under the clouds of this political conflict around whether to ban you from LessWrong. Do not expect many more replies any time soon.