Like, if I see Bob give a bad public speech, do I feel a drive to encourage the narrative that we barely know each other, or an urge to pull him into my arms and talk to him about how to do better?

Where would you place the reaction of thinking the speach was embarrassingly poor and due to the love you have feeling the emarrassment your self due to your close connection with Bob, not wanting, or feeling like you need/should to do something, to help "fix" Bob and still acknowledging your close emotional connection with Bob?

I'm unsure if the rephrasing is really helpful or if perhaps actually counter productive. Ithink the conflict and arming is in many ways the symptom and so the focus on that not going to be a solution. Additionally, that language seems to play directly into the framing both the Russian government and the Chinese goverment are framing things.

On the AI aspect I suspect we could make a small case study out of Israel's use of their AI.

I wonder if potential war is the greatest concern with regard to either loss of liberalism or sites like LW. Interesting news story on views about democratic electoral processes and public trust in them as well as trust that the more democratic form of government will accomplish what it needs to. (Perhaps a lot of reading into with that particular summary but simplist was I could express the summary.)

I've not read the report so not sure if the headline is actually accurate about election -- certainly what is reported in the story doesn't quite support the "voters skeptical about fairness of elections" headline claim. The rest does seem to align with lots of news and events over the past 5 or 10 years.

Shouldn't one make a distinction between negative/critical and bad? 

I agree that makes sense to me and assume your experience is probably representative.

I do wonder about a dynamic that might be obscured by your insight above. While the near term might tend to elevate a lower standard post(er) I would expect one of two paths going forward. 

The bad path would be something along the line of Gresham's Law where the more passionate but well informed and intelligent get crowded out by the mediation and intellectual "posers". I suspect that has happened. Probably reading that in but I might infer that is something of the longer terms outcome your comment suggests.

The good path would be those more passionate, informed and thoughtful learn to adjust their communications skills and keep a check on their emotional response. Emotion and passion are good but can cloud judgement so learning to step back, remove that aspect from one's thinking and then evaluate one's argument more objectively is very helpful. Both for any onlie forum and personally -- and I would suggest even is something of a public good type thing in that it will become more a habit/personality trait that reflects in all aspects of one's life and social interactions.

Do you have any sense about which path we might expect from this type of moderation standard?

I'm not even sure where I would try to start but do wonder if John Wemtworth's concept of Natural Latents might not offer a useful framework for better grounding the subject for this type of discussion.

I found this an interesting but complex read for me -- both the post and the comments. I found a number of what seemed good points to consider, but I seem to be coming away from the discussion thinking about the old parable of the blind men and the elephant.

I like the insight regarding power corrupting or revealing. I think perhaps both might be true and, if so, we should keep both lines of though in mind when thinking about these types of questions.

My general view is that most people are generally good when you're talking about individual interactions. I'm less confident in that when one brings in the in group-out of group aspects. I just am not sure how to integrate all that into a general view or princple about human nature.

A line I heard in some cheesey B-grade horror movies, related to the question of a personal nature and the idea that we all have competing good and bad wolves inside. One of the characters asks which wolve was strongest, the good wolf or the bad wolf. The answer was "Which do you feed the most?"

It would be interesting to have a reference to some source that makes the claim of a paradox.

It is an interesting question but I don't think economists are puzzles by the existance of corporation but rather by understanding where the margin is between when coordination becomes centralized and when it can be price mediated (i.e., market transaction). There is certainly a large literature on the theory of the firm. Coases "The Nature of the Firm" seems quite relevant. I suppose one could go back to Adam Smith and his insight about the division of labor and the extent of the market (which is also something of a tautology I think but still seems to capture something meaninful).

I'm not sure your explanation quite works but am perhaps not fully understanding your point. If people are hiring other people to do stuff for them that can be: hire an employee, hire some contractor to perform specific tasks for the business or hire some outside entity to produce something (which then seems a lot like a market transaction).