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V_V comments on Ritual Report: Schelling Day - Less Wrong
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Comments (113)
I agree that it's possible that V_V is trolling. I think it's more likely that they're just educated enough to cut themselves, thinking in terms of fallacies and warning signals, rather than causal models.
But I responded to V_V because you have the critics you have, not the critics you want, and because they do sometimes raise concerns that are worth considering. It is a questionable idea to share secrets in a public setting, but I suspect that V_V and other observers overestimate the social distance between the attendees; I know I would be comfortable telling the regulars at my LW meetup quite a bit about myself, because I've been friends with them for quite some time now. When you cast it as "we're friends that would like to deliberately be friendlier, and that includes targeted attempts to get to know each other better," it loses much of its danger.
(It still has the awkwardness of "how dare you be deliberate in your dealings with other humans!", but I don't think it's possible for that awkwardness to go away, and that's something that most posts on social issues seem to be open about.)
Responding positively demonstrates open-mindedness, encourages superior criticism, and gives me an opportunity to improve the thing criticized.
Deleting people's comments because of your negative emotional reaction is a strategy I strongly recommend against, and admitting to that in response to deleting someone's accusation of cultishness is a mistake. Your refrigerator is unplugged, and you should plug it back in before the ice melts and the food starts to spoil.
You're welcome!
At the very least, when you notice them you should do a formal outside view perspective, to compare to your inside view perspective. You can often learn a bit about how to present things this way.
I think that the discussion would have gone more productively if you had narrowed your original comment to the feature of the ritual that worried you, the effect it could have, and how that feature could reasonably lead to that effect. Then, people can focus on the individual components of the specific worry, rather the amorphous charge of cultishness. Even if you only noticed the danger because of it sounded your cult alarm, you don't need to use that as part of your explanation of why you think it's dangerous.
Indeed, if you can't come up with an independent reason for why it's dangerous, that's moderate evidence that it's not dangerous, but still suggests something like "I'm worried about group confessions as a component of this ritual; what could go wrong?", which will get the contrarians to do your imagining for you.
I think these concerns are worth informing attendees about- "hey, remember, there's no oath of secrecy here, but also please don't spread stories without permission"- but because attendees can choose to share whatever they like, there's no element of coercion to be worried about. (There might be a reciprocity concern, but that seems minimal and could be ameliorated with the addition of a targeted "X is verboten" rule.)