Brillyant comments on Open Thread: March 4 - 10 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (391)
You extend to me quite a bit of courtesy here, and your tone is very generous although you disagree with me. I seem to see a lot of posts these days that skip the courtesy (which is necessary for productive discourse, rationality is about winning, etc.) and start with "You're wrong" and then proceed from there with middle fingers raised. I do think most of these are relative newcomers, as you say.
Any post trying to say something complex is bound to have multiple valid interpretations. This is just a fact of communication and the difficulty of expressing ideas using language. The truth of this is borne out by the fact that multiple commenters responding to the same post will interpret the original post differently. So, it is not so radical, I think, for me to suggest that we wait to say "I disagree!" or "You're wrong!" until after we've first said "Let me make sure I understand what it is you're saying."
I'd agree there can be a great deal of courtesy-skipping here. It slapped me in the face at first.
Then I got used it. And it forced me to get smarter, and to be more careful about what I said and how I chose to say it. I'm grateful for LW in that it forced me out of some lazy communication habits. I'm still lazy in my communication, but LW helps to the extent I engage with intention.
Perhaps some of it is just a style issue? Or that social awareness of courtesy tends not to go hand-in-hand with brute IQ and technical genius?
Anyway, you make good points (and, to evidence those good points, it basically true that I quite telling people they made good points on LW some time ago as it seemed to violate the often kurt decorum. :)