De-Escalation
Posted: December 13th, 2023, 10:54 am
EDIT by dvgrn: This post by toroidalet was a really good effort at encouraging de-escalation, The part of the post below got reported (no, not by any of the feud participants!) as being off-topic for the Factorio thread, so I had to do something about the post report. It seems like this post really deserves its own thread, anyway! Since the feud in question started on the LifeWiki, it seems appropriate to give these words of wisdom some space on this board.
toroidalet wrote: ↑December 13th, 2023, 4:28 amNow, on to the more difficult personal problems. I would just like to point out that while I am making some criticisms, I am not criticizing the characters of the people involved, nor am I criticizing everything about them. I am criticizing what I believe what needs to be criticized, and defending what I believe needs to be defended. You both feel you have legitimate grievances, and to some extent you are both right. I know how it feels to be attacked and provoked, then made to look like the villain for responding in kind.
It seems to me that the tensions on LifeWiki have started to metastasize to the forums, and I do not know enough about that conflict to decide who started it, who was justified when or how everyone has violated every rule in the book. It does not matter. You all have to find some peaceful coexistence, some way to deal with each other without creating these violent arguments.
Confocaloid, you have been a valuable contributor, and I share your frustrations regarding the renaming of the logarithmic replicator rule.
But whatever Haycat2009 and the others have done on LifeWiki, you were the one who started this particular argument. You may have just been asking a serious question, but it seems improbable to me that Haycat2009 would not see your question as a personal attack and would instead view it as a well-meaning, rational question. Still, you felt you were treated with hostility for a reasonable comment and responded in kind.
Haycat2009, you are relatively new, but new users especially deserve to be treated kindly. And if that 2009 means what I think it means, then you are probably more mature than I was at your age. You did not start this particular argument, and you felt targeted for a slight mistake.
But you kept the argument going. At first, you tried to respond calmly, given your other "disagreements," but it seems improbable, however measured you tried to make them, that the sentences "Also, do you have to doubt everything I do? It feels like harassment," would not be seen by confocaloid as a personal attack rather than an objective, rational statement. Still, you felt you were treated with hostility for a reasonable comment and responded in kind.
Both of you may see the previous paragraphs as a "false equivalence," but that equivalence is precisely the point. I want to show both of you that however unjustified you may find the comments shouting at you from your screen, those hostile comments are made by someone who is just like you, who is thinking the same things about your comments as you are about theirs. This has nothing to do with the merits of your positions nor with any other concurrent issues.
You are not trolls, neither of you. You are both human beings. That person who is arguing with you is not a troll, either. This is not to say that trolls do not exist on the internet, but we are fortunate to have never been blessed by the presence of any for too long. When you are surrounded by unreasonable trolls, consider that you are being overly hostile. You are not equally responsible for the dispute on this thread, but you both are responsible for its escalation.
I know that neither of you wants hostility, and both of you think you are just responding in kind, but when you presume hostility, it presumes itself. No matter how unreasonable the other's positions, no matter how heated your past exchanges, no matter how unfair you perceive the treatment, you have to be respectful. Don't attack others, and don't try to get other people to respond angrily. And do not prove to the other person that you are in fact a troll. Do not give them the satisfaction, if nothing else.
You are not trolls, neither of you. You're better than that.
Someone else said it better than me:Really, I could have just posted this article and cut out most of my own writing here.https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/23/in-favor-of-niceness-community-and-civilization/ wrote:I seek out people who signal that they want to discuss things honestly and rationally. Then I try to discuss things honestly and rationally with those people. I try to concentrate as much of my social interaction there as possible.
So far this project is going pretty well. My friends are nice, my romantic relationships are low-drama, my debates are productive and I am learning so, so much.
And people think “Hm, I could hang out at 4Chan and be called a ‘fag’. Or I could hang out at Slate Star Codex and discuss things rationally and learn a lot. And if I want to be allowed in, all I have to do is not be an intellectually dishonest jerk.”
And so our community grows. And all over the world, the mysterious divine forces favoring honest and kind equilibria gain a little bit more power over the mysterious divine forces favoring lying and malicious equilibria.
Andrew thinks I am trying to fight all the evils of the world, and doing so in a stupid way. But sometimes I just want to cultivate my garden.
You don't have to become best friends, but if you both want to stay in this community, if you want it to stay a community, you will have to be respectful at all costs. This is the price of tolerance. This is the price of free speech. It is "why do I have to be respectful to these people who are always criticizing me, harassing me, who never seem to respect me? Why can't I only do unto to them what they are doing unto me?" Of course, your opponents are thinking the same thing. This is what you have to accept if you want free and open discussion and tolerance of different views. This is what you have to accept if you want these forums to stay healthy and enjoyable.
So just try it. Try to be respectful anyway. From your next post, try removing those negative words altogether or deleting that last snide remark. No matter how justifiably angry or disrespected you feel, resist the urge to engage. Maybe don't even give a reply. I am not asking for you to resolve your differences or even to apologize, just to be nice. Keep being nice, no matter how mean they are; respect them until they give in. That is the only way to banish the trolls.
I would like to end with some words of wisdom (and I do believe they are such):What kind of forum do you want? You know the choice you have to make.confocaloid wrote: ↑November 2nd, 2023, 3:50 pmTurning a community's focus away from the actual hobby onto unrelated issues and generalities is how you take the soul out of it. (I modified a sentence from an older discussion.) This thread is not about the hobby.
For me, the actual hobby means CA patterns, CA evolution rules, anything else directly connected to Life/CA (e.g. ideas for algorithms/software to explore CA, posting completed searches (either positive or negative results), creating physical models of Life patterns, etc.)
)
). But if you resist, you will be better for it. You will be happier for it. And the forums will be better for it too.