
Crocker's rules - Tomte
https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Crocker%27s_rules
======
headconnect
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.

~~~
jandrewrogers
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.

~~~
afarrell
> 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?

~~~
CamperBob2
It's basically a rephrasing of Jon Postel's dictum. "Be liberal in what you
accept, and conservative in what you send."

~~~
prodigal_erik
It invites others to _stop_ being conservative in what they send to you.

~~~
CamperBob2
Yep, that's an unfortunate side effect in both cases. It can encourage sloppy
coding and sloppy rhetoric.

~~~
inimino
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.

~~~
CamperBob2
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.

~~~
inimino
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.

------
danharaj
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.

~~~
rtpg
> 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.

~~~
lucio
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.

~~~
rtpg
\- 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.

~~~
icebraining
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.

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

~~~
jandrewrogers
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.)

~~~
skybrian
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.)

~~~
jandrewrogers
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.

~~~
michael_nielsen
Its descendant lives on: [http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-
chat/](http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/)

------
dorianm
Here is Crocker's Wikipedia user page:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lee_Daniel_Crocker](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](https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Talk:Crocker's_rules)

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

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

~~~
empath75
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.

~~~
Pitarou
I think you're misinterpreting the comment.

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

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

------
canjobear
Is there evidence that this is effective?

~~~
jasonlotito
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.

