I appreciate this post for spelling out an unsolved problem that IMO is a major reason it’s hard to build good community gatherings among large groups of people, and for including enough detail/evidence that I expect many, after reading it, can see how the trouble works in their own inside views. I slightly wish the author had omitted the final section (“What would be the elements of a good system?”), as it seems less evidence-backed than the rest (and I personally agree with its claims less), and its inclusion makes it a bit harder for me to recommend the article to those needing a problem-description.
Huh, I just re-looked over the final section after reading your comment here. The final section seems to have a fairly reasonable epistemic status, and the 3 bullets seem pretty reasonable to me. Curious to hear what you disagree about them?
I mean, I might be being dumb on all these points. But I personally disagree about:
There being a viable “good system for community resolution of conflicts” in larger-than-Dunbar groups (to be fair, the post author does too… except then not at the end?)
Phrasing the cause-of-enforcement as “you decide a person should ‘face consequences for their actions’” (IMO, kicking people out of a community should usually be more about “they impose risks/costs we can’t live with” and less about “making them face consequences”)
A sort of missing mood in the third bullet point (“Holistic judgment: a person should be kicked out if they seem, on the whole, to be bad for the community. They don’t need to be found guilty beyond reasonable doubt of a specific egregious crime.”) I agree with the denotation of what’s written. But there are two memorable-to-me cases where I was part of kicking someone out of the bay area rationalist community (not Brent, nothing most overseas readers would’ve heard about; quieter affairs); and where their lives and sanity rapidly got a lot worse, to the point where I’d put like 30% that the decision to exile them “ruined their lives”. I wouldn’t advise past-me against either decision, because they were people we really didn’t know how to live with, with major repeated situations. But … if someone seemed, on the whole, to be a mild force for boredom and awkwardness in the community, say, I certainly woudln’t kick them out? (And again, I assume neither would the post’s author, mingyuan; but I wish the bullet point e.g. said “if they seem, on the whole, to be someone we can’t live with in a healthy fashion”, or else differentiated between kicking someone out of a random meetup, vs doing things that’ll trigger exile from a place that includes almost all a person’s social ties, built up over years).
I think my problem with the last section is only that it is not up to the very high standard that the rest of the post seems to me to hit, in which things are made unusually clear to even a young/inexperienced reader who is happy to believe relayed events but who wants to see the why of things for themself. (And I’m not providing these ‘disagreements’ because I think the article would be better with my opinions instead of the authors; I don’t think I”m especially correct about these matters; I’m providing them as evidence that this part of the article is less visibly-true-to-all-readers, e.g. to me)
(I’m rarely online but for the record) I agree that the last section is weak and specifically agree with all of the points you made in this comment, including agreeing with the observation that exile from the community can ruin people’s lives.
I appreciate this post for spelling out an unsolved problem that IMO is a major reason it’s hard to build good community gatherings among large groups of people, and for including enough detail/evidence that I expect many, after reading it, can see how the trouble works in their own inside views. I slightly wish the author had omitted the final section (“What would be the elements of a good system?”), as it seems less evidence-backed than the rest (and I personally agree with its claims less), and its inclusion makes it a bit harder for me to recommend the article to those needing a problem-description.
Huh, I just re-looked over the final section after reading your comment here. The final section seems to have a fairly reasonable epistemic status, and the 3 bullets seem pretty reasonable to me. Curious to hear what you disagree about them?
I mean, I might be being dumb on all these points. But I personally disagree about:
There being a viable “good system for community resolution of conflicts” in larger-than-Dunbar groups (to be fair, the post author does too… except then not at the end?)
Phrasing the cause-of-enforcement as “you decide a person should ‘face consequences for their actions’” (IMO, kicking people out of a community should usually be more about “they impose risks/costs we can’t live with” and less about “making them face consequences”)
A sort of missing mood in the third bullet point (“Holistic judgment: a person should be kicked out if they seem, on the whole, to be bad for the community. They don’t need to be found guilty beyond reasonable doubt of a specific egregious crime.”) I agree with the denotation of what’s written. But there are two memorable-to-me cases where I was part of kicking someone out of the bay area rationalist community (not Brent, nothing most overseas readers would’ve heard about; quieter affairs); and where their lives and sanity rapidly got a lot worse, to the point where I’d put like 30% that the decision to exile them “ruined their lives”. I wouldn’t advise past-me against either decision, because they were people we really didn’t know how to live with, with major repeated situations. But … if someone seemed, on the whole, to be a mild force for boredom and awkwardness in the community, say, I certainly woudln’t kick them out? (And again, I assume neither would the post’s author, mingyuan; but I wish the bullet point e.g. said “if they seem, on the whole, to be someone we can’t live with in a healthy fashion”, or else differentiated between kicking someone out of a random meetup, vs doing things that’ll trigger exile from a place that includes almost all a person’s social ties, built up over years).
I think my problem with the last section is only that it is not up to the very high standard that the rest of the post seems to me to hit, in which things are made unusually clear to even a young/inexperienced reader who is happy to believe relayed events but who wants to see the why of things for themself. (And I’m not providing these ‘disagreements’ because I think the article would be better with my opinions instead of the authors; I don’t think I”m especially correct about these matters; I’m providing them as evidence that this part of the article is less visibly-true-to-all-readers, e.g. to me)
(I’m rarely online but for the record) I agree that the last section is weak and specifically agree with all of the points you made in this comment, including agreeing with the observation that exile from the community can ruin people’s lives.