But, of course, I recognize that my comment is insulting. That is not its purpose, and if I could write it non-insultingly, I would do so. But I cannot.
I want to register that I don’t believe you that you cannot, if we’re using the ordinary meaning of “cannot”. I believe that it would be more costly for you, but it seems to me that people are very often able to express content like that in your comment, without being insulting.
I’m tempted to try to rephrase your comment in a non-insulting way, but I would only be able to convey its meaning-to-me, and I predict that this is different enough from its meaning-to-you that you would object on those grounds. However, insofar as you communicated a thing to me, you could have said that thing in a non-insulting way.
I believe you when you say that you don’t believe me.
But I submit to you that unless you can provide a rephrasing which (a) preserves all relevant meaning while not being insulting, and (b) could have been generated by me, your disbelief is not evidence of anything except the fact that some things seem easy until you discover that they’re impossible.
My guess is that you believe it’s impossible because the content of your comment implies a negative fact about the person you’re responding to. But insofar as you communicated a thing to me, it was in fact a thing about your own failure to comprehend, and your own experience of bizarreness. These are not unflattering facts about Duncan, except insofar as I already believe your ability to comprehend is vast enough to contain all “reasonable” thought processes.
Indeed, they are not—or so it would seem. So why would my comment be insulting?
After all, I didn’t write “your stated reason is bizarre”, but “I find your stated reason bizarre”. I didn’t write “it seems like your thinking here is incoherent”, but “I can’t form any coherent model of your thinking here”. I didn’t… etc.
So what makes my comment insulting?
Please note, I am not saying “my comment isn’t insulting, and anyone who finds it so is silly”. It is insulting! And it’s going to stay insulting no matter how you rewrite it, unless you either change what it actually says or so obfuscate the meaning that it’s not possible to tell what it actually says.
The thing I am actually saying—the meaning of the words, the communicated claims—imply unflattering facts about Duncan.[1] There’s no getting around that.
The only defensible recourse, for someone who objects to my comment, is to say that one should simply not say insulting things; and if there are relevant things to say which cannot be said non-insultingly, then they oughtn’t be said… and if anything is lost thereby, well, too bad.
And that would be a consistent point of view, certainly. But not one to which I subscribe; nor do I think that I ever will.
To whatever extent a reader believes that I’m a basically reasonable person, anyway. Ironically, a reader with a low opinion of me should find my comment less insulting to Duncan. Duncan himself, one might imagine, would not finding it insulting at all. But of course that’s not how people work, and there’s no point in deluding ourselves otherwise…
For what it’s worth, I don’t think that one should never say insulting things. I think that people should avoid saying insulting things in certain contexts, and that LessWrong comments are one such context.
I find it hard to square your claim that insultingness was not the comment’s purpose with the claim that it cannot be rewritten to elide the insult.
An insult is not simply a statement with a meaning that is unflattering to its target—it involves using words in a way that aggressively emphasizes the unflatteringness and suggests, to some extent, a call to non-belief-based action on the part of the reader.
If I write a comment entirely in bold, in some sense I cannot un-bold it without changing its effect on the reader. But I think it would be pretty frustrating to most people if I then claimed that I could not un-bold it without changing its meaning.
I’m not sure what you mean—as far as I can tell, I’m the one who suggested trying to rephrase the insulting comment, and in my world Said roughly agreed with me about its infeasibility in his response, since it’s not going to be possible for me to prove either point: Any rephrasing I give will elicit objections on both semantics-relative-to-Said and Said-generatability grounds, and readers who believe Said will go on believing him, while readers who disbelieve will go on disbelieving.
Nor should I, unless I believe that someone somewhere might honestly reconsider their position based on such an attempt. So far my guess is that you’re not saying that you expect to honestly reconsider your position, and Said certainly isn’t. If that’s wrong then let me know! I don’t make a habit of starting doomed projects.
Nor should I, unless I believe that someone somewhere might honestly reconsider their position based on such an attempt.
I think for the purposes of promoting clarity this is a bad rule of thumb. The decision to explain should be more guided by effort/hedonicity and availability of other explanations of the same thing that are already there, not by strategically withholding things based on predictions of how others would treat an explanation. (So for example “I don’t feel like it” seems like an excellent reason not to do this, and doesn’t need to be voiced to be equally valid.)
I think I agree that this isn’t a good explicit rule of thumb, and I somewhat regret how I put this.
But it’s also true that a belief in someone’s good-faith engagement (including an onlooker’s), and in particular their openness to honest reconsideration, is an important factor in the motivational calculus, and for good reasons.
openness to honest reconsideration, is an important factor in the motivational calculus
The structure of a conflict and motivation prompted by that structure functions in a symmetric way, with the same influence irrespective of whether the argument is right or wrong.
But the argument itself, once presented, is asymmetric, it’s all else equal stronger when correct than when it’s not. This is a reason to lean towards publishing things, perhaps even setting up weird mechanisms like encouraging people to ignore criticism they dislike in order to make its publication more likely.
If you’re not even willing to attempt the thing you say should be done, you have no business claiming to be arguing or negotiating in good faith.
You claimed this was low-effort. You then did not put in the effort to do it. This strongly implies that you don’t even believe your own claim, in which case why should anyone else believe it?
It also tests your theory. If you can make the modification easily, then there is room for debate about whether Said could. If you can’t, then your claim was wrong and Said obviously can’t either.
I think it’s pretty rough for me to engage with you here, because you seem to be consistently failing to read the things I’ve written. I did not say it was low-effort. I said that it was possible. Separately, you seem to think that I owe you something that I just definitely do not owe you. For the moment, I don’t care whether you think I’m arguing in bad faith; at least I’m reading what you’ve written.
Additionally, yes, you do owe me something. The same thing you owe to everyone else reading this comment section, Said included. An actual good-faith effort to probe at cruxes to the extent possible. You have shown absolutely no sign of that in this part of the conversation and precious little of it in the rest of it. Which means that your whole side of this conversation has been weak evidence that Said is correct and you are not.
Which means that your whole side of this conversation has been weak evidence that Said is correct and you are not.
This might be true, but it doesn’t follow that anyone owes anyone anything as a result. Doing something as a result might shift the evidence, but people don’t have obligations to shift evidence.
Also, I think cultivating an environment where arguments against your own views can take root is more of an obligation than arguing for them, and it’s worth arguing against your own views when you see a clear argument pointing in that direction. But still, I wouldn’t go so far as to call even that an actual obligation.
You’ve said very little in a great deal of words. And, as I said initially, you haven’t even attempted this.
unless you can provide a rephrasing which (a) preserves all relevant meaning while not being insulting, and (b) could have been generated by me, your disbelief is not evidence of anything except the fact that some things seem easy until you discover that they’re impossible.
Forget requirement (b). You haven’t even attempted fulfilling requirement (a). And for as long as you haven’t, it is unarguably true that your disbelief is not evidence for any of your claims or beliefs.
This is the meaning of “put up or shut up”. If you want to be taken seriously, act seriously.
I think that people should avoid saying insulting things in certain contexts, and that LessWrong comments are one such context.
I more or less agree with this; I think that posting and commenting on Less Wrong is definitely a place to try to avoid saying anything insulting.
But not to try infinitely hard. Sometimes, there is no avoiding insult. If you remove all the insult that isn’t core to what you’re saying, and if what you’re saying is appropriate, relevant, etc., and there’s still insult left over—I do not think that it’s a good general policy to avoid saying the thing, just because it’s insulting.
An insult is not simply a statement with a meaning that is unflattering to its target—it involves using words in a way that aggressively emphasizes the unflatteringness and suggests, to some extent, a call to non-belief-based action on the part of the reader.
By that measure, my comment does not qualify as an insult. (And indeed, as it happens, I wouldn’t call it “an insult”; but “insulting” is slightly different in connotation, I think. Either way, I don’t think that my comment may fairly be said to have these qualities which you list. Certainly there’s no “call to non-belief-based action”…!)
If I write a comment entirely in bold, in some sense I cannot un-bold it without changing its effect on the reader. But I think it would be pretty frustrating to most people if I then claimed that I could not un-bold it without changing its meaning.
True, of course… but also, so thoroughly dis-analogous to the actual thing that we’re discussing that it mostly seems to me to be a non sequitur.
By that measure, my comment does not qualify as an insult. (And indeed, as it happens, I wouldn’t call it “an insult”; but “insulting” is slightly different in connotation, I think. Either way, I don’t think that my comment may fairly be said to have these qualities which you list.
I think I disagree that your comment does not have these qualities in some measure, and they are roughly what I’m objecting to when I ask that people not be insulting. I don’t think I want you to never say anything with an unflattering implication, though I do think this is usually best avoided as well. I’m hopeful that this is a crux, as it might explain some of the other conversation I’ve seen about the extent to which you can predict people’s perception of rudeness.
There are of course more insulting ways you could have conveyed the same meaning. But there are also less insulting ways (when considering the extent to which the comment emphasizes the unflatteringness and the call to action that I’m suggesting readers will infer).
Certainly there’s no “call to non-belief-based action”…!)
I believe that none was intended, but I also expect that people (mostly subconsciously!) interpret (a very small) one from the particular choice of words and phrasing. Where the action is something like “you should scorn this person”, and not just “this person has unflattering quality X”. The latter does not imply the former.
I think that, at this point, we’re talking about nuances so subtle, distinctions so fragile (in that they only rarely survive even minor changes of context, etc.), that it’s basically impossible to predict how they will affect any particular person’s response to any particular comment in any particular situation.
To put it another way, the variation (between people, between situations, etc.) in how any particular bit of wording will be perceived, is much greater than the difference made by the changes in wording that you seem to be talking about. So the effects of any attempt to apply the principles you suggest is going to be indistinguishable from noise.
And that means that any effort spent on doing so will be wasted.
I want to register that I don’t believe you that you cannot, if we’re using the ordinary meaning of “cannot”. I believe that it would be more costly for you, but it seems to me that people are very often able to express content like that in your comment, without being insulting.
I’m tempted to try to rephrase your comment in a non-insulting way, but I would only be able to convey its meaning-to-me, and I predict that this is different enough from its meaning-to-you that you would object on those grounds. However, insofar as you communicated a thing to me, you could have said that thing in a non-insulting way.
I believe you when you say that you don’t believe me.
But I submit to you that unless you can provide a rephrasing which (a) preserves all relevant meaning while not being insulting, and (b) could have been generated by me, your disbelief is not evidence of anything except the fact that some things seem easy until you discover that they’re impossible.
My guess is that you believe it’s impossible because the content of your comment implies a negative fact about the person you’re responding to. But insofar as you communicated a thing to me, it was in fact a thing about your own failure to comprehend, and your own experience of bizarreness. These are not unflattering facts about Duncan, except insofar as I already believe your ability to comprehend is vast enough to contain all “reasonable” thought processes.
Indeed, they are not—or so it would seem. So why would my comment be insulting?
After all, I didn’t write “your stated reason is bizarre”, but “I find your stated reason bizarre”. I didn’t write “it seems like your thinking here is incoherent”, but “I can’t form any coherent model of your thinking here”. I didn’t… etc.
So what makes my comment insulting?
Please note, I am not saying “my comment isn’t insulting, and anyone who finds it so is silly”. It is insulting! And it’s going to stay insulting no matter how you rewrite it, unless you either change what it actually says or so obfuscate the meaning that it’s not possible to tell what it actually says.
The thing I am actually saying—the meaning of the words, the communicated claims—imply unflattering facts about Duncan.[1] There’s no getting around that.
The only defensible recourse, for someone who objects to my comment, is to say that one should simply not say insulting things; and if there are relevant things to say which cannot be said non-insultingly, then they oughtn’t be said… and if anything is lost thereby, well, too bad.
And that would be a consistent point of view, certainly. But not one to which I subscribe; nor do I think that I ever will.
To whatever extent a reader believes that I’m a basically reasonable person, anyway. Ironically, a reader with a low opinion of me should find my comment less insulting to Duncan. Duncan himself, one might imagine, would not finding it insulting at all. But of course that’s not how people work, and there’s no point in deluding ourselves otherwise…
For what it’s worth, I don’t think that one should never say insulting things. I think that people should avoid saying insulting things in certain contexts, and that LessWrong comments are one such context.
I find it hard to square your claim that insultingness was not the comment’s purpose with the claim that it cannot be rewritten to elide the insult.
An insult is not simply a statement with a meaning that is unflattering to its target—it involves using words in a way that aggressively emphasizes the unflatteringness and suggests, to some extent, a call to non-belief-based action on the part of the reader.
If I write a comment entirely in bold, in some sense I cannot un-bold it without changing its effect on the reader. But I think it would be pretty frustrating to most people if I then claimed that I could not un-bold it without changing its meaning.
You still haven’t actually attempted the challenge Said laid out.
I’m not sure what you mean—as far as I can tell, I’m the one who suggested trying to rephrase the insulting comment, and in my world Said roughly agreed with me about its infeasibility in his response, since it’s not going to be possible for me to prove either point: Any rephrasing I give will elicit objections on both semantics-relative-to-Said and Said-generatability grounds, and readers who believe Said will go on believing him, while readers who disbelieve will go on disbelieving.
You haven’t even given an attempt at rephrasing.
Nor should I, unless I believe that someone somewhere might honestly reconsider their position based on such an attempt. So far my guess is that you’re not saying that you expect to honestly reconsider your position, and Said certainly isn’t. If that’s wrong then let me know! I don’t make a habit of starting doomed projects.
I think for the purposes of promoting clarity this is a bad rule of thumb. The decision to explain should be more guided by effort/hedonicity and availability of other explanations of the same thing that are already there, not by strategically withholding things based on predictions of how others would treat an explanation. (So for example “I don’t feel like it” seems like an excellent reason not to do this, and doesn’t need to be voiced to be equally valid.)
I think I agree that this isn’t a good explicit rule of thumb, and I somewhat regret how I put this.
But it’s also true that a belief in someone’s good-faith engagement (including an onlooker’s), and in particular their openness to honest reconsideration, is an important factor in the motivational calculus, and for good reasons.
The structure of a conflict and motivation prompted by that structure functions in a symmetric way, with the same influence irrespective of whether the argument is right or wrong.
But the argument itself, once presented, is asymmetric, it’s all else equal stronger when correct than when it’s not. This is a reason to lean towards publishing things, perhaps even setting up weird mechanisms like encouraging people to ignore criticism they dislike in order to make its publication more likely.
If you’re not even willing to attempt the thing you say should be done, you have no business claiming to be arguing or negotiating in good faith.
You claimed this was low-effort. You then did not put in the effort to do it. This strongly implies that you don’t even believe your own claim, in which case why should anyone else believe it?
It also tests your theory. If you can make the modification easily, then there is room for debate about whether Said could. If you can’t, then your claim was wrong and Said obviously can’t either.
I think it’s pretty rough for me to engage with you here, because you seem to be consistently failing to read the things I’ve written. I did not say it was low-effort. I said that it was possible. Separately, you seem to think that I owe you something that I just definitely do not owe you. For the moment, I don’t care whether you think I’m arguing in bad faith; at least I’m reading what you’ve written.
Additionally, yes, you do owe me something. The same thing you owe to everyone else reading this comment section, Said included. An actual good-faith effort to probe at cruxes to the extent possible. You have shown absolutely no sign of that in this part of the conversation and precious little of it in the rest of it. Which means that your whole side of this conversation has been weak evidence that Said is correct and you are not.
This might be true, but it doesn’t follow that anyone owes anyone anything as a result. Doing something as a result might shift the evidence, but people don’t have obligations to shift evidence.
Also, I think cultivating an environment where arguments against your own views can take root is more of an obligation than arguing for them, and it’s worth arguing against your own views when you see a clear argument pointing in that direction. But still, I wouldn’t go so far as to call even that an actual obligation.
Owing people a good-faith effort to probe at cruxes is not a result of anything in this conversation. It is universal.
You’ve said very little in a great deal of words. And, as I said initially, you haven’t even attempted this.
Forget requirement (b). You haven’t even attempted fulfilling requirement (a). And for as long as you haven’t, it is unarguably true that your disbelief is not evidence for any of your claims or beliefs.
This is the meaning of “put up or shut up”. If you want to be taken seriously, act seriously.
I more or less agree with this; I think that posting and commenting on Less Wrong is definitely a place to try to avoid saying anything insulting.
But not to try infinitely hard. Sometimes, there is no avoiding insult. If you remove all the insult that isn’t core to what you’re saying, and if what you’re saying is appropriate, relevant, etc., and there’s still insult left over—I do not think that it’s a good general policy to avoid saying the thing, just because it’s insulting.
By that measure, my comment does not qualify as an insult. (And indeed, as it happens, I wouldn’t call it “an insult”; but “insulting” is slightly different in connotation, I think. Either way, I don’t think that my comment may fairly be said to have these qualities which you list. Certainly there’s no “call to non-belief-based action”…!)
True, of course… but also, so thoroughly dis-analogous to the actual thing that we’re discussing that it mostly seems to me to be a non sequitur.
I think I disagree that your comment does not have these qualities in some measure, and they are roughly what I’m objecting to when I ask that people not be insulting. I don’t think I want you to never say anything with an unflattering implication, though I do think this is usually best avoided as well. I’m hopeful that this is a crux, as it might explain some of the other conversation I’ve seen about the extent to which you can predict people’s perception of rudeness.
There are of course more insulting ways you could have conveyed the same meaning. But there are also less insulting ways (when considering the extent to which the comment emphasizes the unflatteringness and the call to action that I’m suggesting readers will infer).
I believe that none was intended, but I also expect that people (mostly subconsciously!) interpret (a very small) one from the particular choice of words and phrasing. Where the action is something like “you should scorn this person”, and not just “this person has unflattering quality X”. The latter does not imply the former.
I think that, at this point, we’re talking about nuances so subtle, distinctions so fragile (in that they only rarely survive even minor changes of context, etc.), that it’s basically impossible to predict how they will affect any particular person’s response to any particular comment in any particular situation.
To put it another way, the variation (between people, between situations, etc.) in how any particular bit of wording will be perceived, is much greater than the difference made by the changes in wording that you seem to be talking about. So the effects of any attempt to apply the principles you suggest is going to be indistinguishable from noise.
And that means that any effort spent on doing so will be wasted.