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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   4055 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 14, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I’d say what distinguished the forum originally was more a commitment to free speech than to civility, though it had both of course.

I don’t think it’s possible to create an Internet community where everyone engages charitably but people are also free to call each other or their outgroup stupid, evil, or faggots.

They believe it though. The illusion of censorship is that hiding something makes it disappear, like a hand in front of a baby.

To the extent such a community does exist, it’s living on borrowed time as one group leaves due to asymmetry in hostility (if your community is 80% Packers fans and 20% Bears fans, then Bears fans are going to see a lot more hostility than Packer’s fans).

If you think it was bad before, wait until the packers fans get mod powers. The minority is always going to be perceived as more hostile. ‘Bears are the best’ – ‘what are you, trolling? You knew an inflammatory statement like that would generate a lot of drama’. On the motte, you’re obviously going to get a lot more reports for an equivalent sneer if you’re woke rather than anti-woke.

I’d say what distinguished the forum originally was more a commitment to free speech than to civility, though it had both of course.

In my mod days we experimented with keeping to a particular Overton window, above and beyond what was required to continue existing on reddit, in order to keep posters broadly comfortable. Drawing the line was frustrating and arbitrary and I hated doing it. Stuff like, don't insist on conspicuously misgendering trans posters, and don't lay 100% of the blame for any given issue on Mexicans/Jews/whatever. In any given specific situation we could have reasonably ruled in either direction, but if we'd radically committed to either free speech or civility the moderation would have become exploitable and the forum would have blown up.

They believe it though. The illusion of censorship is that hiding something makes it disappear, like a hand in front of a baby.

If somebody at your job, church, or hobby shouted out people's attractiveness ratings, do you agree that would make the community a worse place, regardless of whether they believe it?

If you think it was bad before, wait until the packers fans get mod powers.

I trust our mods not to do that, so I don't think the generic "stop mod overreach" arguments really work on TheMotte.

If somebody at your job, church, or hobby shouted out people's attractiveness ratings, do you agree that would make the community a worse place, regardless of whether they believe it?

First off, not really. Is he like shouting during the sermon? Then okay, that's disruptive. But if someone was just radically honest, I wouldn't ostracize him. Some people might learn something.

Secondly, our little club is far more committed to the pursuit of truth than they are.

"Radically honest", I'm sure you would agree, isn't synonymous with correct, well-reasoned, or self-aware. The term doesn't necessarily mean anything much beyond "unconcerned with civility." And of course sure, sometimes arguably civility can be dispensed with--but always at a cost.

The real issue, from my perspective, is that resorting to snark, sarcasm, sideswipes, and similar is that these immediately make one's interlocutor defensive, and we none of us are robotic without a very human tendency to bridle when we perceive we are insulted or demeaned. Which turns arguments into shit slinging. I realize that the perspective exists to "show respect only if it's earned" and even "my enemy is just wrong, his or her mind will never be changed, and therefore why observe decorum?" And finally those who pride themselves on "speaking their mind at all times" like some bloviating uncle too jaded by life to give a damn. All of these types have numerous outlets elsewhere to have internet fights without gloves or rules, but fortunately (in my view) this isn't one of them. (I'm not suggesting that you are one such type.)

And of course sure, sometimes arguably civility can be dispensed with--but always at a cost.

I see it the other way. Civility is often helpful, perhaps even necessary, but as a filter on the truth, civility has a cost. Ideally, we should all be capable of hearing the hurtful antagonistic truth, and just keep cooperating, or here, discussing. Of course, in the real world, without the filter, people will fight or walk away. Civility is therefore just a compromise to our weakness and egotism, like you say “our very human tendency to bridle when we perceive we are insulted or demeaned“.

You can have too much civility, blocking out the truth and leaving only platitudes. Our club’s informal norms are cordial enough, its members stoic enough, that imo we don’t need a strongly enforced filter.

Civility is often helpful, perhaps even necessary, but as a filter on the truth, civility has a cost. Ideally, we should all be capable of hearing the hurtful antagonistic truth, and just keep cooperating, or here, discussing. Of course, in the real world, without the filter, people will fight or walk away. Civility is therefore just a compromise to our weakness and egotism, like you say “our very human tendency to bridle when we perceive we are insulted or demeaned“.

Yup. No argument.

Our club’s informal norms are cordial enough, its members stoic enough, that imo we don’t need a strongly enforced filter.

This is where I disagree.

You're right, in a sense. Our club is cordial enough. It's cordial enough almost by definition; it's cordial enough because the ones who weren't cordial enough already left.

Relaxing the filter pushes that boundary a bit further. It would cause more people to leave.

The club would still be cordial enough, defined in terms of the remaining members of the club, because it cannot be anything else; a group will always consist of the people who are members of the group. But merely consisting of the people who are the members of the group isn't enough. One must weigh the value of the people who are no longer in the group against the cost of keeping those members.

Here's the Foundation, which is, as always, the touchstone to use when discussing rule changes:

The purpose of this community is to be a working discussion ground for people who may hold dramatically different beliefs. It is to be a place for people to examine the beliefs of others as well as their own beliefs; it is to be a place where strange or abnormal opinions and ideas can be generated and discussed fairly, with consideration and insight instead of kneejerk responses.

All of the community's rules must be justified by this foundation.

Rules against anything is a sacrifice. I'm not going to argue otherwise. In an ideal world, we could somehow allow all forms of discussion to occur without driving anyone away. But in practice, that ideal isn't achievable. Any amount of permission we give will drive people away; any amount of restriction we impose will halt conversation. Rules against anything is a sacrifice, but at the same time, a lack of rules against something is also a sacrifice.

I personally think we've achieved a reasonable balance, but I also thought, for some time, that perhaps we'd gone a bit too far in the direction of lack-of-rules. Some of our new mods agree and are willing to put more time into shoving the general conversational climate in the direction that they think is appropriate.

This is a sacrifice. I am genuinely sad for the conversations this kills, that we will never see because the strata of the forum itself no longer supports them.

But I'm happy for the people and opinions we may bring back.

If you want to convince me otherwise, you need to make a good argument that less moderation better suits the needs of the Foundation. I think you'll have a hard time doing this, because you'll need to convince me, and convincing me is hard, ironically because I don't have any firm evidence, I just have gut feeling and instinct. This means you need to either provide a form of evidence that I'm not convinced can exist, or you'll need to overcome that instinct.

But that's your goal, and merely pointing to the conversations lost isn't going to do it.

I'm already aware of those, insofar as someone can be aware of something that never existed.

My model on how civility rules fit with the foundation : imagine we still had the full spectrum of ideologies here, in a normal distribution. Because of the ideological distance, the most vicious fights would be between extremes, say left-anarchists vs nazis. They’d be hardest hit by the tightening of civility rules, and it would narrow the ideological spectrum.

I think this fits with the nearest example, the two long bans under discussion here, burdensomecount’s and mine, which started as a spat between us. While most of the sub has sympathy for christianity, or at least ‘believes in belief’, and finds /r/atheism cringe, I’m still a virulent antitheist, while burdensomecount is an earnest believer in a different religion (also different race, which was more of a factor in his ban). So the odd ones cancel each other out. I’m not saying it’s impossible for an individual to stay impeccably civil despite a considerable ideological distance with the median, but it’s less likely, so on the scale of ideas, that’s how it goes.

I suppose you think greater civility would help recapture some of the center and left commentariat, but in practice, civility mostly protects the sub’s majority. A representative example is darwin’s ban, which I always opposed as a too strict interpretation of civility rules.

My instincts (and as you say, that discussion may be pointless) favour the man who gets banned for offending over the one who leaves when offended.

But whatever happens, even though my ban would obviously be a grievous loss, I'm sure this place will remain pretty great. If there was an election for motte dictator, you’d get my vote, and I’m not just saying that, dear leader.

I think my issue is that civility is an axis on its own, and worse, it's a contagious one. If two people are flaming each other then the spectators think "ah, flaming each other is okay", and we get more flaming, and it just kinda continues from there. There isn't really a way to limit it to just extremists; if we allow it for extremists we allow it for everyone.

But on top of that, I don't think it's an inevitable component of being an extremist. I think there's no reason debating extremists need to be any less civil than people who are ideologically aligned, regardless of how different they are.

With these two together, there's serious consequences to allowing it and not so much benefit to allowing it.

If there was an election for motte dictator, you’d get my vote, and I’m not just saying that, dear leader.

It is legitimately appreciated :)

I keep hoping someone else comes along and does what we do, only better, and, man, just nobody does that.

They believe it though. The illusion of censorship is that hiding something makes it disappear, like a hand in front of a baby.

It is impossible to prevent people from writing an uncharitable post against their ideological opponents by forbidding them from calling them faggots (or insert any other snarl word). But I do believe it introduces significant friction and reduces the amount of such posts.

It also makes such posts cattier, which is a disincentive in and of itself.

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