Maybe we could start tagging such stuff with epistemic status: exploratory or epistemic status: exploring hypotheses or something similar? Sort of the opposite of Crocker’s rules, in effect. Do you guys think this is a community norm worth adding?
We have a couple concepts around here that could also help if they turned into community norms on these sorts of posts. For example:
triangulating meaning: If we didn’t have a word for “bird”, I might provide a penguin, a ostrich, and an eagle as the most extreme examples which only share their “birdness” in common. If you give 3+ examples of the sort of thing you’re talking about, generally people will be able to figure out what the 3 things have in common, and can narrow things down to more or less the same concept you are trying to convey to them.
Principle of Charity: I think we pretty much have this one covered. We do have a bad nitpicking habit, though, which means...
Steel manning: If I’m trying to build up an idea, but it’s only in the formative stages, it’s going to have a lot of holes, most of which will be fairly obvious. This means making a lot of sweeping generalizations while explaining.
These are literally just the first couple things that popped into my head, so feel free to suggest others or criticize my thoughts.
In general, it seems like such discussions should be places to share related anecdotes, half-baked thoughts on the matter, and questions. Criticism might be rephrased as questions about whether the criticism applies in this instance. Those who don’t “get” what is being gestured at might be encouraged to offer only questions.
I remember some study about innovation, which found that a disproportionate amount happened around the water cooler. Apparently GPS was invented by a bunch of people messing around and trying to figure out if they could triangulate Sputnik’s position, and someone else wondering whether they could do the reverse and triangulate their own position from satellites with known orbits. We need places for that sort of aimless musing if we want to solve candle problems.
More broadly, we could start applying some of these norms to Discussion. After all, it’s supposed to be for, you know, discussion. :p I think it’s long overdue.
Maybe we could start tagging such stuff with epistemic status: exploratory or epistemic status: exploring hypotheses or something similar? Sort of the opposite of Crocker’s rules, in effect. Do you guys think this is a community norm worth adding?
We have a couple concepts around here that could also help if they turned into community norms on these sorts of posts. For example:
triangulating meaning: If we didn’t have a word for “bird”, I might provide a penguin, a ostrich, and an eagle as the most extreme examples which only share their “birdness” in common. If you give 3+ examples of the sort of thing you’re talking about, generally people will be able to figure out what the 3 things have in common, and can narrow things down to more or less the same concept you are trying to convey to them.
Principle of Charity: I think we pretty much have this one covered. We do have a bad nitpicking habit, though, which means...
Steel manning: If I’m trying to build up an idea, but it’s only in the formative stages, it’s going to have a lot of holes, most of which will be fairly obvious. This means making a lot of sweeping generalizations while explaining.
These are literally just the first couple things that popped into my head, so feel free to suggest others or criticize my thoughts.
In general, it seems like such discussions should be places to share related anecdotes, half-baked thoughts on the matter, and questions. Criticism might be rephrased as questions about whether the criticism applies in this instance. Those who don’t “get” what is being gestured at might be encouraged to offer only questions.
I remember some study about innovation, which found that a disproportionate amount happened around the water cooler. Apparently GPS was invented by a bunch of people messing around and trying to figure out if they could triangulate Sputnik’s position, and someone else wondering whether they could do the reverse and triangulate their own position from satellites with known orbits. We need places for that sort of aimless musing if we want to solve candle problems.
More broadly, we could start applying some of these norms to Discussion. After all, it’s supposed to be for, you know, discussion. :p I think it’s long overdue.