As the saying goes, you are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts; and you stated your cheek-slapping hypothesis as though it was a fact. The difference is important; it’s the difference between saying, “It would be neat if pigs could fly”, and saying, “pigs can fly”.
Some posts are more factually based than others. Some facts are uncontroversial and others are not. Vladimir Nesov noted the fallacy of gray in your other comment about how all one says is opinion. This seems to be a similar situation.
That’s fine, but in this case, you should avoid saying things like “pigs can fly” when you mean something like “flying pigs would be neat”. The second statement is entirely non-controversial, whereas the first statement is practically a challenge. If we were discussing animal husbandry, and I told you, “actually, since pigs fly, you should always cover your pig-pens with a wire mesh, because otherwise the flying pigs will all fly away”, your response would probably consist of, “WTF, flying pigs ? prove it”. And you’d be right to demand proof.
To be more specific, instead of saying,
“Turn the other cheek” can only be understood if you know the cultural context of the time which goes as follows...
You could have said something like
“I don’t really know what the cultural context of the time really was, but I like to imagine it went as follows...”
This way, it’s reasonably clear that we’re talking about fantasy, not fact, and there won’t be any confusion.
We don’t know whether it’s a fantasy/just so story or not. That depends on whether the originator of the explanation made it up, or based it on plenty of evidence, or something in between. I’m glad someone questioned it though, so I know not to assume it’s as certain as if someone on lesswrong stated something they have direct knowledge of.
As the saying goes, you are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts; and you stated your cheek-slapping hypothesis as though it was a fact. The difference is important; it’s the difference between saying, “It would be neat if pigs could fly”, and saying, “pigs can fly”.
I don’t want to preced every posting of mine with a disclaimer, please:
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/06/against-disclai.html
Some posts are more factually based than others. Some facts are uncontroversial and others are not. Vladimir Nesov noted the fallacy of gray in your other comment about how all one says is opinion. This seems to be a similar situation.
That’s fine, but in this case, you should avoid saying things like “pigs can fly” when you mean something like “flying pigs would be neat”. The second statement is entirely non-controversial, whereas the first statement is practically a challenge. If we were discussing animal husbandry, and I told you, “actually, since pigs fly, you should always cover your pig-pens with a wire mesh, because otherwise the flying pigs will all fly away”, your response would probably consist of, “WTF, flying pigs ? prove it”. And you’d be right to demand proof.
To be more specific, instead of saying,
You could have said something like
“I don’t really know what the cultural context of the time really was, but I like to imagine it went as follows...”
This way, it’s reasonably clear that we’re talking about fantasy, not fact, and there won’t be any confusion.
We don’t know whether it’s a fantasy/just so story or not. That depends on whether the originator of the explanation made it up, or based it on plenty of evidence, or something in between. I’m glad someone questioned it though, so I know not to assume it’s as certain as if someone on lesswrong stated something they have direct knowledge of.