This feels very similar to the debate on the MTG color system a while ago, which went (as half-remembered some time so much later I don’t remember how long it’s been, and it’s since been deleted):
A: [proposal of personality sorting system.]
B: [statement/argument that personality sorting systems are typically useless-to-harmful]
A: but this doesn’t respond to my particular personality system.
I’m sympathetic to B (equivalent to jonhswentworth) here. If members of category X are generally useless-to-harmful, it’s unfair and anti-truth to disallow incorporating that knowledge into your evaluations of an X. On the other hand, A could have provided rich evidence of why their particular system was good, and B could have made the exact same statement, and it would still be true. If there are ever exceptions to the rule of “category X is useless-to-harmful”, you need to have a system for identifying them
[I’m going to keep talking about this in the MTG case because I think a specific case is easier to read that “category X”, and it’s less loaded for me than talking about my own piece, if the correspondences aren’t obvious let me know and I can clarify]
A partial solution would be for B to outline not only why they’re skeptical of personality systems, but why, and what specific things would increase their estimation of a particular system. This is a lot to ask, which is a tax on this particular form of criticism. But if the problem is as described there’s a lot of utility in writing it up once, well, and linking to it as necessary.
@johnswentworth, if you’re up for it I think for this and other reasons there’s a lot of value in doing a full post on your general principle (with a link to this discussion). People clearly want to talk about it, and it seems valuable for it to have its own, easily-discoverable, space instead of being hidden behind my post. I would also like to resolve the general principle before discussing how to apply it to this post, which is one reason I’ve held back on participating in this sub-thread.
I probably won’t get to that soon, but I’ll put it on the list.
I also want to say that I’m sorry for kicking off this giant tangential thread on your post. I know this sort of thing can be a disincentive to write in the future, so I want to explicitly say that you’re a good writer, this was a piece worth reading, and I would like to read more of your posts in the future.
This feels very similar to the debate on the MTG color system a while ago, which went (as half-remembered some time so much later I don’t remember how long it’s been, and it’s since been deleted):
A: [proposal of personality sorting system.]
B: [statement/argument that personality sorting systems are typically useless-to-harmful]
A: but this doesn’t respond to my particular personality system.
I’m sympathetic to B (equivalent to jonhswentworth) here. If members of category X are generally useless-to-harmful, it’s unfair and anti-truth to disallow incorporating that knowledge into your evaluations of an X. On the other hand, A could have provided rich evidence of why their particular system was good, and B could have made the exact same statement, and it would still be true. If there are ever exceptions to the rule of “category X is useless-to-harmful”, you need to have a system for identifying them
[I’m going to keep talking about this in the MTG case because I think a specific case is easier to read that “category X”, and it’s less loaded for me than talking about my own piece, if the correspondences aren’t obvious let me know and I can clarify]
A partial solution would be for B to outline not only why they’re skeptical of personality systems, but why, and what specific things would increase their estimation of a particular system. This is a lot to ask, which is a tax on this particular form of criticism. But if the problem is as described there’s a lot of utility in writing it up once, well, and linking to it as necessary.
@johnswentworth, if you’re up for it I think for this and other reasons there’s a lot of value in doing a full post on your general principle (with a link to this discussion). People clearly want to talk about it, and it seems valuable for it to have its own, easily-discoverable, space instead of being hidden behind my post. I would also like to resolve the general principle before discussing how to apply it to this post, which is one reason I’ve held back on participating in this sub-thread.
I probably won’t get to that soon, but I’ll put it on the list.
I also want to say that I’m sorry for kicking off this giant tangential thread on your post. I know this sort of thing can be a disincentive to write in the future, so I want to explicitly say that you’re a good writer, this was a piece worth reading, and I would like to read more of your posts in the future.