But you’re not doing that. You’re trying to make the case that you are objectively right to feel that way, that you have succeeded at a Sense Motive check to detect a pattern of emotions and intentions that are really there. I don’t agree with you, about that.

I think the claim I'd make is not necessarily that Oli's Sense Motive check has succeeded, but that Oli's Sense Motive check correlates much better with other people's Sense Motive checks than yours does, and that ultimately that's what ends up mattering for the effects on discourse.

Like, in the sense that someone's motives approximately only affect LessWrong by affecting the words that they write. So when we know the words they write, knowing their motives doesn't give us any more information about how they're going to affect LessWrong. For some people, there's something like... "okay, if this person actually felt disdain then the words they write in future are likely to be _, and if not they're likely to be _ instead; and we can probably even shift the distribution if we ask them hey we detect disdain from your comment, is that intended?". But we don't really have that uncertainty with Said. We know how he's going to write, whether he feels disdain or not.

I am somewhat interested in his True Motives, but I don't think they should be relevant to LW moderation.

(This is not intended to say "Said's comments are just fine except that people detect disdain".)

people who haven't interacted with Said

Well, this is someone who hasn't interacted with Said in the sense of exchanging words. They have interacted with him in the sense that Said's comments have marginally changed the trajectory of thir life. (So maybe we say they haven't interacted with Said but Said has interacted with them? But that seems like the more important direction here.)

Like, some rando who never heard of LW or Said Achmiz chiming in to say "I would have found Said unpleasant if I'd been here" would feel a bit weird to me. Not off topic but also not very meaningful, and I'd be worried about selection effects. (Which I take to be the bad dynamics you're thinking of. "We don't get an unbiased sample of randos, so it's hard to tell what randos-in-aggregate think.")

But here... sure, there's still some chance of selection effects, and it's good to keep them in mind, which Duncan did.^[1]

But there's also selection effects that come from "people somewhat driven away by Said are less likely to be here than people nonewhat driven away by him", and encouraging DrShiny to comment is a way of counteracting those.

So like, I think it's good to notice the thing that you noticed, we should indeed be paying attention to such things, but ultimately I don't think it was bad.

1. ^{^}

   Granted, his attempt to fight against them presumably wasn't 100% successful in expectation. Duncan's discord members are probably somewhat selected in the direction of disliking Said, though I think less than a lot of people would guess.

   Another thing that seems relevant: I claim the members are also somewhat selected for "people who would be a good fit for LW if they feel like being here", and I haven't spoken to DrShiny much but from what I have I believe they are such a person.

Like seemingly many others, I found Said a mix of "frequently incredibly annoying, seemingly blind to things that are clear to others, poorly calibrated with the confidence level he expresses things, occasionally saying obviously false things^[1]" and "occasionally pointing out the-Emperor-has-no-clothes in ways that are valuable and few other people seem to do".

(I had banned him from my personal posts, but not from my frontpaged posts.)

And I wish we could get the good without the bad. It sure seems like that should be possible. But in practice it doesn't seem to exist much?

I have occasionally noticed in myself that I want to give some criticism; I could choose to put little effort in but then it would be adversarial in a way I dislike, or I could choose to put a bunch of effort in to make a better-by-my-lights comment, or I could just say nothing; and I say nothing.

I think this is less of a loss than I think Said thinks it is. (At least as a pattern. I don't know if Said has much opinion about my comments in specific.) But I do think it's a bit of a loss. I think it's plausible that a version of me who was more willing to be disagreeable and adversarial would have left some valuable comments that in fact never got written.

(But also, it's plausible that that version of me wrote fewer of my actually-good comments; and that some of the additional comments he wrote turned out to be crap; and that his refusal to put in effort in some cases lead to him learning less.)

So is this just, like, a personality dial? Where you only get the EHNC comments if it's turned so far over in one direction that you also get the other stuff? Idk, doesn't seem like that should be the case. Apart from anything else, "a version of Said who has very similar personality but is, like, less wrong about stuff" would IMO be a big improvement. (But maybe it's harder to become less wrong with the dial set over there? Still, I dunno, doesn't feel quite right.)

But for whatever reason, it does seem like the good thing Said was providing is rare, and I'm sad about losing it.

On net I'm pretty sure I agree with the ban. And I strongly appreciate the amount of thoughtfulness put into the decision and this post.

1. ^{^}

   For honesty's sake I should admit the example I had in mind when I wrote that was a bit less obvious than I'd remembered. Said: "X is strictly superior to Y." Me: "no it's not for reasons A, B." Said: "So just do Z, come on, this problem has been solved for decades." Me: "Still has A, and only a partial solution to B because of C." Said: (No reply.)

   It's maybe not obvious that X is not strictly superior; and while I do think it's obvious that Z still has problem A, Said admittedly never outright says it doesn't... but like, still. This comment thread by itself isn't a big deal of course, but I don't think it's particularly out of distribution for Said.

Thoughts on rereading.

My reaction to several of the truths and dares is, like... "???". Like, some combination of "I can't think of anything" and "I don't really know what that means".

I dare you to briefly be your authentic self in a way that you know for a fact will be unpopular with the other people in the room. To prioritize your own values over consensus and social smoothness, even if only for a moment.

I don't instinctively come up with anything for this. After floundering for a bit I can come up with "I could... pull down my pants and scratch my balls? I guess? Is that really the kind of thing this is thinking of? And do I really think it's going to be unpopular? But if I didn't, why wasn't I already doing it?"

"I could... say out loud something that I believe but think most people here would find offensive? If I can think of something? But man, that doesn't feel authentic, that feels like being deliberately provocative, it's not like I had an urge to say it before I got this dare. At least not that I noticed?"

"Honestly, what does me being authentic even mean?"

And it mostly just feels like flailing.

Like, I think I want to play truth or dare with Duncan, and I think Duncan would happily play it with me. But I also think there's a risk that I get a bunch of things like this and I feel kinda left out. Not like excluded, but like "apparently there's something y'all have that I don't". (Which wouldn't be a disaster.)

Maybe that means it's not a good dare for me, a la "make sure you know who the challenge is ‘for.’" But then when I think about that I'm like... am I able to judge which people would be a good target for which dares? I'm not sure I am. This feels like a skill Duncan has more than me but I dunno about its distribution among other people.

...or maybe it means it is a good dare for me that would help me grow.

Similar reaction from a different direction: "make a prank call to your ex". I react like "whoa, hold on, my ex hasn't opted in to this. Shoulder Duncan points at things like Benign Boundary Violations and Is That Your True Rejection? Okay but..." Like that one feels uncomfortable in a way that I'm not sure if it means I shouldn't do it.

In a game of truth or dare, how much thinking and elaboration do you generally anticipate/encourage? Like, if someone's given a dare, do you think they typically react like "hoo boy, okay, um. Right, here goes"? Or more like "ah, to check, what do you mean by _? Okay, hm. Give me a moment to think. ... Does _ satisfy the intent? No, okay. ... How about _?"

I think I by-default imagine the first, but the second feels more likely to work well.

I feel like it might be somewhat common for people to be simultaneously light-world in some parts of their life and dark-world in others. Like, I think someone can simultaneously have internalized senses of: "I'm good at my job, and a valued member of the company. My employer treats me well, and is going to keep doing that, but if that stopped I could quit; I'd probably find a new job easily, but I have enough savings that there's no rush. If my manager asks me for something unrealistic I can say it's unrealistic and no one's going to yell at me. If I get sick I can take a week off without worrying that I'm going to get fired. ... No one likes me as a person all that much, they just tolerate my presence. My friends say otherwise but they sure do seem to hang out with each other more than they hang out with me, and I can't bring that up with them because I don't want to lose them. Anyone I express romantic or sexual interest in gets distant, or just straight-up ghosts me. This new person seems friendly, but..."

Good Will Hunting. Probably lots of other movies and books too, but that's what comes to mind.

Thanks. I have more thoughts but not gonna try to bring them out right now at least.

Also as an aside, the hockey ring situation is from Inside Out 2: in the first one Sadness signals to Riley’s parents that she is very unhappy

I don't know how accurate my memory is.^[1] But the scene I remember is from the first movie. Joy's spent the movie asking what Sadness is even good for, and then she sees some of Riley's memories. In one of them, Riley is sitting alone on a swing under a tree branch, sad because some sport event didn't go how she wanted, I think specifically because she didn't perform as well as she wanted. And her friends come cheer her up, and Joy realizes (and exposits to the viewer) that Sadness shows people we need help.

(Actually, a thing just occurs to me about this scene. I don't remember if her friends were also her teammates. But if they were, then "my friends all hate me now" is an at-least-vaguely reasonable hypothesis to hold, and them coming to cheer her up shows that they don't. Though I still wouldn't frame this as "Sadness shows people we need help".)

I assume the thing you describe also happens, but I don't remember it :p. Assuming the scene I remember happens at all, my guess is it happens before yours? In which case Joy's realization and exposition aren't driven by your scene, though they probably are driven by more than just the scene I remember.

Neither of those. I'll try to recap the conversation from my POV:

In my first comment, I distinguish between

1. Situations where I'm sad, and my friends can help me fix the thing I'm sad about.
2. Situations where I'm sad, and my friends can make me less sad but can't fix the thing I'm sad about.

(And my memory of the film is that the "oh! Sadness signals your friends to come help!" revelation is about a (2), which makes the revelation feel unconvincing to me. Like, I think the argument presented in the film isn't very good; but I can come up with a better argument myself, so I'm not questioning the conclusion.)

Then I read pjeby as saying that in both types of situations, sadness signals allies to come help; but the help they offer isn't to fix the problem, the help they offer is to do harm reduction.

And in my second comment, I'm specifically focusing on the (2)s, and asking how your allies do harm reduction in those situations.

ensuring that you aren't as harmed by your loss

So the thing that I don't remember the film answering, and that I think your comment doesn't answer either, is: how do they do this?

Like, first we need to ask "if I didn't feel sad, how would I be harmed by my loss?" That seems easy enough. If I accidentally flushed my wedding ring down the toilet: I'm down an item that has sentimental (and perhaps monetary) value. If I've lost a Smash Bros tournament: well, winning would have been some kind of gain, and I've lost the possibility of that. But perhaps there are also less obvious harms.

And then we need to ask "how is this harm lessened by my allies showing they care about me?" I don't have a clear answer to that. I still don't have my wedding ring or the possibility of a Smash Bros tournament victory.

We could say "well, you're still just harmed by your loss, but with sadness you get extra friend time which is good, so the net is less overall harm". But... I dunno, doesn't ring true to me. Like for one thing this leaves out that on top of the object level harm, you get the unpleasant sadness emotion.

If we additionally stipulate that I'm worried that my friends and loved ones will all desert me, now that I've lost my wedding ring/the tournament - then sure, them coming to show their support fixes that. That kind of thing is what I was gesturing at with "cognitive distortions", but tbf maybe it's not always a distortion.

The primary intuition pump it provides is showing something like, “What might go wrong if someone loses their ability to feel X emotion,” where X in the film is Sadness.

In the plot, when Sadness is missing, the protagonist Riley can’t express that something is wrong in a way that helps her family notice and help her. Once Sadness returns and is given control, Riley starts to cry on the bus, signaling to herself that she doesn’t actually want to run away from home. When she returns to her house, she starts crying more, no longer suppressing her sadness and showing them in a visceral, hard-to-fake way that she’s actually in a really bad place, and needs help.

Hm, I'd been thinking that I didn't feel like Inside Out did a great job of showing why Sadness is useful.

I've only seen it once, when it was in cinemas. But the specific scene I remember was, Riley does badly in a hockey game or something, and feels sad, and her friends come to comfort her, and Joy realises "oh, sadness lets our friends know we need help!" But... why does she need help? Other than "because she's sad", it's not clear to me. What help do her friends give? They cheer her up, i.e. make her not sad. (In my memory, we don't hear any specific words they say.) So why not just skip the sadness?

Like, there are situations where "something is wrong, and I'm sad about it, and with help the wrong thing can be fixed and then I won't be sad". (My life has been work-sleep-work-sleep for weeks.) And then there are situations where "something is wrong, and I'm sad about it, and it can't be fixed". (It turns out I'm not as good as my opponent at Smash Bros.) If we're saying the value of sadness is "it signals people to come help us", then it doesn't make so much sense in the second case, right? And I only remember the film showing the second case.

Maybe with the bus thing, the film also shows things being wrong that can be fixed, and sadness signalling that?

(And, what is the value of sadness in that second case? One possible answer is "we didn't evolve the ability to emotionally distinguish between things that can be fixed and things that can't", which sounds plausible but is also a curiosity stopper. Another is "not wanting to feel sad when we lose pushes us to win", which, idk, doesn't feel good enough. Another is "even if the thing itself can't be fixed we have cognitive distortions that can be (like I suck at Smash Bros, I provide no value to the world)" - that kinda rings true to me, but of course it brings up the "why do we have cognitive distortions" question....)

Oh, interesting. When I had a prepaid meter (2016ish) I went to a shop, but I'm not sure if buying it online wasn't an option at the time or just no one told me about it.

I find it hard to be greatly bothered

I think it's very reasonable not to be greatly bothered by this.

I do think it matters a little bit. If people are talking about "boots theory" and don't mean the same thing, they're going to communicate less well than if they unpack their definitions.

But I absolutely think of this as a hobby horse of mine. I do fully recommend that people avoid using the term "boots theory", because it's unclear. But I'm not trying to recruit people into a crusade against it.

I'm not sure what explanation of what economic phenomenon you're saying "boots theory" is today used to mean.

I mean that there's no single economic phenominon it's today used to explain. When people talk about "boots theory", it's not clear what they mean, and that's a problem when they're trying to explain something.

Your earlier article (unlike this one) seems mostly to be claiming that the theory is generally offered as an account of why rich people are rich.

Ah, that wasn't my intent. My earlier article was claiming (among other things) that the theory as written is an account of why rich people are rich, whether or not people offer it as that. It didn't take a strong position on how people do in fact offer it; in this article I've looked at that question in more detail.