I think there are a few things being conflated in the situations you’re talking about.
1) “Do I respect you, as a person?” 2) “Do I respect your ideas on the topic at hand?” 3) “Am I cowed away from challenging what I don’t [know that I] respect?”
With these distinctions in place, we can keep a simple definition of respect as “Honestly evaluated value of engaging”, and stop polluting the term “respect” with unlike things which people sometimes want to pretend are “just respect”.
1) “Do I respect you as a person?” fits well with the “treat someone like a person” meaning. It means I value not burning bridges by saying things like “Go die, idiot”, and will at least say “No thanks” if not “What justifies your confidence in what you’re saying?” when you’re saying things I have a hard time taking seriously.
2) “Do I respect your ideas on the topic at hand” is closer to “Do I see you as an authority”—at least, in the sense in which it’s legitimate. If you’re a math professor and you say something counterintuitive about math, I’m more likely to assign it higher credence and all that. This isn’t really as important, because if we have mutual respect for each other then we can explicitly sort out whether its worth taking seriously your ideas on math.
3) “Am I cowed away from challenging” is generally what’s going on when people are saying “if you dare question”—because why is it a “dare” if it’s just about honestly held beliefs and not fear? Whenever fear is driving, honest beliefs and updating on evidence can’t drive, and that’s bad. But if I’m insecure about how that conversation might turn out, then it’s tempting for me to try to frame things as “You’re not respecting me, and I’m an authroritah”. Because that sounds a whole lot better than “I’m afraid that if we honestly hash out how much my ‘expertise’ is worth here, you’ll come to the honest conclusion that it’s less than I know how to handle”.
The somewhat trickier part is that when other people are acting as “systematically flawed belief-generators”. Say I’m a bad actor, and I want to bully people into respecting my authoritah. A healthy ecosystem will recognize the value of my inputs for what it is, and that is necessarily humiliating for me. So what happens when I come in posturing and ignoring subtle hints that people don’t respect my ideas on the topics at hand?
Either I’m successful in cowing the whole community into submission, or the signals get louder. If the community can’t handle loud signals of humiliation, then as long as I’m more shameless than the community is willing to humiliate, the community can’t correct my behavior. And if I’m unwilling to change, people will justifiably lose respect for me as a person—because at this point, what’s the value of a bridge?
In order to not fall victim to such abuses, and keep updates flowing freely, the community has to be quick enough to notice and exclude people acting on these temptations before the conflict gets more heated than it’s tolerance for heat allows. And that can be tricky, because 1) the bad actor is tempted to do their best to disguise things and play innocent, 2) the more conflict averse are tempted to run defense too, and 3) the “bad actors” are often valuable contributors who are erring a little, rather than any sort of “black and white” situation.
Basically the whole problem is that making any sort of “respect” mandatory necessarily enables bad actors.
For example, you say:
if we have mutual respect [of the #1 sort] for each other then we can explicitly sort out whether its worth taking seriously your ideas on math
Now, suppose that Alice does not think that Bob is capable of honestly collaborating on a project of explicitly sorting out whether Bob’s ideas on math are worth taking seriously. (Perhaps Alice thinks that Bob lacks sufficient self-awareness, or that Bob’s ego is too big and too fragile, or that Bob is a crank, or… etc.)
By modus tollens, this implies that Alice does not “respect” Bob (in the #1 sense).
But whoops! It turns out that the rules of the space in which Alice and Bob are having their discussions mandates that participants “respect” one another. Alice, being a faithful rule-follower, scrupulously behaves as if she “respects” Bob. However, Alice is certainly not going to pretend that her evaluation of Bob’s capabilities is otherwise than it is; she remains quite convinced that there’s no hope of explicitly sorting out whether Bob’s math ideas are worth taking seriously.
This breaks the quoted implication, as far as the apparently-observed rules of the community are concerned. Alice and Bob respect each other, or so it would seem; and yet there isn’t any explicit sorting-out happening. Instead, Alice just silently disvalues Bob’s math ideas.
You say:
Either I’m successful in cowing the whole community into submission, or the signals get louder. If the community can’t handle loud signals of humiliation, then as long as I’m more shameless than the community is willing to humiliate, the community can’t correct my behavior. And if I’m unwilling to change, people will justifiably lose respect for me as a person—because at this point, what’s the value of a bridge?
In order to not fall victim to such abuses, and keep updates flowing freely, the community has to be quick enough to notice and exclude people acting on these temptations before the conflict gets more heated than it’s tolerance for heat allows. And that can be tricky, because 1) the bad actor is tempted to do their best to disguise things and play innocent, 2) the more conflict averse are tempted to run defense too, and 3) the “bad actors” are often valuable contributors who are erring a little, rather than any sort of “black and white” situation.
And this is all true, of course. And so long as “respect” is mandatory, these problems cannot be solved.
Yep. Because you can’t require actual respect, any more than you can require people to believe that the sky is green. You can intimidate people into claiming belief/respect, but this necessarily comes at the cost of honesty and ability to update towards the truth.
That doesn’t mean we should tolerate unnecessary hostility. “Go die, idiot” is generally bad behavior, but not because it’s “lacking respect”.
“Go die, idiot” is generally bad behavior, but not because it’s “lacking respect”.
confusingly contradicts (semantically if not substantively)
“Do I respect you as a person?” fits well with the “treat someone like a person” meaning. It means I value not burning bridges by saying things like “Go die, idiot”
I think there are a few things being conflated in the situations you’re talking about.
1) “Do I respect you, as a person?”
2) “Do I respect your ideas on the topic at hand?”
3) “Am I cowed away from challenging what I don’t [know that I] respect?”
With these distinctions in place, we can keep a simple definition of respect as “Honestly evaluated value of engaging”, and stop polluting the term “respect” with unlike things which people sometimes want to pretend are “just respect”.
1) “Do I respect you as a person?” fits well with the “treat someone like a person” meaning. It means I value not burning bridges by saying things like “Go die, idiot”, and will at least say “No thanks” if not “What justifies your confidence in what you’re saying?” when you’re saying things I have a hard time taking seriously.
2) “Do I respect your ideas on the topic at hand” is closer to “Do I see you as an authority”—at least, in the sense in which it’s legitimate. If you’re a math professor and you say something counterintuitive about math, I’m more likely to assign it higher credence and all that. This isn’t really as important, because if we have mutual respect for each other then we can explicitly sort out whether its worth taking seriously your ideas on math.
3) “Am I cowed away from challenging” is generally what’s going on when people are saying “if you dare question”—because why is it a “dare” if it’s just about honestly held beliefs and not fear? Whenever fear is driving, honest beliefs and updating on evidence can’t drive, and that’s bad. But if I’m insecure about how that conversation might turn out, then it’s tempting for me to try to frame things as “You’re not respecting me, and I’m an authroritah”. Because that sounds a whole lot better than “I’m afraid that if we honestly hash out how much my ‘expertise’ is worth here, you’ll come to the honest conclusion that it’s less than I know how to handle”.
The somewhat trickier part is that when other people are acting as “systematically flawed belief-generators”. Say I’m a bad actor, and I want to bully people into respecting my authoritah. A healthy ecosystem will recognize the value of my inputs for what it is, and that is necessarily humiliating for me. So what happens when I come in posturing and ignoring subtle hints that people don’t respect my ideas on the topics at hand?
Either I’m successful in cowing the whole community into submission, or the signals get louder. If the community can’t handle loud signals of humiliation, then as long as I’m more shameless than the community is willing to humiliate, the community can’t correct my behavior. And if I’m unwilling to change, people will justifiably lose respect for me as a person—because at this point, what’s the value of a bridge?
In order to not fall victim to such abuses, and keep updates flowing freely, the community has to be quick enough to notice and exclude people acting on these temptations before the conflict gets more heated than it’s tolerance for heat allows. And that can be tricky, because 1) the bad actor is tempted to do their best to disguise things and play innocent, 2) the more conflict averse are tempted to run defense too, and 3) the “bad actors” are often valuable contributors who are erring a little, rather than any sort of “black and white” situation.
Basically the whole problem is that making any sort of “respect” mandatory necessarily enables bad actors.
For example, you say:
Now, suppose that Alice does not think that Bob is capable of honestly collaborating on a project of explicitly sorting out whether Bob’s ideas on math are worth taking seriously. (Perhaps Alice thinks that Bob lacks sufficient self-awareness, or that Bob’s ego is too big and too fragile, or that Bob is a crank, or… etc.)
By modus tollens, this implies that Alice does not “respect” Bob (in the #1 sense).
But whoops! It turns out that the rules of the space in which Alice and Bob are having their discussions mandates that participants “respect” one another. Alice, being a faithful rule-follower, scrupulously behaves as if she “respects” Bob. However, Alice is certainly not going to pretend that her evaluation of Bob’s capabilities is otherwise than it is; she remains quite convinced that there’s no hope of explicitly sorting out whether Bob’s math ideas are worth taking seriously.
This breaks the quoted implication, as far as the apparently-observed rules of the community are concerned. Alice and Bob respect each other, or so it would seem; and yet there isn’t any explicit sorting-out happening. Instead, Alice just silently disvalues Bob’s math ideas.
You say:
And this is all true, of course. And so long as “respect” is mandatory, these problems cannot be solved.
Yep. Because you can’t require actual respect, any more than you can require people to believe that the sky is green. You can intimidate people into claiming belief/respect, but this necessarily comes at the cost of honesty and ability to update towards the truth.
That doesn’t mean we should tolerate unnecessary hostility. “Go die, idiot” is generally bad behavior, but not because it’s “lacking respect”.
I basically agree with you, but this
confusingly contradicts (semantically if not substantively)
It is lacking respect, but it’s not bad because it’s lacking respect. The badness is separate.
Fully agreed. Fortunately, this sort of thing is mostly not a problem on Less Wrong.
(There are exceptions, of course, but they are usually dealt with fairly competely by the mods.)