(Relevant background context: Zack has previously argued at extreme length that this particular claimant’s failure to adequately respond publicly about another matter is Bayesian evidence about a variety of important inferences related to that claimant’s epistemics.)
I would change “extreme” to “great”. Extreme seems more value-laden to me. I think seperating observations from inferences, especially when value laden, makes your beliefs more legible.
I don’t have a problem with “extreme”. I read it in Wiktionary sense 3: “Excessive, or far beyond the norm.” I can see how that’s value-laden in the sense that what’s excessive or far beyond the norm depends on what length you think would be adequate or within the norm. Clearly, I don’t think it was excessive, or I wouldn’t have written that way. But if Max H. thinks it was excessive (relative to his own perception of adequacy or norms), I think it’s fine for him to indicate as much with the word “extreme”. Who is being misled by this, exactly?
My initial comment didn’t express my actual problem with “extreme”, because I didn’t understand what I felt what wrong with “extreme”. My apologies. I’ll try again.
“Extreme” is quite close to “extremist”, which has a bright negative halo attatched to it. Unfortunately for me, that often spills over to “extreme” when I head the word in a bunch of contexts. If I’m not paying close attention, I expect to translate someone going to an “extreme length” in a piece critical of another claim said person has made, into something with an undue negative halo. So I came away thinking a value judgement had been made on my first pass. I expect enough readers are like me, and read this article in a superficial manner like I often do, that it would be of minor benefit to change the word to “great”.
Seperately, saying you argued at “great length” isn’t what I would call a value judgement. In my view, if you thought the average reader would go “whoa, that’s huge!” you could use this phrase. Yes, the boundary of “huge” is partly socially determined. But I’d say concepts like “huge”, “bright”, “heavy” etc. are closer to a natural abstraction than judgements like “boo”/”yay” or “good”/bad” or “pleasant”/”unplreasant”. They’re useful across a wider variety of humans.
I think I have more faith in Less Wrong readers than you do? I trust readers of this website to be able to interpret words like “extreme” acccording to their literal meanings, rather than being dominated by connotational halo effects.
Never said they’d be dominated by that effect. Nor did I say the majority of LW reader would be at all affected in that way. I think there’s at best a minor effect, which would impact within an OoM of 1% of readers. Which is why I said ‘it would be of minor benefit to change the word to “great”’. But it would also be pretty quick and maybe a good idea? This is all, of course, assuming Max H didn’t want some negative association attatched to your linked piece. I didn’t know if that’s what Max H was going for.
As for why I spent all this time on such a minor point, I guess something was bothering me about the word “extreme” in that sentence and I wanted to focus on it. When I focus like that, it commonly boots me out of a funk, which is what I was in, so doing this was positive EV for me.
I would change “extreme” to “great”. Extreme seems more value-laden to me. I think seperating observations from inferences, especially when value laden, makes your beliefs more legible.
I don’t have a problem with “extreme”. I read it in Wiktionary sense 3: “Excessive, or far beyond the norm.” I can see how that’s value-laden in the sense that what’s excessive or far beyond the norm depends on what length you think would be adequate or within the norm. Clearly, I don’t think it was excessive, or I wouldn’t have written that way. But if Max H. thinks it was excessive (relative to his own perception of adequacy or norms), I think it’s fine for him to indicate as much with the word “extreme”. Who is being misled by this, exactly?
My initial comment didn’t express my actual problem with “extreme”, because I didn’t understand what I felt what wrong with “extreme”. My apologies. I’ll try again.
“Extreme” is quite close to “extremist”, which has a bright negative halo attatched to it. Unfortunately for me, that often spills over to “extreme” when I head the word in a bunch of contexts. If I’m not paying close attention, I expect to translate someone going to an “extreme length” in a piece critical of another claim said person has made, into something with an undue negative halo. So I came away thinking a value judgement had been made on my first pass. I expect enough readers are like me, and read this article in a superficial manner like I often do, that it would be of minor benefit to change the word to “great”.
Seperately, saying you argued at “great length” isn’t what I would call a value judgement. In my view, if you thought the average reader would go “whoa, that’s huge!” you could use this phrase. Yes, the boundary of “huge” is partly socially determined. But I’d say concepts like “huge”, “bright”, “heavy” etc. are closer to a natural abstraction than judgements like “boo”/”yay” or “good”/bad” or “pleasant”/”unplreasant”. They’re useful across a wider variety of humans.
I think I have more faith in Less Wrong readers than you do? I trust readers of this website to be able to interpret words like “extreme” acccording to their literal meanings, rather than being dominated by connotational halo effects.
Never said they’d be dominated by that effect. Nor did I say the majority of LW reader would be at all affected in that way. I think there’s at best a minor effect, which would impact within an OoM of 1% of readers. Which is why I said ‘it would be of minor benefit to change the word to “great”’. But it would also be pretty quick and maybe a good idea? This is all, of course, assuming Max H didn’t want some negative association attatched to your linked piece. I didn’t know if that’s what Max H was going for.
As for why I spent all this time on such a minor point, I guess something was bothering me about the word “extreme” in that sentence and I wanted to focus on it. When I focus like that, it commonly boots me out of a funk, which is what I was in, so doing this was positive EV for me.
I’m glad you’re out of your funk!