What prevented you from simply not replying to my comment? Even once, never mind multiple times?
For some guesses on why authors might not feel comfortable ignoring your comments, I refer you to this excerpt from an old comment of yours:
There is always an obligation by any author to respond to anyone’s comment along these lines. If no response is provided to (what ought rightly to be) simple requests for clarification (such as requests to, at least roughly, define or explain an ambiguous or questionable term, or requests for examples of some purported phenomenon), the author should be interpreted as ignorant. These are not artifacts of my particular commenting style, nor are they unfortunate-but-erroneous implications—they are normatively correct general principles.
You have historically always insisted on the combination of “everyone is required to answer questions and engage with commenters” and “anyone who does not do so should by default be presumed wrong and ignorant”.
I think this explains why people don’t feel comfortable ignoring you. I don’t think you’ve really left people any out but to ban you, or to spend an inordinate amount of time arguing with you (and I know from experience the latter does not actually help).
(To be clear, I consider the excerpt here absurdly wrong and against the spirit of LessWrong, and authors do not generally have an obligation to respond to all such comments. There exists responsibilities for response, when certain thresholds are met, and relationships of mutual respect are established, but nothing even remotely close to what that excerpt suggests).
You don’t actually link to the comment thread from which you’re quoting, (presumably because you are busy or writing this on your phone or some such). Unfortunately, in this case it is likely to cause readers to come away with a totally mistaken understanding of what I was saying. They might, for instance, miss my reply to your reply to my above-quoted comment, where I write:
I should clarify, first of all, that the obligation by the author to respond to the comment is not legalistically specific. By this I mean that it can be satisfied in any of a number of ways; a literal reply-to-comment is just one of them. Others include:
Mentioning the comment in a subsequent post (“In the comments on yesterday’s post, reader so-and-so asked such-and-such a question. And I now reply thus: …”).
Linking to one’s post or comment elsewhere which constitutes an answer to the question.
Someone else linking to a post or comment elsewhere (by the OP) which constitutes an answer to the question.
Someone else answering the question in the OP’s stead (and the OP giving some indication that this answer is endorsed).
Answering an identical, or very similar, question elsewhere (and someone providing a link or citation).
In short, I’m not saying that there’s a specific obligation for a post author to post a reply comment, using the Less Wrong forum software, directly to any given comment along the lines I describe. What I’m saying is that, in the discussion as a whole, which is constituted by the post itself, plus comments thereon, plus related posts and comments, etc., an author has an obligation to respond to reader inquiries of this sort.
(Emphasis [bold] added.)
So, no, it is simply false that I insist that authors must always reply directly to comments (either mine or anyone else’s).
You also claim that I have “spent years arguing for norms in which authors should by default be presumed to be worthy of dismissal and full of ignorance”. This, too, is false. (Indeed, it’s hard to see what such a norm could even mean.) Obviously, I can’t easily provide links to prove a negative, and you don’t provide any quotes or links to support this one. But I think that you’ll be unable to do so, and any examples you do provide will turn out to be misleading in a similar manner to the above.
You have created the culture that makes it so authors do not feel comfortable ignoring people they expect to have unproductive conversations with.
I haven’t created any such thing.
I’m not a moderator, an administrator, or any kind of “privileged” user. I’m not one of the “protected class” of authors who are so valued that keeping them around is worth making serious sacrifices for. I’m one person, who doesn’t comment all that much, and who comments at all on a small minority of posts.
Every single time I’ve made any comment like the one you quoted, you and/or the other mods have pushed back on it, very explicitly and vehemently stating that the norms of Less Wrong in fact do not include any kind of obligation for any kind of replies to criticism, questions, requests, comments of any sort, etc., and that my views are absolutely not the views of the LW moderation team. This is, of course, entirely your right as the people in charge of the site. But “the culture” is the one you created. My preferences w.r.t. what the culture of LW should be have been consistently, thoroughly, and explicitly rejected. I’ve expressed those preferences, but they have not shaped the forum’s culture. You even extracted from me a promise (which I have kept) of avoiding making any claims or saying anything that might lead a reader to the mistaken impression that my views are shared by the moderation team.
If there’s one thing we can say about the culture of Less Wrong today, it’s that it is not based on my views, it is not my preferred culture, and it is in fact the culture you created, in direct opposition to my views on the matter. This, again, is your right. But to then claim that I’ve created any kind of culture on LW seems to me to be outrageously false.
And so, of course, unsurprisingly, the empirical facts of the matter are that people ignore my comments (and, of course, many other people’s comments) all the time. (Do you want examples? I can provide plenty!) They have a right to do so! Even by my standards, as outlined in the quote above, they have a right to do so! All the time, this happens. Authors “do not feel comfortable ignoring” people? That doesn’t seem to stop most of them! Again, I am not saying that this is necessarily a problem. (It is in some cases; in others, not.) But it surely happens, as an absolutely routine matter, all day, every day. Frankly, it’s ridiculous to claim otherwise.
EDIT: It seems that you’ve substantially edited your comment while I was writing my reply, making it seem as if I’m replying to made-up quotes… I would really prefer it if you at very least made a note when doing things like this.
For some guesses on why authors might not feel comfortable ignoring your comments, I refer you to this excerpt from an old comment of yours:
You have historically always insisted on the combination of “everyone is required to answer questions and engage with commenters” and “anyone who does not do so should by default be presumed wrong and ignorant”.
I think this explains why people don’t feel comfortable ignoring you. I don’t think you’ve really left people any out but to ban you, or to spend an inordinate amount of time arguing with you (and I know from experience the latter does not actually help).
(To be clear, I consider the excerpt here absurdly wrong and against the spirit of LessWrong, and authors do not generally have an obligation to respond to all such comments. There exists responsibilities for response, when certain thresholds are met, and relationships of mutual respect are established, but nothing even remotely close to what that excerpt suggests).
No, that doesn’t work at all.
You don’t actually link to the comment thread from which you’re quoting, (presumably because you are busy or writing this on your phone or some such). Unfortunately, in this case it is likely to cause readers to come away with a totally mistaken understanding of what I was saying. They might, for instance, miss my reply to your reply to my above-quoted comment, where I write:
(Emphasis [bold] added.)
So, no, it is simply false that I insist that authors must always reply directly to comments (either mine or anyone else’s).
You also claim that I have “spent years arguing for norms in which authors should by default be presumed to be worthy of dismissal and full of ignorance”. This, too, is false. (Indeed, it’s hard to see what such a norm could even mean.) Obviously, I can’t easily provide links to prove a negative, and you don’t provide any quotes or links to support this one. But I think that you’ll be unable to do so, and any examples you do provide will turn out to be misleading in a similar manner to the above.
I haven’t created any such thing.
I’m not a moderator, an administrator, or any kind of “privileged” user. I’m not one of the “protected class” of authors who are so valued that keeping them around is worth making serious sacrifices for. I’m one person, who doesn’t comment all that much, and who comments at all on a small minority of posts.
Every single time I’ve made any comment like the one you quoted, you and/or the other mods have pushed back on it, very explicitly and vehemently stating that the norms of Less Wrong in fact do not include any kind of obligation for any kind of replies to criticism, questions, requests, comments of any sort, etc., and that my views are absolutely not the views of the LW moderation team. This is, of course, entirely your right as the people in charge of the site. But “the culture” is the one you created. My preferences w.r.t. what the culture of LW should be have been consistently, thoroughly, and explicitly rejected. I’ve expressed those preferences, but they have not shaped the forum’s culture. You even extracted from me a promise (which I have kept) of avoiding making any claims or saying anything that might lead a reader to the mistaken impression that my views are shared by the moderation team.
If there’s one thing we can say about the culture of Less Wrong today, it’s that it is not based on my views, it is not my preferred culture, and it is in fact the culture you created, in direct opposition to my views on the matter. This, again, is your right. But to then claim that I’ve created any kind of culture on LW seems to me to be outrageously false.
And so, of course, unsurprisingly, the empirical facts of the matter are that people ignore my comments (and, of course, many other people’s comments) all the time. (Do you want examples? I can provide plenty!) They have a right to do so! Even by my standards, as outlined in the quote above, they have a right to do so! All the time, this happens. Authors “do not feel comfortable ignoring” people? That doesn’t seem to stop most of them! Again, I am not saying that this is necessarily a problem. (It is in some cases; in others, not.) But it surely happens, as an absolutely routine matter, all day, every day. Frankly, it’s ridiculous to claim otherwise.
EDIT: It seems that you’ve substantially edited your comment while I was writing my reply, making it seem as if I’m replying to made-up quotes… I would really prefer it if you at very least made a note when doing things like this.