It seems like this accusation of bad faith could go both ways. I haven’t seen you demonstrate curiosity or openness to being convinced that your religion pushes anti-epistemology, I’ve only seen flat denial followed by casting of aspersions.
Fair. This is, in part, why I feel I had to ban Said. The pattern from past interactions with him kills in me the desire to pursue an avenue of discussion because it’s gone so poorly in the past. It’s hard to be open and respond in good faith in response to assertions that are phrased such that they feel like personal attacks and when there’s a pattern of trying to engage and finding it’s met with refusal to engage in anything other than debate.
If I were a somewhat better person then perhaps I could remain open while responding to comments that feel like attacks rather than explorations or discussions. Maybe I will be one day, but I’m not there yet.
If this were the really your motivation, then you could simply not respond to my comments. (Indeed you wouldn’t even have to read them. “A comment on my post? —oh, it’s Said Achmiz. Surely he has nothing useful to say, and I have nothing to gain by reading this. [dismiss notification]”)
This is as good a time as any to make the following point. In an earlier comment, you wrote:
We’ve gotten into it over many years and at no time have I felt the better for you commenting on my posts.
You seem to believe that this is a relevant, even decisive, consideration. (And you’re not the only one; I’ve seen such sentiments a few times.)
This seems to me to betray a view of Less Wrong discussions that I can only marvel at—but certainly not sympathize with, much less endorse.
If we were having a private, one-on-one conversation—in person, via email, via direct messages or chat or whatever—then of course it would make perfect sense to say “I am gaining nothing from this interaction; I do not expect to gain anything from this interaction; and I have no obligation to continue this interaction—therefore I now terminate it”. Perfectly normal, straightforwardly sensible.
But Less Wrong is a public forum!
Why do you think people post comments under your posts? What do you think is the purpose of doing this, in the minds of the comment authors? What do they get out of it? Do you think that your posts’ comments sections are a series of one-to-one conversations between you and various readers? Do you think that people are commenting on your posts for your benefit?
It would certainly be an exaggeration to say that I never have the authors’ interests in mind when commenting, or that this is of zero importance to me. But as far as I am concerned, insofar as the author of a post might benefit from reading my comments on his post, it is as one of the participants in the discussion. If the post author stands to benefit more, it is because his ideas are the focus of the discussion. (But this doesn’t even always apply.) It’s certainly not because the comments on his posts are being written for him, or to benefit him.
The point of writing a comment (or, for that matter, a post) is to make a contribution to a discussion, out of which some productive outcome (useful knowledge or understanding, etc.) may emerge—for the benefit of all participants, and all readers. That’s why we have a public forum in the first place! The central motivating idea of a public discussion forum is “we all talk to each other, and as a result, we all benefit; and everyone who reads what we write in these public discussions also benefits”.
So when you motivate your banning of my comments from your posts by asking “what do I, personally, gain from Said Achmiz commenting on my posts”, this strikes me as a bizarrely selfish view.
(And I use the word “bizarrely” quite deliberately. An ordinarily selfish view might be, say, the idea that you write your posts in order to promote your ideas, to convince others, etc., and therefore any comment is evaluated only on whether it helps you to do that. But the idea that comments are to be evaluated by whether they make you, personally, “better”—but not by whether any other participant in the discussion (never mind any readers) are benefited—I don’t think such a view would ever have even occurred to me, had I not seen it expressed by you and others.)
In short: why in the world should it matter whether you “feel the better” for me commenting? If you don’t like my comments—fine; just don’t read them and don’t respond to them. Easy.
If instead you ban me from posting them at all, then it seems reasonable to suspect other motives.
I go to the comments not to find consensus but literally to find people criticizing the article. I want to see the idea of that article discussed. I am not of the opinion that most articles I see are very good; and even if they were, they’re not scripture. For me they’re like the sausage casing that contains the actual food, which is the community processing the data. Independent of any other consideration, just at a lower level of magnification, I don’t think we get smarter this way. I don’t think we achieve robustness just rolling around in a bunch of ideologically hermetic spheres.
For what it may be worth, @Richard_Kennaway makes similar critiques to you on some of my posts, and I have felt no desire to ban him or like the threads I have had with him were unproductive.
It’s worth nothing. How does any of that affect anything I wrote? What’s the idea, here—that if I don’t write my comments, then someone else will just say exactly the same thing, but “more nicely” (or something), therefore nothing is lost if you ban me?
Setting aside the fact that this is obviously false as a trivially demonstrable empirical fact… it strikes me as being absurdly arrogant to make this decision on behalf of everyone who might participate in, and read, your posts and the comments sections thereof.
This might possibly be somewhat justified in some more primitive (or deliberately simpler, or otherwise differently designed) forum/blog system, where there’s no way for the commentariat/readership to express their dissatisfaction with one of the discussion’s participants, so the forum owner/administrator/moderators/whoever have to take it upon themselves to ban commenters who degrade the discussion.
But LW has a voting system! And a fairly advanced one, at that—two-axis voting, reacts, not to mention the ability to collapse/hide entire comment threads… whatever criticism we may level at the design of LW’s commenting features, it certainly can’t be said that commenters and readers lack for ways to express their views on content posted here.
The weird thing is that you can’t even coherently claim to only be concerned about your own benefit. The very post that started this discussion was written (or so you claim therein) out of concern for the well-being and benefit of “the … rationalist crowd”, i.e. the readers and commenters on Less Wrong. So you’re concerned enough for the mental and spiritual well-being and benefit of the LW commentariat to write such a post, but not concerned enough to let them discuss the matter in whatever way they see fit?
How does this laser-like focus on how comments on your posts affect you, personally, fit with the motivation for writing a post like that?
We seen to have different ideas about what the norms of Less Wrong are, and maybe norms for truth seeking more generally. I didn’t get into that because it seems I incorrectly assumed we were on the same page there, and so instead focused on my well-being as a decision relevant fact worth highlighting.
I see LW as a place for collaborative truth seeking, emphasis on collaboration. Someone says something wrong, and then we figure out how to say something less wrong, together. I think the best way to do that is with comments that are kind, truthful, useful, and curious, and those are the norms that I, as a high enough karma members of this site, have earned the right to enforce on my posts.
You violate the above norms in my judgment, particularly the kindness and curiosity parts, and so I have chosen to ban you from my posts. That threads with you are stressful is a manifestation of this judgment.
You obviously don’t fully violate the norms of wider Less Wrong, and my actions have no effect on your ability to use every part of the site that is not one of my posts.
As to why I respond to your comments, if someone posted on something you wrote that your ideas are stupid for obvious reasons, would you ignore it? Maybe you would, but ignoring comes off to many readers as tactic acceptance. When people like your comments, it makes them worth responding to if I disagree, especially on my own posts, in order to engage with not just you, but everyone who reads the comments. To fail to do so would be to leave readers with an incomplete picture of my views.
I also genuinely want to figure things out and try to engage with every comment on my posts that I meaningfully can. I’d actually be quite happy if we could some how work out our differences, find our cruxes, and at least if we are going to agree to disagree understand why that fundamentally is. I tried to do this with you a couple times years ago. It didn’t go well. And seeing your most recent comments I could see the same pattern again.
It’s probably to a fault that I either want to find agreement or at least agreement on why we disagree. My persistence in this is also why I have a hard time dropping threads like this. Somewhere I believe that just one more comment and maybe we’ll crack it. It’s why I’m writing this reply right now! But the longer our threads go, the litter my probability of us figuring this out gets.
I see LW as a place for collaborative truth seeking, emphasis on collaboration. Someone says something wrong, and then we figure out how to say something less wrong, together.
Agreed, except the “emphasis on collaboration” part (which is deeply misguided).
I think the best way to do that is with comments that are kind, truthful, useful, and curious
The best way to do it is the way that does it best. If a “kind” comment is the best way, then write a “kind” comment. If “kindness” is irrelevant, orthogonal, or even detrimental to efficiency and effectiveness of the process, then omit it.
and those are the norms that I, as a high enough karma members of this site, have earned the right to enforce on my posts.
You have been granted that privilege. That is very different from earning a right.
if someone posted on something you wrote that your ideas are stupid for obvious reasons, would you ignore it?
That obviously depends on whether the criticism is valid or not.
If it’s valid, then naturally I wouldn’t ignore it; I’d acknowledge it as valid.
If it’s not valid, then is it obviously invalid? Is that the consensus of other commenters? Do other LW members reply to it in my stead, and/or use the LW voting system to signal their disagreement?
If they do, then there’s no need for me to reply.
If they do not, then there may be a need for a brief reply.
If the criticism is invalid but not obviously so, then a more substantive reply is warranted.
If the criticism is valid but I ignore it, then readers would think less of me.
They would be right to do so. If my ideas are wrong and stupid, and especially if they are wrong and stupid for obvious reasons, then it is good that comments to that effect may be posted under my posts, and it is good that people should think less of me for ignoring those comments.
When people like your comments, it makes them worth responding to if I disagree, especially on my own posts, in order to engage with not just you, but everyone who reads the comments. To fail to do so would be to leave readers with an incomplete picture of my views.
If your post failed to provide a complete picture of your views, then I am doing you—and, much more importantly, all your other readers—a service by writing my comments, and thus giving you the opportunity to rectify that lacuna.
I also genuinely want to figure things out and try to engage with every comment on my posts that I meaningfully can. I’d actually be quite happy if we could some how work out our differences, find our cruxes, and at least if we are going to agree to disagree understand why that fundamentally is. I tried to do this with you a couple times years ago. It didn’t go well. And seeing your most recent comments I could see the same pattern again.
Irrelevant. All of this is irrelevant. However admirable this desire might be, and however understandable might be the failure to fulfill it, it has nothing whatever to do with the question of banning a critic from commenting on your posts, because that is not about you, it is about whether all of your readers, and the LW commentariat, is denied the ability to discuss your ideas without restrictions.
And if you want to “work out our differences, find our cruxes, and at least if we are going to agree to disagree understand why that fundamentally is”, great, I’m for it. If you don’t want to do that, that’s also fine; I am a strong believer in people’s rights to talk to whomever they want, or not. None of that has any bearing whatsoever on the matter of banning, because that, once again, is not about you.
It’s probably to a fault that I either want to find agreement or at least agreement on why we disagree. My persistence in this is also why I have a hard time dropping threads like this. Somewhere I believe that just one more comment and maybe we’ll crack it. It’s why I’m writing this reply right now! But the longer our threads go, the litter my probability of us figuring this out gets.
You are still, bizarrely, treating this as a one-on-one conversation. It simply does not matter why we disagree[1], as far as the question of banning is concerned. It’s just beside the point. We don’t need to agree, or figure out why we disagree, or anything like that. If you don’t have anything to say to my comments, then say nothing. If saying nothing is intolerable, then reply with a link to this thread, or some sort of boilerplate “I think your criticisms are bad and wrong but I have no interest in arguing about it” reply (which you could perhaps copy-paste from a saved file somewhere, thus saving you even the trouble of typing it out every time).
But none of this—none of it!—is the slightest bit responsive to my point: comments on your posts are not primarily for you, and the question of whether to ban critics from your posts is not primarily about you.
But none of this—none of it!—is the slightest bit responsive to my point: comments on your posts are not primarily for you, and the question of whether to ban critics from your posts is not primarily about you.
I am not banning you because you are a critic. I am banning you because your comments are frequently unkind and demonstrate a lack of curiosity. This is why I have banned literally no one else, which includes a great many critics. That you are a critic is an unfortunate coincidence that nevertheless taints the specific way in which you violate the norms I am enforcing in the small part of Less Wrong I’m responsible for.
Just gonna chime in that I agree with Said here about this not just a two-way thing but a question of what the audience gets to see as well. I think his comments on your posts are valuable and banning him makes things worse as far as I’m concerned.
Thank heaven for that! But notice that you’re responding to a strawman: I never claimed that you banned me because I am a critic, period. Obviously not; since, as you say, you haven’t banned plenty of other people.
(Although, as I pointed out upthread, you have, in at least one case, threatened to ban another person for their critical comments, after deleting several of their comments. As far as I’m aware, that person—quite unsurprisingly!—hasn’t commented on your posts since. So, no, you don’t get to claim that it’s just me.)
No, my point is much more serious than this trivial imagined-accusation which you are protesting. I am not saying that you banned me because I’m a critic[1], and that this is bad. I am saying that you banned me, and that this is bad because I’m a critic.
Do you see the difference? It’s not that you are unjustly depriving me of the privilege of commenting on your posts. It’s that you are depriving all of your readers[2] of the benefit of the criticism and discussion that is absent because you banned me. (Not to mention all of the comments that are absent due to the chilling effect of the ban on me.)
(Is this because my comments are so incredibly clever and insightful? No, mostly what I write is fairly straightforward. Nevertheless, it is very often the case that no one else is saying those things. That’s not to my credit, but it is to the discredit of this forum.)
As I have already explained, I consider your comments to violate the norms I want on Less Wrong around kindness and curiosity. On balance, I consider the degree of unkindness and incuriousity sufficient that it outweighs any loss to anyone of not seeing your criticisms. I’m willing to make some amount of trade-off between different norms for the benefit of myself and readers, but you cross the line of what I judge to be productive.
Obviously you seem to disagree. And that seems fair, we disagree on what we think the norms should be!
I think this is likely the crux. You seem to prioritize criticism above other things, in particular criticism to show what you believe to be the truth. That’s admirable, but you are extreme in your approach in ways that violates other norms I hold in greater balance and am enforcing. I think your approach is on net worse because rather than convince, it drives away those who disagree with you rather than help them see the truth you want them to, and so it is ineffective for large classes of readers, including specifically me and the other authors you’ve clashed with. That is, I think your comments are antihelpful even if that’s not what you intend, and since they fall into that category, they are now banned on my post until such time as I see evidence that I would believe your comments would be net helpful.
Obviously some readers do find your comments helpful. They’ve said as much. That I disagree that on net users benefit from your comments if why you are banned.
Again, I actually really want your criticisms, but until such time that they can be delivered in a way that results in productive conversations that help people, including myself, move towards finding the truth, I will keep you banned on my posts.
and so it is ineffective for large classes of readers, including specifically me and the other authors you’ve clashed with
The first half of this talks about readers, but the second half gives examples of authors. I think this is a rather important difference. In fact, it’s absolutely critical to the particular issue being discussed.
Of course many authors do not view Said’s comments positively; after all, he constantly points out that what they are writing is nonsense. But the main value Said provides at the meta-level (beyond the object-level of whether he is right or wrong, which I believe he usually but not always is) is in providing needed criticism for the readers of posts to digest.
There was a comment once by a popular LW user (maybe @Wei Dai?) who said that because he wants the time he spends on LW to be limited, his strategy is as follows: read the title and skim an outline of the post, then immediately go to the comment section to see if there are any highly-rated comments that debunk the core argument of the post and which don’t have adequate responses by the author. Only if there are no such comments does he actually go back and read the post closely, since this is a hard-to-fake signal that the post is actually high-quality.
In the spirit of Lonely Dissent, even one user stepping up and saying The Emperor Has No Clothes is sometimes sufficient for previously unstated disagreements with a post to come to light.
In the spirit of Lonely Dissent, even one user stepping up and saying The Emperor Has No Clothes is sometimes sufficient for previously unstated disagreements with a post to come to light.
Then let it be a user who can do so in a way that is sufficiently kind and curious that the comment is not a mere attempt at refutation but an invitation to discussion.
When I see most of Said’s comments (and here I’m necessarily mostly talking about his comments on other people’s posts), I think that they are on net bad. They smash applause lights. They don’t dig into the details. They respond to surface level details that often skip over why the author is trying to explore a topic because, as I read him, he often disagrees that there is any question to be addressed because it already has an answer he agrees with, and rather that try to engage the author in a discussion to convince them, he registers this disagreement in a way designed to shut down rather than start a discussion that might lead to changed minds. Any amount of usefulness from dissent his comments offer is, at least for me, offset by their manner of delivery.
I don’t see Less Wrong as a place for his style of comments, but he clearly does. It’s why I think the crux of Said and my disagreement is that we fundamentally disagree about what appropriate commenting norms are on Less Wrong. Everything else seems to be downstream of this disagreement, including my distress at dealing with Said’s comments on my posts.
Again, I welcome and encourage dissent on my posts. Please, if you think I am wrong, tell me why I am wrong. But do so in a way that invites engagement. I don’t see Less Wrong as a place for ideas to battle, but a place for curious people to work together to better understand the world, and that means not just creating a written record of competing claims and their evaluation, but also an attempt to convince people who we believe hold wrong beliefs to come to hold less wrong beliefs, since otherwise Less Wrong would be nothing but a pretty artifact that had no effect on the world.
(You earlier mentioned trouble dropping threads like this, and also said two days ago that you wanted to be done as you felt it unlikely the conversation would be fruitful; apologies if this is overbearing, but, are you sure you endorse continuing this discussion?)
It seems like this accusation of bad faith could go both ways. I haven’t seen you demonstrate curiosity or openness to being convinced that your religion pushes anti-epistemology, I’ve only seen flat denial followed by casting of aspersions.
Fair. This is, in part, why I feel I had to ban Said. The pattern from past interactions with him kills in me the desire to pursue an avenue of discussion because it’s gone so poorly in the past. It’s hard to be open and respond in good faith in response to assertions that are phrased such that they feel like personal attacks and when there’s a pattern of trying to engage and finding it’s met with refusal to engage in anything other than debate.
If I were a somewhat better person then perhaps I could remain open while responding to comments that feel like attacks rather than explorations or discussions. Maybe I will be one day, but I’m not there yet.
If this were the really your motivation, then you could simply not respond to my comments. (Indeed you wouldn’t even have to read them. “A comment on my post? —oh, it’s Said Achmiz. Surely he has nothing useful to say, and I have nothing to gain by reading this. [dismiss notification]”)
This is as good a time as any to make the following point. In an earlier comment, you wrote:
You seem to believe that this is a relevant, even decisive, consideration. (And you’re not the only one; I’ve seen such sentiments a few times.)
This seems to me to betray a view of Less Wrong discussions that I can only marvel at—but certainly not sympathize with, much less endorse.
If we were having a private, one-on-one conversation—in person, via email, via direct messages or chat or whatever—then of course it would make perfect sense to say “I am gaining nothing from this interaction; I do not expect to gain anything from this interaction; and I have no obligation to continue this interaction—therefore I now terminate it”. Perfectly normal, straightforwardly sensible.
But Less Wrong is a public forum!
Why do you think people post comments under your posts? What do you think is the purpose of doing this, in the minds of the comment authors? What do they get out of it? Do you think that your posts’ comments sections are a series of one-to-one conversations between you and various readers? Do you think that people are commenting on your posts for your benefit?
It would certainly be an exaggeration to say that I never have the authors’ interests in mind when commenting, or that this is of zero importance to me. But as far as I am concerned, insofar as the author of a post might benefit from reading my comments on his post, it is as one of the participants in the discussion. If the post author stands to benefit more, it is because his ideas are the focus of the discussion. (But this doesn’t even always apply.) It’s certainly not because the comments on his posts are being written for him, or to benefit him.
The point of writing a comment (or, for that matter, a post) is to make a contribution to a discussion, out of which some productive outcome (useful knowledge or understanding, etc.) may emerge—for the benefit of all participants, and all readers. That’s why we have a public forum in the first place! The central motivating idea of a public discussion forum is “we all talk to each other, and as a result, we all benefit; and everyone who reads what we write in these public discussions also benefits”.
So when you motivate your banning of my comments from your posts by asking “what do I, personally, gain from Said Achmiz commenting on my posts”, this strikes me as a bizarrely selfish view.
(And I use the word “bizarrely” quite deliberately. An ordinarily selfish view might be, say, the idea that you write your posts in order to promote your ideas, to convince others, etc., and therefore any comment is evaluated only on whether it helps you to do that. But the idea that comments are to be evaluated by whether they make you, personally, “better”—but not by whether any other participant in the discussion (never mind any readers) are benefited—I don’t think such a view would ever have even occurred to me, had I not seen it expressed by you and others.)
In short: why in the world should it matter whether you “feel the better” for me commenting? If you don’t like my comments—fine; just don’t read them and don’t respond to them. Easy.
If instead you ban me from posting them at all, then it seems reasonable to suspect other motives.
P.S.: Here’s Tycho of Penny Arcade opining on a similar situation:
For what it may be worth, @Richard_Kennaway makes similar critiques to you on some of my posts, and I have felt no desire to ban him or like the threads I have had with him were unproductive.
It’s worth nothing. How does any of that affect anything I wrote? What’s the idea, here—that if I don’t write my comments, then someone else will just say exactly the same thing, but “more nicely” (or something), therefore nothing is lost if you ban me?
Setting aside the fact that this is obviously false as a trivially demonstrable empirical fact… it strikes me as being absurdly arrogant to make this decision on behalf of everyone who might participate in, and read, your posts and the comments sections thereof.
This might possibly be somewhat justified in some more primitive (or deliberately simpler, or otherwise differently designed) forum/blog system, where there’s no way for the commentariat/readership to express their dissatisfaction with one of the discussion’s participants, so the forum owner/administrator/moderators/whoever have to take it upon themselves to ban commenters who degrade the discussion.
But LW has a voting system! And a fairly advanced one, at that—two-axis voting, reacts, not to mention the ability to collapse/hide entire comment threads… whatever criticism we may level at the design of LW’s commenting features, it certainly can’t be said that commenters and readers lack for ways to express their views on content posted here.
The weird thing is that you can’t even coherently claim to only be concerned about your own benefit. The very post that started this discussion was written (or so you claim therein) out of concern for the well-being and benefit of “the … rationalist crowd”, i.e. the readers and commenters on Less Wrong. So you’re concerned enough for the mental and spiritual well-being and benefit of the LW commentariat to write such a post, but not concerned enough to let them discuss the matter in whatever way they see fit?
How does this laser-like focus on how comments on your posts affect you, personally, fit with the motivation for writing a post like that?
We seen to have different ideas about what the norms of Less Wrong are, and maybe norms for truth seeking more generally. I didn’t get into that because it seems I incorrectly assumed we were on the same page there, and so instead focused on my well-being as a decision relevant fact worth highlighting.
I see LW as a place for collaborative truth seeking, emphasis on collaboration. Someone says something wrong, and then we figure out how to say something less wrong, together. I think the best way to do that is with comments that are kind, truthful, useful, and curious, and those are the norms that I, as a high enough karma members of this site, have earned the right to enforce on my posts.
You violate the above norms in my judgment, particularly the kindness and curiosity parts, and so I have chosen to ban you from my posts. That threads with you are stressful is a manifestation of this judgment.
You obviously don’t fully violate the norms of wider Less Wrong, and my actions have no effect on your ability to use every part of the site that is not one of my posts.
As to why I respond to your comments, if someone posted on something you wrote that your ideas are stupid for obvious reasons, would you ignore it? Maybe you would, but ignoring comes off to many readers as tactic acceptance. When people like your comments, it makes them worth responding to if I disagree, especially on my own posts, in order to engage with not just you, but everyone who reads the comments. To fail to do so would be to leave readers with an incomplete picture of my views.
I also genuinely want to figure things out and try to engage with every comment on my posts that I meaningfully can. I’d actually be quite happy if we could some how work out our differences, find our cruxes, and at least if we are going to agree to disagree understand why that fundamentally is. I tried to do this with you a couple times years ago. It didn’t go well. And seeing your most recent comments I could see the same pattern again.
It’s probably to a fault that I either want to find agreement or at least agreement on why we disagree. My persistence in this is also why I have a hard time dropping threads like this. Somewhere I believe that just one more comment and maybe we’ll crack it. It’s why I’m writing this reply right now! But the longer our threads go, the litter my probability of us figuring this out gets.
Agreed, except the “emphasis on collaboration” part (which is deeply misguided).
The best way to do it is the way that does it best. If a “kind” comment is the best way, then write a “kind” comment. If “kindness” is irrelevant, orthogonal, or even detrimental to efficiency and effectiveness of the process, then omit it.
You have been granted that privilege. That is very different from earning a right.
That obviously depends on whether the criticism is valid or not.
If it’s valid, then naturally I wouldn’t ignore it; I’d acknowledge it as valid.
If it’s not valid, then is it obviously invalid? Is that the consensus of other commenters? Do other LW members reply to it in my stead, and/or use the LW voting system to signal their disagreement?
If they do, then there’s no need for me to reply.
If they do not, then there may be a need for a brief reply.
If the criticism is invalid but not obviously so, then a more substantive reply is warranted.
If the criticism is valid but I ignore it, then readers would think less of me.
They would be right to do so. If my ideas are wrong and stupid, and especially if they are wrong and stupid for obvious reasons, then it is good that comments to that effect may be posted under my posts, and it is good that people should think less of me for ignoring those comments.
If your post failed to provide a complete picture of your views, then I am doing you—and, much more importantly, all your other readers—a service by writing my comments, and thus giving you the opportunity to rectify that lacuna.
Irrelevant. All of this is irrelevant. However admirable this desire might be, and however understandable might be the failure to fulfill it, it has nothing whatever to do with the question of banning a critic from commenting on your posts, because that is not about you, it is about whether all of your readers, and the LW commentariat, is denied the ability to discuss your ideas without restrictions.
And if you want to “work out our differences, find our cruxes, and at least if we are going to agree to disagree understand why that fundamentally is”, great, I’m for it. If you don’t want to do that, that’s also fine; I am a strong believer in people’s rights to talk to whomever they want, or not. None of that has any bearing whatsoever on the matter of banning, because that, once again, is not about you.
You are still, bizarrely, treating this as a one-on-one conversation. It simply does not matter why we disagree[1], as far as the question of banning is concerned. It’s just beside the point. We don’t need to agree, or figure out why we disagree, or anything like that. If you don’t have anything to say to my comments, then say nothing. If saying nothing is intolerable, then reply with a link to this thread, or some sort of boilerplate “I think your criticisms are bad and wrong but I have no interest in arguing about it” reply (which you could perhaps copy-paste from a saved file somewhere, thus saving you even the trouble of typing it out every time).
But none of this—none of it!—is the slightest bit responsive to my point: comments on your posts are not primarily for you, and the question of whether to ban critics from your posts is not primarily about you.
Not that I think it’s a mystery in any case. Really, the question has already been answered to my satisfaction.
I am not banning you because you are a critic. I am banning you because your comments are frequently unkind and demonstrate a lack of curiosity. This is why I have banned literally no one else, which includes a great many critics. That you are a critic is an unfortunate coincidence that nevertheless taints the specific way in which you violate the norms I am enforcing in the small part of Less Wrong I’m responsible for.
Just gonna chime in that I agree with Said here about this not just a two-way thing but a question of what the audience gets to see as well. I think his comments on your posts are valuable and banning him makes things worse as far as I’m concerned.
Thank heaven for that! But notice that you’re responding to a strawman: I never claimed that you banned me because I am a critic, period. Obviously not; since, as you say, you haven’t banned plenty of other people.
(Although, as I pointed out upthread, you have, in at least one case, threatened to ban another person for their critical comments, after deleting several of their comments. As far as I’m aware, that person—quite unsurprisingly!—hasn’t commented on your posts since. So, no, you don’t get to claim that it’s just me.)
No, my point is much more serious than this trivial imagined-accusation which you are protesting. I am not saying that you banned me because I’m a critic[1], and that this is bad. I am saying that you banned me, and that this is bad because I’m a critic.
Do you see the difference? It’s not that you are unjustly depriving me of the privilege of commenting on your posts. It’s that you are depriving all of your readers[2] of the benefit of the criticism and discussion that is absent because you banned me. (Not to mention all of the comments that are absent due to the chilling effect of the ban on me.)
(Is this because my comments are so incredibly clever and insightful? No, mostly what I write is fairly straightforward. Nevertheless, it is very often the case that no one else is saying those things. That’s not to my credit, but it is to the discredit of this forum.)
Nor, of course, am I making the negation of this claim.
And yourself as well, but that part is strictly your own business.
As I have already explained, I consider your comments to violate the norms I want on Less Wrong around kindness and curiosity. On balance, I consider the degree of unkindness and incuriousity sufficient that it outweighs any loss to anyone of not seeing your criticisms. I’m willing to make some amount of trade-off between different norms for the benefit of myself and readers, but you cross the line of what I judge to be productive.
Obviously you seem to disagree. And that seems fair, we disagree on what we think the norms should be!
I think this is likely the crux. You seem to prioritize criticism above other things, in particular criticism to show what you believe to be the truth. That’s admirable, but you are extreme in your approach in ways that violates other norms I hold in greater balance and am enforcing. I think your approach is on net worse because rather than convince, it drives away those who disagree with you rather than help them see the truth you want them to, and so it is ineffective for large classes of readers, including specifically me and the other authors you’ve clashed with. That is, I think your comments are antihelpful even if that’s not what you intend, and since they fall into that category, they are now banned on my post until such time as I see evidence that I would believe your comments would be net helpful.
Obviously some readers do find your comments helpful. They’ve said as much. That I disagree that on net users benefit from your comments if why you are banned.
Again, I actually really want your criticisms, but until such time that they can be delivered in a way that results in productive conversations that help people, including myself, move towards finding the truth, I will keep you banned on my posts.
The first half of this talks about readers, but the second half gives examples of authors. I think this is a rather important difference. In fact, it’s absolutely critical to the particular issue being discussed.
Of course many authors do not view Said’s comments positively; after all, he constantly points out that what they are writing is nonsense. But the main value Said provides at the meta-level (beyond the object-level of whether he is right or wrong, which I believe he usually but not always is) is in providing needed criticism for the readers of posts to digest.
There was a comment once by a popular LW user (maybe @Wei Dai?) who said that because he wants the time he spends on LW to be limited, his strategy is as follows: read the title and skim an outline of the post, then immediately go to the comment section to see if there are any highly-rated comments that debunk the core argument of the post and which don’t have adequate responses by the author. Only if there are no such comments does he actually go back and read the post closely, since this is a hard-to-fake signal that the post is actually high-quality.
In the spirit of Lonely Dissent, even one user stepping up and saying The Emperor Has No Clothes is sometimes sufficient for previously unstated disagreements with a post to come to light.
Then let it be a user who can do so in a way that is sufficiently kind and curious that the comment is not a mere attempt at refutation but an invitation to discussion.
When I see most of Said’s comments (and here I’m necessarily mostly talking about his comments on other people’s posts), I think that they are on net bad. They smash applause lights. They don’t dig into the details. They respond to surface level details that often skip over why the author is trying to explore a topic because, as I read him, he often disagrees that there is any question to be addressed because it already has an answer he agrees with, and rather that try to engage the author in a discussion to convince them, he registers this disagreement in a way designed to shut down rather than start a discussion that might lead to changed minds. Any amount of usefulness from dissent his comments offer is, at least for me, offset by their manner of delivery.
I don’t see Less Wrong as a place for his style of comments, but he clearly does. It’s why I think the crux of Said and my disagreement is that we fundamentally disagree about what appropriate commenting norms are on Less Wrong. Everything else seems to be downstream of this disagreement, including my distress at dealing with Said’s comments on my posts.
Again, I welcome and encourage dissent on my posts. Please, if you think I am wrong, tell me why I am wrong. But do so in a way that invites engagement. I don’t see Less Wrong as a place for ideas to battle, but a place for curious people to work together to better understand the world, and that means not just creating a written record of competing claims and their evaluation, but also an attempt to convince people who we believe hold wrong beliefs to come to hold less wrong beliefs, since otherwise Less Wrong would be nothing but a pretty artifact that had no effect on the world.
(You earlier mentioned trouble dropping threads like this, and also said two days ago that you wanted to be done as you felt it unlikely the conversation would be fruitful; apologies if this is overbearing, but, are you sure you endorse continuing this discussion?)
Actually, I’m glad I didn’t, because I think maybe Said and I have finally gotten to the crux.