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Elo comments on Weirdness at the wiki - Less Wrong Discussion

7 Post author: NancyLebovitz 30 November 2015 11:37PM

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Comment author: Elo 02 December 2015 05:49:05AM 2 points [-]

I am unsure; I believe Ra asked for evidence of what Gleb had said followed by Gleb declaring his academic status as evidence enough to be an authority on <the issue>. This led Ra to criticize his academic status.

While it is true that Gleb is an academic; it is also true that "because I said so" is not a good enough answer to a request for more information(especially not here on LW) (I am unsure if the request was polite or not)(I am also unsure of the exact wording of Gleb's response). I am unsure as to the state of that whole thread;

Ra could probably compile the best history as he is right in the thick of it.

It could certainly be said that adressing the arguments is the most significant thing, not the person who made it. If the arguments are not clear enough to address; That would lead to asking for more evidence and lead us to here and now. I am unclear as to all the details to be able to understand this all.

Comment author: jimrandomh 02 December 2015 06:52:09AM 2 points [-]

By my reading of that thread, he was not leaning on his own authority but on that of an academic consensus. James Miller replied by claiming to distrust academia in general on the matter, and mentioned relevant incentives that might push them towards an incorrect conclusion. Gleb replied that "peer review is peer review". Up to that point, everyone was being reasonable.

Then VoiceOfRa jumped in, was very rude and seemed to thoroughly misunderstand what was going on. See this comment where he says:

For example, you've claimed several times that people should believe you because you are an academic historian.

But both of those links lead to comments by Gleb which link to sources!

Comment author: Elo 02 December 2015 08:05:03AM *  3 points [-]

this comment: (By Gleb)

http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/mzw/link_a_rational_response_to_the_paris_attacks_and/cwzh

includes the line:

Do you consider my credibility as an academic historian to be evidence?

Before seeing that comment I was confused as to whether Ra was talking about words (that Gleb said) to the effect of that or literally those words; now I see it was those words exactly.

this thread also brings to light something interesting:

http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/mzw/link_a_rational_response_to_the_paris_attacks_and/cx6p

Gleb: I can't really summarize whole books.

RichardKennaway: er, what (link to Gleb's summary of thinking fast and slow where it was 30,000 words long)

http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/mzw/link_a_rational_response_to_the_paris_attacks_and/cx75

Gleb: Lol, fair enough. You caught me well on that one. Let me update my statement to being unwilling to summarize whole books.

but then Gleb failed to actually add information from the book.

While I expect that the book holds claims to the effect of what Gleb intended to say; I feel like he didn't do his full effort in supporting his claims; instead relying on his "credibility as an academic historian" to try to pass as the truth, as well as getting away without actually answering the question for providing more information.

I genuinely do not care about the topic; I admit that Gleb put in some effort to try to help offer insight to people; but I feel he did not put in the right effort in the right places, leading it to look like he was relying on his "credibility". I can't fault Ra for jumping on the issue; I can fault Ra for not doing it as gently and in good faith (and steelmanned) as possible. But from there; Gleb refused to continue the discussion and cited it as a personal attack.

looks like all parties at fault for that mess.

It's now probably worthwhile suggesting a strategy for not having this happen again in the future: I wrote one up recently here:

http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/mzz/open_thread_nov_23_nov_29_2015/cwyl

a two-pronged approach to offence. in regards to:

  • a statement could be taken the offensively
  • it was taken offensively by someone.

On the part of Ra:

1: clean up the statement so that it is harder to take offensively (steelman)

On the part of Gleb:

2: encourage less personal offence from the original statement

both sides are needed to make discussions more productive. Either person could have put in more effort to improve the state of the discussion.

As an explicitly specific instruction: When you are feeling like a comment was an attack on you;

  • quote it;
  • say "did you mean X, otherwise that sounded like an attack; can you clarify?"
  • where X is a version of the statement that does not hold the attack; but still holds a debatable point.
Comment author: VoiceOfRa 02 December 2015 06:23:36AM 1 point [-]

Something like that Gleb replied to James_Miller with a somewhat ridiculous assertion along with:

Do you consider my credibility as an academic historian to be evidence?

I replied that he had greatly damaged his credibility with his assertion. At which point Gleb flipped out about ad hominem.

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