I'd seen this once before and then forgotten about it. Thanks for mentioning it here again!
Are you aware of any kind of backlash, where non-parties to a letter exchange harshly criticize one or both participants, or your platform, for engaging in the exchange at all?
One thing that I notice in your platform somehow is a sort of I-Thou dynamic (maybe just because people are addressing each other cordially, or even affectionately, in the second person?) and not an I-It ("look at that losery loser over there with the super-dumb beliefs!"). Surely that militates against tribalism -- and surely some people are mad that some of the conversations are happening at all? ("Why is this person/platform legitimizing this terrible person by having this letter exchange?" or something.)
Are you afraid that you'll be tempted to refuse certain letter exchanges because their topics are too intense or too taboo somehow, or because you're not sure the participants are interacting in good faith? Are you sort of at peace with the prospect of having to make that judgment?
How are people finding the platform and finding each other? Are you reaching out to them based on their prior reputations? Is someone suggesting your site to pairs of people who've been in social media fights, or seemed to be on the verge of them? Are people finding it themselves by word of mouth?
How many of the participants do you think have some kind of celebrity or substantial following outside of your site? Do you think that makes things better or worse in some way?
How do these exchanges compare to, say, a podcast video interview? (I did an SSC adversarial collaboration last year and my collaborator, and now friend, later interviewed me for his podcast, which felt like a pretty nice format too.)
Thanks for your kind words and insightful questions, schoen.
Are you aware of any kind of backlash, where non-parties to a letter exchange harshly criticize one or both participants, or your platform, for engaging in the exchange at all?
Yes, on rare occasions. Helen Pluckrose and Kathleen Stock both experience a backlash on Twitter for participating in their dialogue on trans/gender issues. Interestingly, they both reported that the backlash was predominantly from their own audience/tribe. Neither of them were particularly bothered by it.
A criticism I’ve heard with regards to the platform is that it appears to be aligned or associated with the Intellectual Dark Web. This is true to the extent that we strongly value free speech and good faith dialectic, but we don’t have loyalties to any particular group, and we welcome (and are actively trying to host) conversations with people from all sides of the ideological and political spectrum.
One thing that I notice in your platform somehow is a sort of I-Thou dynamic… Surely that militates against tribalism”
Thanks for noticing. We’ve put a lot of effort into nudging writers to engage in good faith. Little things seem to have a big effect. For example, the default text on the letter writing page is “Dear NAME,”.
surely some people are mad that some of the conversations are happening at all? ("Why is this person/platform legitimizing this terrible person by having this letter exchange?"
This hasn’t been a significant issue, but I’m sure we’ll see more of this as we grow. It’s not something we’re particularly worried about; my co-founders and I are happy to defend the primacy of free speech and the importance of dialogue.
Are you afraid that you'll be tempted to refuse certain letter exchanges because their topics are too intense or too taboo somehow,
...or because you're not sure the participants are interacting in good faith? Are you sort of at peace with the prospect of having to make that judgment?
We fully support writers' freedom of speech, and we do not censor content or ban users unless legally or ethically necessary (child porn, doxxing, fraud, and direct & credible threats of violence). If we’re convinced that a writer is acting in bad faith we’ll flag their account, and their content will only appear on their own profile.
How are people finding the platform and finding each other? Are you reaching out to them based on their prior reputations? Is someone suggesting your site to pairs of people who've been in social media fights, or seemed to be on the verge of them? Are people finding it themselves by word of mouth?
It’s a mix of all of these. When we launched, a little over a year ago, all of the conversations were initiated by me or someone on my team reaching out to writers. Now, the vast majority of our conversations happen organically: writers typically discover Letter via conversations shared to Twitter, and they invite other writers by starting conversations with them. We still do outreach, but limit our attention to high status writers.
How many of the participants do you think have some kind of celebrity or substantial following outside of your site? Do you think that makes things better or worse in some way?
The majority of our most popular writers have a following on Twitter, but our average writer doesn’t. Popular writers help with distribution, and the quality of their writing tends to be higher. As you might guess, there’s a strong correlation between the quality and expertise of a writer, and their popularity.
How do these exchanges compare to, say, a podcast video interview?
Good question. There are pros and cons to both formats. Audio is great because a lot of meaning is conveyed in tone, inflection, etc, and you often get a better sense of a speakers’ personality. The cons are that the conversation comes at you at the speed of mouth, and there’s a pressure to respond promptly. Podcast guests often feel a performative pressure, and they might misspeak, or convey an idea or argument less eloquently than they might’ve otherwise. Letter conversations, being asynchronous and written, provides writers the time to fully consider and understand their interlocutor’s position before responding, and enables them to present their best possible argument.
I did an SSC adversarial collaboration last year and my collaborator, and now friend, later interviewed me for his podcast, which felt like a pretty nice format too.
We’re currently exploring this format: a Letter conversation followed by a moderated, digital live event, which is live streamed and recorded. Our vision for Letter is to be the best place for conversation in any medium.
FYI, two of our writers, Buster Benson and BJ Campbell used Letter to flesh out their SSC Adversarial Collaboration submission on gun policy: https://letter.wiki/conversation/129
Since you are the creator of the site, I just wanted to ask you to reconsider your position on anonymity. There are so many interesting ideas to be had, but bad actors could take quotes out of context and end up wiping out a twitter storm, or people could fear that this happens (or may happen, people have been canceled for things they said years ago) and so not use the site.
Anonymity has a bad rep, so we could just consider it the Chatham house rule online - you could require a real name account but only show letters under pseudonym.
The "gender critical" discussion, for example, contains Helen Pluckrose, one of the originators of the "grievance studies" paper, and Kathleen Stock, who got fired from being a philosophy professor for being anti-trans. Both of them take the anti-trans position.
If you consider Helen Pluckrose to be anti-trans, I worry that means you haven't actually read any of her writing on trans people, and rather only heard her opinions filtered through her very vocal and vitriolic critics from the critical theory swathe of twitter - and I certainly doubt you've seen the vast amount of vitriol thrown at her on a regular basis by gender crits either.
I'm not going to link any of the vitriol because it's mindless and horrible, but she gets called "a traitor to women" and told she wants her daughter to be raped on a fairly regular basis by such people.
To understand Helen's actual position, I recommend people read this:
It's somewhat long and somewhat nuanced, which means most extreme activists at both ends of the argument hate it, but I'd claim that it is, overall, very much more pro-trans than otherwise and the majority of trans people I'm aware of who've read it came away with the same impression.
That's a shockingly ignorant article, particularly when it comes to nonbinary people — it even uses "transtrenders" to try and separate the good, gender-conforming trans people from those icky blue-haired weirdos.
Thank you for confirming that Pluckrose is in fact deeply transphobic. If you think that is "nuanced" you are seriously mistaken. Consider re-evaluating your priors, in SSC speak.
The complete failure to understand enbies is, indeed, unfortunate.
I stand by my estimate that it gets a lot more right than it gets wrong, however.
My priors are based on conversations with a bunch of trans people; a mere assertion of "shocking ignorance" and "transphobia" largely leaves me thinking that you're so certain of your correctness you don't believe arguments need to even be made, which is not a position I can really rebut.
However, I shared the article, unfortunate parts and all, such that people can draw their own conclusions, and I'd continue to invite people to read and decide for themselves.
It is not just "unfortunate", it betrays their actual views, which is that we should be ready to sacrifice people's lives on the altar of patriarchal gender norms.
A lot of the more polite bigots will be comfortable making concessions to the trans people who conform to patriarchal roles (and hey, good on Pluckrose for being slightly less bad than charlatans like Stock) but will have knives out for anyone whose existence challenges them. This is a problem.
The only way to true gender liberation is through abolishing the patriarchy.
> It is not just "unfortunate", it betrays their actual views, which is that we should be ready to sacrifice people's lives on the altar of patriarchal gender norms.
Helen is hardly gender role essentialist and in fact quite substantially non-conforming to many female gender norms and visibly proud to be her.
To assume that her failure (as of the time of writing, at least) to comprehend non-binary identities "betrays" anything except a lack of comprehension is ... unfounded, at best.
This comment would appear to be a paradigmatic example of non-nuanced. Neither of those people is anti-trans except according to a narrowly doctrinaire definition. Pluckrose is a left-liberal who writes against critical theory and identity politics from a universalist liberal perspective. She has repeatedly written in defense of trans and gay rights, although she does not believe that "trans women can be accepted straightforwardly as women in every situation". Stock is a feminist philosopher who regards gender self-identity as potentially harmful to the interests of women. Both of these are reasonable and nuanced positions that can't be adequately summarized as "anti-trans" whether or not you agree with them.
> Neither of those people is anti-trans except according to a narrowly doctrinaire definition.
They certainly aren't "pro" trans either, though. The point wasn't whether or not they were extremists, it's whether they were representative speakers for ALL the relevant perspectives. And they clearly aren't.
How seriously this crowd takes her says a lot about its own values and methods.
edit: as a parody of the sort of meta-level discussion that is more concerned with intellectually bogus, self-absorbed notions of "truth" and "nuance" than the lives of actual human beings, the response is peerless. Well done!
As a parody of the type of nuance-free ideologically driven commentary under discussion, this is peerless. You managed to efficiently cram accusations of fraud and fascism alongside guilt by association and misrepresentation in very few words. Well done!
Edit: it’s a shame you decided to edit your post after I responded. The new version is not quite as successful.
This looks interesting, I do enjoy the way you've structured it to be 1v1, allowing for minority opinions to be presented without the typical distributed-gish-gallop that online discussions can be.
Wow, I had this exact idea just the other day. Letter writing is such an ideal format for nuanced discussion, particularly as it conveys the personal perspective and human element behind one’s ideas. Congrats on making it real.
I will consider signing up, but I strongly resist using my own image as avatar, despite using my real name. Is there nuance to your policy there?
Lastly, your site is not well mobile optimized (iphone SE). The left menu should be collapsed or wrapped vertically inline.
What a curiously interesting site. The back and forth format, yet being long form and asynchronous, encourages real discussion. I haven't seen this level of even-handed replies in quite a while.
Scott would be allowed to use a pseudonym - from our FAQs:
Do I have to use my real name?
Yes, please. We also ask that your profile picture is a photo of yourself.
Anonymity tends to spoil the quality of online discourse, and we’re working to prevent that on Letter. Accounts which do not represent a real person may be muted: their letters will appear only on their own profile page. Exceptions are made when anonymity is necessary, eg: political/religious dissidents, whistleblowers, etc.
Your site seems a very useful and constructive contribution to good faith discussion
However I feel that this particular policy is going to discourage some reasonable and informed people from discussing topics which may get them fired or mobbed on social media, etc.
That you have contributors who will take that risk is not the same as opening the opportunity to everybody including those who will not.
Your take on anonymity is opinion but stated as fact; obviously there are negatives of the abusive "keyboard warrior" type, but it also enables people who might have unpopular or "incorrect" opinions to voice them fearlessly and honestly.
In supposedly liberal democracies it is not clear how to claim "political dissident" status - what are the criteria?
The emphasis should be on civility and good faith, not whether or not they are confident to use their real name in a public space.
Are you aware of any kind of backlash, where non-parties to a letter exchange harshly criticize one or both participants, or your platform, for engaging in the exchange at all?
One thing that I notice in your platform somehow is a sort of I-Thou dynamic (maybe just because people are addressing each other cordially, or even affectionately, in the second person?) and not an I-It ("look at that losery loser over there with the super-dumb beliefs!"). Surely that militates against tribalism -- and surely some people are mad that some of the conversations are happening at all? ("Why is this person/platform legitimizing this terrible person by having this letter exchange?" or something.)
Are you afraid that you'll be tempted to refuse certain letter exchanges because their topics are too intense or too taboo somehow, or because you're not sure the participants are interacting in good faith? Are you sort of at peace with the prospect of having to make that judgment?
How are people finding the platform and finding each other? Are you reaching out to them based on their prior reputations? Is someone suggesting your site to pairs of people who've been in social media fights, or seemed to be on the verge of them? Are people finding it themselves by word of mouth?
How many of the participants do you think have some kind of celebrity or substantial following outside of your site? Do you think that makes things better or worse in some way?
How do these exchanges compare to, say, a podcast video interview? (I did an SSC adversarial collaboration last year and my collaborator, and now friend, later interviewed me for his podcast, which felt like a pretty nice format too.)