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Cyan comments on How to think like a quantum monadologist - Less Wrong
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Comments (266)
The context you're missing here is that prior to this exchange Alicorn asked SilasBarta not to respond directly to her comments and he agreed.
Unfortunately, it's not that simple; there are competing considerations from the rest of the users here that I have to honor as well.
If I'm going to comment in a discussion, I need to place my comments in the most relevant place. I did not see, and still don't see, why I should inconvenience everyone else here by putting my comments in irrelevant, hard-to-find places, just to stick to the rule of not replying directly to Alicorn.
Now, take a look at the comment I actually made. Is that a harassing remark? Even if it's going back on what I said, it doesn't look like harassment. Now, if I had made a point of deliberately replying to every single Alicorn comment, then I can see it be harassment. But that's not what happened. And to demand that I not comment at all would just be bullying.
What's more, when people were (severely) modding her down for her rather rude "Leave me the fuck alone", I asked them to stop and explained the context.
I've made every effort not to respond to offenses in kind, but as always, "no good deed goes unpunished".
Incidentally, I had withdrawn permission from Alicorn to post on my top-level posts, yet I don't see similar censure.
Yes, it's an obviously ridiculous demand based on an oversized sense of entitlement and an extremely fragile ego, and Alicorn could not have reasonably inferred her comments were inappropriate ... but when did that ever matter?
Not to address any of your other points, but my downvote on that particular remark reflected the insult to Mitchell_Porter, not the fact that Alicorn would prefer you leave her alone.
Fair point. I agree that Mitchell_Porter may have had reason to object to it, but not Alicorn.
In the previous discussions, Mitchell had been repeatedly saying things like, "if no part of the system has color, neither can the system have color", and my comment was trying to make fun of this by saying that whatever beliefs he has about symphonies (the system) must apply to violins (the part).
Ahh, good analogy. I'd almost forgotten that this drama was going on in the (@#$!) monad thread.
And doing so would not be a problem, if you would stick to replying to/with facts like you do to every male commenter, rather than try to have some kind of pseudofamiliar conversation with Alicorn.
Have you been following Alicorn's complaints? It certainly would have been a problem to somebody!
SilasBarta has had pseudofamiliar conversations with me (on this very post, in fact) - I cannot pretend to have been paying attention to his interactions with Alicorn since the seduction community flamewar, but "every male commenter" is probably incorrect.
In fact, I think Silas displays above average pseudofamiliarity.
...although that's not strictly a bad thing, in my opinion. It's worth noting, though, that displaying pseudofamiliarity with someone who would prefer you did not is impolite.
What does pseudofamiliarity even mean? I'm guessing it means taking a tone more appropriate for someone you know well?
That's about what I mean. Something like
is insulting on it's face. But it would appear goodnatured, and would probably bring you closer to each other, if the person you were referring to (effectively in front of her) were your friend in the first place. That is what I mean by taking a familiar tone. But you can not possibly have missed that your prior relation to Alicorn is not one of warm cameraderie, so you can't have meant it to work that way (or so I thought)*.
And if I actually had to explain that I will have to ask the question that I held back when I first saw your comment: Are you autistic?
*Edited because I assumed too much. My post became needlessly insulting towards SilasBarta. I hope that it is less so now.
I would say that is approximately correct - I read "pseudofamiliarity" as the tone you would take with an amicable acquaintance. Not as free as the way you would talk to a close personal friend, but lighthearted.
Alicorn is not an amicable acquaintance, and she has found conversation with you in the past uncomfortable. Even granting that you have the right to address her remarks without engaging her specifically, the jocular tone of your initial remark assumed a (pseudo)familiarity in your relationship which was not present.
(Or an acquaintance who is openly a rival, where it is a minor display of dominance and a signal to others that you don't need to consider them a threat. Not that I think it applies here.)
Okay, that makes sense. I do use a lot of smilies, just to make sure the intent is clear.
That's not surprising - posts where one is inclined to use smilies are at least pseudofamiliar.
(And - I apologize for interjecting with advice - given that Alicorn does not like you, if you are replying to her in such a tone that you would consider using smilies, you are probably being overly familiar. Jocularity is probably appropriate in other situations, though.)
(...but I would advise against cutting remarks like the one which set off this thread.)
As far as I know it didn't mean anything until now, except as a pseudo-technical term used by memory researchers. But 'familiar' means roughly that.
Yes, that was foolish of him and were I to have made an impulsive concession like that I would retract it before replying. But then I would continue to reply impersonally to Alicorn's comments as though they were from any other poster, refuting those that I disagreed with or adding related insights as appropriate. (I would hopefully not make dumbass comments like "where is Alicorn when you need her?")
Serendipitously, this reply to Alicorn addresses your comment as well.
The fact that he agreed just makes him a hypocrite when he breaks the agreement. If he hadn't agreed, that wouldn't make it appropriate for him to continue to bother me.
My point is directed at statements like
and
and not at the appropriateness or lack thereof of SilasBarta continuing to interact with you in the counterfactual world where he had not agreed.