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dlthomas comments on Welcome to Less Wrong! - Less Wrong
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I think this is generally correct. I do wonder about a few points:
If I am operating on Crocker's Rules (I personally am not, mind, but hypothetically), and someone's attempt to convey information to me has obvious room for improvement, is it ever permissible for me to let them know this? Given your decision theory point, my guess would be "yes, politely and privately," but I'm curious as to what others think as well. As a side note, I presume that if the other person is also operating by Crocker's Rules, you can say whatever you like back.
Do you mean improvement of the information content or the tone? If the former, I think saying "your comment was not informative enough, please explain more" is okay, both publicly and privately. If the latter, I think saying "your comment was not polite enough" is not okay under the spirit of Crocker's rules, neither publicly nor privately, even if the other person has declared Crocker's rules too.
When these things are orthogonal, I think your interpretation is clear, and when information would be obscured by politeness the information should win - that's the point of Crocker's Rules. What about when information is obscured by deliberate impoliteness? Does the prohibition on criticizing impoliteness win, or the permit for criticizing lack of clarity? In any case, if the other person is not themselves operating by Crocker's Rules, it is of course important that your response be polite, whatever it is.
Basically, no. If you want to criticize people for being rude to you just don't operate by Crocker's rules. Make up different ones.
Question: do Crocker's rules work differently here than I'm used to? I'm used to a communication style where people say things to get the point across, even though such things would be considered rude in typical society, not for being insulting but for pointless reasons, and we didn't do pointless things just to be typical. We were bluntly honest with each other, even (actually especially) when people were wrong (after all, it was kind of important that we convey that information accurately, completely and as quickly as possible in some cases), but to be deliberately insulting when information could have been just as easily conveyed some other way (as opposed to when it couldn't be), or to be insulting without adding any useful information at all, was quite gauche. At one point someone mentioned that if we wanted to invoke that in normal society, say we were under Crocker's rules.
So it looks like the possibilities worth considering are: 1. Someone LIED just to make it harder for us to fit in with normal society! 2. Someone was just wrong. 3. You're wrong. 4. Crockering means different things to different people.
Which do you think it is?
The impression I have is that calling Crocker's rules being never acting offended or angry at the way people talk to you, with the expectation that you'll get more information if people don't censor themselves out of politeness.
Some of your reactions here are not those I expect from someone under Crocker's rules (who would just ignore anything insulting or offensive).
So maybe what you consider as "Crocker's rules" is what most people here would consider "normal" discussion, so when you call Crocker's rules, people are extra rude.
I would suggest just dropping reference to Crocker's rules, I don't think they're necessary for having a reasonable discussion, and they they put pressure on the people you're talking to to either call Crocker's rules too (giving you carte blanche to be rude to them), otherwise they look uptight or something.
Possible. I'm inexperienced in talking with neurotypicals. All I know is what was drilled into me by them, which is basically a bunch of things of the form "don't ever convey this piece of information because it's rude" (where the piece of information is like... you have hairy arms, you're wrong, I don't like this food, I don't enjoy spending time with you, this gift was not optimized for making me happy-- and the really awful, horrible dark side where they feel pressured never to say certain things to me, like that I'm wrong, they're annoyed by something I'm doing, I'm ugly, I sound stupid, my writing needs improvement-- it's horrible to deal with people who never say those things because I can never assume sincerity, I just have to assume they're lying all the time) that upon meeting other neurodiverse I immediately proceeded to forget all about. And so did they. And THAT works out well. It's accepted within that community that "Crocker's rules" is how the rest of the world will refer to it.
Anyway, if I'm not allowed to hear the truth without having to listen to whatever insults anyone can come up with, then so be it, I really want to hear the truth and I know it will never be given to me otherwise. But there IS supposed to be something between "you are not allowed to say anything to me except that I'm right about everything and the most wonderful special snowflake ever" and "insult me in every way you can think of", even if the latter is still preferable to the former. (Is this community a place with a middle ground? If so, I didn't think such existed. If so, I'll gladly go by the normal rules of discussion here.)
My experience of LW is that:
* the baseline interaction mode would be considered rude-but-not-insulting by most American subcultures, especially neurotypical ones
* the interaction mode invoked by "Crocker's rules" would be considered insulting by most American subcultures, especially neurotypical ones
* there's considerable heterogeneity in terms of what's considered unacceptably rude
* there's a tentative consensus that dealing with occasional unacceptable rudeness is preferable to the consequences of disallowing occasional unacceptable rudeness, and
* the community pushes back on perceived attempts to enforce politeness far more strongly than it pushes back on perceived rudeness.
Dunno if any of that answers your questions.
I would also say that nobody here has come even remotely close to "insult in every conceivable way" as an operating mode.
YES!
There seem to be a lot of new people introducing themselves on the Welcome thread today/yesterday. I would like to encourage everyone to maybe be just a tad bit more polite, and cognizant of the Principle of Charity, at least for the next week or two, so all our newcomers can acclimate to the culture here.
As someone who has only been on this site for a month or two (also as a NT, socially-skilled, female), I have spoken in the past about my difficulties dealing with the harshness here. I ended up deciding not to fight it, since people seem to like it that way, and that's ok. But I do think the community needs to be aware that this IS in fact an issue that new (especially NT) people are likely to shy away from, and even leave or just not post because of.
tl;dr- I deal with the "rudeness", but want people to be aware that is does in fact exist. Those of us who dislike it have just learned to keep our mouths shut and deal with it. There are a lot of new people now, so try to soften it for the next week or two.
(Note: I have not been recently down-voted, flamed, or crushed, so this isn't just me raging.)
I'm unlikely to change my style of presentation here as a consequence of new people arriving, especially since I find it unlikely that the wave of introductions reflects an actual influx of new people, as opposed to an influx of activity on the Welcome threads making the threads more visible and inspiring introductions.
If my presentation style is offputting to new people who prefer a different style, I agree that's unfortunate. I'm not sure that my dealing by changing my style for their benefit -- supposing they even benefit from it -- is better.
I should hope not. I can conceive of more ways to insult than I can type in a day, depending on how we want to count 'ways'.
How do I insult thee? Let me count the ways.
I insult thee to the depth and breadth and height
My mind can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the lack of Reason and the craft of Bayes.
Although I must admit I was tempted take it up as a novel challenge just to demonstrate how absurd the hyperbole was.
Returning to this... if you're still tempted, I'd love to see your take on it. Feel free to use me as a target if that helps your creativity, though I'm highly unlikely to take anything you say in this mode seriously. (That said, using a hypothetical third party would likely be emotionally easier.)
Unrelatedly: were you the person who had the script that sorts and display's all of a user's comments? I've changed computers since being handed that pointer and seem to have misplaced the pointer.
You might like this comment.
This should be strongly rejected, if Crocker's Rules are ever going to do more good than harm. I do not mean that it is not the case given existing norms (I simply do not know one way or the other), but that norms should be established such that this is clearly not the case. Someone who is unable to operate according to Crocker's Rules attempting to does not improve discourse or information flow - no one should be pressured to do so.
I agree with you in the abstract.
The problem is, the more a community is likely to consider X a "good" practice, the more it is likely to think less of those who refuse to do do X, whatever X is; so I don't see a good way of avoiding negative connotations to "unable to operate according to Crocker's Rules".
... that is, unless the interaction is not symmetric, so that when one side announces Crocker's rules, there is no implicit expectation that the other side should do the same (with the associated status threat); for example if on my website I mention Crocker's rules next to the email form or something.
But in a peer-to-peer community like this, that expectation is always going to be implicit, and I don't see a good way to make it disappear.
Well, here's me doing my part: I don't declare Crocker's rules, and am unlikely to ever do so. Others can if they wish.
As I've mentioned before, I am not operating by Crocker's rules. I try to be responsible for my emotional state, but realize that I'm not perfect at this, so tell me the truth but there's no need to be a dick about it. I am not unlikely, in the future, to declare Crocker's rules with respect to some specific individuals and domains, but globally is unlikely in the foreseeable future.
Here's my part too: I don't declare Crocker's rules and do not commit to paying any heed to whether others have declared Crocker's rules. I'll speak to people however I see fit - which will include taking into account the preferences of both the recipient and any onlookers to precisely the degree that seems appropriate or desirable at the time.
I don't know about getting rid of it entirely, but we can at least help by stressing the importance of the distinction, and choosing to view operation by Crocker's rules as rare, difficult, unrelated to any particular discussion, and of only minor status boost.
Another approach might be to make all Crocker communication private, and expect polite (enough) discourse publicly.
Wikipedia and Google seem to think Eliezer is the authority on Crocker's Rules. Quoting Eliezer on sl4 via Wikipedia:
Also, from our wiki:
Looking hard for another source, something called the DoWire Wiki has this unsourced:
So if anyone is using Crocker's Rules a different way, I think it's safe to say they're doing it wrong, but only by definition. Maybe someone should ask Crocker, if they're concerned.