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DanArmak comments on The noncentral fallacy - the worst argument in the world? - LessWrong
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I was one of those who asked for examples. This is indeed a good example, and I take it to heart. I am still uncertain what the effect of the new and planned rules will be (troll feeding fee etc.). But it's now less a case of "what problem are you trying to solve?" and more "how should we solve this problem?"
In more detail: I missed this thread, but skimming the remaining comments, I think it would have been a waste of time to participate. But since many others did participate (while saying in many comments that eridu was quite irrational and/or wrong), it's possible I would have been drawn in if I had the opportunity. So I'm glad you stopped it.
At the time I make this reply, DanArmak's comment was downvoted (I voted it back up). Downvoting a comment like that above is the sort of reason why I am starting to distrust the behavior of meta-threads as a reliable signal of what the community thinks.
It's easy to see:
... and read "It's obvious that eridu is stupid and irrational, and people said so yet kept blabbering and that could have made me join in, so thanks for stopping all this idiocy."
It actually tempted me to downvote too, but the comment is overall useful and that is a very uncharitable interpretation of the wording. It's simply not true that it was a waste of time for everyone - each of my comments and each response to them made me learn something and helped me do a few updates.
It was also a very good opportunity for me to review my own cached database on gender-unfairness in this particular case, which I hadn't done yet since way before learning all this cool stuff about rationality I learned on LessWrong. Overall, I came out winning from that thread, regardless of whether it was started by a troll or not (the alternative was being bored and brainkilled to death by my boring and mind-killing-filled day job). So, for me, and maybe a few others, the above statement about eridu and the thread rings untrue, though not completely unjustified in retrospect.
I haven't seen eridu's comments myself. I can make no real judgement on their quality. My comment was based solely on the comments of other people in the thread. And the gist of most of those comments is that eridu was being irrational and wrong.
However, now that you point it out, it seems wrong for me to wish to restrict other people's conversations. I would prefer to simply ignore such conversations, but I don't trust myself to do so reliably. Selfishly, I might wish for moderators to ban such conversations, but the moderators' preferences on what to ban don't always coincide with mine or other users'.
A better technical solution might help. I don't have enough experience with other forums to make good predictions on what different features might lead do.
Do you mean in general, or do you mean in a particular forum?
If the latter: there are all kinds of conversations I wish to restrict on this particular forum. Most of them don't in fact happen here, but if they started to I would leave. Some of them do happen here, and I grit my teeth and do my best to ignore them, and I downvote them to communicate my preference.
What's wrong with that?
I mean conversations on LW, yes. And yes there are conversations, which are few in practice, that I wouldn't wish to happen even if I was oblivious to them. Like anything that harms people.
But the subject I was discussing was conversations that bothered me when I saw them, not just in themselves (then I might vote or reply to influence them), but by tempting me to participate in a something I would later regret as a waste of time. E.g., an unproductive argument, troll-baiting, bad argumentation or rationality, and other things of that sort. Hence Eliezer's new rules which are intended to more quickly shutdown downvoted conversations - although I disagree with the method, I tentatively agree with the goal.
However, I don't want to stop others from having conversations that I don't like merely because they e.g. use poor arguments or defend completely wrong positions. It would best for conversations to happen, just without bothering me. I don't know if this can be achieved in practice.
Of course I can't be sure that the conversations that affect you that way are the same ones that affect me that way. So could you say which ones you mean?
Why would that be better than the conversations not happening here at all?
I would prefer not to point to specific threads. Generally speaking, what most irritates me is exchanges where we talk past each other in long comments without ever quite engaging with each others' main points, and threads where we don't really engage one another at all but rather all try to show off how individually clever we are.
Because it would be better for others to have the conversations they want, and the same to me if I were not bothered.
Well, OK, but... let me back up a bit here, because I'm now confused.
You've said that you're talking about conversations that bother you by tempting you to participate in them, and you've (tentatively) endorsed the goal of shutting those conversations down. But you've also said you endorse allowing conversations to continue if people want those conversations. And it seems implicit in the whole conversation that you're treating peoples' participation in conversations as evidence that they want those conversations.
It seems that those three sentences describe an internally inconsistent set of desires... that is, if they were true of me, there would exist conversations C such that I both want C shut down and do not want C shut down.
Which, OK, that sort of goal-conflict is certainly a thing that happens to human brains, it happens to me all the time, and if that's what's going on then I understand my confusion about it and no further clarification is necessary. (Or, well, more accurate is to say I consider no further clarification likely.)
But if that's not what's going on then I'm confused.
First, at least some of the other people in these conversation say that unlike myself, they really want to participate in them and it's not a temptation they would want to avoid.
Second, I would prefer those conversations to exist (since others want them) if they could exist in a way that would not tempt me to join in, as it does now. Of which I said that I don't know if that goal could be achieved in practice (except by moving these conversations to a completely separate site, obviously).
As long as that goal is not achieved at least partially, I recognize there's a problem (for myself) with having these conversations here on LW. And I tentatively welcome changes to the LW rules that try to fix this, even though I am uncertain if the specific changes being implemented will not have other, worse, negative effects as well.
Yes there are conflicting goals here, but I am explicitly balancing them.