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Constant comments on We are not living in a simulation - Less Wrong
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I actually agree with you that dfranke may have made a mistake, but I disagree about the identity of the mistake. The possible mistake would be the inverse of what you have been arguing. You cited Eliezer posts to the effect that obeying social rules is no excuse for being irrational. But the purported problem here surely is that dfranke broke certain social rules - the purported rule to make no assumptions about a poster's gender when referring to them. It is the breaking of social rules, not irrationality per se, that typically causes offense. And offense is what was caused here.
No, mere offense is not the problem. AstroCJ reports:
It happens that transwomen who physically look like men get physically asaulted, by people who identify the transwomen as a (defective) man, and make a point emphasizing this identification during the assault. So when someone else identifies her as a man, she anticpates (through the representitive heurestic) that she is about to be assaulted. This anticipation, though irrational and inaccurate and possibly even contradicted by more accurate explicit beliefs, is highly stressful. This stress is a real consequence of the misidentification, and I think we should be able to recognize this consequence as a bad thing independantly of social rules.
All right, point taken.
If I understand correctly, you agree that dfranke made an actual mistake about what decision to make to get good consequences, rather than merely violating a social rule.
Given that context, is there anything I said in the previous discussion that you were previously confused about that you understand now, or any assertions you may have confidently made that you should now reconsider?
I am only agreeing to the specified point, which is that the stress caused to AstroCJ is a bad thing independently of social rules.
It does not follow that dfranke necessarily made a mistake of rationality, given what dfranke knew at the time, and even given what dfranke was responsible for knowing at the time (to take the criterion of responsibility up a notch).
Would it be a normal psychological reaction for dfranke now to feel guilt and apologize for the stress caused, even if dfranke has genuinely done nothing wrong? Maybe. Recall this post. Quoting:
As a matter of fact - and here I'm re-introducing the idea of the social norm - it may be a social norm for dfranke now to apologize even if dfranke has done nothing wrong. Such a social norm could be built on top of the psychological regularity that Yvain pointed out.
Dfranke apologising would be faux pas. Or at least it would be a strategically poor social move.
Really? If I unintentionally do something to offend someone, I apologize. If that holds for unintentionally bumping into someone, or spilling coffee on their shoe, then as a logical extension it holds true for things I say, whatever medium I use to say them. The relevant aspect in this case isn't what I say, it's what effect that has. If I said (or wrote) something that seemed reasonable at the time, but offended someone or hurt their feelings, then I'm sorry to have hurt their feelings. I won't necessarily censor myself forever after, or even change the things I say, but I will apologize because it's a social ritual that hopefully makes me feel less guilty and the hurt/offended party feel less offended or hurt.
(For the sake of abstract curiosity:)
I would apologise for spilling coffee on someone but not in this situation. The analogy is not a good one and definitely not one of logical deduction! Some relevant factors:
I may have missed something, but I think the bulk of the interaction was with me, though Costanza added a comment at the end. The username similarity is pure coincidence.
That's the one! Fixed.
I guess maybe I did not read the entire comment string, since I didn't notice any 'obnoxious' comments from Astro, or much of an 'absurd public spectacle'. You may be right about that.
Agreed!
I would still apologize. That is the person I've chosen to be (and by extension, the person I've chosen to represent myself as). It may not produce an overall 'good' outcome, but I'm not sure what you define as 'good'. I've never been treated with disrespect by people I've apologized too.
Ok, so you previously said that you agree "that dfranke may have made a mistake", and you now agree that this mistake was not a violation of social rules. You still assert that it was not a "mistake of rationality".
Would you agree that it was a mistake that dfranke, and others who behave the same way, should take note of and avoid repeating in the future? Ultimately, my point is that whatever rules were correctly or incorrectly followed to lead to this bad outcome, the bad outcome should be a red flag that says we should try to understand what happened, and fix the rules or follow the rules better or whatever will work to not repeat the mistake.
The general problem with arguing that bad outcomes were not caused by a mistake is that whatever denotations you use to make it technically correct, it is bringing in connotations that there is nothing to fix, which is flat out false.
No, I retract entirely the claim that he may have made a social mistake. I do not substitute for it any other claim.
Let me get this straight:
You thought that dfrank had made a mistake of violating a social rule.
I argued that the mistake was not merely violation of a social rule.
You accepted my argument, thus modifying your belief to: there was no mistake?
Tabooing "mistake", would you agree that a bad outcome occured, and that in the future we should make better decisions so that similar bad outcomes do not occur?
I don't see how this profits anyone. Constant has been precise enough already.
No, I did not accept your argument. I accepted a particular point that you raised. I quoted the point that I accepted.
Fine, consider line 3 to be modified to say "You accepted a point in my argument" instead of "You accepted my argument". I still want to know: is the result that you now believe there was no mistake? If so, how did that happen? If not, what was the result?
(Was that distinction really so important that it had to take the place of responding to my questions?)
And the really important part of that comment was: