Perhaps “making the charitable assumption” is, in general, too narrow a phrasing.
Often it happens that someone reveals themselves to be either a twit or a fool, or ignorant or evil, or stupid or mired in delusion and fallacies, etc. In such cases, different people have different intuitions about which state would be worse.
For my part, valuing intelligence, I’d rather be a spiteful contrarian than stupid, largely because people with that problem have higher upside.
Perhaps “making the charitable assumption” is, in general, too narrow a phrasing.
Often it happens that someone reveals themselves to be either a twit or a fool, or ignorant or evil, or stupid or mired in delusion and fallacies, etc. In such cases, different people have different intuitions about which state would be worse.
For my part, valuing intelligence, I’d rather be a spiteful contrarian than stupid, largely because people with that problem have higher upside.
Surely you mean “too wide”, since your issue seems to be that different people understand it to mean different things in the same situation?
I should claim I meant to do that. Instead, I can honestly plead intoxication...but more likely I was thinking “too narrowing a phrasing”.