“Interest In Conflict Is Instrumentally Convergent” by Screwtape

Why is conflict resolution hard?

I talk to a lot of event organizers and community managers. Handling conflict is consistently one of the things they find the most stressful, difficult, or time consuming. Why is that?

Or, to ask a related question: Why is the ACX Meetups Czar, tasked with collecting and dispersing best practices for meetups, spending so much time writing about social conflict? This essay is not the whole answer, but it is one part of why this is a hard problem.

Short answer: Because interest in conflict resolution is instrumentally convergent. Both helpful and unhelpful people have reason to express strong opinions on how conflict is handled.

Please take as a given that there exists (as a minimum) one bad actor with an interest in showing up to (as a minimum) one in-person group.

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See, a funny thing about risk teams: the list of [...]

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The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
May 9th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qyykn5G9EKKLbQg22/interest-in-conflict-is-instrumentally-convergent

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.