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JoshuaZ comments on The Super Happy People (3/8) - Less Wrong
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I'm curious as to how you think the confessor is intended a self-insert given the confessor's horrible history. Am I misinterpreting what you've said?
The writing style's strike me as very similar. Are you sure you aren't just seeing differences due to who it is aimed at? Also, is there a chance you can make more constructive criticism about what makes one unreadable and what the differences are?
I'm not aware of any aspect of the story that obviously throws in Eliezer's "masturbatory fantasies" - it might help to note that a story can have sex, even strange sex, and not have it because the author is writing about their own personal fetishes. Also note that this remark comes across as uncivil. Unfortunately, while Less Wrong is a community that prides itself on rationality, people (both on LW and elsewhere) often use civility as a proxy for rationality. I suspect this has contributed to your downvotes.
It sounds like you are equating a preference for civility with the inability to distinguish civility and rationality. Have I misunderstood you?
FWIW this is also the interpretation I found evident.
That's a very good point. I don't have any good evidence that the inability exists and the preference explanation does do a very good job explaining the data.
It seems to me that there is no need to apologize for the claimed fact that LW people appreciate both rationality and civility. And certainly no reason to suggest that we conflate the two.
I suppose that it might be worth mentioning that P(downvoting|perceived incivility) > P(downvoting|perceived civility) and that P(downvoting|perceived irrationality) > P(downvoting| perceived rationality). And hence, that the downvotes provide ambiguous evidence to Augustus regarding his perceived sins. But this inability to signal unambiguously should not be interpreted as an inability to distinguish - not even by a fan of BF Skinner.
FWIW, I initially took Augustus's reference to "masturbatory fantasies" to be the fantasy of being in a ship captain's position of respected authority and having possession of remarkable moral clarity. Only on rereading did I notice the alternative reading that involved tentacles. Perhaps I am naive, but I see that kind of comic relief as less revealing about an author's own fetishes, and more revealing about his wish to seem hip to whatever subculture he is courting.
I downvote uncivil responses because they activate arguments-as-soldiers mode.
Someone making ad hominem remarks has usually run out of legitimate criticisms. Civility seems like a shorthand for letting an argument stand on its merits and not getting personal, which is (epistemically) rational behavior.