It’s not a trick, he’s allowed to backtrack and amend his choice of specific example and have a re-do of my response. In this dialogue, I chose the underlying reality to be that Steve’s “point” really is incoherent, because a Monte Carlo simulation of real-world arguers has a high probability of landing on this scenario.
You saw coming that his position would be temporarily incoherent, that’s why you went there. I expect Steve to be aware of this at some level, and update on how hostile the debate is. Minimize the amount of times you have to prove him wrong.
I agree with the principle of “minimize the amount of times you have to prove him wrong”. But in the dialogue, I only had to “prove him wrong” that one time, because his position was fundamentally incoherent, not temporarily incoherent.
Relies very heavily that in adversial context a free pick should be an optimal pick. The other arguer demonstrated that he didn’t even realise that he can pick so its is reasonable to assume he doesn’t know the pick should be optimal.
Doing re-dos without preannouncing them is giving free mulligans for yourself. I think would have been in the safe in saying that he did not make new claims, denying the mulligan. There could have been 10 facets of the exploitation in the scenario and fixing one of them would still leave 9 open. You can’t say that a forest doesn’t exist if it is not any of the individual trees.
The new claim is also not contradictory with the old story. It could also be taken as further spesification of it.
Ok but what if he truly doesn’t have a point? Because as the author of the fictional situation, I’m saying that’s the premise. Under these circumstances, isn’t it right and proper to play the kind of “adversarial game” with him that he’s likely to “lose”?
It is pretty easy to ‘win’ any argument that the other side has to take a strong stance behind.
Go ahead, ask something where you take a strong stance.
I was going to say Uber has definately done ‘blank’, but I’m not very Steve and saying that Uber isn’t as ‘fair’ as amazon or walmart is a position that is easy to agree with or against. Whoever makes out the best is going to agree with this adversarial gain.
Relying that your opponent does a mistake is not a super reliable strategy. If someone reads your story and uses it as inspiration to start an argument they might end up in a situation where the actual person doesn’ t make that mistake. That could feel a lot more like “shooting yourself in the face in an argument” rather than “demolishing an argument”.
Argument methods that work because of misdirection arguably don’t serve truth very well or work very indirectly (being deceptive makes it rewarding for the other to be keen).
Most people have reasons for their stances. Their point might be louzy or unimportant but usually one exists. If he truly doesn’ t have a point then there is no specific story to tell. As author you have the options of him having a story or not meaning anything with his words but not both.
Well, I’m not offering a general-purpose debate-winning tactic. I’m offering a basic sanity check that happens to demolish most arguments because humans are bad at thinking and have trouble even forming coherent claims.
I guess the point of humanity is to achieve as much prosperity as possible. Adversarial techniques help when competition improves our chances—helpful in physical activities, when groups compete, in markets generally. But in a conversation with someone your best bet to help humanity is to help them come around to your superior understanding, and adversarial conversation won’t achieve that.
The ideal strategy looks something like the best path along which you can lead them, where you can demonstrate to them they are wrong and they will believe you, which usually involves you demonstrating a very clear and comprehensive understanding, citing information, but doing it all in a way that seems collaborative.
Asking for specific examples is not a rhetorical device, it’s a tool for clear thinking. What I’m illustrating with Steve is a productive approach that raises the standard of discourse. IMO.
I’ve personally been in the Steve role many times: I used to hang out a lot with Anna Salamon when I was still new to LessWrong-style rationality, and I distinctly remember how I would make statements that Anna would then basically just ask me to clarify, and in attempting to do so I would realize I probably don’t have a coherent point, and this is what talking to a smarter person than me feels like. She was being empathetic and considerate to me like she always is, not adversarial at all, but it’s still accurate to say she demolished my arguments.
I believe that the thing which is making many of your commenters misinterpret the post is that you chose a political example for the dialogue. That gives people the (reasonable, as this is a common move) suspicion that you have a motive of attacking your political enemy while disguising it as rationality advice.
Even if they don’t think that, if they have any sympathies towards the side that you seem to be attacking, they will still feel it necessary to defend that side. To do otherwise would risk granting the implicit notion that the “Uber exploits its drivers” side would have no coherent arguments in general, regardless of whether or not you meant to send that message.
You mentioned that you have personal examples where Anna pointed out to you that your position was incoherently. Something like that would probably have been a better example to use: saying “here’s an example of how I made this mistake” won’t be suspected of having ulterior motives the way that “here’s an example of a mistake made by someone who I might reasonably be suspected to consider a political opponent” will.
Ahhh right, you got me, I was unnecessarily political! It didn’t pattern match to the kind of political arguing that I see in my bubble, but I get why anyone who feels skeptical or unhappy about Uber’s practices won’t be maximally receptive to learning about specificity using this example, and why even people who don’t have an opinion about Uber have expressed feeling “uncomfortable” with the example. Thanks!
At some point I may go back and replace with another example. I’m open to ideas.
It’s not a trick, he’s allowed to backtrack and amend his choice of specific example and have a re-do of my response. In this dialogue, I chose the underlying reality to be that Steve’s “point” really is incoherent, because a Monte Carlo simulation of real-world arguers has a high probability of landing on this scenario.
You saw coming that his position would be temporarily incoherent, that’s why you went there. I expect Steve to be aware of this at some level, and update on how hostile the debate is. Minimize the amount of times you have to prove him wrong.
I agree with the principle of “minimize the amount of times you have to prove him wrong”. But in the dialogue, I only had to “prove him wrong” that one time, because his position was fundamentally incoherent, not temporarily incoherent.
Relies very heavily that in adversial context a free pick should be an optimal pick. The other arguer demonstrated that he didn’t even realise that he can pick so its is reasonable to assume he doesn’t know the pick should be optimal.
Doing re-dos without preannouncing them is giving free mulligans for yourself. I think would have been in the safe in saying that he did not make new claims, denying the mulligan. There could have been 10 facets of the exploitation in the scenario and fixing one of them would still leave 9 open. You can’t say that a forest doesn’t exist if it is not any of the individual trees.
The new claim is also not contradictory with the old story. It could also be taken as further spesification of it.
Ok but what if he truly doesn’t have a point? Because as the author of the fictional situation, I’m saying that’s the premise. Under these circumstances, isn’t it right and proper to play the kind of “adversarial game” with him that he’s likely to “lose”?
It is pretty easy to ‘win’ any argument that the other side has to take a strong stance behind.
Go ahead, ask something where you take a strong stance.
I was going to say Uber has definately done ‘blank’, but I’m not very Steve and saying that Uber isn’t as ‘fair’ as amazon or walmart is a position that is easy to agree with or against. Whoever makes out the best is going to agree with this adversarial gain.
Relying that your opponent does a mistake is not a super reliable strategy. If someone reads your story and uses it as inspiration to start an argument they might end up in a situation where the actual person doesn’ t make that mistake. That could feel a lot more like “shooting yourself in the face in an argument” rather than “demolishing an argument”.
Argument methods that work because of misdirection arguably don’t serve truth very well or work very indirectly (being deceptive makes it rewarding for the other to be keen).
Most people have reasons for their stances. Their point might be louzy or unimportant but usually one exists. If he truly doesn’ t have a point then there is no specific story to tell. As author you have the options of him having a story or not meaning anything with his words but not both.
Well, I’m not offering a general-purpose debate-winning tactic. I’m offering a basic sanity check that happens to demolish most arguments because humans are bad at thinking and have trouble even forming coherent claims.
I guess the point of humanity is to achieve as much prosperity as possible. Adversarial techniques help when competition improves our chances—helpful in physical activities, when groups compete, in markets generally. But in a conversation with someone your best bet to help humanity is to help them come around to your superior understanding, and adversarial conversation won’t achieve that.
The ideal strategy looks something like the best path along which you can lead them, where you can demonstrate to them they are wrong and they will believe you, which usually involves you demonstrating a very clear and comprehensive understanding, citing information, but doing it all in a way that seems collaborative.
Asking for specific examples is not a rhetorical device, it’s a tool for clear thinking. What I’m illustrating with Steve is a productive approach that raises the standard of discourse. IMO.
I’ve personally been in the Steve role many times: I used to hang out a lot with Anna Salamon when I was still new to LessWrong-style rationality, and I distinctly remember how I would make statements that Anna would then basically just ask me to clarify, and in attempting to do so I would realize I probably don’t have a coherent point, and this is what talking to a smarter person than me feels like. She was being empathetic and considerate to me like she always is, not adversarial at all, but it’s still accurate to say she demolished my arguments.
I believe that the thing which is making many of your commenters misinterpret the post is that you chose a political example for the dialogue. That gives people the (reasonable, as this is a common move) suspicion that you have a motive of attacking your political enemy while disguising it as rationality advice.
Even if they don’t think that, if they have any sympathies towards the side that you seem to be attacking, they will still feel it necessary to defend that side. To do otherwise would risk granting the implicit notion that the “Uber exploits its drivers” side would have no coherent arguments in general, regardless of whether or not you meant to send that message.
You mentioned that you have personal examples where Anna pointed out to you that your position was incoherently. Something like that would probably have been a better example to use: saying “here’s an example of how I made this mistake” won’t be suspected of having ulterior motives the way that “here’s an example of a mistake made by someone who I might reasonably be suspected to consider a political opponent” will.
Ahhh right, you got me, I was unnecessarily political! It didn’t pattern match to the kind of political arguing that I see in my bubble, but I get why anyone who feels skeptical or unhappy about Uber’s practices won’t be maximally receptive to learning about specificity using this example, and why even people who don’t have an opinion about Uber have expressed feeling “uncomfortable” with the example. Thanks!
At some point I may go back and replace with another example. I’m open to ideas.
Ok I finally made this edit. Wish I did it sooner!