I agree with all of this, until the last sentence.
When my friend tells me “come on, jump in the cold water”, I’m not going to do it. (In fact, I’m less likely to do it than if my friend weren’t trying to pressure me to do it.) Not because I’m “setting a boundary”, but because I don’t want to. Is the real issue that I’m a coward? Well, you know what, if you (the general “you”, which could be my friend, or a bystander, or whoever) want to conclude that I’m a coward, that’s fine. You conclude that. I will consider that question in my own time and in my own way. But I’m still not jumping in the water, and you can’t make me.
In short: totally, be a human, but humans definitely sometimes just don’t want to do things, and don’t do those things, because they don’t want to do them, period. And that’s their right. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
Alright. I will approach the question obliquely, if you please…
First, consider this old comment by Benquo, which likewise addresses the question of whether the “30 mins” line was insulting:
If Said is insulted by your clarity about how much time you’re investing in interpretive labor, then I think this is evidence that Said’s sense of offense is not value-aligned with good discourse. If someone put a note like that on a response to a comment by me, I’d feel like they were making an effort to be metacooperative. 30 minutes is a long time for a single comment!
Now, for one thing, this is wrong for basic “confusing a conflict for a mistake” sorts of reasons—but that’s uninteresting. More to the point, it’s wrong because it implies that someone spending 30 minutes writing a comment is somehow a positive thing. But (as I’ve written about, on many occasions) in fact, effort invested in something (and in writing especially) is completely worthless. Indeed it’s worse than worthless—it’s a negative! Effort is a cost, not a benefit. Maybe you’re “buying” something useful with your effort and maybe you aren’t, but whatever you end up with, it would’ve been better if you had acquired it “more cheaply”. A comment that you spent 30 minutes on is strictly worse than that same comment if you’d been able to write it in 15 seconds.
That is—it’s worse for you. For your readers, it’s neither better nor worse (except instrumentally and probabilistically, insofar as the longer you spend writing any given comment, or doing any given thing, the less likely it is that you’ll be able to produce more and other value, since you’ll have less time left to do so; so in that sense, it’s worse for your readers too—but otherwise, they have no reason to care).
We can see that it makes no sense at all to treat “having spent some time writing a comment” as a gift to one’s interlocutor. There’s no benefit which accrues to anyone from you having spent some amount of time writing a comment. So reporting “time spent writing a comment” can’t be thought of as calling attention to such a benefit.
Well, we’ve seen that time spent writing is actually a cost, so a report like this is in fact reporting a cost. (Right away we can consult our intuitions, and ask: suppose that someone gives you a gift, and as they hand it to you, they pointedly mention how much it cost them. What would you think of a person who did this? … but that is only an intuition pump, not an argument.)
Alright, so what exactly is wrong with reporting a cost like this?
A principle that I consider to be of critical importance is that we ought not allow people to reduce or eliminate their responsibility by outsourcing it. Crucially, this includes the outsourcing of responsibility to one’s other selves.
If the one says “I was just following orders, so blame those who gave the orders”—this is no excuse, right? You were following orders—but you chose to follow orders! (“I had no real choice” is a valid excuse, of course—but a completely different excuse.) If the one says “I had those moral views because I trusted such-and-such spiritual authorities, so blame them and not me”—this too is no excuse; you chose to trust those people! Likewise with “I can’t do that, because our policy forbids it”—yet who else but you decided to have that policy? And so on… this is all standard stuff. But I say that precisely the same principle applies when the one says “I can’t do that, because I have precommitted to not doing that”. We should reject this excuse just as forcefully as we do the others, and say: “who else but you decided that?” Precommitments, self-imposed rules, and the like, should never mitigate one’s responsibility for one’s actions.
Now suppose that we regularly exchange gifts (birthday and holiday presents, etc.), but one day I announce that I’m precommitting to spending $500 more on buying you gifts, and nothing more thereafter. Some months later, I hand you a birthday present and say “this one cost me $100, which exhausts that $500 limit I’d mentioned, so you’ll get nothing more from me ever again, sorry”. According to the principle outlined above, this is equivalent to me simply saying, one day, “I’ve decided to never buy you any gifts ever again”.
Obviously, this is not exactly something that you’d expect to hear in the course of a relationship that is going well.
The “I plan to spend only X more time on this discussion”, and the “I have spent Y time on this comment” follow-ups, are saying: “I am doing you a favor by engaging in this discussion with you (in contrast to the usual situation, where we are both freely choosing to participate in a discussion, for various reasons of our own); and to emphasize how gracious I am being, how appreciative you should be, and how much it’s costing me to do you this favor, I will remind you of those costs with each comment”. Then, when the self-imposed limit is reached, the one saying these things now gets to avoid the normal expectations about replying to relevant questions, the normal conclusions that readers might reach when they observe lack of response to relevant comments, etc., by pointing to said limit—“sorry, I wish I could reply, but I just can’t; the limit, you know”.
(“Hey, does Alice not like you anymore or something? She didn’t get you anything for your birthday this year…” “Oh, that’s just because she precommitted to not getting me any more gifts ever again after reaching a certain defined limit of money spent on gifts for me.” “But… that’s worse. You get how that’s worse, right?”)
In short, the message is “I’m doing you a favor here, and I have a fixed budget of favors for you; and this favor is very valuable—see that you don’t forget what it’s costing me!”. This is a stance that one takes toward one’s social inferiors, never toward equals.
Secure feels like the wrong word here.
Which line(s) are you referring to? This word isn’t central in the post so I’m confused.
But it’s right in the tweet? The one that your post opens with? It’s in there twice in the space of two sentences.
See the end of this comment. (If you are still confused about my stance on this after reading that bit, then I will explain in greater detail.)
You were still making a statement about Ben’s assessment of Zack, which is still kind of weird to disagree-react to
I was disagreeing with Ben’s assessment of Zack. There’s nothing weird about that. Rather odd to claim otherwise, frankly.
you are still very obviously mistaken as almost everyone who has interacted with Zack, at least within the past few years, would be very likely to attest
Sure, they can attest all they like, that’s their right. Nevertheless, I disagree. (I don’t put much stock in majoritarianism.) That’s what the react is for, right? Disagreeing? You have an assessment of Zack’s behavior; I have a different assessment of Zack’s behavior. (I don’t even know if Zack agrees with my assessment of Zack’s behavior. I certainly haven’t asked him about it. The react was an expression of my assessment, not anyone else’s.)
I like Zack, but it’s very obvious that in conversations he has lots and lots of feelings barely contained (and indeed, he says so frequently)
That’s as may be. The claim was “barely able to contain strongly emotional and hostile outbursts”. I’ve seen no evidence of any “hostile outbursts” or “barely contained” “hostile outbursts” or any such thing.
1Replying to @habryka’s recent comment here, because I am currently rate-limited to 1 comment per day and can’t reply in situ:
I think you have never interacted with either Ben or Zack in person!
You are mistaken.
(Why would I disagree-react with a statement about how someone behaves in person if I’d never met them in person? Have you ever known me to make factual claims based on no evidence whatsoever…? Really, now!)
Yes, of course. I both remember and agree wholeheartedly. (And @habryka’s reply in a sibling comment seems to me to be almost completely non-responsive to this point.)
Nope.
Yep, absolutely they do, but that doesn’t change anything.
It sets a bad precedent and encourages annoying and bad behavior. Far better to be known as the person who can’t be pressured into things.