It would be a more accurate title, but it would then have even less to do with the bulk of the actual article, which is not about futurists’ track records but about the prospects for resurrecting the dead.
In any case, suppose you wanted to expand on your remarks about UAPs. You might begin by arguing that the US military is generally trustworthy, wouldn’t ever release doctored footage to spread misinformation, is full of people capable of finding good “normal” explanations for things when they exist, etc.; then you might review some examples of UAP reports, possible explanations for them, and why you find some more credible than others; and finally you might put together the foregoing analysis to reach the conclusion: “We are being pranked by aliens”. (Note: my guess is that that is not in fact your position.)
Would you think a good title for that article would be “The US military is generally trustworthy”? I think that would be a bad title. If I read that article with that title I would think something like “This person chose a deliberately misleading title, probably because he knew that a title stating the actual thesis of the article would put people off. In future, if I read things he writes, I should expect rhetorical tricks and manipulation rather than straightforwardness.”
Maybe that’s unfair? I don’t think I really endorse the principle that the only honest way to title an article that argues for a particular thesis is for the title to be a brief statement of that thesis. But I do think that that’s the default thing to do with the title, and that if you do something else there should probably be a specific good reason, and if the only reason is “I think people won’t take me seriously if they know my actual opinion going in” then I think that’s a bad reason.
(Also, for what it’s worth, I don’t think the proposition that it may one day be possible to something-like-resurrect at least some of the dead is in fact one that would get you regarded as a crackpot around here, even though I am not at all convinced that you have made a good case for the particular version of that proposition your article argues for.)
>”You might begin by arguing that the US military is generally trustworthy, wouldn’t ever release doctored footage to spread misinformation”
When the government denied UAPs, the response was “it’s not officially real, the authorities have not verified it”. Now the government says it is real, and the response has shifted to “you trust the authorities??”
>”Would you think a good title for that article would be “The US military is generally trustworthy”? I think that would be a bad title”
See above. It’s always lose/lose with goalpost movers. This does make me wonder where you stand on vaccines, though. Trust government on vaccines, but not UAPs? I am 3x vaccinated, FWIW
>”then you might review some examples of UAP reports, possible explanations for them, and why you find some more credible than others”
I pay taxes so that this government agency can do that for me, much as I also do not pave the roads myself.
>”Maybe that’s unfair? I don’t think I really endorse the principle that the only honest way to title an article that argues for a particular thesis is for the title to be a brief statement of that thesis. But I do think that that’s the default thing to do with the title, and that if you do something else there should probably be a specific good reason, and if the only reason is “I think people won’t take me seriously if they know my actual opinion going in” then I think that’s a bad reason.”
My reason is that I am hungry. I like to eat hot food and sleep indoors. Under capitalism, this requires money. This article was originally written for Medium.com, a monetized blogging platform. It did not occur to me when copying it here that the cultures of these two sites might differ in a way that would change the reception of my writing based on the title, as I am new here.
>”(Also, for what it’s worth, I don’t think the proposition that it may one day be possible to something-like-resurrect at least some of the dead is in fact one that would get you regarded as a crackpot around here, even though I am not at all convinced that you have made a good case for the particular version of that proposition your article argues for.)”
That’s fine, I came here to argue recreationally, agreement defeats that aim.
You seem to have completely misunderstood the point of my UAP example, which was to point out something about titles, and not any of the other things you seem to have taken it to be. In particular:
I was not at all trying to argue for or against any particular view of what UAPs have what sort of explanation.
I was not at all making any claim about what an article about UAPs would contain, beyond (1) “I can imagine an article that covers roughly these points” and (2) “if so, I think X would be a poor title”.
I was not at all making any claim about what one should and shouldn’t trust any given bit of the government about.
I was not at all making any comment on the relative merits of trying to decide how to explain any particular UAP versus letting AOIMSG do it, though I’m a little puzzled by your comment since so far as I know the number of UAP-analyses AOIMSG has released so far is zero.
Yes, different places with different people and different incentives have different cultures. Maybe clickbait and misdirection are necessary when using Medium as a tool for extracting money from advertisers or readers. They will not go down well here.
Another thing that may not go down well here is if your goal in argument is recreation rather than truth-seeking. You’ve said several times that you came here looking for disagreement, but I don’t see any sign that any of that disagreement has caused you to reconsider anything even slightly.
Obviously my opinions on vaccines have precisely nothing to do with your article about resurrecting the dead, which is what this discussion was about before you 100% misunderstood an analogy I made. But, since you ask: I think vaccination is one of humanity’s greatest and most important inventions; I think the vast majority of concern about serious vaccine side-effects is grossly misplaced, and in many cases deliberately and dishonestly fostered by people who are happy to cause harm for financial or political gain; I think it’s likely that the COVID-19 vaccination programmes saved millions of lives; I think the error bars for these vaccines are much higher than for many others because they were developed and tested in a hurry, for a rapidly-mutating disease that hasn’t been around for long; it seems as if the benefits of booster doses may be fairly short-lived (and it’s not completely clear that they aren’t sometimes negative) and not reduce infectiousness very much; I have had three doses and will probably take a fourth when it is offered to me later this year; it might depend on whether I can get the bivalent version whIch I expect to be more beneficial and less likely sometimes-negative.
It would be a more accurate title, but it would then have even less to do with the bulk of the actual article, which is not about futurists’ track records but about the prospects for resurrecting the dead.
The former is necessary to establish the credibility of the latter imo
Possibly necessary, but not sufficient.
In any case, suppose you wanted to expand on your remarks about UAPs. You might begin by arguing that the US military is generally trustworthy, wouldn’t ever release doctored footage to spread misinformation, is full of people capable of finding good “normal” explanations for things when they exist, etc.; then you might review some examples of UAP reports, possible explanations for them, and why you find some more credible than others; and finally you might put together the foregoing analysis to reach the conclusion: “We are being pranked by aliens”. (Note: my guess is that that is not in fact your position.)
Would you think a good title for that article would be “The US military is generally trustworthy”? I think that would be a bad title. If I read that article with that title I would think something like “This person chose a deliberately misleading title, probably because he knew that a title stating the actual thesis of the article would put people off. In future, if I read things he writes, I should expect rhetorical tricks and manipulation rather than straightforwardness.”
Maybe that’s unfair? I don’t think I really endorse the principle that the only honest way to title an article that argues for a particular thesis is for the title to be a brief statement of that thesis. But I do think that that’s the default thing to do with the title, and that if you do something else there should probably be a specific good reason, and if the only reason is “I think people won’t take me seriously if they know my actual opinion going in” then I think that’s a bad reason.
(Also, for what it’s worth, I don’t think the proposition that it may one day be possible to something-like-resurrect at least some of the dead is in fact one that would get you regarded as a crackpot around here, even though I am not at all convinced that you have made a good case for the particular version of that proposition your article argues for.)
>”You might begin by arguing that the US military is generally trustworthy, wouldn’t ever release doctored footage to spread misinformation”
When the government denied UAPs, the response was “it’s not officially real, the authorities have not verified it”. Now the government says it is real, and the response has shifted to “you trust the authorities??”
>”Would you think a good title for that article would be “The US military is generally trustworthy”? I think that would be a bad title”
See above. It’s always lose/lose with goalpost movers. This does make me wonder where you stand on vaccines, though. Trust government on vaccines, but not UAPs? I am 3x vaccinated, FWIW
>”then you might review some examples of UAP reports, possible explanations for them, and why you find some more credible than others”
I pay taxes so that this government agency can do that for me, much as I also do not pave the roads myself.
>”Maybe that’s unfair? I don’t think I really endorse the principle that the only honest way to title an article that argues for a particular thesis is for the title to be a brief statement of that thesis. But I do think that that’s the default thing to do with the title, and that if you do something else there should probably be a specific good reason, and if the only reason is “I think people won’t take me seriously if they know my actual opinion going in” then I think that’s a bad reason.”
My reason is that I am hungry. I like to eat hot food and sleep indoors. Under capitalism, this requires money. This article was originally written for Medium.com, a monetized blogging platform. It did not occur to me when copying it here that the cultures of these two sites might differ in a way that would change the reception of my writing based on the title, as I am new here.
>”(Also, for what it’s worth, I don’t think the proposition that it may one day be possible to something-like-resurrect at least some of the dead is in fact one that would get you regarded as a crackpot around here, even though I am not at all convinced that you have made a good case for the particular version of that proposition your article argues for.)”
That’s fine, I came here to argue recreationally, agreement defeats that aim.
You seem to have completely misunderstood the point of my UAP example, which was to point out something about titles, and not any of the other things you seem to have taken it to be. In particular:
I was not at all trying to argue for or against any particular view of what UAPs have what sort of explanation.
I was not at all making any claim about what an article about UAPs would contain, beyond (1) “I can imagine an article that covers roughly these points” and (2) “if so, I think X would be a poor title”.
I was not at all making any claim about what one should and shouldn’t trust any given bit of the government about.
I was not at all making any comment on the relative merits of trying to decide how to explain any particular UAP versus letting AOIMSG do it, though I’m a little puzzled by your comment since so far as I know the number of UAP-analyses AOIMSG has released so far is zero.
Yes, different places with different people and different incentives have different cultures. Maybe clickbait and misdirection are necessary when using Medium as a tool for extracting money from advertisers or readers. They will not go down well here.
Another thing that may not go down well here is if your goal in argument is recreation rather than truth-seeking. You’ve said several times that you came here looking for disagreement, but I don’t see any sign that any of that disagreement has caused you to reconsider anything even slightly.
Obviously my opinions on vaccines have precisely nothing to do with your article about resurrecting the dead, which is what this discussion was about before you 100% misunderstood an analogy I made. But, since you ask: I think vaccination is one of humanity’s greatest and most important inventions; I think the vast majority of concern about serious vaccine side-effects is grossly misplaced, and in many cases deliberately and dishonestly fostered by people who are happy to cause harm for financial or political gain; I think it’s likely that the COVID-19 vaccination programmes saved millions of lives; I think the error bars for these vaccines are much higher than for many others because they were developed and tested in a hurry, for a rapidly-mutating disease that hasn’t been around for long; it seems as if the benefits of booster doses may be fairly short-lived (and it’s not completely clear that they aren’t sometimes negative) and not reduce infectiousness very much; I have had three doses and will probably take a fourth when it is offered to me later this year; it might depend on whether I can get the bivalent version whIch I expect to be more beneficial and less likely sometimes-negative.