I am confused, and I do not have enough energy to figure this out. So I will just wait and see what happens.
After Ben’s post, everything seemed obvious. After the response from Nonlinear, everything seems obvious again. I wonder if it is possible that a third post (and fourth etc.) will flip the consensus again.
I wish that someone who only cares about technical details would go through the claims made in the original article, and made a list of: what exactly was claimed, what exactly was refuted, and how are these two related. To distinguish “X was clearly refuted by evidence Y” from “it is quite possible for X and Y to be simultaneously true” and maybe some other options.
(EDIT: This comment does it well; I would like to see Ben’s response specifically to it.)
I have this weird feeling (and feel weird about admitting it) that the response from Nonlinear sometimes felt too good. Not sure if I can explain it. It’s like… if one guy says “they paid me $1000” and the other guy says “no, we paid him $2000″, then my brain will generate possibilities like: maybe it was $1000, maybe it was $2000, and maybe it was something in between and both sides are exaggerating—all three options seem plausible. But if instead one guy says “they paid me $1000” and the other guy says “actually, we gave him control over our entire budget of $1,000,000 and told him ‘dude, take as much as you like, even all if you want, we don’t mind’”, then my brain just refuses to generate possibilities and assign probabilities, and just displays an error message. (And yes, I am aware that this is exactly the kind of bullshit story someone who simply refuses to update on clear evidence would make up. It is also how a genuine “something is wrong but I can’t figure out what” feels like.)
I have this weird feeling (and feel weird about admitting it) that the response from Nonlinear sometimes felt too good.
One explanation is that you have this weird feeling because many problems turn out to be honest misunderstandings, and a response that is too good rules out the possibility that there’s been an honest misunderstanding. Realizing that being charitable is not an option and that you are forced to believe that one of the two sides is a liar (or out of touch enough that they may as well be a liar) is 1) unpleasant, and 2) rare.
I am confused, and I do not have enough energy to figure this out. So I will just wait and see what happens.
After Ben’s post, everything seemed obvious. After the response from Nonlinear, everything seems obvious again. I wonder if it is possible that a third post (and fourth etc.) will flip the consensus again.
I wish that someone who only cares about technical details would go through the claims made in the original article, and made a list of: what exactly was claimed, what exactly was refuted, and how are these two related. To distinguish “X was clearly refuted by evidence Y” from “it is quite possible for X and Y to be simultaneously true” and maybe some other options.
(EDIT: This comment does it well; I would like to see Ben’s response specifically to it.)
I have this weird feeling (and feel weird about admitting it) that the response from Nonlinear sometimes felt too good. Not sure if I can explain it. It’s like… if one guy says “they paid me $1000” and the other guy says “no, we paid him $2000″, then my brain will generate possibilities like: maybe it was $1000, maybe it was $2000, and maybe it was something in between and both sides are exaggerating—all three options seem plausible. But if instead one guy says “they paid me $1000” and the other guy says “actually, we gave him control over our entire budget of $1,000,000 and told him ‘dude, take as much as you like, even all if you want, we don’t mind’”, then my brain just refuses to generate possibilities and assign probabilities, and just displays an error message. (And yes, I am aware that this is exactly the kind of bullshit story someone who simply refuses to update on clear evidence would make up. It is also how a genuine “something is wrong but I can’t figure out what” feels like.)
One explanation is that you have this weird feeling because many problems turn out to be honest misunderstandings, and a response that is too good rules out the possibility that there’s been an honest misunderstanding. Realizing that being charitable is not an option and that you are forced to believe that one of the two sides is a liar (or out of touch enough that they may as well be a liar) is 1) unpleasant, and 2) rare.