In the first, you take a place where someone has cited very specific numbers, and ask them to (basically) say where those numbers came from. Then, you note note a problem with the claim “if [socialist] then [more productive]” by pointing out that socialist firms haven’t come to dominate the economy.
In the second, you accommodate the other user’s request that you target your spot-check to co-ops, note that your spot-check led you to the opposite conclusion of the other user, and also note a confusion about whether the cited study is even coherent.
I think this is extremely standard, central LW skepticism in its healthy form.
Some things those comments do not do:
Attempt to set the frame of the discussion to something like ~”obviously this objection I have raised is fundamentally a defeater of your whole point; if you do not answer it satisfactorily then your thesis has been debunked,” which is a thing that Socrati tend to do to a pretty substantial degree.
Leap to conclusions about what the author meant, or what their point is tantamount to, and then run off toward the horizon without checking back in. You’re just straightforwardly expressing confusions and curiosities, not putting words in the author’s mouth.
Create a large burden-of-response upon the author. They’re pretty atomic, simple points; each could be replied to without the author having to do the equivalent of writing a whole new essay.
Cause a tree-explosion where, like, the response to Objection A generates Objections B and C, and then the response to Objection B generates Objections D and E, and then the response to Objection C generates Objections F, G, and H, all without a) consideration for whether the other person intends to go that deep, or b) consideration for whether the Objections are anywhere near the crux of the issue.
I apologize; this comment is sort of dashed off and I would’ve liked to have an additional spoon for it; I don’t think I’ve been exhaustive or thorough. But hopefully this gives at least a little more detail.
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.
I think this is extremely standard, central LW skepticism in its healthy form.
Some things those comments do not do: [...]
I think that’s a very interesting list of points. I didn’t like the essay at all, and the message didn’t feel right to me, but this post right here makes me a lot more sympathetic to it.
(Which is kind of ironic; you say this comment is dashed off, and you presumably spent a lot more time on the essay; but I’d argue the comment conveys a lot more useful information.)
Gonna bring up another case where someone was critical on LessWrong: someone advocated for socialist firms and I (being critical) spot-checked claims about employee engagement and coop productivity. Does the “Killing Socrates” point apply to my comments here? Why/why not?
Personally, I think those comments are good.
In the first, you take a place where someone has cited very specific numbers, and ask them to (basically) say where those numbers came from. Then, you note note a problem with the claim “if [socialist] then [more productive]” by pointing out that socialist firms haven’t come to dominate the economy.
In the second, you accommodate the other user’s request that you target your spot-check to co-ops, note that your spot-check led you to the opposite conclusion of the other user, and also note a confusion about whether the cited study is even coherent.
I think this is extremely standard, central LW skepticism in its healthy form.
Some things those comments do not do:
Attempt to set the frame of the discussion to something like ~”obviously this objection I have raised is fundamentally a defeater of your whole point; if you do not answer it satisfactorily then your thesis has been debunked,” which is a thing that Socrati tend to do to a pretty substantial degree.
Leap to conclusions about what the author meant, or what their point is tantamount to, and then run off toward the horizon without checking back in. You’re just straightforwardly expressing confusions and curiosities, not putting words in the author’s mouth.
Create a large burden-of-response upon the author. They’re pretty atomic, simple points; each could be replied to without the author having to do the equivalent of writing a whole new essay.
Cause a tree-explosion where, like, the response to Objection A generates Objections B and C, and then the response to Objection B generates Objections D and E, and then the response to Objection C generates Objections F, G, and H, all without a) consideration for whether the other person intends to go that deep, or b) consideration for whether the Objections are anywhere near the crux of the issue.
I apologize; this comment is sort of dashed off and I would’ve liked to have an additional spoon for it; I don’t think I’ve been exhaustive or thorough. But hopefully this gives at least a little more detail.
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.
I think that’s a very interesting list of points. I didn’t like the essay at all, and the message didn’t feel right to me, but this post right here makes me a lot more sympathetic to it.
(Which is kind of ironic; you say this comment is dashed off, and you presumably spent a lot more time on the essay; but I’d argue the comment conveys a lot more useful information.)