The difference is that we all have a much clearer picture of what Robin Hanson’s claim means than what Steve means, so Robin’s claim is sufficiently coherent and Steve’s isn’t. I agree there’s a gray area on what is “sufficiently coherent”, but I think we can agree there’s a significant difference on this coherence spectrum between Steve’s claim and Robin’s claim.
For example, any listener can reasonably infer from Robin’s claim that someone on medical insurance who gets cancer shouldn’t be expected to survive with a higher probability than someone without medical insurance. But reasonable listeners can have differing guesses about whether or not Steve’s claim would also describe a world where Uber institutes a $15/hr flat hourly wage for all drivers.
Why can’t Steve claim he has a friend that can be called that can exempilify exploitation?
Sure, then I’d just try to understand what specific property of the friend counts as exploitation. In Robin’s case, I already have good reasonable guesses about the operational definitions of “health”. Yes I can try to play “gotcha” and argue that Robin hasn’t nailed down his claim, and in some cases that might actually be the right thing to do—it’s up to me to determine what’s sufficiently coherent for my own understanding, and nail down the claim to that standard, before moving onto arguing about the truth-value of the claim.
If the bar is infact low Steve passed it upon positing McDonalds as relevant alternative and the argument went on to actually argue the argument
Ah, if Steve really meant “Yes Uber screws the employee out of $1/hr compared to McDonald’s”, then he would have passed the specificity bar. But the specific Steve I portray in the dialogue didn’t pass the bar because that’s not really the point he felt he wanted to make. The Steve that I portray found himself confused because his claim really was insufficiently specific, and therefore really was demolished, unexpectedly to him.
Well I am more familiar with settings where I have a duty to understand the world rather than the world having the duty to explain itself to me. I also hold that having unfamiliar things hit higher standards creates epistemic xenophobia. I would hold it important that one doesn’t assign falsehood to a claim they don’t understand. Althought it is also true that assigning truth to a claim one doesn’t understand is dangerous to relatively same caliber.
My go-to assumption would be that Steve understands something different with the word and might be running some sort of moon logic in his head. Rather than declare the “moon proof” to be invalid it’s more important that the translation between moon logic and my planet logic interfaces without confusion. Instead of using a word/concept I do know wrong he is using a word or concept I do not know.
“Coherent” usually points to a concept where a sentence is judged on it’s home logics terms. But as used here it’s clearly in the eye of the beholder. So it’s less “makes objective sense” and more a “makes sense to whom?”. The shared reality you create in a discussion or debate would be the arbiter but if the argument realies too much on those mechanics it doesn’t generalise to contextes outside of that.
I also just think there are a lot of Steves in the world who are holding on to belief-claims that lack specific referents, who could benefit from reading this post even if no one is arguing with them.
The difference is that we all have a much clearer picture of what Robin Hanson’s claim means than what Steve means, so Robin’s claim is sufficiently coherent and Steve’s isn’t. I agree there’s a gray area on what is “sufficiently coherent”, but I think we can agree there’s a significant difference on this coherence spectrum between Steve’s claim and Robin’s claim.
For example, any listener can reasonably infer from Robin’s claim that someone on medical insurance who gets cancer shouldn’t be expected to survive with a higher probability than someone without medical insurance. But reasonable listeners can have differing guesses about whether or not Steve’s claim would also describe a world where Uber institutes a $15/hr flat hourly wage for all drivers.
Sure, then I’d just try to understand what specific property of the friend counts as exploitation. In Robin’s case, I already have good reasonable guesses about the operational definitions of “health”. Yes I can try to play “gotcha” and argue that Robin hasn’t nailed down his claim, and in some cases that might actually be the right thing to do—it’s up to me to determine what’s sufficiently coherent for my own understanding, and nail down the claim to that standard, before moving onto arguing about the truth-value of the claim.
Ah, if Steve really meant “Yes Uber screws the employee out of $1/hr compared to McDonald’s”, then he would have passed the specificity bar. But the specific Steve I portray in the dialogue didn’t pass the bar because that’s not really the point he felt he wanted to make. The Steve that I portray found himself confused because his claim really was insufficiently specific, and therefore really was demolished, unexpectedly to him.
Well I am more familiar with settings where I have a duty to understand the world rather than the world having the duty to explain itself to me. I also hold that having unfamiliar things hit higher standards creates epistemic xenophobia. I would hold it important that one doesn’t assign falsehood to a claim they don’t understand. Althought it is also true that assigning truth to a claim one doesn’t understand is dangerous to relatively same caliber.
My go-to assumption would be that Steve understands something different with the word and might be running some sort of moon logic in his head. Rather than declare the “moon proof” to be invalid it’s more important that the translation between moon logic and my planet logic interfaces without confusion. Instead of using a word/concept I do know wrong he is using a word or concept I do not know.
“Coherent” usually points to a concept where a sentence is judged on it’s home logics terms. But as used here it’s clearly in the eye of the beholder. So it’s less “makes objective sense” and more a “makes sense to whom?”. The shared reality you create in a discussion or debate would be the arbiter but if the argument realies too much on those mechanics it doesn’t generalise to contextes outside of that.
Sure, makes sense.
I also just think there are a lot of Steves in the world who are holding on to belief-claims that lack specific referents, who could benefit from reading this post even if no one is arguing with them.