Can you give examples of situations where “charity” has been used in ways that have the negative kinds of effects you’re worried about? Maybe we just have different experiences, but to me the term is normally just used in the “non-uncharitableness” sense that you mention. So in practice it doesn’t seem to cause any epistemic or communicative damage that I could tell.
Someone at LW told me about an argument-mapping website which aimed to provide an online forum where debate would actually be good—an excellent place on the internet to check for the arguments on both sides of any issue, and all the relevant counterarguments to each.
Unfortunately, the moderators interpreted the “principle of charity” to imply no cynical arguments can be made; that is, the principle of charity was understood as a fundamental assumption that humans are basically good.
This made some questions dealing with corruption, human intentions, etc were ruled out as a matter of policy. For example, at least on my understanding of their rules, debating hansonian skepticism would be against policy. Similarly, applying hansonian skepticism to argue pro/con other points would be against policy.
I think person A often hopes that person B will either confirm that “yes, that’s a pretty accurate summary of my position,” or “well, parts of that are correct, but it differs from my actual position in ways 1, 2, and 3” or “no, you’ve completely misunderstood what I’m trying to say. Actually, I was trying to say [summary of person B’s position].”
One may hope for something like this, certainly. But in practice, I find that conversations like this can easily result from that sort of attitude:
Alice: It’s raining outside.
Bob, after thinking really hard: Hmm. What I hear you saying is that there’s some sort of precipitation, possibly coming from the sky but you don’t say that specifically.
Alice: … what? No, it’s… it’s just raining. Regular rain. Like, I literally mean exactly what I said. Right now, it is raining outside.
Bob, frowning: Alice, I really wish you’d express yourself more clearly, but if I’m understanding you correctly, you’re implying that the current weather in this location is uncomfortable to walk around in? And—I’m guessing, now, since you’re not clear on this point, but—also that it’s cloudy, and not sunny?
Alice: …
Bob: …
Alice: Dude. Just… it’s raining. This isn’t hard.
Bob, frowning some more and looking thoughtful: Hmm…
Yeah, sorry for being imprecise in my language. Can you just be charitable and see that my statement make sense if you replace “VNM” by “Dutch book” ?
I’m not sure if this is a case of “corruption” so much, as your interlocutor just suffering from illusion of transparency and thinking that it’s obvious to everyone that a sentence that replaces “VNM” by “Dutch book” is what they originally meant. IME there’s a very common failure mode of person A thinking that person B is being uncharitable and nitpicky when it’s actually the case that A’s intended meaning is much less clear to B than A assumes. But this would easily happen even when sticking to the “charitability as non-uncharitability” interpretation, since the problem is that A is incorrectly perceiving B to be uncharitable.
The “other side of the corruption” thing that you mention also seems like a case of someone applying the “don’t dismiss an argument because you think the person presenting it is stupid/evil” rule (which I interpreted you to endorse, and which seems compatible with non-uncharitability), but in a mistaken manner.
From the second comment / your quoted dialogue: I think that that kind of an attempt at clarifying the other person’s intent would also fall under the kinds of behaviors Rob endorses? He can correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it’s not the kind of distortion he’s concerned about. Even if it wasn’t, I’m not sure that “trying to be charitable” is the problem there; rather it’s that Bob literally doesn’t understand what Alice is trying to say. (And it seems better to at least make that obvious and have the conversation stall there, than to miss that fact and continue the discussion in such a way that both parties are thinking they understand the other when they actually don’t.)
The linked post had quite a lot of discussion of this sort of thing in the comments, and I hesitate to recapitulate it all, so please forgive the incompleteness of this reply… that said:
From the second comment / your quoted dialogue: I think that that kind of an attempt at clarifying the other person’s intent would also fall under the kinds of behaviors Rob endorses? He can correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it’s not the kind of distortion he’s concerned about.
Perhaps, but if so, then my reply would be that Rob’s view does not go far enough!
Even if it wasn’t, I’m not sure that “trying to be charitable” is the problem there; rather it’s that Bob literally doesn’t understand what Alice is trying to say.
Yes, indeed he does not, but the point I was trying to make there is that Bob’s attempts to “charitably understand” Alice’s words get him further from understanding, instead of closer to it.
I mean, how plausible is it, really, that Alice says “it’s raining outside” and Bob just doesn’t get what the heck Alice is talking about? No doubt the natural way to read this fictional dialogue is to see the depicted subject matter as metaphorical, but just try reading it literally—it’s ridiculous, right? Alice is saying something perfectly ordinary and straightforward. How can Bob not get it? Is he crazy or stupid or what?
What I’m trying to convey is that being on the receiving end of this sort of “charitableness” often feels like being Alice in the dialogue. You just want to yell “No! Stop it! Stop trying to interpret my words ‘charitably’! Just read what I’m actually saying! This isn’t complicated!”
Anyway, we’re definitely in “recapitulating old discussion” territory now, so I’ll leave it at that… most of what I could say on the matter, I already said, so by all means check out my many other comments on that post.
(And it seems better to at least make that obvious and have the conversation stall there, than to miss that fact and continue the discussion in such a way that both parties are thinking they understand the other when they actually don’t.)
The problem, really, is—what? Not misunderstanding per se; that is solvable. The problem is the double illusion of transparency; when I think I’ve understood you (that is, I think that my interpretation of your words, call it X, matches your intent, which I assume is also X), and you think I’ve understood you (that is, you think that my interpretation of your words is Y, which matches what you know to be your intent, i.e. also Y); but actually your intent was Y and my interpretation is X, and neither of us is aware of this composite fact.
As I say in the comment, however, I think that attempts at “charity” are actually the opposite of a good solution to this!
How can Bob not get it? Is he crazy or stupid or what?
It looks to me like Bob doesn’t respect Alice enough to fully listen to her, and much prefers the sound of his own voice. As a consequence, he truly doesn’t understand her. A combination of status dynamics and not-concentrating humans not being general intelligences.
I would describe the dialogue by saying that Bob is steelmanning Alice’s claim, while being uncharitable and remaining unaware of equivocation between the original claim and the steelmanned claim.
In terms of paradigms, Alice is making a factual claim, while Bob doesn’t understand or tolerate the paradigm of factual claims, and is instead familiar with the paradigms of social implications and practical advice, uses for facts rather than facts considered in themselves. The charitable thing for Bob would be to figure out the paradigm of factual claims (and make use of it for the purposes of this conversation), the point of view that focuses on knowledge in itself while abstracting from its possible applications. Trying to find subtext is Bob’s way of steelmanning the claim, recasting it into a shape that’s more natural for the paradigms Bob understands (or insists on).
Equivocation between the claim in the paradigm of factual claims and the same claim in the paradigm of practical applications is unnecessary confusion that could be avoided. The steelmanning aims to improve the argument by performing a centrality-seeking translation, a way of making a concept more resilient to equivocation. And it would make the conversation more robust rather than more confusing, had Bob been aware of the issue of paradigms, another hidden argument that matters when interpreting language, in this case a difference in paradigms (ways of understanding) rather than a difference in preference (subjectively selected).
I am somewhat confused that you provide that comment thread as an example of charity having negative effects, when the thing that spawned that entire thread, or so it seems to me, was insufficient charity / civility / agreeableness (as e.g. evidenced by several negative-karma comments).
I don’t think he said it clearly, and I don’t think he said anything else clearly. Believe it or not, what I am doing is charitable interpretation...I am trying to make sense of what he said. If he thinks [X], that would imply “[X], so [Y]”, because that makes more sense than “[X], so don’t [Y]”. So I think that is what he is probably saying.
Can you give examples of situations where “charity” has been used in ways that have the negative kinds of effects you’re worried about? Maybe we just have different experiences, but to me the term is normally just used in the “non-uncharitableness” sense that you mention. So in practice it doesn’t seem to cause any epistemic or communicative damage that I could tell.
Someone at LW told me about an argument-mapping website which aimed to provide an online forum where debate would actually be good—an excellent place on the internet to check for the arguments on both sides of any issue, and all the relevant counterarguments to each.
Unfortunately, the moderators interpreted the “principle of charity” to imply no cynical arguments can be made; that is, the principle of charity was understood as a fundamental assumption that humans are basically good.
This made some questions dealing with corruption, human intentions, etc were ruled out as a matter of policy. For example, at least on my understanding of their rules, debating hansonian skepticism would be against policy. Similarly, applying hansonian skepticism to argue pro/con other points would be against policy.
(I don’t recall what the website was called.)
Wow. Okay, that’s a good example.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/i2Dnu9n7T3ZCcQPxm/zetetic-explanation#C2EW2aDQCqPyN6tfG
ETA: See also https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/i2Dnu9n7T3ZCcQPxm/zetetic-explanation#3FQAZCRgw762fPctZ
ETA2: Quoting a relevant bit:
Thanks!
From the first linked comment:
I’m not sure if this is a case of “corruption” so much, as your interlocutor just suffering from illusion of transparency and thinking that it’s obvious to everyone that a sentence that replaces “VNM” by “Dutch book” is what they originally meant. IME there’s a very common failure mode of person A thinking that person B is being uncharitable and nitpicky when it’s actually the case that A’s intended meaning is much less clear to B than A assumes. But this would easily happen even when sticking to the “charitability as non-uncharitability” interpretation, since the problem is that A is incorrectly perceiving B to be uncharitable.
The “other side of the corruption” thing that you mention also seems like a case of someone applying the “don’t dismiss an argument because you think the person presenting it is stupid/evil” rule (which I interpreted you to endorse, and which seems compatible with non-uncharitability), but in a mistaken manner.
From the second comment / your quoted dialogue: I think that that kind of an attempt at clarifying the other person’s intent would also fall under the kinds of behaviors Rob endorses? He can correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it’s not the kind of distortion he’s concerned about. Even if it wasn’t, I’m not sure that “trying to be charitable” is the problem there; rather it’s that Bob literally doesn’t understand what Alice is trying to say. (And it seems better to at least make that obvious and have the conversation stall there, than to miss that fact and continue the discussion in such a way that both parties are thinking they understand the other when they actually don’t.)
The linked post had quite a lot of discussion of this sort of thing in the comments, and I hesitate to recapitulate it all, so please forgive the incompleteness of this reply… that said:
Perhaps, but if so, then my reply would be that Rob’s view does not go far enough!
Yes, indeed he does not, but the point I was trying to make there is that Bob’s attempts to “charitably understand” Alice’s words get him further from understanding, instead of closer to it.
I mean, how plausible is it, really, that Alice says “it’s raining outside” and Bob just doesn’t get what the heck Alice is talking about? No doubt the natural way to read this fictional dialogue is to see the depicted subject matter as metaphorical, but just try reading it literally—it’s ridiculous, right? Alice is saying something perfectly ordinary and straightforward. How can Bob not get it? Is he crazy or stupid or what?
What I’m trying to convey is that being on the receiving end of this sort of “charitableness” often feels like being Alice in the dialogue. You just want to yell “No! Stop it! Stop trying to interpret my words ‘charitably’! Just read what I’m actually saying! This isn’t complicated!”
Anyway, we’re definitely in “recapitulating old discussion” territory now, so I’ll leave it at that… most of what I could say on the matter, I already said, so by all means check out my many other comments on that post.
Indeed. To quote yet another of my comments on that same post:
As I say in the comment, however, I think that attempts at “charity” are actually the opposite of a good solution to this!
It looks to me like Bob doesn’t respect Alice enough to fully listen to her, and much prefers the sound of his own voice. As a consequence, he truly doesn’t understand her. A combination of status dynamics and not-concentrating humans not being general intelligences.
I would describe the dialogue by saying that Bob is steelmanning Alice’s claim, while being uncharitable and remaining unaware of equivocation between the original claim and the steelmanned claim.
In terms of paradigms, Alice is making a factual claim, while Bob doesn’t understand or tolerate the paradigm of factual claims, and is instead familiar with the paradigms of social implications and practical advice, uses for facts rather than facts considered in themselves. The charitable thing for Bob would be to figure out the paradigm of factual claims (and make use of it for the purposes of this conversation), the point of view that focuses on knowledge in itself while abstracting from its possible applications. Trying to find subtext is Bob’s way of steelmanning the claim, recasting it into a shape that’s more natural for the paradigms Bob understands (or insists on).
Equivocation between the claim in the paradigm of factual claims and the same claim in the paradigm of practical applications is unnecessary confusion that could be avoided. The steelmanning aims to improve the argument by performing a centrality-seeking translation, a way of making a concept more resilient to equivocation. And it would make the conversation more robust rather than more confusing, had Bob been aware of the issue of paradigms, another hidden argument that matters when interpreting language, in this case a difference in paradigms (ways of understanding) rather than a difference in preference (subjectively selected).
I am somewhat confused that you provide that comment thread as an example of charity having negative effects, when the thing that spawned that entire thread, or so it seems to me, was insufficient charity / civility / agreeableness (as e.g. evidenced by several negative-karma comments).
It hardly needs saying, but: I do not agree with your assessment.
I figured, which is why I moderated my statement as only “somewhat” confused :).
This comment comes to mind: