Decoupling norms: It is considered eminently reasonable to require your claims to be considered in isolation—free of any context or potential implications. An insistence on raising these issues despite a decoupling request are often seen as sloppy thinking or attempts to deflect.
Contextualising norms: It is considered eminently reasonable to expect certain contextual factors or implications to be addressed. Not addressing these factors is often seen as sloppy or even an intentional evasion.
As Zack_M_Davis points out in his review, one of the issues with this definition is that there are infinite variations of “context” that can be added in any given situation “I’m wearing a hat while saying this”, and there are infinite implications that any given thing you say can have “this implies that the speaker has a mouth and could therefore say the thing.
However, I do think that there is an actual, useful, real distinction here that’s both important and doesn’t have another thing to describe. The thing I think this is pointing at is “How much you and others are willing to think about the consequences of what is said seperate from its’ truth value.”
This split is quite important in a community that cares strongly about truth, and strongly about the outcomes of the world, and being able to say “we’re in a decoupling space” or “this is a contextualzing conversation” or “I generally support decoupling as an epistemic norm” is quite an important shorthand to point at that thing.
I’d love to see the post cleaned up to make it clear that you’re talking about “contextualizing as understanding how your words will have an effect in the context that you’re in” and decoupling as “decoupling what you say from the effects it may create.”
The core of this post seems to be this
Decoupling norms: It is considered eminently reasonable to require your claims to be considered in isolation—free of any context or potential implications. An insistence on raising these issues despite a decoupling request are often seen as sloppy thinking or attempts to deflect.
Contextualising norms: It is considered eminently reasonable to expect certain contextual factors or implications to be addressed. Not addressing these factors is often seen as sloppy or even an intentional evasion.
As Zack_M_Davis points out in his review, one of the issues with this definition is that there are infinite variations of “context” that can be added in any given situation “I’m wearing a hat while saying this”, and there are infinite implications that any given thing you say can have “this implies that the speaker has a mouth and could therefore say the thing.
However, I do think that there is an actual, useful, real distinction here that’s both important and doesn’t have another thing to describe. The thing I think this is pointing at is “How much you and others are willing to think about the consequences of what is said seperate from its’ truth value.”
This split is quite important in a community that cares strongly about truth, and strongly about the outcomes of the world, and being able to say “we’re in a decoupling space” or “this is a contextualzing conversation” or “I generally support decoupling as an epistemic norm” is quite an important shorthand to point at that thing.
I’d love to see the post cleaned up to make it clear that you’re talking about “contextualizing as understanding how your words will have an effect in the context that you’re in” and decoupling as “decoupling what you say from the effects it may create.”
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I think this is valid.