I actually DO believe you can’t write this in not-insulting way. I find it the result of not prioritizing developing and practicing those skills in general.
while i do judge you for this, i judge you for this one time, on the meta-level, instead of judging any instance separately. as i find this behavior orderly and predictable.
Original: “I find your stated reason bizarre to the point where I can’t form any coherent model of your thinking here.”
New version 1: “I can’t form any coherent model of your thinking here.”
New version 2: “I don’t understand your stated reason at all.”
New version 3: Omit that sentence.
These shift the sentence from a judgment on Duncan’s reasoning to a sharing of Said’s own experience, which (for me, at least) removes the unnecessary/escalatory part of the insult.
New version 4: “(I find your stated reason bizarre to the point where I can’t form any coherent model of your thinking here. Like, this is a statement about me, not about your thinking, but that’s where I am. I kinda wish there was a way to say this non-insultingly, but I don’t know such a way.)”
It seems to me that Czynski is just plain wrong here. But I have no expectation of changing his mind, no expectation that engaging with him will be fun or enlightening for me, and also I think he’s wrong in ways that not many bystanders will be confused about if they even see this.
If someone other than Czynski or Said would be interested in a reply to the above comment, feel free to say so and I’ll provide one.
Version 1 is probably not the same content, since it is mostly about the speaker, and in any case preserves most of the insultingness. Version 2 is making it entirely about the speaker and therefore definitely different, losing the important content. Version 3 is very obviously definitely not the same content and I don’t know why you bothered including it. (Best guess: you were following the guideline of naming 3 things rather than 1. If so, there is a usual lesson when that guideline fails.)
Shifting to sharing the speaker’s experience is materially different. The content of the statement was a truth claim—making it a claim about an individual’s experience changes it from being about reality to being about social reality, which is not the same thing. It is important to be able to make truth claims directly about other people’s statements, because truth claims are the building blocks of real models of the world.
Hmm interesting. I agree that there is a difference between a claim about an individual’s experience, and a claim about reality. The former is about a perception of reality, whereas the latter is about reality itself. In that case, I see why you would object to the paraphrasing—it changes the original statement into a weaker claim.
I also agree that it is important to be able to make claims about reality, including other people’s statements. After all, people’s statements are also part of our reality, so we need to be able to discuss and reason about it.
I suppose what I disagree with thus that the original statement is valid as a claim about reality. It seems to me that statements are generally/by default claims about our individual perceptions of reality. (e.g. “He’s very tall.”) A claim becomes a statement about reality only when linked (implicitly or explicitly) to something concrete. (e.g. “He’s in the 90th percentile in height for American adult males.” or “He’s taller than Daddy.” or “He’s taller than the typical gymnast I’ve trained for competitions.”)
To say a stated reason is “bizarre” is a value judgment, and therefore cannot be considered a claim about reality. This is because there is no way to measure its truth value. If bizarre means “strange/unusual”, then what exactly is “normal/usual”? How Less Wrong posters who upvoted Said’s comment would think? How people with more than 1000 karma on Less Wrong would think? There is no meaning behind the word “bizarre” except as an indicator of the writer’s perspective (i.e. what the claim is trying to say is “The stated reason is bizarre to Said”).
I suppose this also explains why such a statement would seem insulting to people who are more Duncan-like. (I acknowledge that you find the paraphrase as insulting as the original. However, since the purpose of discussion is to find a way so people who are Duncan-like and people who are Said-like can communicate and work together, I believe the key concern should be whether or not someone who is Duncan-like would feel less insulted by the paraphrase. After all, people who are Duncan-like feel insulted by different things than people who are Said-like.)
For people who are Duncan-like, I expect the insult comes about because it presents a subjective (social reality) statement in the form of an objective (reality) statement. Said is making a claim about his own perspective, but he is presenting it as if it is objective truth, which can feel like he is invalidating all other possible perspectives. I would guess that people who are more Said-like are less sensitive, either because they think it is already obvious that Said is just making a claim from his own perspective or because they are less susceptible to influence from other people’s claims (e.g. I don’t care if the entire world tells me I am wrong, I don’t ever waver because I know that I am right.)
Version 3 is very obviously definitely not the same content and I don’t know why you bothered including it.
I included Version 3 because after coming up with Version 2, I noticed it was very similar to the earlier sentence (“I definitely no longer understand.”), so I thought another valid example would be simply omitting the sentence. It seemed appropriate to me because part of being polite is learning to keep your thoughts to yourself when they do not contribute anything useful to the conversation.
somewhere (i can’t find it now) some else wrote that if he will do that, Said always can say it’s not exactly what he means.
In this case, i find the comment itself not very insulting—the insult is in the general absent of Goodwill between Said and Duncan, and in the refuse to do interpretive labor. so any comment of “my model of you was <model> and now i just confused” could have worked.
my model of Duncan avoided to post it here from the general problems in LW, but i wasn’t surprised it was specific problem. I have no idea what was Said’s model of Duncan. but, i will try, with the caveat that the Said’s model of Duncan suggested is almost certainly not true :
I though that you avoid putting it in LW because there will be strong and wrong pushback here against the concept of imaginary injury. it seem coherent with the crux of the post. now, when I learn the true, i simply confused. in my model, what you want to avoid is exactly the imaginary injury described in the post, and i can’t form coherent model of you.
i suspect Said would have say i don’t pass his ideological Turning test on that, or continue to say it’s not exact. I submit that if i cannot, it’s not writing not-insultingly, but passing his ideological turning test.
I actually DO believe you can’t write this in not-insulting way. I find it the result of not prioritizing developing and practicing those skills in general.
while i do judge you for this, i judge you for this one time, on the meta-level, instead of judging any instance separately. as i find this behavior orderly and predictable.
If it’s really a skill issue, why hasn’t anyone done that? If it can be written in a non-insulting way, demonstrate! I submit that you cannot.
I’m curious, what do you think of these options?
Original: “I find your stated reason bizarre to the point where I can’t form any coherent model of your thinking here.”
New version 1: “I can’t form any coherent model of your thinking here.”
New version 2: “I don’t understand your stated reason at all.”
New version 3: Omit that sentence.
These shift the sentence from a judgment on Duncan’s reasoning to a sharing of Said’s own experience, which (for me, at least) removes the unnecessary/escalatory part of the insult.
New version 4: “(I find your stated reason bizarre to the point where I can’t form any coherent model of your thinking here. Like, this is a statement about me, not about your thinking, but that’s where I am. I kinda wish there was a way to say this non-insultingly, but I don’t know such a way.)”
That’s still shifting to a claim about social reality and therefore not the same thing.
Experiment:
It seems to me that Czynski is just plain wrong here. But I have no expectation of changing his mind, no expectation that engaging with him will be fun or enlightening for me, and also I think he’s wrong in ways that not many bystanders will be confused about if they even see this.
If someone other than Czynski or Said would be interested in a reply to the above comment, feel free to say so and I’ll provide one.
You really have no intellectual integrity at all, do you?
Version 1 is probably not the same content, since it is mostly about the speaker, and in any case preserves most of the insultingness. Version 2 is making it entirely about the speaker and therefore definitely different, losing the important content. Version 3 is very obviously definitely not the same content and I don’t know why you bothered including it. (Best guess: you were following the guideline of naming 3 things rather than 1. If so, there is a usual lesson when that guideline fails.)
Shifting to sharing the speaker’s experience is materially different. The content of the statement was a truth claim—making it a claim about an individual’s experience changes it from being about reality to being about social reality, which is not the same thing. It is important to be able to make truth claims directly about other people’s statements, because truth claims are the building blocks of real models of the world.
Hmm interesting. I agree that there is a difference between a claim about an individual’s experience, and a claim about reality. The former is about a perception of reality, whereas the latter is about reality itself. In that case, I see why you would object to the paraphrasing—it changes the original statement into a weaker claim.
I also agree that it is important to be able to make claims about reality, including other people’s statements. After all, people’s statements are also part of our reality, so we need to be able to discuss and reason about it.
I suppose what I disagree with thus that the original statement is valid as a claim about reality. It seems to me that statements are generally/by default claims about our individual perceptions of reality. (e.g. “He’s very tall.”) A claim becomes a statement about reality only when linked (implicitly or explicitly) to something concrete. (e.g. “He’s in the 90th percentile in height for American adult males.” or “He’s taller than Daddy.” or “He’s taller than the typical gymnast I’ve trained for competitions.”)
To say a stated reason is “bizarre” is a value judgment, and therefore cannot be considered a claim about reality. This is because there is no way to measure its truth value. If bizarre means “strange/unusual”, then what exactly is “normal/usual”? How Less Wrong posters who upvoted Said’s comment would think? How people with more than 1000 karma on Less Wrong would think? There is no meaning behind the word “bizarre” except as an indicator of the writer’s perspective (i.e. what the claim is trying to say is “The stated reason is bizarre to Said”).
I suppose this also explains why such a statement would seem insulting to people who are more Duncan-like. (I acknowledge that you find the paraphrase as insulting as the original. However, since the purpose of discussion is to find a way so people who are Duncan-like and people who are Said-like can communicate and work together, I believe the key concern should be whether or not someone who is Duncan-like would feel less insulted by the paraphrase. After all, people who are Duncan-like feel insulted by different things than people who are Said-like.)
For people who are Duncan-like, I expect the insult comes about because it presents a subjective (social reality) statement in the form of an objective (reality) statement. Said is making a claim about his own perspective, but he is presenting it as if it is objective truth, which can feel like he is invalidating all other possible perspectives. I would guess that people who are more Said-like are less sensitive, either because they think it is already obvious that Said is just making a claim from his own perspective or because they are less susceptible to influence from other people’s claims (e.g. I don’t care if the entire world tells me I am wrong, I don’t ever waver because I know that I am right.)
I included Version 3 because after coming up with Version 2, I noticed it was very similar to the earlier sentence (“I definitely no longer understand.”), so I thought another valid example would be simply omitting the sentence. It seemed appropriate to me because part of being polite is learning to keep your thoughts to yourself when they do not contribute anything useful to the conversation.
somewhere (i can’t find it now) some else wrote that if he will do that, Said always can say it’s not exactly what he means.
In this case, i find the comment itself not very insulting—the insult is in the general absent of Goodwill between Said and Duncan, and in the refuse to do interpretive labor. so any comment of “my model of you was <model> and now i just confused” could have worked.
my model of Duncan avoided to post it here from the general problems in LW, but i wasn’t surprised it was specific problem. I have no idea what was Said’s model of Duncan. but, i will try, with the caveat that the Said’s model of Duncan suggested is almost certainly not true :
I though that you avoid putting it in LW because there will be strong and wrong pushback here against the concept of imaginary injury. it seem coherent with the crux of the post. now, when I learn the true, i simply confused. in my model, what you want to avoid is exactly the imaginary injury described in the post, and i can’t form coherent model of you.
i suspect Said would have say i don’t pass his ideological Turning test on that, or continue to say it’s not exact. I submit that if i cannot, it’s not writing not-insultingly, but passing his ideological turning test.