naraburns
nihil supernum
No bio...
User ID: 100
naraburns
nihil supernum
7mo ago
The change I would prefer would be to make shutting down consensus a goal that is at least equal in weight to enforcing post quality.
Well, as I noted somewhere upthread, we already do engage in a fair bit of "affirmative action" moderating. Which is maybe not quite what you're asking for but sounds pretty close to me. We tend to go easier on people who are bringing underrepresented or heterodox viewpoints into play.
(In this particular case, uh... I have to say that coffee_enjoyer's position on Israel is not one that strikes me as underrepresented or heterodox, here. I understand that probably everyone feels dogpiled at some point or other, but no, I'm much more likely to cut slack to a rule-breaking Wokist than I am to cut slack to a rule-breaking Israel critic, simply because we could probably use more of the former, but I can't imagine us ever running short of the latter.)
I might find it hard to dispel the accusation that this amounts to "moderate my enemies more", since I am on the balance unhappy with the Overton window here and therefore naturally am an "enemy" of the majority of highly-upvoted positions; but this does not mean that I am "friends" with most of the downvoted ones, unhappy families all being different and what-not.
Well, "friends" in the loose sense that you have identified a common "enemy" (me!). My impression of your follow-up is that, yes: you want more moderation for your enemies, and less for your friends. But now you've made two suggestions that, actually, the mod team already follows, more or less--if not, perhaps, to the degree you would prefer. So you're not wrong, exactly, you just seem to think that your prescriptions will yield results that, actually, we can say from experience they do not especially yield. None of this is terribly surprising, the mod team really does think about and discuss this stuff amongst ourselves a fair bit, so it would be pretty surprising if you were to say something original about the project we've got going here. But you're always welcome to try, provided you do so within the bounds of the rules we've established over the life of the community.
naraburns
nihil supernum
29d ago
Are you saying that to live a valuable life you need to only do what is "reasonable" as in the bare minimum of not harming others? Or "reasonable" as in "make the world a better place but you can spend moderate/reasonable costs and don't have to spend severe/unreasonable costs"?
More like the latter. Contractualism is the view that we should never violate a principle of action that no one could reasonably reject as a basis for informed, unforced, general agreement. In practice, we want to be able to justify our actions to others within our moral community. A principle like "always act to make the world a better place" seems reasonably rejectable; not only will I rarely have any idea which of my actions will "make the world a better place," even if I have a very good idea that it would actually make the world a better place to torture a certain innocent child, I have compelling reasons to not do that. In particular, innocent children have a weighty interest--a right--to not be tortured, and making the world a little or even a lot better for millions of people is not sufficient to overcome such interests.
Of course most choices are not so stark. There is often value in doing more than is strictly required of you, but even so it's very important to notice the difference between what is optimal and what is obligatory. If morality required us to always do the optimal thing, it would be impossibly demanding. Very likely no one would ever actually do the "right" thing, on such a view--there are simply too many unknowns. It is much more reasonable to expect people to act in ways they can justify to others. Deliberately making the world a worse place is not generally something we can justify to others. But it's not hard to justify to others, say, spending some time chatting about politics on the Internet, provided your other immediate obligations have been met and you find this sort of activity interesting or relaxing or fun. Is it the optimal way to spend your time? Perhaps not! But you are not actually under a moral obligation to spend your time optimally. So long as posting on Internet forums does not violate a principle of action that no one could reasonably reject, it's permissible.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
This post is fine, but given its relation with CW issues, should be posted in the CW thread.
naraburns
nihil supernum
2mo ago
Some of this is CW material (birthright citizenship, e.g.) so you should post this in the weekly Culture War thread. Though as a new user you are likely to get a fair bit of pushback given how much this post flags as AI influenced.
naraburns
nihil supernum
4mo ago
I did not understand your question at all!
I think the answer will depend on where one draws a number of lines within important continua. Not everyone agrees (as far as I know) on the extent to which human civilization (and related egregore(s)) has or has not guided human biological evolution, so I didn't want to hinge my argument on prior agreement on that particular point. But I'm sure there is more than one way to usefully conceptualize the problem; if you prefer, for example, it wouldn't be incompatible with the substance of my post to suggest instead that competing egregores are at issue.
naraburns
nihil supernum
4mo ago
Yes, but humans are also biologically selected for certain patterns of collective action - thats part of normal evolution for a social species.
...did you even look at the link, maybe? Or read what I wrote about reductionism not being useful in the context of this conversation? You're not saying anything I don't know, but perhaps more importantly, you're not saying anything you shouldn't anticipate me knowing. In the end, we're presumably all just subatomic particles doing what subatomic particles do! Your question was "why is it egregorian and not just normal evolution" and my answer was "because evolution describes biological patterns and arrangements, while egregores describe social patterns and arrangments." Your response appears to be "nah those aren't different things" but they are at least as different as diamond and graphite, for which we have different words despite their consisting of the same atomic substrate.
Maybe it would just be simpler to point out that British-descended humans in Britain, America, and Australia clearly share "normal evolution" in common--but not egregorian memespace?
Or maybe I just don't understand your question at all.
naraburns
nihil supernum
5mo ago
We already told you to use the contact form. Or you could respond to this comment! Spamming the site does not endear you to us.
naraburns
nihil supernum
5mo ago
This is sufficiently "culture war" that you should post it in the Culture War thread.
naraburns
nihil supernum
5mo ago
What is up with the top-level post here (I am unable to get a direct link)? It says "Removed" but no modhat comment.
It looks like that user went through and deleted all their own comments.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
I do not even know whether it is possible, but I can't think of any reason why we would do that.
naraburns
nihil supernum
8mo ago
It's highly relevant, because I am trying to figure out what the actual infraction is, and one of the ways I'm going to do that is by comparing what I did to seemingly similar behavior from others.
No, don't compare yourself to unmoderated comments; we don't (can't) moderate every rules violation, because we don't even see most of them. Most of the time, a comment has to get reported first.
So you're saying that if I'd sprinkled in a few hedging words, there wouldn't be a problem? Or if I'd specified "Republicans" and "Democrats"?
"Republicans" and "Democrats" is probably still too general, because those are not meaningfully homogeneous groups beyond the fact of their group membership. You need to specify to a meaningful degree. "People who believe in God" is a very general group, but you can say some things about them in a permissible way. And I definitely didn't say "sprinkle in a few hedging words and there won't be a problem," I said something more like "hedging and honest self report can be mitigating factors, provided the rest of your comment isn't too blatantly terrible in other ways."
That is me characterizing the pattern of thinking I am talking about, as exemplified in the excerpt I quoted.
But first, you never say "suppose someone thinks that..." and second, your characterization slips into weak man territory. Remember, you opened with:
This epitomizes general differential expectations of conservatives and liberals. Conservatives are regarded (and to a shocking degree, regard themselves)
So this sets the expectation that you think that conservatives (as well as liberals) think, concerning conservatives:
FEMA death camps, Birtherism, Jewish Space Lasers, etc... They're dumb, they're ignorant, they can't help themselves and we shouldn't expect anything of them.
It's impossible to tell, from your comment, whether you include yourself in "conservatives" or "liberals" so it's impossible to tell, from your comment, whether you are hiding your own views behind a neutral "some people think" point of view, or what. If you're going to run with a "some people think" argument, then you need to be either steel manning it, or proactively providing evidence of what those "some people" actually think.
naraburns
nihil supernum
9mo ago
It wasn't me, but several of my posts on reddit were included in the maintenance of a cultural Marxism "thread" (maybe on CWR?) for a time, that included numerous materials. But at some point the creator deleted it, presumably either by quitting reddit or by being banned from it. This was not my first post on the topic, but Google is not helping me find older ones and I haven't got the bandwidth just this moment to dig up the others.
naraburns
nihil supernum
11mo ago
I don't know! That's definitely a question for @ZorbaTHut.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
Any advice on getting one?
There are many ways, but in my experience the most decisive step toward getting paid large sums of money to tell other people to do things they would do better without your interference is to get an MBA.
naraburns
nihil supernum
4mo ago
That's not the work I intended that phrase to do. It was more of a factual observation about the extent to which outcomes are actually (not) within OP's control, which was the overall point of my post.
Specifically, "ought" implies "can." Ensuring that some people are employed might be the right thing to do; say for the purposes of argument that it is in this case. If in such a case it's not really up to you that those people will stay employed, it can't really be a moral requirement that you keep them employed. The claim "if you don't do it, eventually someone else will" is not a justification for any particular course of action, but an empirical claim about the extent to which a certain outcome is likely (not) within OP's control.
naraburns
nihil supernum
4mo ago
It gave me Thomas Sowell, and when I asked for others it suggested Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. Apparently I missed my calling as an economist.
naraburns
nihil supernum
5mo ago
Where should I post this?
Reddit? You seem keen to make a reddit alternative, there is a whole subreddit for those.
naraburns
nihil supernum
5mo ago
So, this is borderline, but on balance I am not approving this post.
It's not quite recruiting for a cause, but the reference to "infested with commies/radical leftists" kinda puts it in that territory. You're also a "new user" which kind of pings "spam" to me. Or maybe I just don't see the value in using a top post in this space to recruit for... an alternative to this space.
naraburns
nihil supernum
5mo ago
It's not just you.
I heard a right-coded radio host mention the New Orleans attack somewhat recently, but it was only a passing reference in connection with a Biden gaffe.
Wasn't this strenuously denied for years and claims of it were met with accusations of being paranoid conspiracy theorists?
My inclination is to say "no" but on reflection I have vague memories of this being something the mod team was maybe disunified about for a while (maybe still is). It's also possible I'm giving the wrong impression with the phrase "affirmative action." It's possible different moderators have had, and expressed, different ideas of what amounts to "affirmative action" in various cases. Zorba has always made it our top priority to make this a
place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases
which necessarily involves having people who don't all share the same biases. So we've always tried to moderate in ways that would encourage the development of such a community.
On the other hand, the mod team is accused somewhat regularly of going too easy/too hard on red tribe/blue tribe posts, and we have often cited this fact as evidence that moderation is not actually especially biased in one direction or the other; everyone always feels like their ox is the one being gored. Thumbing the scales a bit in favor of including heterodox views does not rise to the level of nuking the rules, any more than QCs do. And I don't think we've ever thumbed the scales for tribal reasons (either pro or con)--just for specific users in specific cases, where it was, say, understandable that someone might get a little hot under the collar.
So I would suggest that the way to parse all of this is that moderation is a qualitative and adaptive process in a reputation economy. We do go easier on new users, generally. We go easier on people who make QCs or otherwise contribute to the health of the community (e.g. by expressing heterodox views), for the most part. We go harder on people who habitually make bad posts, or express unwillingness to abide by the rules. We moderate tone rather than content. What that amounts to, in the end, is... what we have here. If you're getting moderated occasionally, it's probably nothing to worry much about. If you're getting moderated a lot, it's definitely because you're breaking the rules and showing no inclination to even try doing better.
In the process, do we have our biases or pet issues or whatever? Sure, we're just people. Do I think we do a pretty good job at impartiality and fairness anyway? Yeah, I do. Are we perfect? No, I can't imagine. Are we better than basically every other message board moderation team on the Internet? Yeah, I think we actually are. Are we going to change? Sure, over time that's bound to happen.
Has anything in this thread come anywhere near identifying a real identifiable problem with moderation in our community, and suggesting novel but plausible ways to address said problem? Well... not yet! Which makes the amount of effort I've put into it so far pretty wasted, and probably reduces the likelihood of my bothering to respond effortfully to similar complaints in the future. The people most inclined to complain about the rules are basically never the ones who are consciously and positively contributing to the effectuation of the foundation.
naraburns
nihil supernum
7mo ago
I can't discern him breaking any rules, or you explicitly accusing of breaking him of any rules, apart from the subjective "wildcard rule" about obnoxiousness.
Are you not reading carefully, or are you just reading selectively? Look at my mod comment again. I first said
grumping about someone else's award because their comment doesn't reinforce your preferred narrative is obnoxious at best
That's the wildcard rule, applied not for what he said, but for grumping about what someone else said--so you mischaracterized my criticism in exactly the same way that coffee_enjoyer mischaracterized it, by suggesting it is about my "taste" rather than about coffee_enjoyer's insistence on his own taste being the proper determinant of quality. So right from the starting gate, you have demonstrated that you don't know what you're talking about.
Then you said
someone who only ran afoul of that rule
but this is clearly an unforced error. In my very first mod comment I also wrote:
your emphasis on "pre-teen" and the way you referenced "the past decade" while quoting Dean referencing "the last few decades" suggest very strongly to my mind that you are not engaging charitably, or even just honestly
"Be charitable" is a very clear rule. Coffee-enjoyer broke it, as I demonstrated by mentioning how he broke it, and I said all of that quite clearly. So the rest of your comment fails to land entirely; I'm sure you can think of some other reason to criticize my moderation, and yet at this point it seems that your real goal is just that--to criticize my moderation, regardless of anything I have actually said or done. By your own logic, at this point it seems like you should probably just recuse yourself from criticizing my moderation approach.
I will address your parting question anyway:
Do you imagine there is any argument or evidence at all that could persuade you to change your current approach to moderation, or is it a matter of either having to take your ride to wherever it leads or getting off?
I imagine there are many such arguments and evidence; I hardly imagine myself to be a paragon of human judgment. But as you have not presented any such arguments or evidence--as you indeed failed to even notice the rather explicit rule breaking I spelled out in my initial post--what is it you expect me to change?
That is, is there some specific change you have in mind? You mention recusal but actually the whole mod team does recusals pretty often, calling for others to come in and handle stuff they don't think they can be impartial about. However it's basically never about topics, because the whole mod team has opinions on just about everything. If we recused ourselves from topics we happen to know and care about, none of us could moderate anything! Rather, usually mods will recuse themselves from dealing users who get under our skin (or are just particularly under our skin on a given day). You mentioned darwin; back in the day, I recused myself from moderating him a lot.
So beyond that, what "argument or evidence" do you think you have in mind, that you think should change moderation policies here? Sometimes you write as if you think people should be moderated more ("Plenty of completely normal posts these days would have been moderated 5 years ago...") but your argument in this case is that coffee_enjoyer, at least, should be moderated less. As far as I can tell, you are engaged in the same special pleading that nearly all rules-lawyers and mod-critics bring to us, as if we'd never seen it before: "why don't you moderate my enemies more, and my friends less?"
And once it is recognized that that is the substance of the question being asked, well, it kind of answers itself, doesn't it?
naraburns
nihil supernum
8mo ago
Well,
Moderation is adaptive and qualitative.
Rules-lawyering and grudge-litigating are rarely beneficial to anyone on any side of the issue. I notice, however, that you have posted multiple AAQCs, and received no warnings at all, over the past nine months. I would like to say this with all sincerity--not as a taunt, or an inducement for you to now behave as a frustrator--but that's exactly the outcome we wanted to see. You're still here, you're not perma-banned, you make quality posts. Thank you.
naraburns
nihil supernum
8mo ago
They've represented an alternative to the tides of mass opinion AND to the Cathedral.
That seems like a nicely succinct way of saying it talks with crowds but keeps its virtue, and walks with kings but keeps the common touch.
Retaining the "common touch" doesn't mean "to be the modal person." It means retaining an ability to relate to, and communicate with, people of no particular importance. Some examples of having lost the "common touch" in policy debates might be, say, pushing new identity terms on people who don't want them, or pretending that student loan forgiveness isn't a handout to the wealthy.
I don't know what I said to inspire such tenacious contrarianism in you, but like... at minimum, you could try disagreeing with me without putting words in my mouth.
Posing rhetorical questions in the second person is not against the rules, but it is very often a sign that you are dropping into an antagonistic rather than productive conversational pose.
These in particular are standard issue hollow accusations; they seem routinely applicable to basically everyone, and are equally routinely dismissed with "eh old news." So if you actually want to talk about relevant past events, you should put in the effort to specify which events you find most relevant, why you find them most relevant, and how you think that matters.
In short, none of the questions you asked appears to be a solicitation of actual information or in furtherance of discussion. You're just being performatively incredulous at your outgroup.
Don't.
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