There’s tacit knowledge in bay rationalist conversation norms that I’m discovering and thinking about, here’s an observation and related thought. (I put the example later after the generalisation because that’s my preferred style, feel free to read the other way).
Willingness to argue righteously and hash out things to the end, repeated over many conversations, makes it more salient when you’re going for a dead end argument. This salience can inspire you to do argue more concisely and to the point over time. Going to the end of things generates ground data on which to update your models of arguing and conversation paths, instead of leaving things unanswered. So, though it’s skilful to know when not to “waste” time on details and unimportant disagreements, the norm of “frequently enough going through til everyone agrees on things” seems profoundly virtuous.
Short example from today, I say “good morning”. They point out it’s not morning (it’s 12:02). I comment about how 2 minutes is not that much. They argue that 2 minutes is definitely more than zero and that’s the important cut-off. I realize that “2 minutes is not that much” was not my true rebuttal, that this next token my brain generated was mostly defensive reasoning rather than curious exploration of why they disagreed with my statement. Next time I could instead note they’re using “morning” to have a different definition/central cluster than I, appreciate that they pointed this out, and decide if I want to explore this discrepancy or not.
Many things don’t make sense if you’re just doing them for local effect, but do when you consider long term gains. (something something naive consequentialism vs virtue ethics flavored stuff)
There’s tacit knowledge in bay rationalist conversation norms that I’m discovering and thinking about, here’s an observation and related thought. (I put the example later after the generalisation because that’s my preferred style, feel free to read the other way).
Willingness to argue righteously and hash out things to the end, repeated over many conversations, makes it more salient when you’re going for a dead end argument. This salience can inspire you to do argue more concisely and to the point over time.
Going to the end of things generates ground data on which to update your models of arguing and conversation paths, instead of leaving things unanswered.
So, though it’s skilful to know when not to “waste” time on details and unimportant disagreements, the norm of “frequently enough going through til everyone agrees on things” seems profoundly virtuous.
Short example from today, I say “good morning”. They point out it’s not morning (it’s 12:02). I comment about how 2 minutes is not that much. They argue that 2 minutes is definitely more than zero and that’s the important cut-off.
I realize that “2 minutes is not that much” was not my true rebuttal, that this next token my brain generated was mostly defensive reasoning rather than curious exploration of why they disagreed with my statement. Next time I could instead note they’re using “morning” to have a different definition/central cluster than I, appreciate that they pointed this out, and decide if I want to explore this discrepancy or not.
Many things don’t make sense if you’re just doing them for local effect, but do when you consider long term gains. (something something naive consequentialism vs virtue ethics flavored stuff)