Aha, this clarifies some things helpfully. It is now much clearer to me than it was before what epistemological error you take Zack to be trying to correct here.
I still think it’s clear that Zack’s main purpose in writing the article was to promote a particular object-level position on the political question. But I agree that “even though categories are map rather than territory, some maps match reality much better than others, and to deny that is an error” (call this proposition P, for future use) is a reasonable point to make about epistemology in the abstract, and that given the context of Zack’s article it’s reasonable to take that to be a key thing it’s trying to say about epistemology.
But it seems to me—though perhaps I’m just being dim—that the only possibly way to appreciate that P was Zack’s epistemological point is to be aware not only of the political (not-very-sub) subtext of the article (which, you’ll recall, is the thing I originally said it was wrong not to mention) but also of the context where people were addressing that specific political issue in what Zack considers a too-subjective way. (For the avoidance of doubt, I’m not saying that that requires some sort of special esoteric knowledge unavailable to the rest of us. Merely having just reread Scott’s TCWMFM would have sufficed. But it happened that I was familiar enough with it not to feel that I needed to revisit it, and not familiar enough with it to recognize every specific reference to it in Zack’s article. I doubt I’m alone in that.)
Again, perhaps I’m just being dim. But I know that some people didn’t even see the political subtext, and I know that I didn’t see P as being Zack’s main epistemological point before I read what you just wrote. (I’m still not sure it is, for what it’s worth.) So it doesn’t seem open to much doubt that just putting the article here without further explanation wasn’t sufficient.
There’s a specific way in which I could be being dim that might make that wrong: perhaps I was just distracted by the politics, and perhaps if I’d been able to approach the article as if it were purely talking in the abstract about epistemology I’d have taken it to be saying P. But, again, if so then I offer myself as evidence that it needed some clarification for the benefit of those liable to be distracted.
As to the rest:
It looks to me as if you are ascribing meanings and purposes to me that are not mine at all. E.g., “If we all know that such arguments aren’t meant to be taken literally, but are instead meant to push one side of a particular political debate in that context”—I didn’t think I was saying, and I don’t think I believe, and I don’t think anything I said either implies or presupposes, anything like that. The impression I have is that this is one of those situations where I say X, you believe Y, from X&Y you infer Z, and you get cross because I’m saying Z and Z is an awful thing to say—when what’s actually happening is that we disagree about Y. Unfortunately, I can’t tell what Y is in this situation :-).
So I don’t know how to react to your suggestion that I should have said explicitly rather than just assuming that posts like Scott’s TCWMFM “are mindkilled politics and engaging with them lowers the quality of discourse here”; presumably either (1) you think I actually think that or (2) you think that what I’ve said implies that so it’s a useful reductio, but I still don’t understand how you get there from what I actually wrote.
To be explicit about this:
I do not think that Scott’s TCWMFM is “mindkilled politics”.
I do not think that engaging with articles like Scott’s TCWMFM lowers the quality of discourse.
I do not think that it’s impossible to hold Scott’s position honestly.
I do not think that it’s impossible to hold Zack’s position honestly.
I don’t think that Zack’s article is “mindkilled politics”, but I do think it’s much less good than Scott’s.
I don’t think Scott is making the epistemological mistake you say Zack is saying he’s making, that of not understanding that one way of drawing category boundaries can be better than another. I think he’s aware of that, but thinks (as, for what it’s worth, I do, but I think Zack doesn’t) that there are a number of comparably well matched with reality ways to draw them in this case.
I think that responding to Scott’s article as if he were simply saying “meh, whatever, draw category boundaries literally any way you like, the only thing that matters is which way is nicest” is not reasonable, and I think that casting it as making the mistake you say Zack is saying Scott was making requires some such uncharitable interpretation. (This may be one reason why I didn’t take P to be the main epistemological claim of Zack’s article.)
If you’re still offended by what I wrote, then at least one of us is misunderstanding the other and I hope that turns out to be fixable.
But I agree that “even though categories are map rather than territory, some maps match reality much better than others, and to deny that is an error”
Wait. Suitability for purpose has to come in here. There is no single ordering of how closely a map reflects reality. Maps compress different parts of reality in different ways, to enable different predictions/communications about various parts of reality. It’s been literally decades since I’ve enjoyed flamewars about which projection of Earth is “best” for literal maps, but the result is the same: it depends on what the map will be used for, and you’re probably best off using different maps for different purposes, even if those maps are of the same place.
I don’t know the actual debate going on, and pretty much think that in unspecific conversation where details don’t matter, one should prefer kindness and surface presentation. Where the details matter, be precise and factual about the details—don’t rely on categorizations that have notable exceptions for the dimensions you’re talking about.
For the avoidance of doubt, I strongly agree that what counts as “matching reality much better” depends on what you are going to be using your map for; that’s a key reason why I am not very convinced by Zack’s original argument if it’s understood as a rebuttal to (say) Scott’s TCWMFM either in general or specifically as it pertains to the political question at issue.
in unspecific conversation where details don’t matter, one should prefer kindness and surface presentation.
Why? Doesn’t this lead to summaries being inaccurate and people having bad world models (ones that would assign lower probability to the actual details, compared to ones based on accurate summaries)?
Doesn’t this lead to summaries being inaccurate and people having bad world models (ones that would assign lower probability to the actual details, compared to ones based on accurate summaries)?
No, it doesn’t lead there. It starts there. The vast majority of common beliefs will remain inaccurate on many dimensions, and all you can do is to figure out which (if any) details you can benefit the world by slightly improving, in your limited time. Details about hidden attributes that will affect almost nothing are details that don’t need correcting—talk about more interesting/useful things.
No one has time to look into the details of everything. If someone isn’t going to look into the details of something, they benefit from the summaries being accurate, in the sense that they reflect how an honest party would summarize the details if they knew them. (Also, how would you know which things you should look into further if the low-resolution summaries are lies?)
This seems pretty basic and it seems like you were disagreeing with this by saying the description should be based on kindness and surface presentation. Obviously some hidden attributes matter more than others (and matter more or less context-dependently), my assertion here is that summaries should be based primarily on how they reflect the way the thing is (in all its details) rather than on kindness and surface presentation.
In many contexts, the primary benefit of the summary is brevity and simplicity, more even than information. If you have more time/bandwidth/attention, then certainly including more information is better, and even then you should prioritize information by importance.
In any case, I appreciate the reminder that this is the wrong forum for politically-charged discussions. I’m bowing out—I’ll read any further comments, but won’t respond.
To be clear, brevity and simplicity are not the same as kindness and surface presentation, and confusing these two seems like a mistake 8 year olds can almost always avoid making. (No pressure to respond; in any case I meant to talk about the abstract issue of accurate summaries which seems not to be politically charged except in the sense that epistemology itself is a political issue, which it is)
But it seems to me—though perhaps I’m just being dim—that the only possibly way to appreciate that P was Zack’s epistemological point is to be aware not only of the political (not-very-sub) subtext of the article (which, you’ll recall, is the thing I originally said it was wrong not to mention) but also of the context where people were addressing that specific political issue in what Zack considers a too-subjective way.
That’s not actually an important part of the content of Zack’s article. It is only relevant in the context of your claim that Zack was responding to a very different specific thing not directly referenced in his article. I am not saying that the fact that you were wrong means that the true cause should have been obvious. I am saying that the fact that you were wrong should make you doubt that you were obviously right.
If people’s models have a specific glitch, laying out what the undamaged version ought to look like is legitimate, and shouldn’t have to exist solely in reference to the specific instance of the glitch. Truth doesn’t have to make reference to error to be true—it just has to match reality.
Wait, if you reckon the proposition I called P is “not actually an important part of the content of Zack’s article” then what did you have in mind as the “politically motivated epistemic error” that Zack’s article was about?
(Or, if P was that error, how am I supposed to understand your original protest which so far as I can tell only makes any sense if you consider that correcting the epistemic error was the whole point, or at least the main point, of Zack’s article?)
I still think it’s clear that Zack’s main purpose in writing the article was to promote a particular object-level position on the political question.
Why would you think that? Why would this post be a remotely effective way to do that? Why is that even a plausible thing Zack’s trying to do here? Can you point to an example of someone who was actually persuaded?
I feel like I’ve done way too much work explaining my position here and you haven’t really explained the reasoning behind yours.
For what it’s worth, I feel the same way as you but with the obvious change of sign: it feels to me like you keep accusing me of saying somewhat-outrageous things that I’m not intending to say and don’t believe, and when I ask why you’d think I mean that you just ignore it, and it feels to me like I’ve put much more trouble into understanding your position and clarifying mine than you have into understanding mine and clarifying yours.
Presumably the truth lies somewhere in between.
I don’t think it is reasonable to respond to “I think Zack was trying to do X” with “That’s ridiculous, because evidently it didn’t work”, for two reasons. Firstly, the great majority of attempts to promote a particular position on a controversial topic don’t change anyone’s mind, even in a venue like LW where we try to change our minds more readily when circumstances call for it. Secondly, if you propose that instead he was trying to put forward a particular generally-applicable epistemological position (though I still don’t know what position you have in mind, despite asking several times, since the only particular one you’ve mentioned you then said wasn’t an important part of the content of Zack’s article) then I in turn can ask whether you can point to an example of someone who was persuaded of that by the article.
It’s somewhat reasonable to respond to “I think Zack was trying to do X” with “But what he wrote is obviously not an effective way of doing X”, but I don’t see why it’s any more obviously ineffective as a tool of political persuasion, or as an expression of a political position, than it is as a work of epistemological clarification, and in particular it doesn’t even look to me more than averagely ineffective in such a role.
For the avoidance of doubt, I don’t in the least deny that I might be wrong about what Zack was trying to do. (Sometimes a person thinks something’s clear that turns out to be false. I am not immune to this.) Zack, if you happen to be reading and haven’t been so annoyed by my comments that you don’t want to interact with me ever again, anything you might want to say on this score would be welcome. If I have badly misunderstood what you wrote, please accept my apologies.
Aha, this clarifies some things helpfully. It is now much clearer to me than it was before what epistemological error you take Zack to be trying to correct here.
I still think it’s clear that Zack’s main purpose in writing the article was to promote a particular object-level position on the political question. But I agree that “even though categories are map rather than territory, some maps match reality much better than others, and to deny that is an error” (call this proposition P, for future use) is a reasonable point to make about epistemology in the abstract, and that given the context of Zack’s article it’s reasonable to take that to be a key thing it’s trying to say about epistemology.
But it seems to me—though perhaps I’m just being dim—that the only possibly way to appreciate that P was Zack’s epistemological point is to be aware not only of the political (not-very-sub) subtext of the article (which, you’ll recall, is the thing I originally said it was wrong not to mention) but also of the context where people were addressing that specific political issue in what Zack considers a too-subjective way. (For the avoidance of doubt, I’m not saying that that requires some sort of special esoteric knowledge unavailable to the rest of us. Merely having just reread Scott’s TCWMFM would have sufficed. But it happened that I was familiar enough with it not to feel that I needed to revisit it, and not familiar enough with it to recognize every specific reference to it in Zack’s article. I doubt I’m alone in that.)
Again, perhaps I’m just being dim. But I know that some people didn’t even see the political subtext, and I know that I didn’t see P as being Zack’s main epistemological point before I read what you just wrote. (I’m still not sure it is, for what it’s worth.) So it doesn’t seem open to much doubt that just putting the article here without further explanation wasn’t sufficient.
There’s a specific way in which I could be being dim that might make that wrong: perhaps I was just distracted by the politics, and perhaps if I’d been able to approach the article as if it were purely talking in the abstract about epistemology I’d have taken it to be saying P. But, again, if so then I offer myself as evidence that it needed some clarification for the benefit of those liable to be distracted.
As to the rest:
It looks to me as if you are ascribing meanings and purposes to me that are not mine at all. E.g., “If we all know that such arguments aren’t meant to be taken literally, but are instead meant to push one side of a particular political debate in that context”—I didn’t think I was saying, and I don’t think I believe, and I don’t think anything I said either implies or presupposes, anything like that. The impression I have is that this is one of those situations where I say X, you believe Y, from X&Y you infer Z, and you get cross because I’m saying Z and Z is an awful thing to say—when what’s actually happening is that we disagree about Y. Unfortunately, I can’t tell what Y is in this situation :-).
So I don’t know how to react to your suggestion that I should have said explicitly rather than just assuming that posts like Scott’s TCWMFM “are mindkilled politics and engaging with them lowers the quality of discourse here”; presumably either (1) you think I actually think that or (2) you think that what I’ve said implies that so it’s a useful reductio, but I still don’t understand how you get there from what I actually wrote.
To be explicit about this:
I do not think that Scott’s TCWMFM is “mindkilled politics”.
I do not think that engaging with articles like Scott’s TCWMFM lowers the quality of discourse.
I do not think that it’s impossible to hold Scott’s position honestly.
I do not think that it’s impossible to hold Zack’s position honestly.
I don’t think that Zack’s article is “mindkilled politics”, but I do think it’s much less good than Scott’s.
I don’t think Scott is making the epistemological mistake you say Zack is saying he’s making, that of not understanding that one way of drawing category boundaries can be better than another. I think he’s aware of that, but thinks (as, for what it’s worth, I do, but I think Zack doesn’t) that there are a number of comparably well matched with reality ways to draw them in this case.
I think that responding to Scott’s article as if he were simply saying “meh, whatever, draw category boundaries literally any way you like, the only thing that matters is which way is nicest” is not reasonable, and I think that casting it as making the mistake you say Zack is saying Scott was making requires some such uncharitable interpretation. (This may be one reason why I didn’t take P to be the main epistemological claim of Zack’s article.)
If you’re still offended by what I wrote, then at least one of us is misunderstanding the other and I hope that turns out to be fixable.
Wait. Suitability for purpose has to come in here. There is no single ordering of how closely a map reflects reality. Maps compress different parts of reality in different ways, to enable different predictions/communications about various parts of reality. It’s been literally decades since I’ve enjoyed flamewars about which projection of Earth is “best” for literal maps, but the result is the same: it depends on what the map will be used for, and you’re probably best off using different maps for different purposes, even if those maps are of the same place.
I don’t know the actual debate going on, and pretty much think that in unspecific conversation where details don’t matter, one should prefer kindness and surface presentation. Where the details matter, be precise and factual about the details—don’t rely on categorizations that have notable exceptions for the dimensions you’re talking about.
For the avoidance of doubt, I strongly agree that what counts as “matching reality much better” depends on what you are going to be using your map for; that’s a key reason why I am not very convinced by Zack’s original argument if it’s understood as a rebuttal to (say) Scott’s TCWMFM either in general or specifically as it pertains to the political question at issue.
Why? Doesn’t this lead to summaries being inaccurate and people having bad world models (ones that would assign lower probability to the actual details, compared to ones based on accurate summaries)?
No, it doesn’t lead there. It starts there. The vast majority of common beliefs will remain inaccurate on many dimensions, and all you can do is to figure out which (if any) details you can benefit the world by slightly improving, in your limited time. Details about hidden attributes that will affect almost nothing are details that don’t need correcting—talk about more interesting/useful things.
No one has time to look into the details of everything. If someone isn’t going to look into the details of something, they benefit from the summaries being accurate, in the sense that they reflect how an honest party would summarize the details if they knew them. (Also, how would you know which things you should look into further if the low-resolution summaries are lies?)
This seems pretty basic and it seems like you were disagreeing with this by saying the description should be based on kindness and surface presentation. Obviously some hidden attributes matter more than others (and matter more or less context-dependently), my assertion here is that summaries should be based primarily on how they reflect the way the thing is (in all its details) rather than on kindness and surface presentation.
In many contexts, the primary benefit of the summary is brevity and simplicity, more even than information. If you have more time/bandwidth/attention, then certainly including more information is better, and even then you should prioritize information by importance.
In any case, I appreciate the reminder that this is the wrong forum for politically-charged discussions. I’m bowing out—I’ll read any further comments, but won’t respond.
To be clear, brevity and simplicity are not the same as kindness and surface presentation, and confusing these two seems like a mistake 8 year olds can almost always avoid making. (No pressure to respond; in any case I meant to talk about the abstract issue of accurate summaries which seems not to be politically charged except in the sense that epistemology itself is a political issue, which it is)
That’s not actually an important part of the content of Zack’s article. It is only relevant in the context of your claim that Zack was responding to a very different specific thing not directly referenced in his article. I am not saying that the fact that you were wrong means that the true cause should have been obvious. I am saying that the fact that you were wrong should make you doubt that you were obviously right.
If people’s models have a specific glitch, laying out what the undamaged version ought to look like is legitimate, and shouldn’t have to exist solely in reference to the specific instance of the glitch. Truth doesn’t have to make reference to error to be true—it just has to match reality.
Wait, if you reckon the proposition I called P is “not actually an important part of the content of Zack’s article” then what did you have in mind as the “politically motivated epistemic error” that Zack’s article was about?
(Or, if P was that error, how am I supposed to understand your original protest which so far as I can tell only makes any sense if you consider that correcting the epistemic error was the whole point, or at least the main point, of Zack’s article?)
Firmly agree with your last paragraph, though.
Why would you think that? Why would this post be a remotely effective way to do that? Why is that even a plausible thing Zack’s trying to do here? Can you point to an example of someone who was actually persuaded?
I feel like I’ve done way too much work explaining my position here and you haven’t really explained the reasoning behind yours.
For what it’s worth, I feel the same way as you but with the obvious change of sign: it feels to me like you keep accusing me of saying somewhat-outrageous things that I’m not intending to say and don’t believe, and when I ask why you’d think I mean that you just ignore it, and it feels to me like I’ve put much more trouble into understanding your position and clarifying mine than you have into understanding mine and clarifying yours.
Presumably the truth lies somewhere in between.
I don’t think it is reasonable to respond to “I think Zack was trying to do X” with “That’s ridiculous, because evidently it didn’t work”, for two reasons. Firstly, the great majority of attempts to promote a particular position on a controversial topic don’t change anyone’s mind, even in a venue like LW where we try to change our minds more readily when circumstances call for it. Secondly, if you propose that instead he was trying to put forward a particular generally-applicable epistemological position (though I still don’t know what position you have in mind, despite asking several times, since the only particular one you’ve mentioned you then said wasn’t an important part of the content of Zack’s article) then I in turn can ask whether you can point to an example of someone who was persuaded of that by the article.
It’s somewhat reasonable to respond to “I think Zack was trying to do X” with “But what he wrote is obviously not an effective way of doing X”, but I don’t see why it’s any more obviously ineffective as a tool of political persuasion, or as an expression of a political position, than it is as a work of epistemological clarification, and in particular it doesn’t even look to me more than averagely ineffective in such a role.
For the avoidance of doubt, I don’t in the least deny that I might be wrong about what Zack was trying to do. (Sometimes a person thinks something’s clear that turns out to be false. I am not immune to this.) Zack, if you happen to be reading and haven’t been so annoyed by my comments that you don’t want to interact with me ever again, anything you might want to say on this score would be welcome. If I have badly misunderstood what you wrote, please accept my apologies.