To mock or deride to make other people think less of the target of the sneering. The effect is to cause the community to dismiss the thing that was sneered at, if the sneering is successful.
I’m not sure about that. If you’re engaging at the object-level, you’re not dismissing. If you indicate that something is meta-level not valuable, that seems very hard to do non-hurtfully, since social exclusion is inherently hurtful. And maybe should be appropriately hurtful.
It’s a tenet of LessWrong that factual content and emotional valence are separate axes. Or more plainly, disagreeing on a matter of fact never makes you an asshole, but delivery can.
I like the reduced emotionality of LessWrong, but in this case it seems to me that socially excluding someone is inherently hurtful in a way that no website’s social norms can override. And I’m not even convinced that if you could eliminate the sting of sneering entirely that you should. But if you wanted to, how would you recommend someone take actions that cause people to dismiss a comment without being sneering? Or even harder, to dismiss a person entirely?
To mock or deride to make other people think less of the target of the sneering. The effect is to cause the community to dismiss the thing that was sneered at, if the sneering is successful.
Is it possible to take actions that cause people to dismiss something, without being sneering?
I’m not sure about that. If you’re engaging at the object-level, you’re not dismissing. If you indicate that something is meta-level not valuable, that seems very hard to do non-hurtfully, since social exclusion is inherently hurtful. And maybe should be appropriately hurtful.
It’s a tenet of LessWrong that factual content and emotional valence are separate axes. Or more plainly, disagreeing on a matter of fact never makes you an asshole, but delivery can.
I like the reduced emotionality of LessWrong, but in this case it seems to me that socially excluding someone is inherently hurtful in a way that no website’s social norms can override. And I’m not even convinced that if you could eliminate the sting of sneering entirely that you should. But if you wanted to, how would you recommend someone take actions that cause people to dismiss a comment without being sneering? Or even harder, to dismiss a person entirely?