FYI: Negative reinforcement is the wrong term. Negative reinforcement is the taking away of an aversive stimulus to increase certain behavior or response.

A negative emotional jolt when pointed out you're wrong wouldn't be negative reinforcement, it would be positive punishment: the adding of an aversive stimulus to decrease a certain behavior or response.

I guess we need a poll to collect the data points.

Perhaps in the next article, because now here are almost 400 comments and it would be hard to see.

What strikes me is that the straightforward (to me) interpretation never enters her mind - that he thought she was mistaken and said so.

It's quite interesting to see the thought process and compare it to my own. It reinforces my belief that just like Haidt's different moral modalities, there are different truth modalities, mainly epistemic versus social. When I'm talking, I'm mainly just sharing my model of reality. When many others talk, it's a "speech act", aimed at "handling" the listener.

When others talk, I'm listening for the model, because I'm modeling their behavior and intent using myself as a model (biggest mistake ever), and assuming they're trying to communicate their model. I think she is making the same mistake but from the social speech acts perspective, modeling his behavior and intent using herself as a model.

Maybe I should be doing that Harry thing more often, and developing a Social Person in my head, to at least query every now and again.

Or that women tend to be calibrated differently in determining what level of warmth/coldness should be interpreted as hostility.

I think that's certainly part of it - they have different priors for the relationship of intent and associated comments. Theirs is probably more common in general.

To sketch another stereotype, analytical/smart/nerdy people will tend to be more cold and robotic, treating more as machines than as people, and having poor empathic skills.

To put it differently, nerdy people have different habitual goals in speech. They're trying to communicate facts, not interact/handle/manipulate people. They may have empathic skills, but they're not always applying them.

I wonder how much of the perceived distinction between male/female styles correlates to time spent in ideologically heterogeneous communities. If you're only used to discussions with an in group, the out group will feel very jarring and hostile. This is probably more of an issue for progressive posters, as libertarians rarely have the choice to be in an ideologically heterogeneous community. Also, I suppose anyone with any religious impulse would find the atmosphere rather hostile as well.

And almost all emotional queues are lost online. For people who habitually make emotional evaluation a prime part of their mental focus in a discussion, it must be rather disorienting, while nerds will be perfectly comfortable and at home. Nerds were made for the net, the net was made for nerds.

I'm not sure how much to trust this stereotype. At best it's true as a rule-of-thumb with plenty of exceptions (people with great analytical minds and seemingly natural "people skills" certainly do exist). But if we run with it for a moment, doesn't it seem to screen off gender differences? That is, even if women do tend to lie further towards the "emotional" end of the emotional-analytic spectrum (again, I'm not arguing that this is even a real spectrum, just trying to hash out my confusion), this doesn't matter much because it's only the more analytical women who will give a damn about LW to begin with.

I think this rather incorrectly conflates being "emotional" in the sense of being nonanalytic with being "emotional" in the sense of being sensitive to the actions and opinions of others. While people who don't have analytical inclinations are unlikely to have a place in this community as long as it continues to follow its intended purpose, I don't think that's necessarily the case for sensitive people.

To take an example who immediately comes to mind (and I hope she doesn't mind my using her as an example of such), Swimmer963 has often made references to her own social sensitivity, in the sense of being powerfully affected by what she perceives others around her to think and feel. This certainly doesn't seem to have impeded her in becoming a valuable member here. It also obviously hasn't resulted in her being driven from the community, but if a sensitive individual had a poor initial experience here, it seems very likely that they would decide not to stick around.

women who are on LW still tend to be more put off by the hostility.

Unless we have some availability bias here. Such as, people who dislike something, speak more in discussions about disliking it. And if those people are women, they are more likely to attribute their dislike to male behavior, than if they are men.

In other words, a reversed form of this. A man: "Wow, I dislike how people behave on LW." A woman: "Wow, I dislike how men behave on LW."

My personal guess is that the truth is somewhere in between. Some things that men do here, are unpleasant for women. But also, sometimes women attribute to "male behavior" something that actually is not a specifically male behavior... but because majority of LW users are male, it is very easy to assign every frustration from LW to them. For example, discussing PUA stuff and "getting women" may be really repulsive for many women. But a lack of smiling faces, disagreeing with someone's self-description, or feeling threatened by very smart people, that can be (at least partially) just a gender-independent consequence of having a website focused on rationality.

I dunno if we're doing women a service or disservice by accepting this viewpoint... is it an interpretation that many feminists would approve?

How is this relevant? The important question is whether this interpretation is true.

So one might naively expect that even women are more emotional than men, this difference will mostly have vanished when we shift to the groups "Men Who Like LW Stuff" and "Women Who Like LW Stuff". But apparently this isn't the case, since OP finds (and some commenters agree) that women who are on LW still tend to be more put off by the hostility. So I suppose we should conclude that the correlation between analytical-ness and empathic-shortcoming is bunk.

Why? All you've shown is that this correlation doesn't fully screen off gender.

For example, off the top of my head I can't recall a reading single sneery comment about unattractive women (and I also never observed them getting ignored at meetups,

I've seen Roissy recommended as though anyone would be delighted by reading him. He's a very sneery fellow. On the other hand that was a year or more ago, which is several eternities in internet time.

On the other hand, the perceived friendliness issues are ongoing.

A possibly useful distinction: courtesy vs. cordiality. Courtesy means a moderate level of respect which includes saying "I disagree" rather than "You're wrong". Cordiality means giving positive indications of liking.

They blur into each other. I would read "Thank you" as mostly courteous and "Thank you!" as cordial.

I can sympathize with your desire to not offend-- I'm like that about race. However, reading is cheaper than making mistakes in public, and can be fairly educational.

women talk/post differently when they're away from men-- directly and without emoticons. I haven't spent enough time in all-women groups to have an opinion about this.

A data point: My friend often writes on a "website for mothers", and they have a lot of emoticons (and animated!) and use them often. (Here; ignore the language, just click on a few random articles and scroll down to comments.)

I would say that some women speak and write as your friend describes (simply because not all women are the same), but many women use the "feminine" way of speech/writing, and it's not only when men are present. Perhaps for some of them this is natural, and others only use it strategically in presence of men.

it's probably not good that whenever I hear about people like that I feel a flash of contempt and a thought of "Good riddance" goes through my head.

I was the only male

Huh, I always thought you were a female

Your friend complains that her boyfriend forgot to get her something for Valentine's day. A cold response:

This is consistent with both your current boyfriend's previous actions and your previous boyfriends' actions. You should spend some time thinking about why you seek out romantic partners that consistently disappoint you.

A warm response:

Aww, that sucks, I'm sorry. Hug? Wanna go look at pictures of kittens on the internet?

You can find another great example of a cold response in lukeprog's rational romance post.

"Warmth" means at least two things:

1. The tendency to openly show one's emotional reactions to other people, whether with explicit words, or voice tone, or body language. Someone can be called "cold" if they speak in a monotone and rarely make clear facial expressions, or if they never acknowledge their emotional states.

2. The tendency to recognize and (to some degree) reflect the emotional states of the people around oneself. The person who's usually first to ask someone else if they're all right when they're behaving oddly, for instance, is displaying warmth. A person who fails to notice that someone else is upset, or pretends to ignore it, is being cold.

It is my impression that the aforementioned terms are primarily used to describe styles of speech or writing. A more technical style which focuses exclusively on conveying the idea as precisely as possible, and which perhaps adheres to some particular well-defined style guidelines (as, for example, this sentence and the preceding one), is considered cold.

On the flip side, when you're more conversational, try to get across some sort of emotion, or just generally appeal to the person you're addressing (in a friendly way!), that's more warm.

Example Comment: There are far too many solar flares on Sol, due to reason X. They can be reduced by measure Y, but it will cost many thousands of kangaroos, which Australians support but no other country will help in the measure's implementation.

• Warm Critique A: I had heard of reason X as well, but I found out that actually reason X is not as logically sound as 'twas thought to be. The base premise that derives reason X was disproved in experiment Z, which you can read a summary of here: _, or read in full here: _. [Optionally insert comment intended to be slightly humorous for extra warmth, especially if the comment ends with an exclamation mark, here.]

• Cold Critique B: There is no viable way of implementing measure Y, as shown here: _; Australia is unsupported in finding a partner for research into potential methods for the implementation of Y, and not just unsupported in the implementation itself (which is currently impossible in the first place). Australia's government probably suffer from the sunk cost fallacy due to all the resources they invested in the inevitably worthless kangaroo solution; they refuse to terminate the project.

• Warm Response to B: Yeah, that was a prime example of the sunk cost fallacy, wasn't it? Or amusing, at least. Fortunately for Australia's government, reason X proved to have little supporting fact (see my comment here: _ for details). They were able to quit the project without much backlash in the end!

• Cold Response to ↑: Ah, so they did. Though I'd hardly call it a prime example of the sunk cost fallacy. They did have some reason to think it a worthwhile pursuit.

• Alternative Warm Version of ↑: Oh, I didn't know that; thanks for the update[. or !] To be fair to Australia's government, they had little reason to think the impossibility of measure Y bore poorly upon reason X; though, of course, 'tis debatable whether reason X justified the amount invested into researching alternative methods for implementing measure Y. In any regard, it's not clear to what degree they fell victim to the sunk cost fallacy, if indeed at all. [Optionally conclude with an appeal for correction if one's reasoning is mistaken, exempli gratia: "Do you think that's a reasonable account, or have I erred or overlooked something?" This tact could be taken as passive aggression, so use with care.]

Of course I could be misrepresenting the two, or am poorly calibrated. Let the alt text of the Karma score of this comment inform its perceived accuracy.

Gender relations = politics.

uncritically downvote anything feminist sounding, and upvote armchair ev-psych;

This is frustrating to read since complaints of other groups that amount to the same thing are ignored, but then again this is to be expected.

From the complaints (and not just here and now) it seems obvious that there is a problem we really should solve.

There being a problem people complain about and it actually being worth solving are remarkably uncorrelated. Here is an argument I made on the matter in the past.

I see at least three different topics here (maybe more could be found in other articles and discussions) -- speaking of women as objects; unsupported or incorrect theories about differences between men and women; unfriendly environment -- and I believe each of them deserves to be discussed separately.

I think the assumption here is that LW is some sort of a sealed environment, living in a vacuum only of its own generated ideas. Needless to say, it's not like that: everybody will continue to bring here, rationality or not, basic imprinting from life AFK. This includes other-sex objectification (let's not illude ourselves with thinking that one side is less wrong than the other), incorrect thinking, etc.

I agree though that if we are not able to win on gender issues, we are doomed.

Thanks for the analysis. I'm not convinced that the topics can be kept completely separate since unfriendly environment amplifies the effects of the other two, but it's worth a try.

There was that discussion of ignoring good test results from a member of a group if you already believe that they're bad at whatever was being tested.

here

Remember that motivational video Eliezer linked to? One of the lines toward the end was "If she puts you in the friend zone, put her in the rape zone." I can't imagine Eliezer saying that himself, and I expect he was only noticing and making use of the go for it and ignore your own pain slogans-- but I'm still shocked and angry that it's possible to not notice something like that.

My apologies for that! You're correct that I didn't notice that on a different level than, say, the parts about killing your friends if they don't believe in you or whatever else was in the Courage Wolf montage. I expect I made a 'bleah' face at that and some other screens which demonstrated concepts exceptionally less savory than 'Courage', but failed to mark it as something requiring a trigger warning. I think this was before I'd even heard of the concept of a "trigger warning", which I first got to hear about after writing Ch. 7 of HPMOR.

LW was the first place I've been where women caring about their own interests is viewed as a weird inimical trait which it's only reasonable to subvert, and I'm talking about PUA.

It seems like in the best case, PUA would be kind of like makeup. Lots of male attraction cues are visual, so they can be gamed when women wear makeup, do their hair, or wear an attractive outfit. Lots of female attraction cues are behavioral, so they can be gamed by acting or becoming more confident and interesting.

As one Metafilter user put it:

If you want to understand the appeal of the PUAs, you have to remember that it does work. Mixed in with the cod psychology and jargon are some boring but sensible tips. I would say the big four are:

1. Approach lots of women
2. Act confident
3. Have entertaining things to say
4. Dress and groom well

There are quite a few guys who haven't really practiced those four things, which do take a bit of effort and experience. So when they start to follow the PUA movement, they absorb the nonsense, start doing the sensible, practical things, and find that they're getting a whole lot more sex. So they conclude that the nonsense is absolutely true.

Do you have ethical problems with any of 1-4?

Ed. - It's possible that when HughRistik said "not all PUA advice is like Roissy's", he meant "the PUA stuff we're discussing on Less Wrong is Roissy-type stuff, and not all PUA stuff is like that".

Commenting to state a disagreement with a LW narrative (you're okay with the emotional tone / lack thereof) on a LW narratives thread will chip away at anonymity. If enough LW women were to do that, then people may figure out who wrote which narratives by process of elimination. I acknowledge that it would be way infeasible for all of us to memorize all the narratives and never say something that disagrees, and that's not what I'm suggesting. I'm saying that adding a comment on the LW narratives thread itself that's in clear disagreement with one of the narratives is poor anonymity strategy.

My default is to assume that men and women are pretty similar.

How do you reconcile this view with the way questions of tone have become entangled with gender issues in this very thread?

There was that discussion of ignoring good test results from a member of a group if you already believe that they're bad at whatever was being tested. (They were referred to as blues, but it seemed to be a reference to women and math.) It was a case of only identifying with the gatekeeper.

It was also an extremely straightforward application of Bayes's theorem.

No thought about the unfairness

The problem is that the concept of "fairness" you are using there is incompatible with VNM-utilitarianism. (If somebody disagrees with this, please describe what the term in one's utility function corresponding to fairness would look like.)

I'm not sure how much anyone has been convinced that women have actual points of view

Where has anyone claimed they don't? At least beyond the general rejection of qualia?

Indeed, and I am sad to say that I have seen this even in the top-level posts and blog as well. I'm actually doing a write-up about evo-psych and why a rationalist community should maybe try to avoid it. I might post it to this forum if there's interest.

I'm not just interested, I'm fascinated. Please do.

Alicorn wrote this post, but I for one am interested in reading more on the topic.

I strongly agree that people who talk about differences between men and women should say something about how large the difference is and the amount of overlap. I would also welcome some mention of how much evidence they have.

I do feel like LW is cold, and I'd rather not say "unfriendly", which to me sounds explicitly hostile, but it's non-friendly. Commenting here feels like Coming to Work, not like hanging out with friends. You know, where I need to remember to mind all of my manners. Seeing the orange envelope fills me with panic, as I am sure there is someone there just waiting to chew me out for violating some community norm or just being Wrong.

Truthfully, I think it is the lack of "small talk" that makes it feel unfriendly to me. It has the air of, "we're not interested in you personally, we're here to get things done". I want things to be personal. I want to make friends.

What are some Internet forums that don't feel unfriendly

Ravelry, mentioned above. It primarily serves as a place for swapping info about needlework patterns. There's some criticism inherent in such a project (e.g. "I found a mistake in the pattern you posted") but it's mostly about mutual admiration and support. It's not especially comparable to LW, though, since it doesn't aim to be about writing or discussion.

I value the honest truth-seeking and argument that happens here, but I don't think that has to exclude warmth.

My first-ever LW comment was not well-thought-out, and I got a curt "That makes no sense because _" response. Currently that kind of thing wouldn't affect me as much, but at the time it stung. Someone else stepped in with the "Welcome to Less Wrong" post that made it feel friendlier, which was good.

Another early experience that had me thinking "These people are jerks" was reading the Bayesian Judo post from the Sequences, which seemed to be about how to embarrass people at parties by proving your superior intellect even after they tried to disengage from the conversation.

It is- I've been on here for ~2 years (lurking, then signed up) and often refrain from commenting, simply because I fear being thought of as a complete idiot. I am slowly getting more comfortable, but I still feel (mildly) anxious when posting. Yes, even this post.

On another note, I have noticed that this anxiety has dropped pretty dramatically in the last two years (the thought to post barely even crossed my mind, back then), and this is due in part to being exposed to this community. I've also noticed, though this may or may not be related, that my (female) friends think I've become more "cold" (their words) in the last year or so, but my male friends say they can more easily relate to me, now. It could just be maturity, but LW has been a major influencing factor in my life.

Worth noting that in my little anchoring experiment the mindless critical comments were downvoted much more harshly than the mindless positive comments.

The discussions on e.g. Flickr often consist solely of comments like "Awesome pic! Great colours, looking forward to your next contribution." or "I like your style, please post more!"... To me, this represents the prototype of internet friendliness - not that I would like it to see it here, not that it couldn't be easily faked, but one just cannot deny that it sounds encouraging. There is even no need to talk about ourselves or to say anyting substantial at all, just signal friendliness the most obvious way, it works.

(It's interesting to note how dramatically Flickr differs from Youtube in the commenter culture.)

An old friendly forum I used to frequent had lots of silliness and emoticons and exclamation marks.

This is something I've heard several times, so I'll accept it as correct.

Selection effects. Those who have an issue with the status quo are far more likely to complain than those who like it are to praise it.

I try to practice Rekcorc's Rules myself, starting sentences with "Yes, "Good," "You're right," "Thanks," and other words with little content other than an (honest) recognition of the value of the person's statement.

Is anyone up to the karma of creating a good TL;DR for that article to post as summary on the wiki for frequent reference? It seems like this would be a very useful thing.

I agree with this. I find about 50% (very rough estimate) of the time when I say "I think this is what is going on in my head" and my OH disagrees, he's right and I'm wrong. I usually to have a strong tendency to rationalise, and I don't think I'd be close to how successful I am with Alicorn-style luminosity without that sort of outside input (though admittedly I'm still pretty bad - that stuff is hard!). I reciprocate when he introspects as well.

I do still find it annoying and instinctively argue back, but results spoke for themselves when I turned out to be wrong, and now I welcome it as an overall positive-utility interaction even though it still annoys me on an instinctive level.

I agree that this happens but I think it's not nice to point it out unless the user has specifically requested it? If you think it's important to point out, then starting with questions and asking permission to offer input are more respectful and effective ways to communicate

For example, I will sometimes respond to a direct question about feelings or emotional states, and people will jump in to tell me I am rationalitying wrong. Even though I made no mention of how I handled that emotional state or what my actions were! I was just reporting on the initial situation. It's in those times that people usually just tell me to think/do what I usually do and it's arrogant and not particularly insightful. =/

I don't believe that you believe this. (See? Wasn't that annoying?)