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Crocker's rules

wiki.lesswrong.com

117 pointsTomte54 comments

Would be great to see some meaningful example where these principles clearly improved the conversation, be it in terms of time, conclusion, compromise or what have you. I've got this feeling that it's one of these things that cause a threaded discussion to be misinterpreted by outsiders in terms of predictability.

It is important to understand the milieu in which Crocker's Rules originated. The old Extropians mailing list was, by design, a place where even highly controversial and socially taboo subjects could be discussed and argued from positions that average people might find abhorrent if the position was carefully constructed, interesting, and grounded in rational or scientific observation. Many people found it emotionally challenging to engage on that list due to the volume of uncomfortable ideas they were exposed to. Even on that list, many topics were difficult to discuss because it triggered too many people regardless of the merits of the topic.

Declaring "Crocker's Rules" was an explicit statement that you refused to be triggered and that every possible subject matter was on the table for reasoned discourse without devolving into an emotional response. The flip side of this is being open to accepting better ideas that you are not predisposed to accepting.

As an aside, Lee Daniel Crocker gets credit personally for successfully challenging some long-seated political beliefs I held, by virtue of compelling argumentation.

>It is important to understand the milieu in which Crocker's Rules originated. The old Extropians mailing list was, by design, a place where even highly controversial and socially taboo subjects could be discussed and argued from positions that average people might find abhorrent if the position was carefully constructed, interesting, and grounded in rational or scientific observation.

So, can you give some examples?

Effects of slavery as a way of organizing the economy? Everybody knows slavery is bad, end of story, which tends to cut short any analysis of its effect on internal efficiency, productivity, etc.

Who calls "Crocker's rules"? The guy who wants to start the discussion about the economics of slavery? The guy who thinks it's viable? The guy who thinks it isn't viable and anyone who thinks so should be shot? How does it work?

Furthermore, what's the point? I mean, if you're in a discussion group where there's a non-zero probability that one of it's members will pick slavery (or something else equally apalling) as a discussion issue, but group members are self-selected (which is a reasonable supposition for groups in general, and even more so for obscure mailing lists) then it's likely that all members are amoral enough for discussion purposes such that this "Crocker's rules" thing would be redundant.

The article explains you can only declare Crocker's rule on yourself, and can not force it onto others who have not accepted it. A discussion will only work under Crocker's rules only if everyone consents.

I did read the article, thank you.

What I meant is that I find it unlikely that in such a group there would even be a strong moral reaction to any issue in the first place. I don't know about the extropian mailing list, but take LessWrong members, for instance. They are quite shameless about the topics they choose. And they're not much given to non-cognitive criticism either (e.g. calling someone an ass). So calling on "Crocker's rules" would be just redundant.

What is the point of ignoring something that doesn't happen?

Edit: On the other hand, it relies on the assumption that there's a trade-off between civility and informativeness which just might not be there.

There's a spectrum of people and opinions in any discussion. Why would you think it doesn't happen?

Second, your use of charged language (amoral, appalling, shameless) demonstrates why rational discussions can be difficult on sensitive topics.

Just talking about talking about them you are already sounding rather judgmental.

Establishing a culture of following those rules is important to getting mailing lists that can sustain such discussion productively.

Calling Crocker's Rules exposes people to the expectations and reminds them what are striving to achieve, assuming that they are indeed trying follow the rules but got caught in the moment, which happens to most of us.

> that you refused to be triggered

Was it a refusal to be triggered, or a decision to steel yourself for possibly being triggered and commitment summoning the wherewithal to handle that gracefully?

A little bit of both. It is a commitment to efficiently and dispassionately evaluating the facts at hand on their own merits, but it also is the practiced discipline of disregarding your emotional reaction and recognizing that your emotional reaction to offensive ideas are not grounded in reason.

It follows from the idea that how something makes you feel has little relation to its veracity or rationality. If the goal of discussion is primarily about the veracity and rationality of an argument then taking offense contributes nothing toward that goal and tends to suppress otherwise reasonable perspectives via social convention.

Crocker's Rules can be looked at as an intentional refusal to have any sacred cows, consciously or subconsciously, and making an effort to respond to every discussion as if one actually does have no sacred cows.

It's basically a rephrasing of Jon Postel's dictum. "Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send."

It invites others to stop being conservative in what they send to you.

Yep, that's an unfortunate side effect in both cases. It can encourage sloppy coding and sloppy rhetoric.

That's not a side effect but rather the point, isn't it? To allow others to communicate to you more directly by committing to not responding emotionally.

Edit: to be perfectly clear, by "not responding emotionally" I mean not sending a nasty email while angry. I don't mean suppressing any emotional response.

Well, one criticism of Postel's principle is that it's contributed to the security hazards of the modern-day Internet. We have a lot of ill-behaved software, written by programmers who felt free to take the easy way out because everyone else bent over backwards to accommodate them. The critics argue that a more formal, RFC-respectful approach -- the equivalent of what we'd call "political correctness" in a conversational context -- would bring about a safer Internet (or safer world) for everyone.

I don't subscribe to that point of view because I disagree with the idea that safety and security should be prioritized above virtually everything else including freedom. But I think it's worth acknowledging in a devil's-advocate sense. The question, "What's the minimum level of standards enforcement / political correctness that's required to enable technological development / human progress?" is an interesting one. Clearly the answer isn't "Zero" in either case.

Political correctness is about being conservative in what you say. Crocker's rules is about being liberal in what you accept. You could do both, then you'd be following a conversational equivalent of Postel's principle.

The analogy breaks down pretty quickly though.

I guess I often do it internally. If someone is acting derisive towards me but still has some amount of content in their objection, I (sometimes) internally pretend that they have said only the content, minus the derisive crap, and then I respond to that.

I've also noticed that sometimes when I do that, the person I'm engaging with responds more respectfully.

Other times I hit back because sometimes people are jerks. I dunno. Jury's still out for me on whether I should ignore derision all the time.

The introduction of derision into a discussion is often a sign of weakness.

I think the idea that emotions are not information... alien? I guess. Whatever. These sorts of rules do select for certain kinds of people to have certain kinds of conversations, but I don't buy that the actual selection effect is what is intended or claimed.

When intelligent people have great conversations, they are not the kind where people's emotions are disregarded. That does not make them less efficient, in fact, considering that humans have a great deal of circuitry for empathy, I think it would be perfectly reasonable to claim the opposite: That an environment where a high level of emotional communication is processed in a constructive way is the most efficient way to convey information.

I don't think this post holds up to scrutiny:

> The underlying assumption is that rudeness is sometimes necessary for effective conveyance of information, if only to signal a lack of patience or tolerance

In other words, some emotions are perfectly acceptable! It's ok to be rude, because, I guess, somehow rudeness is an emotion conducive to rational communication? Ok. Granted. Why is signaling that one is upset not also a constructive emotion? It's not entirely spelled out but it's easy to infer that what is really at issue here is the expectation of empathy and good faith. The implication being that empathy is an obstacle to rational discussion.

That's what disregarding "emotional feelings" means.

To put it lightly, I emphatically disagree.

Edit: To make it clear, here is an alternative rule I think would be more productive. Crocker's rules gets you some types of conversations with some types of people you otherwise wouldn't get. Instead, I think one should offer to be receptive to empathetic discussion about a difficult topic. I think this gets you other kinds of conversations with other kinds of people and I think they are more useful.

> the idea that emotions are not information

> signaling that one is upset

I think you're missing the point. This is a way for people to claim that they won't be offended (and won't start a flame war--remember those?) and thereby invite others to speak plainly. The belief is that this leads to a more efficient communication than people not speaking plainly for fear of offending you.

There's nothing in it about ignoring other people's emotions, not expressing your own emotions, not being empathetic, emotions not being information (the post literally says the opposite of this), or pretending to be emotionless like so many Spocks. I think all of these are things that you're reading into what's actually there.

> one should offer to be receptive to empathetic discussion about a difficult topic.

An important part of that is letting the other person know you aren't going to jump on them for something they say. This is what Crocker's rules are about.

I feel like you may have missed the emphasis that Crocker's Rules can only be called for oneself. You don't declare that they are in effect for others, and declaring them doesn't mean that you are giving yourself license to be rude.

In fact, it's just the opposite - you are agreeing to be more accepting of their thoughts, including the emotional content (even the inflammatory parts) of their message.

I believe that the intention is that the emotions that are discarded are your own, at least to the extent that you try to fairly understand the other person's viewpoint by suppressing your own biases and emotional response to what they're saying.

I think suppressing your own emotional response is not as good as reasoning out your emotional response. I also think my criticism of these rules applies more to open discussions where you invoke Crocker's rules for yourself. The openness means that you can attract bad conversation partners as well as the ones you actually want. It invites people to be more careless with their empathy. And that, I think, encourages the neglect of an important mode of communication.

In a private conversation, invoking Crocker's rules, still, I think is not the best option. I think the best option is to have a conversation where emotional processing is intentional and guided. Having someone else guide you through processing your own emotional responses requires a lot more trust and labor than Crocker's rules do, but I think it's immensely more valuable. Even when evaluating technical problems, feelings and intuition are so helpful. A lot of code review, for example, relies on gut feeling and emotions about code. Strange but true in my experience.

My core misgiving is that I think Crocker's rules are motivated by this assumption that a lack of empathy leads to a broader, more constructive conversation. I just don't think that's true in my own experience but there is a streak of anti-emotion dogma in rationally oriented communities. I think it's an often unspoken but problematic bias.

> there is a streak of anti-emotion dogma in rationally oriented communities.

This is certainly true.

I feel you're responding more to this perceived anti-emotional bias than to the actual content of Crocker's rules.

> I think suppressing your own emotional response is not as good as reasoning out your emotional response.

The first does not preclude the second. You still know what you wanted to say, and can examine that to your heart's content.

> It invites people to be more careless with their empathy. And that, I think, encourages the neglect of an important mode of communication.

Keep in mind the norm is not Crocker's rules. I'm not sure worrying that we are missing out on the norm when we occasionally opt for different rules of communication explicitly is something we need to be worried about.

> In a private conversation, invoking Crocker's rules, still, I think is not the best option. I think the best option is to have a conversation where emotional processing is intentional and guided.

Crocker's rules do not prevent emotional processing. We are not machines, capable of completely detaching all emotional interpretation. We can at best suppress our reactions, and not fault the other party for bringing up the argument.

> Even when evaluating technical problems, feelings and intuition are so helpful.

Yes, but they can also cloud rational discussion of why. Crocker's rules can help here as well, by helping you explore possible reasons for your intuition without that intuition getting in the way. Intuituin is good, but is necessarily less useful than the data that has formed that intuition in your mind. If you can access that data and how it formed your intuition, that's useful (but may not always be possible). Intuition is like a rule-of-thumb. Quick and useful when applied correctly, but detrimental when applied incorrectly.

> My core misgiving is that I think Crocker's rules are motivated by this assumption that a lack of empathy leads to a broader, more constructive conversation.

Lack of empathy may allow you to consider viewpoints you would have dismissed out of hand, and under careful observation you may find some of those viewpoints are not quite what you assumed they were. It's a way to get past your gut reactions and intuitions just in case you find they were misfiring. Nobody is proposing you don't then reconsider what was discussed with all your emotional faculties to determine if there are additional constraints that still discourage the arguments proposed. Crocker's rules are not a way to make a decision, but a tool for widening perspective and information.

As a simple example of Crocker's rules and where it might find use in a less extreme way, imagine a discussion regarding how to deal with social welfare in an extremely fiscally conservative group. Crocker's rules might by useful in bringing in the subject of a basic income without the emotional baggage of people's preconceptions on the idea, and allow them to examine it with a more rational eye. Conversely, the idea of eliminating corporate taxes might be usefully examined in a very fiscally liberal group under Crocker's rules. Depending on the dispositions of the groups involved, I could easily see both of those devolving into base political arguments before useful discourse could be reached.

I agree that if all communication was done under Crocker's rules, we might lose something important. I just don't think anyone has actually proposed that.

Thank you for this comment. It clearly captures a nagging feeling I have wrt to the general idea floated frequently in tech circles that somehow, the emotional "baggage" of a conversation is an impediment to be suspended by agreement rather than a valid channel of the conversation. It also frequently feels like special pleading: "Please limit the conversation to the aspects with which I'm comfortable," which is deeply ironic when one is asking to exclude other's comfort.

I can imagine certain people in certain conversations usefully applying Crocker's rule, but I suspect that, in practice, it's more frequently a bludgeon used as another commenter in this thread did: as a ground rule to which all (should) implicitly consent in order to value some tokenized version of "free speech".

It's the age-old cartesian dualism between reason (good!) and emotions (bad!), which for some reasons still seduces many people. They believe they are more or less their pre-frontal cortex, so things like emotions get in the way of the Thinker.

> The underlying assumption is that rudeness is sometimes necessary for effective conveyance of information

I see this sort of thought come up a lot, but what situation requires rudeness to be more concise? For example, you could take Torvald's emails, cut out the rudeness, and they'd be much shorter and to the point.

The idea that rude == direct doesn't really hold up in my experience.

It is not the same. The level of insult conveys the information of how wrong the patch/bad the situation is, in Linus's view.

That's important information.

From Torvalds:

The fact is, people need to know what my position on things are. And I can't just say "please don't do that", because people won't listen. I say "On the internet, nobody can hear you being subtle," and I mean it.

And I definitely am not willing to string people along, either. I've had that happen too—not telling people clearly enough that I don't like their approach, they go on to re-architect something, and get really upset when I am then not willing to take their work.

- This looks good

- this looks bad

- this looks extremely bad

- this is dangerous, I imagine you can exploit this

- You can easily exploit this code with attached example

A free scale if you need to convey degree of good/badness for attached code. CC0 license.

This is a bit snarky, but I do think that a bit of effort can be made to describe code as being bad without declaring that the author's mother should have aborted them.

Well, taking the "shut the fuck up" incident, the scale was used at the maximum level (an example of the commit breaking a program was provided, with a patch fixing it) and the maintainer insisted it wasn't really a bug because the app was holding it wrong. Therefore, your scale needs an extra level.

I think this example doesn't match the point being argued. You assume the implied rudeness to mean that arguing parties insult each other - but insults are just on one end of the spectrum of "rudeness". If you argue on the premise that rudeness is the disregard for the opposing party's feelings, there's plenty of opportunities for rational arguments that will provoke a very emotional reaction and thus be discarded without further scrutiny.

So, I'd argue that while the premise that some direct and blunt statements can be rude, that doesn't mean that any rudeness (esp. insults) is a better argument.

Sounds interesting, but where can we read Crocker's actual rules?

As I recall, "Crocker's rules" originated in an email Lee Daniel Crocker posted on the old Extropians mailing list in the 1990s. He simply declared in an email, during some contentious or heated discussion (as was the norm for that list), that he wanted people to communicate with him without any regard for whether they might offend him, valuing bluntness, honesty, and authenticity over social nicety, pleasantness, and diplomatic protocol.

The rules were never a formalized thing. A person that declares Crocker's rules is basically saying that they (1) want people to not filter their communication with them in any way for the sake of pleasantness and (2) take full responsibility for and ownership of their reaction to that unfiltered communication.

(The article references a source on the SL4 mailing list, but that is not the origin. SL4 post-dates Crocker's Rules, and the people that moderated and ran SL4 were all on the old Extropians mailing list.)

Huh, no wonder it's obscure. If someone wants to see this become popular, there needs to be a clear statement that you can link to. (It should make a clear distinction between the rule and the commentary/justification for the rule.)

I don't think it is trying to become popular, it is just a cultural artifact of the Internet as it existed in the 1990s. Enough influential people in tech today were on that mailing list at the time that the reference and idea is still known to some people even though the mailing list is long gone. The only reason I know about it is that I was there (virtually) when it happened.

Its descendant lives on: http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/

It's not about making something popular. It's about improving your own life. If you think someone's not telling you something because they're afraid you'll react emotionally, then by declaring your intention not to do so, you give them free reign to tell you things.

You don't need this to be popular. In fact, the lack of the idea's popularity may be advantageous. You get a chance to extract marginal information over what other people will get from the same person.

It's pretty much:

- What are you thinking about?

- I can't tell you. You'll laugh.

- I promise I won't.

- Okay, it's this thing.

http://www.sl4.org/crocker.html

I think this is it (i.e., the actual rule(s?)):

> By declaring commitment to Crocker's rules, one authorizes other debaters to optimize their messages for information, even when this entails that emotional feelings will be disregarded.

IIUC, the article is just worded rather confusingly.

They're in the article, and the original post is linked at the end.

Here is Crocker's Wikipedia user page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lee_Daniel_Crocker

Also the discussion page on LessWrong is pretty interesting: https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Talk:Crocker's_rules

Safe spaces disable free speech so you do not upset others.

Crocker's rules state you cannot be upset to enable free speech.

Said more clearly, declaring Crocker's Rules informs everyone else that they need not fear offending you if they wish to share controversial opinions.

E.g. an elderly person may declare Crocker's Rules during a discussion on the utility vs. cost of the elderly in society, such that younger people feel comfortable speaking openly against Medicare, etc.

You didn't actually read it. Only the listener can declare they're operating on Crocker's rules. You can't just unilaterally declare that nobody can be offended by anything you say.

I think in the GP's post, "you" = "the listener", not the other member of the conversation.

Yes, exactly.

I did read it. Would it be better if I rephrased it:

Crocker's rules state one's self cannot be upset to enable free speech.

I think you're misinterpreting the comment.

If you think gp is misinterpreting, perhaps attempt to rephrase it so they might better understand?

"Invoking Crocker's rules means choosing to state that you cannot be upset because you want to enable free speech."

Crocker's rules states that one commits oneself to not being offended. It does not say what one can or cannot do; it's not a rule that binds, it's a disposition one adopts (contrary to how the GP clearly views it).

Is there evidence that this is effective?

Considering the rule is only self-imposed, it's pretty self-selective.

"Crocker emphasized, repeatedly, in Wikipedia discourse and elsewhere, that one could only adopt Crocker's rules to apply to oneself, and could not impose them on a debate or forum with participants who had not opted-in explicitly to these rules, nor use them to exclude any participant."

In essence, it's a rule about how you allow people communicate to you, rather than how you communicate with others.

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