sweenesm

I’m relatively new to lesswrong.com, but it seems to be a site where there’s a strong tendency for people to actually be respectful to each other in the comments, even when they disagree. How do we promote more of that in the world in general, where people seem less committed to rationality? I have a couple of thoughts on where to start. The Dignity Index The Dignity Index, started by Tim Shriver (Chairman of Special Olympics), is a way of rating communication with scores from 1 to 8, with 1 on the level of “let’s kill them all,” and 8 basically being “I hate no one and value everyone.” Students who learned how to rate communication using this scale reportedly became more conscious of how they themselves were communicating, and this led some to change their behaviors. What might happen if it were standard practice to teach all students how to rate our interactions this way (and that "policing" interactions this way scores low on The Dignity Index itself)? Also, one could envision The Dignity Index rating applied, through machine learning, to social media posts, with users being able to filter for posts and comments above some minimum Dignity Index level that they choose. I don’t know how much actual impact this could have on social media civility, but it seems like an interesting thing to try. The key thing I think needs to happen for The Dignity Index to catch on is for more people to become aware of it (hence, this post). Anger Trigger Elimination Course for the Masses Removing anger from “below the surface” of conversations could have a huge effect on making dialogue generally more productive, I believe. And techniques do exist to help people “remove” their anger triggers. I’m not talking about classic “anger management” (breathing, etc.) - I’m referring to actual removal of impulses to get angry when specific things (“triggers”) happen. The best online course I’ve found for this thus far is "Anger - Complete freedom from anger forever” by Angela Hardy on