On the recommendation of someone who may or may not wish to identify themselves publicly, I’m posting the contents of a private message I sent to them with regard to Gleb_Tsipursky, as they believe the ambiguity of what and why I was doing may be causing some people consternation/cause for alarm, and contributing to some overall negative feelings on Less Wrong, as my reasons for behaving the way I was weren’t terribly transparent to some people.
“His pinging of my emotional immune system is, I’m pretty sure, a false alarm. I have no reason to disbelieve him when he professes to, effectively, be emulating a sociopath, particularly in light of how bad he is at it.
Most of the point of that lengthy ‘attack’ was in the exaggeration, as I wanted -Gleb- to know how he’s taken, and he didn’t react to my more subtle attempts to nudge his behavior; the purpose wasn’t hostility for the sake of hostility, it was to try to get him to modify some of his behavior while giving him a redemptive path (not redeemed by me, but redeemed by his behavior; my role is that of the villain, providing an obstacle which requires him to overcome personal faults and which plays conveniently to his preexisting strengths), which worked to a limited extent, although he seems quite inventive about new ways to break social norms.
Honestly I think he is just an incredibly socially clueless person who wants to be liked by a community he respects, and everything he’s doing is to prove his worthiness to Less Wrong. Unfortunately his… tactics aren’t particularly well-received, being painfully transparent.
The public attacks encourage him to modify his behavior while giving him a sympathetic position from which to recover his reputation. He’s done a decent job of being graceful about it, and has modified his behaviors somewhat, which helps his reputation along, but then turns around and transgresses again in some other fashion. Sigh. (They do serve a secondary purpose, in the doubtful case he -is- a predator, of making people more cognizant of his behavior patterns.)”
I don’t like how people are talking about Gleb here where everybody involved knows that he reads it without much respect for that. I understand that it is necessary for this community to solve this out and in a way this community is good that using reflection and neutral point of view but still I’m not too happy how it is done. I’d wish somebody would say:
Hi Gleb, if you are reading this, I’m sorry that we didn’t find a better way. We really want to solve this in a way that is OK for you and us.
As for the tension that Gleb brings (and actually some other newbies, including me too): I think this is a natural process for a community that is developing after some initial hype. People taking the seed elsewhere; the origin not having the same close-knit focus anymore. I’m OK with this and I think adjusting to it and making the best out of it is better than fighting (which has its own questionable trade-offs). So Gleb is just one example. I have seen this very process in the c2 forum almost exactly the same way (there I also arrived after the hype; c2 is defunct now; make of it what you want...).
I like Gleb’s intention and I partly recognize myself. How do you expect somebody with such a skill-set to act and learn? I also tried things. I mean there is a whole CFAR topic about it: CoZE. I hope nobody expects that CoZE always comes with pleasant socially adequate and successful results. I did quite some blunders not that different what some people here feel uncomfortable with tried by Gleb. But he does. And he learns and adjusts. Fast. Maybe too fast because that creates incomplete adjustments that probably add to the uneasy impression he makes. But who knows how non-LW people in his circle perceive him? Who knows what feedback he gets or doesn’t get?
I welcome Gleb and I hope he continues to improve because I see lots of potential. Maybe more impact than many other people here. Make the best out of it.
Gunnar, I read it like you see some similarities between you and Gleb, but from by point of view, you two are quite unsimilar. You often write about the topic you feel most experienced (parenting), your advice seems good, and you fit the local culture well (after the few initial blunders). Gleb’s writings seem very cargo-cultish, he constantly does weird things, and his employees posting here only make it more weird.
Essentially, your posts are valued for their content, while I am afraid that Gleb is merely tolerated here because we still hope that maybe his activities outside of LW will be useful somehow.
What would make me improve my opinion on Gleb?
a) If someone coming here from Intentional Insights would actually fit in our culture and post useful stuff. Then I would say: “Okay, Gleb’s personal style rubs me the wrong way, but now I see that’s only a superficial thing and he actually helps to spread the kind of rationality we value here. There are many paths to the same goal.”
b) If Gleb himself would change.
At this moment I simply don’t see any evidence that what Gleb does is useful. I derive no personal pleasure from reading his articles; and I see no data that it actually helps anyone outside of LW. (I am not saying that everyone here must do super useful things, but someone who tries to become a public face of rationalist movement should.)
I agree with Gunnar that it’s not polite to talk about someone in the third person to their face. I wasn’t sure how to handle that part of it, so I’m glad Gunnar has brought it up.
I suspect people feel he gives a negative impression of lesswrong. And he will not go away with downvotes. Trouble is that it’s not just that we disagree with him; often he is behaving in ways that are, not even wrong. If he were doing something wrong, it would be simple to say, “that is something wrong; instead of doing wrong you should do right like X”. By being uncannily off, we can’t even help.
First, he puts HuffPo-style posts onto LW which are pretty nauseating.
Second, he hires people—virtual assistants from the third world—to get LW accounts and praise him. They mostly post inanities like this for example. There are what, about five of them at the moment?
Third, he wants to be the face of rationality for the unwashed masses. In the unlikely event that this comes to pass, it… would not be optimal :-/
Otherwise I continue to think that he is in dire need of a clue and that he is the clearest example of cargo cult behaviour that I have seen in a while.
Because he occasionally (when he’s targeting intelligent people rather than stupid people, to put it bluntly) does some good work. I don’t want to downvote or ignore him, I want him to be the person he should be.
I’m the person who encouraged OrphanWilde to post that PM. I’m quite grateful that he did because this has recast the situation.
I don’t know about anyone else, but my impression of Gleb is that he’s annoying but mostly harmless. Mostly harmless because that early project of trying to promote rationality by turning it into an applause light was definitely a bad idea.
The PM has caused me to do some updating which I hope I will generalize. I started out with an assumption that there might be something wrong with Gleb for attracting that sort of animus, and something wrong with me for not seeing what was wrong with Gleb.
I think OrphanWilde’s approach has made LW seem like a place where people can be attacked for unclear reasons, and as moderator, I probably should have moved much earlier to discourage this.
It literally never occurred to me that the animus was (or had shifted to) something strategic, and it wasn’t trolling exactly but it was still not an accurate presentation of OrphanWilde’s beliefs.
I haven’t seen a clear explanation from anyone (though I may have missed some comments) of what they think Gleb misunderstands.
Here’s the comment which OW’s PM was an answer to. I don’t have a copy of what I PM’d to OW, but it was tactful.It took me a while to get from “What the fucking fuck?” to “Thank you for the information”. I believe that you can’t force a mind. Shaming people isn’t a reliable way of getting the behavior you want from them. Neither is anything else, but a light touch has fewer side effects.
I think a fine line needs to be walked when addressing Gleb, if only because he evidently has media visibility skills that could be useful for the community if he were less misguided.
>Honestly I think he is just an incredibly socially clueless person who wants to be liked by a community he respects, and everything he’s doing is to prove his worthiness to Less Wrong. Unfortunately his… tactics aren’t particularly well-received, being painfully transparent.
> encourage him to modify his behavior
has modified his behaviors somewhat
would encourage him to continue to modify further.
but then turns around and transgresses again in some other fashion.
Perhaps he is lacking some fundamental understanding that if he were given we could trust him to no longer transgress and instead improve. I haven’t the faintest idea what; or how to find it. Nor do I have much energy left (after already trying many times) for trying down this pathway (or any) on his behalf.
I think he doesn’t understand average people. And I think that he thinks that he does.
And then he uses people’s mental faults to try to improve their minds, which is… wrong? I think that’s the issue, the thing he is “uncannily off” about. He’s trying to fool people into not being fools.
People don’t like being made into fools, so insofar as he succeeds, he turns them off from rationality, rather than turning them onto it. And for a community that already struggles with an aura of cultishness, it’s exactly the wrong kind of approach.
And then he uses people’s mental faults to try to improve their minds, which is… wrong?
I don’t think he’s doing anything like that. It’s true that he tailors his content to the lowest common denominator (because he views this as the only feasible way of reaching that crowd), but surely people with no “mental faults” can benefit from it just as much as anyone else.
my role is that of the villain, providing an obstacle which requires him to overcome personal faults and which plays conveniently to his preexisting strengths
This is a strategy that I’ve only seen working in comic books.
At least this should show the danger of taking cues about interpersonal behavior from fiction.
It works all the time. It relies on cognitive dissonance—if you’re so nasty that other people want to defend somebody, they think more positively of that person than they would if they didn’t.
On the recommendation of someone who may or may not wish to identify themselves publicly, I’m posting the contents of a private message I sent to them with regard to Gleb_Tsipursky, as they believe the ambiguity of what and why I was doing may be causing some people consternation/cause for alarm, and contributing to some overall negative feelings on Less Wrong, as my reasons for behaving the way I was weren’t terribly transparent to some people.
“His pinging of my emotional immune system is, I’m pretty sure, a false alarm. I have no reason to disbelieve him when he professes to, effectively, be emulating a sociopath, particularly in light of how bad he is at it.
Most of the point of that lengthy ‘attack’ was in the exaggeration, as I wanted -Gleb- to know how he’s taken, and he didn’t react to my more subtle attempts to nudge his behavior; the purpose wasn’t hostility for the sake of hostility, it was to try to get him to modify some of his behavior while giving him a redemptive path (not redeemed by me, but redeemed by his behavior; my role is that of the villain, providing an obstacle which requires him to overcome personal faults and which plays conveniently to his preexisting strengths), which worked to a limited extent, although he seems quite inventive about new ways to break social norms.
Honestly I think he is just an incredibly socially clueless person who wants to be liked by a community he respects, and everything he’s doing is to prove his worthiness to Less Wrong. Unfortunately his… tactics aren’t particularly well-received, being painfully transparent.
The public attacks encourage him to modify his behavior while giving him a sympathetic position from which to recover his reputation. He’s done a decent job of being graceful about it, and has modified his behaviors somewhat, which helps his reputation along, but then turns around and transgresses again in some other fashion. Sigh. (They do serve a secondary purpose, in the doubtful case he -is- a predator, of making people more cognizant of his behavior patterns.)”
I don’t like how people are talking about Gleb here where everybody involved knows that he reads it without much respect for that. I understand that it is necessary for this community to solve this out and in a way this community is good that using reflection and neutral point of view but still I’m not too happy how it is done. I’d wish somebody would say:
As for the tension that Gleb brings (and actually some other newbies, including me too): I think this is a natural process for a community that is developing after some initial hype. People taking the seed elsewhere; the origin not having the same close-knit focus anymore. I’m OK with this and I think adjusting to it and making the best out of it is better than fighting (which has its own questionable trade-offs). So Gleb is just one example. I have seen this very process in the c2 forum almost exactly the same way (there I also arrived after the hype; c2 is defunct now; make of it what you want...).
I like Gleb’s intention and I partly recognize myself. How do you expect somebody with such a skill-set to act and learn? I also tried things. I mean there is a whole CFAR topic about it: CoZE. I hope nobody expects that CoZE always comes with pleasant socially adequate and successful results. I did quite some blunders not that different what some people here feel uncomfortable with tried by Gleb. But he does. And he learns and adjusts. Fast. Maybe too fast because that creates incomplete adjustments that probably add to the uneasy impression he makes. But who knows how non-LW people in his circle perceive him? Who knows what feedback he gets or doesn’t get?
I welcome Gleb and I hope he continues to improve because I see lots of potential. Maybe more impact than many other people here. Make the best out of it.
Gunnar, I read it like you see some similarities between you and Gleb, but from by point of view, you two are quite unsimilar. You often write about the topic you feel most experienced (parenting), your advice seems good, and you fit the local culture well (after the few initial blunders). Gleb’s writings seem very cargo-cultish, he constantly does weird things, and his employees posting here only make it more weird.
Essentially, your posts are valued for their content, while I am afraid that Gleb is merely tolerated here because we still hope that maybe his activities outside of LW will be useful somehow.
What would make me improve my opinion on Gleb?
a) If someone coming here from Intentional Insights would actually fit in our culture and post useful stuff. Then I would say: “Okay, Gleb’s personal style rubs me the wrong way, but now I see that’s only a superficial thing and he actually helps to spread the kind of rationality we value here. There are many paths to the same goal.”
b) If Gleb himself would change.
At this moment I simply don’t see any evidence that what Gleb does is useful. I derive no personal pleasure from reading his articles; and I see no data that it actually helps anyone outside of LW. (I am not saying that everyone here must do super useful things, but someone who tries to become a public face of rationalist movement should.)
I agree with Gunnar that it’s not polite to talk about someone in the third person to their face. I wasn’t sure how to handle that part of it, so I’m glad Gunnar has brought it up.
Why do we need all this drama? Why can’t the people who don’t like Gleb just downvote or ignore him?
I suspect people feel he gives a negative impression of lesswrong. And he will not go away with downvotes. Trouble is that it’s not just that we disagree with him; often he is behaving in ways that are, not even wrong. If he were doing something wrong, it would be simple to say, “that is something wrong; instead of doing wrong you should do right like X”. By being uncannily off, we can’t even help.
First, he puts HuffPo-style posts onto LW which are pretty nauseating.
Second, he hires people—virtual assistants from the third world—to get LW accounts and praise him. They mostly post inanities like this for example. There are what, about five of them at the moment?
Third, he wants to be the face of rationality for the unwashed masses. In the unlikely event that this comes to pass, it… would not be optimal :-/
Otherwise I continue to think that he is in dire need of a clue and that he is the clearest example of cargo cult behaviour that I have seen in a while.
Because he occasionally (when he’s targeting intelligent people rather than stupid people, to put it bluntly) does some good work. I don’t want to downvote or ignore him, I want him to be the person he should be.
I’m the person who encouraged OrphanWilde to post that PM. I’m quite grateful that he did because this has recast the situation.
I don’t know about anyone else, but my impression of Gleb is that he’s annoying but mostly harmless. Mostly harmless because that early project of trying to promote rationality by turning it into an applause light was definitely a bad idea.
The PM has caused me to do some updating which I hope I will generalize. I started out with an assumption that there might be something wrong with Gleb for attracting that sort of animus, and something wrong with me for not seeing what was wrong with Gleb.
I think OrphanWilde’s approach has made LW seem like a place where people can be attacked for unclear reasons, and as moderator, I probably should have moved much earlier to discourage this.
It literally never occurred to me that the animus was (or had shifted to) something strategic, and it wasn’t trolling exactly but it was still not an accurate presentation of OrphanWilde’s beliefs.
I haven’t seen a clear explanation from anyone (though I may have missed some comments) of what they think Gleb misunderstands.
Here’s the comment which OW’s PM was an answer to. I don’t have a copy of what I PM’d to OW, but it was tactful.It took me a while to get from “What the fucking fuck?” to “Thank you for the information”. I believe that you can’t force a mind. Shaming people isn’t a reliable way of getting the behavior you want from them. Neither is anything else, but a light touch has fewer side effects.
I think a fine line needs to be walked when addressing Gleb, if only because he evidently has media visibility skills that could be useful for the community if he were less misguided.
>Honestly I think he is just an incredibly socially clueless person who wants to be liked by a community he respects, and everything he’s doing is to prove his worthiness to Less Wrong. Unfortunately his… tactics aren’t particularly well-received, being painfully transparent.
> encourage him to modify his behavior
would encourage him to continue to modify further.
Perhaps he is lacking some fundamental understanding that if he were given we could trust him to no longer transgress and instead improve. I haven’t the faintest idea what; or how to find it. Nor do I have much energy left (after already trying many times) for trying down this pathway (or any) on his behalf.
I think he doesn’t understand average people. And I think that he thinks that he does.
And then he uses people’s mental faults to try to improve their minds, which is… wrong? I think that’s the issue, the thing he is “uncannily off” about. He’s trying to fool people into not being fools.
People don’t like being made into fools, so insofar as he succeeds, he turns them off from rationality, rather than turning them onto it. And for a community that already struggles with an aura of cultishness, it’s exactly the wrong kind of approach.
I don’t think he’s doing anything like that. It’s true that he tailors his content to the lowest common denominator (because he views this as the only feasible way of reaching that crowd), but surely people with no “mental faults” can benefit from it just as much as anyone else.
My reaction to Gleb’s “emulating a sociopath” is essentially this. :(
This is a strategy that I’ve only seen working in comic books.
At least this should show the danger of taking cues about interpersonal behavior from fiction.
It works all the time. It relies on cognitive dissonance—if you’re so nasty that other people want to defend somebody, they think more positively of that person than they would if they didn’t.
It looks like an awfully long chain of inference to me. One weak point was that other people were attacking Gleb—it wasn’t you as a lone attacker.
Note that (and this may be a flaw in my character), I was left wondering if you were right rather wanting to defend Gleb.
I think his empathy deficits are more autistic than psychopathic.