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?)
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.