[Note: I've avoided using gendered pronouns out of respect for the general principle that one should not assume a particular gender, but given others referring to gwern as “he”, I will follow suit]
You didn't only do that. You also claimed that he misunderstood Punoxysm
I'm not sure what statement of mine you're referring to.
Punoxysm made a point suggesting that Iraq is somehow comparable to Russia as far as the response to threats goes. That's pretty obviously wrong.
No, it's not. There are quite obviously differences between the two countries, but that does not mean that it's "obviously wrong" that a statement about Iraq is completely inapplicable to the USSR.
Saying: "If you can't have a calm, rational, and civil conversation about this, then I can only conclude that it you are not a rationalist.", is not trying to resolve the issue civilly.
First of all, you're ignoring everything that happened before that (and in fairness, some of it is not in the thread). When gwern made a statement that made no sense, I didn't just say "That makes no sense". I went out of my way to think of what he could have meant. Maybe he meant to say "Iraq" instead of "USSR". So I ask whether that's the issue, and he replies that it's not. So, I double-check that gwern is did in fact mean what his words say. Gwern responded to that by insulting me. I responded to that by painstakingly laying out how I arrived at my interpretation. Gwern made no response to that comment in that thread, but did go to another article and attacked me regarding this thread: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/kfp/terminology_thread_or_name_that_pattern/b47t
So, the comment that you quote was made AFTER gwern accused me of deliberately misunderstanding him, AFTER I had asked for a clarification, and AFTER gwern had gone to another thread to make an assertion (that I had misunderstood the statement) that gwern refused to defend in the original thread. So what you quoted appeared AFTER I tried to resolve the issue civilly, and gwern made it clear that he had no interest in doing so. That was when I pointed out that gwern was acting uncivilly, and that I was making conclusions based on that.
Now, as for the statement that you quoted, is it uncivil to point out someone else's incivility? What is wrong with saying "If you can't act like a rationalist, then I'm going to conclude you're not a rationalist"? Keep in mind, gwern said that he believed that I was being dishonest in claiming not to understand what he said. He basically called me a liar. You want to call me wrong, fine. I'm quite willing to accept the possibility that I'm wrong. But calling me a LIAR? That's not okay. I think putting up with that shit as long as I did shows what lengths I'm willing to go to bring a discussion back to a civil basis.
This sentence is passive aggressive by making an allegation that the site as a whole might be bad. Did you intend to make that allegation? Do you think making such an allegation makes it more likely that your post while be positively received and people side with you?
What's passive aggressive about it? It's a bit of a catch-22. If I say that I this incident is making think there may be something wrong with the site, that is going to make people defensive. But if I say nothing, then my post won't be positively received for the simple reason that my post won't exist. I don't intend to be passive aggressive. Anything I say will be interpreted as implying meaning beyond the literal statements, and coming up with a statement whose implicature matches my intended meaning is beyond my rhetorical skills, if it is possible at all. drethelin is going so far as to say that I am saying that gwern should be banned. If I make vague statements that gwern's behavior is bad, then people are going to jump to those sort of conclusions. If I'm more specific, and say “I think X should happen”, then I will be perceived as dictating. There's really nothing I can say that won't be as implying something. I believe that gwern's behavior is seriously anti-rationalist, I think that there should be social norms against such behavior. If there are such social norms, they are not evident to me, and in my personal opinion, this is suboptimal.
To go from the details of this case to something more general, it seems like to me like a conflict of values.
The only value that is necessary to condemn gwern's behavior is the principle that people should try to resolve disagreements civilly and not call someone a liar simply because he says he doesn't understand what you're saying.
Gwern communicates in a way that optimizes for information transmitted instead of avoiding to say specific things to be respectful.
Wow. That's almost exactly the opposite of the actual situation. This whole issue arose because I asked gwern to explain a statement, and rather than optimizing for information transmitted and answering me, he simply insulted me. Gwern was further irritated in another thread by my trying to get him to make his position explicit, calling my attempts to clarify the issue “Socratic bullshit”. As far as I can tell, gwern doesn't optimize for information, he optimizes for avoiding to have to critically examine his assumptions.
You think that part of being civil means to move within some fixed social norms and leaving them is bad.
Well, yeah, I think that insulting other people is bad. Normatively, it's rude. If you want to go positivist, it's destructive to effective communication. Not only that, it is contrary to what I understand rationality to be. This is not merely “You aren't acting in accordance to my personal values”. It's:
This site purports to have values distinct from the general populace I understood those values to include ones contrary to gwern's behavior It's really quite a disheartening experience to finally find a site that at first seems to oppose the sort of irrationality that is endemic on the internet Having behavior such as gwern's not be seriously discouraged is inimical to the stated goals of LW; how can create a Friendly AI, when one can't even create a friendly discussion board? Given these issues, I thought it important to seek the input of the community at large.
Gwern might be jerky is the same way Harry in HPMOR is.
No! That's the very thing makes the lack of condemnation of gwern so bizarre and distressing. How many times has Harry!MOR been confronted with a differing point of view, and he says “Well, I should seriously consider this point of view, try to figure out where this other person is coming from, and assume that they have good reason for believing it, even if it's not true. In fact, it's quite possible that I'm the one who's wrong, and it would be wrong for me to dismiss that possibility out of hand”? Now how many times has he responded by accusing the other person of not really honestly holding the opposing point of view, calling them an idiot and troll? How many times has he asked other people questions that, from the other person's point of view, are asking them to justify obvious, basic facts, and how many times has he responded to other people asking him such questions by calling the questions “Socratic bullshit”? How many times has he refused to defend a proposition in one discussion, and then referred to it as a clear fact in another discussion?
We have at the moment another thread about how that kind of rationality rubs some people the wrong way.
From that article “In some cases, people think it's rude to suggest to someone that they're wrong.” Again, I am not taking offense at being told that I am wrong. I am taking offense at being called a liar, idiot, and troll. It's gwern that can't handle people disagreeing with him.
how can create a Friendly AI, when one can't even create a friendly discussion board?
Different cultures have different notion of what's friendly behavior. If you behave in a way that's friendly behavior in the US in a village in Namibia, you are likely to do things that offend them and bring you into interactions that don't feel good even if the people in the village follow the notions of what friendly Namibian behavior happens to be.
That's roughly what happens here. You expect certain cultural customs to hold that you probably learned in the Social J...
Apparently, I am not entitled to be treated with basic civility. Or, at least, not according to gwern. It started when gwern wrote
>>All you're saying is that Saddam called the USA's bluff and was wrong and it was disastrous. That could EASILY have happened with an attempt by the US to demand inspections from Russia.
>Um, no, because the USSR had no reason to think and be correct in thinking it served a useful role for the USA which meant the threats were bluffs that were best ridden out lest it damage both allies' long-term goals.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/kfd/a_parable_of_elites_and_takeoffs/b1xz
I read this as saying the USSR should call the bluff, which made no sense in relation to gwern's other posts. When I asked whether this was actually what was intended, gwern got pissed off, insisted that there was no way a good faith reading could see the post as saying that, and accused me of deliberately misunderstanding. I have bent over backwards to resolve this civilly, but my repeated attempts to get gwern to explain how I had misunderstood the sentence achieved nothing but the accusation that I was making an “underhanded” effort to get gwern to respond. Despite not being willing to discuss the matter in *that* thread, gwern brought the matter up in a comment thread for a completely different article. Throughout our encounters, gwern has been incredibly rude, referring to me as an “idiot” and “troll” (rather hypocritical, given the ridiculously silly claims made by gwern, such as that "A, therefore, A" is not a circular argument), and generally treating me with an utter lack of respect. And in defense, gwern has pointed to high karma and being here a long time as making any accusation of inappropriate behavior “presumptuous”. Because apparently, the popular kids can't be criticized by mere common folk.
Looking at the stats, gwern is indeed the top recent contributor, which makes this behavior all the more worthy of comment. If some random poster were being rude, that would be worrisome, but the fact that the top contributor thinks that a high karma score is license to egregiously violate Wheton's rule suggests that there may be something wrong with the site as a whole.
EY has referred to a need to have this be a “Well-Kept Garden”. So I would like to know whether gwern's behavior is the sort of thing that people here think is acceptable in this garden.