Great to see TMS get a mention. TMS is what has worked for my wife—with remission being a reliable ~9 months later each time.
The main problem was location combined with the number of treatments. It effectively required an inpatient stay down in Melbourne because it hadn’t been made available locally.
rsaarelm gave an excellent explanation early on about how the issue seems to be an incompatibility between forum mechanics and blog mechanics, rather than an issue with moderation itself. It would be unfortunate if the point was overlooked because it misunderstood as “moderation is bad”.
It is fair to say that a blog with a policy “I’ll moderate however I like, if you don’t like it leave” works fine. It’s the default and implicit.
When it comes to a forum system with as many potential posters as there are commenters then “If you don’t like it leave” is the implicit ultimatum from every single user to every other. But if the feed system that governs content exposure doesn’t allow leaving individual posters, then the only thing that could be left is the entire forum.
This is why all other significant sites with a many producers → many consumers model all have unsubscribe, mute and/or block features. It helps ensure a few weeds in the Well-Kept Garden don’t drive away all the plants with low toxin tolerance.
It sounds like—particularly from testimony from habryka and Eliezer—moving to a more meta-blog like system is/was critical to lesswrong being viable. Which means leaning in to that structure and fully implementing the requisite features seems like an easy way to improve the experience of everyone.
I like the details of specific ways people may (implicitly or explicitly) make this mistake regarding meta-ethics in a way that matters.
It almost seems like the post was “Don’t roll your own” and this added “meta-ethics”.
Can I, looking at that UI, see how to get others “private spaces” out of my brain? The core mechanic of reading the site appears to be non-consensual exposure to others private (sometimes) nonsense.
I stopped by to lesswrong for the first time in a decade and (due to the familiar author) this was the first post that caught my attention in my feed. I’m shocked.
The new policy:
* Allows post authors to suppress any disagreement or correction at will.
* STILL does not allow blocking users
* Force feeds these private and immune from criticism posts on all participants in a collective feed, with no way to opt out, mute, or block any egregious abusers.
This is a feature combination that isn’t seen on any successful site. For good reason. As others have mentioned sites where authors control participation always rely on readers being able to opt in, then opt out if the author deviates from good faith contribution (in the reader’s view). Forums where you cannot opt out do not allow conflicts of interest in moderation. Anyone moderating on their own disagreements is (and should be) viewed with suspicion.
Honestly, even the refusal to allow users to block and mute each other has always been a toxic trait of lesswrong. But being force fed posts and comments from bad faith debaters with no ability to refute, block or mute would make for a site even worse than x.com, at least in terms of technology for facilitating healthy conversation.
It should have been immediately obvious that as soon as posts become author controlled spaces, readers must be able to choose which authors they follow. How was this able to happen? Were there no adults in the room?
We have the instinct to consume sugar because it is the most concentrated form of energy that humans can process, not because it is naturally paired with vitamins.
Sugar is desirable as the most easily accessible form of energy. Being concentrated is more useful for long term storage in a mobile form, hence the use of the more concentrated fat.
UPI Reporter Dan Olmsted went looking for the autistic Amish. In a community where he should have found 50 profound autistics, he found 3.
He went looking for autistics in a community mostly known for rejecting Science and Engineering? It ‘should’ be expected that the rate of autism is the same as in the general population? That’s… not what I would expect. Strong social penalties for technology use for many generations would be a rather effective way to cull autistic tendencies from a population.
I think this is about the only scenario on LW that someone can be justifiably downvoted for that statement.
I up-voted it for dissenting against sloppy thinking disguised as being deep or clever. Twisting the word ‘god’ to include other things that do fit the original, literal or intended meaning of the term results in useless equivocation.
Hubris isn’t something that destroys you, it’s something you are punished for. By the gods!
Or by physics. Not all consequences for overconfidence are social.
You were willing to engage with me after I said something “inexcusably obnoxious” and sarcastic, but you draw the line at a well reasoned collection of counterarguments? Pull the other one.
For those curious, I stopped engaging after the second offense—the words you wrote after what I quoted may be reasonable but I did not and will not read them. This is has been my consistent policy for the last year and my life has been better for it. I recommend it for all those who, like myself, find the temptation to engage in toxic internet argument hard to resist.
It works even better in forums that do not lack the block feature. I was unable to avoid peripheral exposure to the parent comment when I was drawn to the thread to thank Markus.
Can’t imagine who’d have guessed your exact intention just based on your initial response, though.
You are probably right and I am responsible for managing the predictable response to my words. Thankyou for the feedback.
I was sarcastic, but you were sarcastic first.
I was not sarcastic. I was entirely straightforward and sincere.
I am afraid your conversation practices make me unable to engage with you further (unless, obviously, I perceive others to be negatively impacted by your words.)
Wow, thank God you’ve settled this question for us with your supreme grasp of rationality. I’m completely convinced by the power of your reputation to ignore all the arguments common_law made, you’ve been very helpful!
Apart from the inexcusably obnoxious presentation the point hidden behind your sarcasm suggests you misunderstand the context.
Stating arguments in favour of arguing with hostile arguers is one thing. “You should question your unstated but fundamental premise” is far more than that. It uses a condescending normative dominance attempt to imply that the poster must not have ‘questioned’ or thought about a central part of the point because, presumably, if they had ‘questioned’ that they would have ended up agreeing with common_law instead.
In my judgement the opening poster deserves some moral support and protection against that kind of sniping. I chose (largely out of politeness) to express simple agreement with the poster, rather than a more aggressive and detailed rejection of common_law.
Since you (passive aggressively) asked:
Whether an argument is worthwhile depends primarily on the competence of the arguments presented, which isn’t strongly related to the sincerity of the arguer.
This argument misses the point. The reason to avoid arguing with hostile arguers is not that it is impossible to learn anything from such people (although the expected information value is likely to be low). It is because doing so is dangerous or costly on a psychological, physical or economic level.
Of course if you enjoy arguing with hostile people or think it is potentially useful practice then go ahead. In much the same way if you think getting into physical fights will teach you self defence skills then go ahead and insult drunk guys at the bar till they take a swing at you.
You should question your unstated but fundamental premise: one should avoid arguments with “hostile arguers.”
I just questioned that premise. It seems sound.
Trying to use reasoned discussion tactics against people who’ve made up their minds already isn’t going to get you anywhere, and if you’re unlucky, it might actually be interpreted as backtalk, especially if the people you’re arguing against have higher social status than you do—like, for instance, your parents.
At times being more reasonable and more ‘mature’ sounding in conversation style even seems to be more offensive. It’s treating them like you are their social equal and intellectual superior.
I want the free $10. The $1k is hopeless and were I to turn out to lose that side of the bet then I’d still be overwhelmingly happy that I’m still alive against all expectations.
I consider social policy proposal harmful and reject it as applied to myself or others. You may of course continue to refrain from speaking out against this kind of behaviour if you wish.
In the unlikely event that the net positive votes (at that time) given to Azathoth123 reflect the actual attitudes of the lesswrong community the ‘public’ should be made aware so they can choose whether to continue to associate with the site. At least one prominent user has recently disaffiliated himself (and deleted his account) for a far less harmful social political concern. On the other hand other people who embrace alternate lifestyles may be relieved to see that Azathoth’s prejudiced rabble rousing is unambiguously rejected here.
Ignorant is fastest—only calculate answer and doesn’t care of anything else.
Just don’t accidentally give it a problem that is more complex than you expect. Only caring about solving such a problem means tiling the universe with computronium.
Wow. I want the free money too!
There’s a thought. While not FAIs, I wonder how much LLMs are corrupted by how much power they are primed to consider that they have. I am guessing a huge amount. When speaking as if a person with higher status I expect it to convey more self serving arguments.
Anyone know if this has been studied?