it feels to me like I’m dumping all the sins of humankind upon their undeserving heads—I’m presenting one error, out of context, as exemplar for all the errors of this kind that have ever been committed, and showing none of the good qualities of the speaker—it would be like caricaturing them, if I called them by name.
Is this just me? Should we try to have social norms that permit this?
I’m comfortable with MichaelBishop’s suggestion. The example would be unconvincing if it picked on just anybody. To show that the error is important requires catching one of the sites heavy hitters making it. Being picked on in this way is a backhanded compliment; I would be pleased if people cared whether my comments were right or wrong.
Very well, since you are comfortable with it, let us take a look at this comment:
That doesn’t read like a description of lived experience at all, let alone the specific experience I asked about.
This was in response to Annoyance’s description of the experience of realizing your difficulties have been the result of a mistake, that once understood, seems really simple.
Your criticism, did not explain what you mean by a lived experience, or a experience of the first dhyana you had previously asked for, and you certainly did not explain how this is different from what Annoyance described (if something specific was missing from the description, it would be sufficient to say what that was).
And in response Annoyance reiterated his points, which would be unlikely to satisfy you. If you had instead offered a more concrete criticism, that gave some information about what a good answer would look like, what form it would take, then maybe Annoyance could have produced an answer that you would have considered good.
I see your point. In some cases maybe examples could be provided without explicitly stating who said what. But obviously we don’t want to outlaw critiquing each other.
Its interesting. I didn’t explicitly criticize this post, but my short comment, requesting examples could be considered a somewhat vague implicit criticism. So I may have just done something quite similar to what JGWeissman was criticizing in his post!
The truth is, I probably wouldn’t have requested an example if I was confident that JGWeissman was making an important criticism.
The truth is, one good example wouldn’t do that much for me, because my skepticism is about how common this “fallacy” is and how well people were dealing with it before JGWeissman gave it a name. Maybe I just haven’t been that observant on this point, but I haven’t gotten the impression its a big deal.
Maybe I just haven’t been that observant on this point, but I haven’t gotten the impression its a big deal.
You indeed could be more observant on this point. In this comment, you do exactly what I described, accusation of a fallacy with a link and no explanation. Perhaps you could support the claim by referencing the comment you replied to, though the fact that you did not remains. And it is not trivial to demonstrate that the fallacy mentioned is really any sort of cognitive error, see my response to the comment you agreed with.
In saying “I haven’t gotten the impression its a big deal,” I did not mean that people never link to posts or articles about fallacies or biases without also writing a great deal of explanation for how the link is relevant. I meant that I don’t find such comments like this (short, critical, with a link) particularly problematic.
Often times a short, critical, comment with a link is all I need. It may sometimes even communicate the key information more efficiently than a longer comment. If it is insufficient, I will ask for more explanation.
Please provide an example from LW comments.
I dislike the idea of doing this; as Eliezer said
Is this just me? Should we try to have social norms that permit this?
I’m comfortable with MichaelBishop’s suggestion. The example would be unconvincing if it picked on just anybody. To show that the error is important requires catching one of the sites heavy hitters making it. Being picked on in this way is a backhanded compliment; I would be pleased if people cared whether my comments were right or wrong.
Very well, since you are comfortable with it, let us take a look at this comment:
This was in response to Annoyance’s description of the experience of realizing your difficulties have been the result of a mistake, that once understood, seems really simple.
Your criticism, did not explain what you mean by a lived experience, or a experience of the first dhyana you had previously asked for, and you certainly did not explain how this is different from what Annoyance described (if something specific was missing from the description, it would be sufficient to say what that was).
And in response Annoyance reiterated his points, which would be unlikely to satisfy you. If you had instead offered a more concrete criticism, that gave some information about what a good answer would look like, what form it would take, then maybe Annoyance could have produced an answer that you would have considered good.
I see your point. In some cases maybe examples could be provided without explicitly stating who said what. But obviously we don’t want to outlaw critiquing each other.
Its interesting. I didn’t explicitly criticize this post, but my short comment, requesting examples could be considered a somewhat vague implicit criticism. So I may have just done something quite similar to what JGWeissman was criticizing in his post!
The truth is, I probably wouldn’t have requested an example if I was confident that JGWeissman was making an important criticism.
The truth is, one good example wouldn’t do that much for me, because my skepticism is about how common this “fallacy” is and how well people were dealing with it before JGWeissman gave it a name. Maybe I just haven’t been that observant on this point, but I haven’t gotten the impression its a big deal.
You indeed could be more observant on this point. In this comment, you do exactly what I described, accusation of a fallacy with a link and no explanation. Perhaps you could support the claim by referencing the comment you replied to, though the fact that you did not remains. And it is not trivial to demonstrate that the fallacy mentioned is really any sort of cognitive error, see my response to the comment you agreed with.
In saying “I haven’t gotten the impression its a big deal,” I did not mean that people never link to posts or articles about fallacies or biases without also writing a great deal of explanation for how the link is relevant. I meant that I don’t find such comments like this (short, critical, with a link) particularly problematic.
Often times a short, critical, comment with a link is all I need. It may sometimes even communicate the key information more efficiently than a longer comment. If it is insufficient, I will ask for more explanation.