Unwanted criticism is problematic

[Lebowski]

Topic Summary: Response to a comment in rules about unwanted criticism in unbounded. Explanation of my tentative reasoning and conclusion regarding what CF category I should mostly post in for the near term.

Goal: Figure out the best category for most of my CF posting in the near term.

Why are you posting this in Unbounded? Because I don’t want to make it more difficult for people to respond by placing limits on what they can say.

Do you want unbounded criticism? (A criticism is a reason that an idea decisively fails at a goal. Criticism can be about anything relevant to goal success, including methods, meta, context or tangents. If you think a line of discussion isn’t worth focusing attention on, that is a disagreement with the person who posted it, which can be discussed.) No.

@Elliot

As far as the category rules , if you consent to unbounded criticism responses (and do not request bounds on criticism ) then I guess it should be technically allowed to make a topic in Unbounded. But giving you criticism that you don’t want sounds problematic for both you and them.

I agree people giving me criticism I don’t want is problematic for both me and them.

However, Ingracke’s argument convinced me that posting mostly in friendly is also problematic for me and others:

@ingracke

Posting in “friendly” just makes it harder for other people to engage with you and deal with your errors because they have to be more careful about how they point out their errors and what they bring up.

It is OK to point out actual contradictions in people’s arguments in “friendly”. So posting there wouldn’t have stopped this kind of error from being pointed out.

The thing I try to be careful with in “friendly” is stuff like pointing out ongoing patterns of behaviour, which is a more meta issue.

So posting in “friendly” might protect you from certain kinds of criticism. But it actually makes it harder for other people to engage with you at all, since you make these kinds of errors as a pattern, and it is hard to figure out how to deal with that without bringing in unwanted meta.

I think the above statement also applies at least to the “Other” category and probably “Projects” as well. I have another problem with “Projects” anyway, which is that I’m not currently very interested in doing structured, organized attempts to achieve goals like learning. So most of what I want to post wouldn’t fit there.

So I think all current CF categories are problematic for me. I also don’t know of a new category I could suggest that would not be problematic. I also think not posting would be problematic.

So I don’t know any non-problematic course of action wrt my CF posting. Given that, the next question I consider is which problems am I willing to accept in the near term / until I think of something better?

It wasn’t identical, but I think the old FI list was most like the Unbounded CF category. And I think the old FI list generally worked OK for me despite me having some problems there.

Also the general idea of restricting the possibly true, relevant things others can say in response to my posts seems quite bad to me even in the short term, especially as a general policy. Even if I don’t want them, I think people should be allowed to say them.

The unbounded category seems like what makes CF unique/special. Every other forum I know of has implicit and often explicit rules making them more like “friendly” or even more restrictive. Especially given my lack of interest in structured/organized CF learning projects, if I just want friendly random discussions I should probably do that elsewhere.

I like the idea of wanting unbounded criticism even though I know I don’t currently, actually want it.

So it seems like posting in unbounded despite not wanting unbounded criticism is an acceptable option despite being problematic, whereas the other categories are not.

The template helps in this situation, because answering no to the explicit question about wanting unbounded criticism helps make people aware / reminded of what’s going on.

[JustinCEO]

@Lebowski

@Elliot

As far as the category rules , if you consent to unbounded criticism responses (and do not request bounds on criticism ) then I guess it should be technically allowed to make a topic in Unbounded. But giving you criticism that you don’t want sounds problematic for both you and them.

I agree people giving me criticism I don’t want is problematic for both me and them.

One thought I had is if you make the situation (that you consent to, but don’t really want, unbounded criticism) clear, that is helpful to other people. It helps them judge how much they should “invest” in the topic, how much you’ll appreciate stuff, etc. It also helps you to be clear about this, cuz if you don’t get a lot of engagement on a topic you make, you should have some sense of why that might be (so being clear helps calibrate your expectations better and understand what’s going on). So even though it’s a problematic situation and not great, being clear and upfront about it is still helpful and good for all.

[JustinCEO]

@Lebowski

I have another problem with “Projects” anyway, which is that I’m not currently very interested in doing structured, organized attempts to achieve goals like learning. So most of what I want to post wouldn’t fit there.

You should consider trying a tiny micro project (NOT a big commitment) and seeing how that goes. IIRC Elliot recommends trying something small. I’ve run into some issues that are interesting (like I had the damnedest time filling out the template for the first time!)

[JustinCEO]

@Lebowski

The template helps in this situation, because answering no to the explicit question about wanting unbounded criticism helps make people aware / reminded of what’s going on.

Yeah