FYI, I updated this post somewhat in response to some of your comments here (as well as some other commenters in other venues like FB and my workplace slack). The current set of updates is fairly small (adding a couple sentences and changing wordings). But there’s a higher level problem that I think requires reworking the post significantly. I’m probably just going to write a followup post optimized a bit differently.
In this post I was deliberately trying not to be too opinionated about which things “count as frame control”, “is frame control bad?” or whatnot. But a number of people either misinterpreted what I was saying, or just felt lost about what my thesis was.
A line that was originally in the post, I removed during an editing pass, and then added back in in-response to your comments was:
I’m not sure we should actually use the phrase – it seems easy to weaponize in unhelpful ways.
Which (I think?) was precisely the thing you were worried that this whole reification of frame control was pointed at. Part of the point of this post is that I disagreed with Aella’s framing, and don’t want to accidentally create a giant blob of stuff that gets vaguely tarred by “sometimes abusive people use this, so maybe it’s always Real Bad?”.
I changed the title to “Taboo ‘Frame Control’”, hoping to point more clearly in that direction.
I wrote the examples fairly quickly, and deliberately didn’t specify which things I thought were blameworthy in them (aiming to present them as more ‘raw data’ than ‘here’s a takeaway’), but, it does seem like a reasonable inference that if I’m bringing stuff up I maybe think it’s blameworthy, and to be on the lookout for that.
At the end of the day, my understanding is that you don’t really think frames are a useful concept in the first place, so I assume any analysis built on top of frames also won’t seem useful to you. So, I’m not really expecting there to be a version of this post you’d find satisfying, but I do hope to at least avoid the particular failure modes you seem most worried about.
At the end of the day, my understanding is that you don’t really think frames are a useful concept in the first place, so I assume any analysis built on top of frames also won’t seem useful to you.
This comment and (the last two paragraphs of) this comment may clarify my view on the matter somewhat.
So, I’m not really expecting there to be a version of this post you’d find satisfying
Well, quite frankly, I think that the version of this post that I’d find most satisfying is one that actually tabooed “frames” and “frame control”, while attempting to analyze what it is that motivates people to talk about such things as these discussions of “frame control” tend to describe (in the spirit of “dissolving questions” by asking what algorithm generates the question, rather than taking the question’s assumptions for granted).
Indeed, I found myself sufficiently impatient to read such a post that I wrote it myself…
I remain unconvinced that there’s anything further that’s worth saying about any of this that wouldn’t be best said by discarding the entire concept of “frame control”, and possibly even “frames”, starting from scratch, and seeing if there’s remains any motivation to say anything.
So, in that sense, yes, I think your characterization is more or less correct.
Yeah I do think writing a post that actually-tabooed-frame-control would be good. (The historical reason this post doesn’t do that is in large part because I initially wrote a different post, called “Distinctions in Frame Control”. realized that post didn’t quite have enough of a purpose, and sort of clarified my goal at the last minute and then hastily retrofitted the post to make it work.)
Indeed, I found myself sufficiently impatient to read such a post that I wrote it myself…
FWIW I did quite appreciate that comment. I may have more to say about it later, but regardless, I thought it was a good exercise I found helpful to think about.
FYI, I updated this post somewhat in response to some of your comments here (as well as some other commenters in other venues like FB and my workplace slack). The current set of updates is fairly small (adding a couple sentences and changing wordings). But there’s a higher level problem that I think requires reworking the post significantly. I’m probably just going to write a followup post optimized a bit differently.
In this post I was deliberately trying not to be too opinionated about which things “count as frame control”, “is frame control bad?” or whatnot. But a number of people either misinterpreted what I was saying, or just felt lost about what my thesis was.
A line that was originally in the post, I removed during an editing pass, and then added back in in-response to your comments was:
Which (I think?) was precisely the thing you were worried that this whole reification of frame control was pointed at. Part of the point of this post is that I disagreed with Aella’s framing, and don’t want to accidentally create a giant blob of stuff that gets vaguely tarred by “sometimes abusive people use this, so maybe it’s always Real Bad?”.
I changed the title to “Taboo ‘Frame Control’”, hoping to point more clearly in that direction.
I wrote the examples fairly quickly, and deliberately didn’t specify which things I thought were blameworthy in them (aiming to present them as more ‘raw data’ than ‘here’s a takeaway’), but, it does seem like a reasonable inference that if I’m bringing stuff up I maybe think it’s blameworthy, and to be on the lookout for that.
At the end of the day, my understanding is that you don’t really think frames are a useful concept in the first place, so I assume any analysis built on top of frames also won’t seem useful to you. So, I’m not really expecting there to be a version of this post you’d find satisfying, but I do hope to at least avoid the particular failure modes you seem most worried about.
This comment and (the last two paragraphs of) this comment may clarify my view on the matter somewhat.
Well, quite frankly, I think that the version of this post that I’d find most satisfying is one that actually tabooed “frames” and “frame control”, while attempting to analyze what it is that motivates people to talk about such things as these discussions of “frame control” tend to describe (in the spirit of “dissolving questions” by asking what algorithm generates the question, rather than taking the question’s assumptions for granted).
Indeed, I found myself sufficiently impatient to read such a post that I wrote it myself…
I remain unconvinced that there’s anything further that’s worth saying about any of this that wouldn’t be best said by discarding the entire concept of “frame control”, and possibly even “frames”, starting from scratch, and seeing if there’s remains any motivation to say anything.
So, in that sense, yes, I think your characterization is more or less correct.
Yeah I do think writing a post that actually-tabooed-frame-control would be good. (The historical reason this post doesn’t do that is in large part because I initially wrote a different post, called “Distinctions in Frame Control”. realized that post didn’t quite have enough of a purpose, and sort of clarified my goal at the last minute and then hastily retrofitted the post to make it work.)
FWIW I did quite appreciate that comment. I may have more to say about it later, but regardless, I thought it was a good exercise I found helpful to think about.