Critique of fuzzy intuitions and impressions and feelings often involves fuzzy intuitions and impressions and feelings, I think- and if this stuff is restricted in critique but not in top level content it makes top level content involving fuzzy intuitions and impressions and feelings hard to critique, despite I think being exactly the content which needs critiquing the most.
If I’ve given the impression that I object to and want to restrict fuzziness itself, then I’d like to clarify and reverse that impression ASAP. I think it’s entirely possible to do fuzzy intuitions and impressions and feelings in a high-quality, high-epistemic way, and I think it’s a critical part of the overall ecosystem of ideas; as an example I’d point to ~the entire corpus of work written by Anna Salamon.
I don’t think there’s a conflict between freedom of fuzziness and high standards; the key is to flag things. If it’s an intuition, note that it’s an intuition; if there’s no formal argumentation behind it, note that; if you think it would be resistant to update and also think that’s correct, just be open about that up front. That way, people who want to engage know what they’re dealing with, and know which lines of approach will be useful versus which will be futile.
A sort of cheesy, empty example, since I’m trying to come up with it on the fly and there’s no actual topic at hand:
I don’t know, I don’t really have arguments to back this up, but I’m getting the sense that there’s a very large and powerful dynamic in play in this situation that no one has pointed at or addressed. Like, when I imagine a world where we’ve fully solved all four of the problems that USERFACE has pointed out, I still get a deep, sinking, doomy feeling in my stomach. This is just intuition, but it’s pretty strong, and I’m wondering if anybody else has thoughts in that direction.
If I’ve given the impression that I object to and want to restrict fuzziness itself, then I’d like to clarify and reverse that impression ASAP. I think it’s entirely possible to do fuzzy intuitions and impressions and feelings in a high-quality, high-epistemic way, and I think it’s a critical part of the overall ecosystem of ideas; as an example I’d point to ~the entire corpus of work written by Anna Salamon.
I don’t think there’s a conflict between freedom of fuzziness and high standards; the key is to flag things. If it’s an intuition, note that it’s an intuition; if there’s no formal argumentation behind it, note that; if you think it would be resistant to update and also think that’s correct, just be open about that up front. That way, people who want to engage know what they’re dealing with, and know which lines of approach will be useful versus which will be futile.
A sort of cheesy, empty example, since I’m trying to come up with it on the fly and there’s no actual topic at hand:
I’d upvote a comment like that in a heartbeat.