It’s a fuzzy Sorites-like distinction, but I think I’m more sympathetic to trying to route around a particular interlocutor’s biases in the context of a direct conversation with a particular person (like a comment or Tweet thread) than I am in writing directed “at the world” (like top-level posts), because the more something is directed “at the world”, the more you should expect that many of your readers know things that you don’t, such that the humility argument for honesty applies forcefully.
FWIW, I have the opposite inclination. If I’m talking with a person one-on-one, we have high bandwidth. I will try to be skillful and compassionate in avoiding triggering them, while still saying what’s true, and depending on the who I’m talking to, I may elect to remain silent about some of the things that I think are true.
But I overall am much more uncomfortable with anything less than straightforward statements of what I believe and why, in smaller-person contexts, where there is the communication capacity to clarify misunderstandings, and where my declining to offer an objection to something that someone says more strongly implies agreement.
the more you should expect that many of your readers know things that you don’t
This seems right to me.
But it also seem right to me that the broader your audience the lower their average level of epistemics and commitment to epistemic discourse norms. And your communication bandwidth is lower.
Which means there is proportionally more risk of 1) people mishearing you and that damaging the prospects of the policies you want to advocate for (eg “marketing”), 2) people mishearing you, and that causing you personal problems of various stripes, and 3) people understanding you correctly, and causing you personal problems of various stripes. [1]
So the larger my audience the more reticent I might be about what I’m willing to say.
There’s obviously a fourth quadrant of that 2-by-2, “people hearing you correctly and that damaging the prospects of the policies you want to advocate for.”
Acting to avoid that seems commons destroying, and personally out of integrity. If my policy proposals have true drawbacks, I want to clearly acknowledge them and state why I think they’re worth it, not disemble about them.
It’s a fuzzy Sorites-like distinction, but I think I’m more sympathetic to trying to route around a particular interlocutor’s biases in the context of a direct conversation with a particular person (like a comment or Tweet thread) than I am in writing directed “at the world” (like top-level posts), because the more something is directed “at the world”, the more you should expect that many of your readers know things that you don’t, such that the humility argument for honesty applies forcefully.
FWIW, I have the opposite inclination. If I’m talking with a person one-on-one, we have high bandwidth. I will try to be skillful and compassionate in avoiding triggering them, while still saying what’s true, and depending on the who I’m talking to, I may elect to remain silent about some of the things that I think are true.
But I overall am much more uncomfortable with anything less than straightforward statements of what I believe and why, in smaller-person contexts, where there is the communication capacity to clarify misunderstandings, and where my declining to offer an objection to something that someone says more strongly implies agreement.
This seems right to me.
But it also seem right to me that the broader your audience the lower their average level of epistemics and commitment to epistemic discourse norms. And your communication bandwidth is lower.
Which means there is proportionally more risk of 1) people mishearing you and that damaging the prospects of the policies you want to advocate for (eg “marketing”), 2) people mishearing you, and that causing you personal problems of various stripes, and 3) people understanding you correctly, and causing you personal problems of various stripes.
[1]
So the larger my audience the more reticent I might be about what I’m willing to say.
There’s obviously a fourth quadrant of that 2-by-2, “people hearing you correctly and that damaging the prospects of the policies you want to advocate for.”
Acting to avoid that seems commons destroying, and personally out of integrity. If my policy proposals have true drawbacks, I want to clearly acknowledge them and state why I think they’re worth it, not disemble about them.