I think that sometimes it is true that you and a conversational partner will be in a situation where it really actually seems like the highest-probability hypothesis, by a high margin, is that they can’t explain because their point has no merit.
I think one arrives at such a high probability on such a sad hypothesis due to specific kinds of evidence.
I think that often, people are overconfident that that’s what’s going on, and undercounting hypotheses like “the person wants to have the conversation at a different level of meta” or “they just do not have the time to reply to each of ten different commenters who are highly motivated to spill words” or “the person asking for the explanation is not the kind of person the author is trying to bridge with or convince.”
(This is near the root of my issues with Said—I don’t find Said’s confusions at all predictive or diagnostic of confusion-among-my-actual-audience; Said seems to think that his own lack of understanding means something about the point being confused or insufficiently explained or justified, and I often simply disagree, and think that it’s a him-problem.)
I think that it’s good to usually leave space for people, as a matter of policy—to try not to leave the impression that you think (and thus others should think) that a failure to respond adequately is damning, except where you actually for-real think that a failure to respond adequately is genuinely damning.
Like, it’s important not to whip that social weapon out willy-nilly, because then it’s hard to tell when no, we really mean it, if they can’t answer this question we should actually throw out their claims.
Currently, the environment of LW feels, to me, supersaturated with that sort of implication in a way that robs the genuine examples of their power, similar to how if people refer to every little microaggression as “racism” then calling out an actual racist being actually macro-racist becomes much harder to do.
I don’t think it’s bad or off-limits to say that if someone can’t answer X, their point is invalid, but I think we should reserve that for when it’s both justified and actually seriously meant.
So maybe a better example of the problem you are talking about is this, where I basically end up in a position of “if you cannot give an explanation of how this neurological study supports your point, then your point is obscurantist? My behavior in this thread could sort of be said to contain all four of the issues you mention. However rereading the original post and thread makes me feel like it was pretty appropriate. There were some things I could have done better, but my response was better than nothing, despite ultimately being a criticism.
I think that sometimes it is true that you and a conversational partner will be in a situation where it really actually seems like the highest-probability hypothesis, by a high margin, is that they can’t explain because their point has no merit.
I think one arrives at such a high probability on such a sad hypothesis due to specific kinds of evidence.
I think that often, people are overconfident that that’s what’s going on, and undercounting hypotheses like “the person wants to have the conversation at a different level of meta” or “they just do not have the time to reply to each of ten different commenters who are highly motivated to spill words” or “the person asking for the explanation is not the kind of person the author is trying to bridge with or convince.”
(This is near the root of my issues with Said—I don’t find Said’s confusions at all predictive or diagnostic of confusion-among-my-actual-audience; Said seems to think that his own lack of understanding means something about the point being confused or insufficiently explained or justified, and I often simply disagree, and think that it’s a him-problem.)
I think that it’s good to usually leave space for people, as a matter of policy—to try not to leave the impression that you think (and thus others should think) that a failure to respond adequately is damning, except where you actually for-real think that a failure to respond adequately is genuinely damning.
Like, it’s important not to whip that social weapon out willy-nilly, because then it’s hard to tell when no, we really mean it, if they can’t answer this question we should actually throw out their claims.
Currently, the environment of LW feels, to me, supersaturated with that sort of implication in a way that robs the genuine examples of their power, similar to how if people refer to every little microaggression as “racism” then calling out an actual racist being actually macro-racist becomes much harder to do.
I don’t think it’s bad or off-limits to say that if someone can’t answer X, their point is invalid, but I think we should reserve that for when it’s both justified and actually seriously meant.