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Coscott comments on LINK: In favor of niceness, community, and civilisation - Less Wrong Discussion
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I'm with Scott. It's so natural to think that if your enemies are as ruthless as the Tsars and their goons, you need to be as ruthless as the Bolsheviks to fight them. But we all know how that worked out, and it hardly seems to be an outlier; rather, it seems to be the norm for those willing to sink to their opponents' level. If the goal is victory for our cause, and not just victory for some people who find it convenient to claim to be cheerleaders for our cause, we need to be very careful that our tactics are not training up Stalins within our ranks. Not that I'm advocating total purity at all times and in all respects, but I think before playing dirty you need to make sure you have a much better reason to think it's a good idea than "the other guys are doing it."
Of course.
The goal isn't to match the opponent, the goal is an effective strategy to further your own ends. Complete pacifism in the face of abuse is probably not it.
People seem to overestimate the effectiveness of playing dirty, though. Perhaps willingness to play dirty signals commitment, and I expect some of the time people are more interested in showing off their commitment than actually making progress toward the putative goal. But in any event, playing dirty has all sorts of costs (some discussed in this thread) which people seem to ignore or underestimate, and my only point is that it's a strategy to be employed only when it still seems like the best option even after all the costs and risks have been considered.
Yeah, that's pretty much my take. Often, signalling the willingness to play dirty without actually doing so gets us the collective benefits of "niceness, community, and civilization" while also getting us some extra individual benefits on top of that. And asserting that playing dirty is effective and that rational agents should be willing to play dirty can be an effecting way of signalling that willingness.
Until someone comes along reads all the stuff you wrote about the importance of playing dirty and believes you.
Or alternatively uses it to argue that you aren't trustworthy because you are willing to play dirty.
I've been considering to precommit to this: if someone in a group I'm a part of plays dirty or uses blackmail, I'll delete all of his/her reputation points in my head, and impose a moratorium on when he/she can start earning reputation points with me again. I would do this regardless of the success of what he/she did to the group.
Is this wise?
It is perhaps not wise to have such an all or nothing reaction to something that is as hard to define as "plays dirty" or "uses blackmail."
What do you mean by "complete pacifism"?
The way to fight someone how spreads lies about you is not to spread lies about them, it's to spread the truth about them.
When I speak of fighting back, I'm talking about making them pay a cost, and not feeling constrained to play fair for their sake. They've forfeited that consideration.
If you have overriding reasons to tell the truth, do so. But not to preserve value for them. When someone attacks you, it's time to destroy values for them.
Agreed, however, as I argue here the biggest reason for not lying for your cause isn't for their sake, it's for yours.