You weren’t there. You can’t reconstruct what it was like to be there. But you can read his comment. It contains the word “tradeoff” four times. Can you suggest what disclaimers he should have used instead?
(but the comments responding to Eliezer seem pretty reasonable to me.)
Can you suggest what disclaimers he should have used instead?
Let’s assume for the sake of comity that I can’t. What follows?
To address your broader question, though: it seems likely to me that there is no wording which reliably causes observers to believe that I’m genuinely just making a factual observation and that I’m not covertly implying any arguments, since I can’t think of any way of preventing people who are covertly implying arguments from using the same wording, which will shortly thereafter cause clever observers to stop trusting that wording.
This certainly includes bald assertions like “Hey, guys, I’m genuinely just making a factual observation here and totally NOT covertly implying any arguments, OK?” which even unsophisticated deceivers know enough to use, but it also covers more sophisticated variations.
That said, it also seems likely to me that for any given audience there exists wording that will manipulate that audience into believing I’m genuinely just making a factual observation, and a sufficiently skilled manipulator can find that wording. I don’t claim to be such a manipulator. (Of course, if I were, it would probably be in my best interests not to claim to be.)
Then again, such a manipulator could presumably do this even when that belief is false.
The approach I usually endorse in such cases is to not worry about it and concentrate on more generally behaving in a trustworthy way, counting on observant members of the community to recognize that and to consequently trust me to not be playing rhetorical games. (That’s not to say I always succeed, nor that I never play rhetorical games.) In other words, I count on the cultivation of personal reputation over iterated trials.
Of course, deceivers of all stripes similarly count on the cultivation of personal reputation over iterated trials.
Expensive signaling helps here, of course, but isn’t always an option.
You weren’t there. You can’t reconstruct what it was like to be there. But you can read his comment. It contains the word “tradeoff” four times. Can you suggest what disclaimers he should have used instead?
(but the comments responding to Eliezer seem pretty reasonable to me.)
Let’s assume for the sake of comity that I can’t.
What follows?
To address your broader question, though: it seems likely to me that there is no wording which reliably causes observers to believe that I’m genuinely just making a factual observation and that I’m not covertly implying any arguments, since I can’t think of any way of preventing people who are covertly implying arguments from using the same wording, which will shortly thereafter cause clever observers to stop trusting that wording.
This certainly includes bald assertions like “Hey, guys, I’m genuinely just making a factual observation here and totally NOT covertly implying any arguments, OK?” which even unsophisticated deceivers know enough to use, but it also covers more sophisticated variations.
That said, it also seems likely to me that for any given audience there exists wording that will manipulate that audience into believing I’m genuinely just making a factual observation, and a sufficiently skilled manipulator can find that wording. I don’t claim to be such a manipulator. (Of course, if I were, it would probably be in my best interests not to claim to be.)
Then again, such a manipulator could presumably do this even when that belief is false.
The approach I usually endorse in such cases is to not worry about it and concentrate on more generally behaving in a trustworthy way, counting on observant members of the community to recognize that and to consequently trust me to not be playing rhetorical games. (That’s not to say I always succeed, nor that I never play rhetorical games.) In other words, I count on the cultivation of personal reputation over iterated trials.
Of course, deceivers of all stripes similarly count on the cultivation of personal reputation over iterated trials.
Expensive signaling helps here, of course, but isn’t always an option.