I would want to say that there are clearer examples, e.g., people bringing up racism, social justice, the Omnicause, etc., into nearly every single conversation. But, similarly, it looks reasonable from their perspective, and I can disagree with the perspective that makes this behavior reasonable to them, because it is the perspective I find unreasonable.
But there are still differences of behavior. You can do this rudely or not rudely. E.g. if you’re at a talk and go up in the Q&A at the end, you could ask a pointed question about it (fine! good!) or you could pretend to ask a question but actually just ramble on your thing until the moderator takes the mic from you. I believe the comment thread on my post about deference was rude because my interlocutor was ignoring what I was saying, because he just wanted to talk about his thing. This burns the commons of “author putting forward a new idea upholds the principle of responding to all serious criticism”, by piggybacking off that.
I don’t think I mind harshness, though maybe I’m wrong. E.g. your response to me here https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zmtqmwetKH4nrxXcE/which-side-of-the-ai-safety-community-are-you-in?commentId=hjvF8kTQeJnjirXo3 seems to me comparably harsh, and I probably disagree a bunch with it, but it seems contentful and helpful, and thus socially positive/cooperative, etc. I think my issue with this thread is that it seems to me you’re aggressively missing the point / not trying to get the point, or something, idk. Or just talking about something really off-topic even if superficially on-topic in a way I don’t want to engage with. IDK.
Like, to me it seems pretty rude for Bob to
not spend basic effort to understand what Alice is saying
go off on his thing
while posing as being responsive to what Alice is saying
while posing as being responsive to what Alice is saying
I think the problem with this isn’t rudeness as such, but with deceiving people (who aren’t paying close enough attention) that Bob’s comment was relevant to Alice’s thesis. (A lot of politeness norms are about concealing or obfuscating information, and I often want to rudely defy those, but I don’t want to deceive people; the category of rudeness is lumping together different things that I want to treat very differently.)
Ok. I could quibble with “to a large extent” (actually, I took that to mean at least a majority, but now I’m not sure if that’s what you mean by that). But I think I agree that a lot of politeness norms are about obfuscating.
...But there’s also plenty of politeness that’s not about that. For example:
keeping out of personal space
coughing without covering your mouth
not being too loud
ignoring what someone is saying when you’re talking to them
interrupting
hijacking attentional spaces
not doing some amount of interpretive labor
dismissing ideas / possibilities without due explanation or consideration
Some of these shouldn’t be universally enforced; e.g. in many cases I can quite enjoy a perfectly friendly conversation with lots of kinda-heated-sounding interruptions. Some of these are vague (e.g. what is “dismissing” and “due consideration”). Some of these are clear aggression (e.g. personal space) but some of them aren’t.
I don’t know exactly what “rudeness” is as a category, or know how to perfectly delineate each type of rudeness so that it’s already explicitly never in conflict with truth-seeking, but I don’t think I should have to know in order for us to agree that rudeness in general is bad, and to enforce rudeness norms.
But there are still differences of behavior. You can do this rudely or not rudely. E.g. if you’re at a talk and go up in the Q&A at the end, you could ask a pointed question about it (fine! good!) or you could pretend to ask a question but actually just ramble on your thing until the moderator takes the mic from you. I believe the comment thread on my post about deference was rude because my interlocutor was ignoring what I was saying, because he just wanted to talk about his thing. This burns the commons of “author putting forward a new idea upholds the principle of responding to all serious criticism”, by piggybacking off that.
I guess some people don’t want to hear or believe that I just don’t like the rudeness, and completely sublimates this to their conflict that they are engaged in. Ok fine. I’ll note that the one other time (unless I’m forgetting) I considered banning user was here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DDG2Tf2sqc8rTWRk3/llm-generated-text-is-not-testimony?commentId=crnYQQQoE6agAonst
I gave my reason:
Like, to me it seems pretty rude for Bob to
not spend basic effort to understand what Alice is saying
go off on his thing
while posing as being responsive to what Alice is saying
It’s just rude. It’s not a huge deal.
I think the problem with this isn’t rudeness as such, but with deceiving people (who aren’t paying close enough attention) that Bob’s comment was relevant to Alice’s thesis. (A lot of politeness norms are about concealing or obfuscating information, and I often want to rudely defy those, but I don’t want to deceive people; the category of rudeness is lumping together different things that I want to treat very differently.)
Ok. I could quibble with “to a large extent” (actually, I took that to mean at least a majority, but now I’m not sure if that’s what you mean by that). But I think I agree that a lot of politeness norms are about obfuscating.
...But there’s also plenty of politeness that’s not about that. For example:
keeping out of personal space
coughing without covering your mouth
not being too loud
ignoring what someone is saying when you’re talking to them
interrupting
hijacking attentional spaces
not doing some amount of interpretive labor
dismissing ideas / possibilities without due explanation or consideration
Some of these shouldn’t be universally enforced; e.g. in many cases I can quite enjoy a perfectly friendly conversation with lots of kinda-heated-sounding interruptions. Some of these are vague (e.g. what is “dismissing” and “due consideration”). Some of these are clear aggression (e.g. personal space) but some of them aren’t.
I don’t know exactly what “rudeness” is as a category, or know how to perfectly delineate each type of rudeness so that it’s already explicitly never in conflict with truth-seeking, but I don’t think I should have to know in order for us to agree that rudeness in general is bad, and to enforce rudeness norms.