NO! “Burden of proof” is for courts and social battles, not thinking.
You make an argument so that I can counter it
This isn’t debate club either!
So many people don’t seem to get this! It’s infuriating.
I wonder if it’s just word association with Traditional Rationality. People think making persuasive arguments has anything to do with what we’re doing here.
Yes, making persuasive arguments is often instrumentally useful, and so in that sense is a ‘rationality skill’ - but cooking and rock climbing are also ‘rationality skills’ in that sense.
My usual working theory is that smart people often learn that winning the argument game is a way for smart people to gain status, especially within academia and within communities of soi-disant smart people (aka mensa), and thus come to expect any community of smart people will use the argument game as a primary way to earn and retain status. They identify LW as a community of smart people, so they begin playing the argument game in order to establish their status.
And when playing the argument game results in _losing_status instead, they feel betrayed and defensive.
I don’t usually italicize it, but I wouldn’t be too surprised to encounter it italicized, especially in print. I imagine it depends one whether one considers it an English word borrowed from a foreign language (which I do) or a foreign phrase (which one plausibly could).
How odd! When I went there through google it didn’t ask for a login, but when I follow the link it does.
Anyway, summarized, his point is that the benefits to the right audience of using the right word at the right time outweigh the costs to everyone else either looking it up and learning a new word, getting the general meaning from context, or not understanding and ignoring it. But like much of Buckley, the original text is worth reading if you enjoy language.
Googling “Buckley eristic lapidary November” should get you a link that works.
We should probably just use those phrases directly then, rather than excluding possible readers without adding any informational content.
Nonsense. More words is better. Nuance is good. Words are trivially easy to look up.
I didn’t ask what the word meant, because by the time I was done reading the comment I knew what the word meant and even had a rough sense of when I would want to use “soi-disant” as opposed to “so-called” or “self-proclaimed”.
Agreed that more words are better–more possible information can be conveyed. However, it sounds like you’re better than the average reader at grasping the meaning of words from context. (Knowing French, I can guess what ‘soi-disant’ means...having no idea, I don’t know if I would have deduced it from the context of just that one comment.)
It’s not unreasonable to infer from by the time I was done reading the comment I knew what the word meant and even had a rough sense of when I would want to use “soi-disant” as opposed to “so-called” or “self-proclaimed” that thomblake didn’t interrupt his reading of the comment to go perform some other task (e.g., looking the word up on google).
I mean, if someone said about an essay that by the time they were done reading it they had a deep understanding of quantum mechanics, I would probably infer that the essay explained quantum mechanics, even though they might mean they started reading it in 2009, put it down unfinished to go study QM for three years, then found the unfinished essay (which was in fact about gardenias) and finished reading it.
As I understand it, “counterfactual” originates from history, it means, originally, when historians analyze what would happen if some particular thing had gone differently.
Really? I always thought it came from logic/semantics: a “counterfactual conditional” is one of the form “If X had happened, Y would have”, and there is a minor industry in finding truth conditions for them.
No, the difference is between serious historical studies of what would likely have happened, vs people who make up new characters who had no significance OTL to tell a good story.
To expand on this—a counterfactual might predict “and then we would still have dirigibles today”, or not, if asking “what if the Hindenburg disaster had not occurred.” It would probably NOT predict who would be president in 2012, neither would it predict that in a question wholly unrelated to air travel or lighter-than-air technology. An alternate history fiction story might need the president for the plot, and it might go with the current president or it might go with Jack Ryan. An alternate history timeline is somewhere in the middle, but in general will ask “what change could have made [some radically different way the modern world looks like]” rather than “what can we predict would have happened if [some change happened]” and refrain from speculation on stuff that can’t be predicted to any reasonable probability.
The line is also to some extent definable as between historians and fiction authors, though these can certainly overlap particularly in the amateur side of things.
So many people don’t seem to get this! It’s infuriating.
I wonder if it’s just word association with Traditional Rationality. People think making persuasive arguments has anything to do with what we’re doing here.
Yes, making persuasive arguments is often instrumentally useful, and so in that sense is a ‘rationality skill’ - but cooking and rock climbing are also ‘rationality skills’ in that sense.
Yeah, it comes up a lot.
My usual working theory is that smart people often learn that winning the argument game is a way for smart people to gain status, especially within academia and within communities of soi-disant smart people (aka mensa), and thus come to expect any community of smart people will use the argument game as a primary way to earn and retain status. They identify LW as a community of smart people, so they begin playing the argument game in order to establish their status.
And when playing the argument game results in _losing_status instead, they feel betrayed and defensive.
Never encountered this before. Is it usually italicized?
I don’t usually italicize it, but I wouldn’t be too surprised to encounter it italicized, especially in print. I imagine it depends one whether one considers it an English word borrowed from a foreign language (which I do) or a foreign phrase (which one plausibly could).
It means “so-called” or “self-proclaimed”.
We should probably just use those phrases directly then, rather than excluding possible readers without adding any informational content.
(On that note, someone at an LW meetup I went to recently made a good point: why do we say “counterfactual” instead of just “made-up”?)
Buckley’s response to this sentiment is apposite.
Login required. Summarize?
How odd! When I went there through google it didn’t ask for a login, but when I follow the link it does.
Anyway, summarized, his point is that the benefits to the right audience of using the right word at the right time outweigh the costs to everyone else either looking it up and learning a new word, getting the general meaning from context, or not understanding and ignoring it. But like much of Buckley, the original text is worth reading if you enjoy language.
Googling “Buckley eristic lapidary November” should get you a link that works.
Nonsense. More words is better. Nuance is good. Words are trivially easy to look up.
I didn’t ask what the word meant, because by the time I was done reading the comment I knew what the word meant and even had a rough sense of when I would want to use “soi-disant” as opposed to “so-called” or “self-proclaimed”.
What is the additional nuance in “soi-disant” that’s not in “self-described”?
Agreed that more words are better–more possible information can be conveyed. However, it sounds like you’re better than the average reader at grasping the meaning of words from context. (Knowing French, I can guess what ‘soi-disant’ means...having no idea, I don’t know if I would have deduced it from the context of just that one comment.)
I did not deduce it from context—I looked it up. Using the Internet.
It’s the obvious thing to do if it’s after 1998.
Somehow in your comment it seemed like you meant you’d figured it our yourself...rereading it, I don’t know why I thought that.
It’s not unreasonable to infer from by the time I was done reading the comment I knew what the word meant and even had a rough sense of when I would want to use “soi-disant” as opposed to “so-called” or “self-proclaimed” that thomblake didn’t interrupt his reading of the comment to go perform some other task (e.g., looking the word up on google).
I mean, if someone said about an essay that by the time they were done reading it they had a deep understanding of quantum mechanics, I would probably infer that the essay explained quantum mechanics, even though they might mean they started reading it in 2009, put it down unfinished to go study QM for three years, then found the unfinished essay (which was in fact about gardenias) and finished reading it.
I sympathize with this suggestion. But at the same time, I do enjoy learning new words.
As I understand it, “counterfactual” originates from history, it means, originally, when historians analyze what would happen if some particular thing had gone differently.
Really? I always thought it came from logic/semantics: a “counterfactual conditional” is one of the form “If X had happened, Y would have”, and there is a minor industry in finding truth conditions for them.
Well, I heard it first relating to history.
Hm, so I guess the modern term would be “alternate history fic”? :-)
No, the difference is between serious historical studies of what would likely have happened, vs people who make up new characters who had no significance OTL to tell a good story.
To expand on this—a counterfactual might predict “and then we would still have dirigibles today”, or not, if asking “what if the Hindenburg disaster had not occurred.” It would probably NOT predict who would be president in 2012, neither would it predict that in a question wholly unrelated to air travel or lighter-than-air technology. An alternate history fiction story might need the president for the plot, and it might go with the current president or it might go with Jack Ryan. An alternate history timeline is somewhere in the middle, but in general will ask “what change could have made [some radically different way the modern world looks like]” rather than “what can we predict would have happened if [some change happened]” and refrain from speculation on stuff that can’t be predicted to any reasonable probability.
The line is also to some extent definable as between historians and fiction authors, though these can certainly overlap particularly in the amateur side of things.
Right, I should have mentioned that in grandparent. Thanks!