Copied text from a Facebook post that feels related (separating intent from result):
In Duncan-culture, there are more mistakes you’re allowed to make, up-front, with something like “no fault.”
e.g. the punch bug thing—if you’re in a context where lots of people play punch bug, then you’re not MORALLY CULPABLE if you slug somebody on the shoulder and then they say “Ouch, I don’t like that, do not do that.”
(You’re morally culpable if you do it again, after their clear boundary, but Duncan-culture has more wiggle room for first-trespasses.)
However, Duncan-culture is MORE strict about something like …
“I hurt people! But it’s okay, I patched the dynamic that led to the hurt. But then I hurt other people! But it’s okay, because I isolated and fixed that set of mistakes, too. But then I hurt other people! But it’s okay, because I isolated and fixed that set of mistakes, too. But then I hurt other people! But it’s okay...”
In Duncan-culture, you can get away with about two rounds of that. On the third screwup, pretty much everybody joins in to say “no. Stop. You are clearly just capable of inventing new mistakes every time. Cease this iterative process.”
And if you don’t—if you keep going, making a different error with a similar result every time—
In Duncan-culture, the resulting harm on rounds three and beyond is treated as, essentially, deliberate/intentional. Because the result was predictable, and this fact failed to move you.
This is not, as far as I can tell, robustly/reliably true in the broader culture I’m currently a part of.
EDIT: More disambiguation:
We give people protection, socially speaking, when we consider them to have had good intentions, but to have made a mistake with tragic results.
In Duncan-culture, you can’t really get that protection three times in a row for three similar results. If you do A and it leads to X, that’s just a mistake and we treat you sympathetically/generously. If you then do B and it leads to X, well, plausibly your first patch wasn’t good enough, but like, okay, things are hard, your good intentions shine through, fair game. But if you then do C and it leads to X, all future X’s resulting from D and E and so on are considered “your fault” in the not-excusable-as-a-mistake way. Good intentions cease to matter after three different Xings; your job now is to do whatever it takes to avoid more X, or to accept full responsibility for all future X, approximately as if you caused X on purpose/decided X was a side effect you felt worth causing.
In this specific case, I was writing about a colleague who kept hurting people in their attempts to help them with rationality. They kept managing to hurt people in novel and interesting ways, every time they patched the previous failure mode. “No. Stop.” would be in reference to “stop fiddling with people’s brains in this way.”
Similarly, Brent Dill had in fact been doing different damages to each of his romantic partners, but eventually the Berkeley community was like “no, we are horrified, we don’t care if you’re not making those specific mistakes anymore, we do not trust you to not make new ones.” In that case “No. Stop.” was in reference to “dating any of the women in our community.”
Copied text from a Facebook post that feels related (separating intent from result):
In Duncan-culture, when people say “no. Stop”, what’s the thing that they’re saying should stop?
In this specific case, I was writing about a colleague who kept hurting people in their attempts to help them with rationality. They kept managing to hurt people in novel and interesting ways, every time they patched the previous failure mode. “No. Stop.” would be in reference to “stop fiddling with people’s brains in this way.”
Similarly, Brent Dill had in fact been doing different damages to each of his romantic partners, but eventually the Berkeley community was like “no, we are horrified, we don’t care if you’re not making those specific mistakes anymore, we do not trust you to not make new ones.” In that case “No. Stop.” was in reference to “dating any of the women in our community.”