The “fallacy” alleged here is not the using of acronyms, but your calling it a mind projection fallacy when I said a statement was deliberately obscure.
I was projecting a motivation onto the speaker. That’s bad, but not actually the mind projection fallacy, because it wasn’t my motivation that I was projecting. That was some other error; maybe the “Bad effects are caused by bad people” fallacy. The mind projection part would be me saying, “This statement is not clear to me; therefore, this statement is not clear.”
Is that the mind projection fallacy? Technically, yes. I could have found a more E’-like way of saying that I didn’t know what the acronym meant. But I did at least make it clear that the trouble was that I didn’t know what the acronym meant. It’s enough of a common convention to say “That statement is confusing” when you mean “That statement is confusing to me” that I don’t think we should call it the mind projection fallacy; especially when it is invoked as a justification for ignoring the issue of whether the original statement was confusing.
(I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have said anything if I hadn’t very recently puzzled over, and wasted a few minutes googling, what SWPL stood for.)
Saying it was confusing would have been kind of bad; you might argue that it would be shorthand for “I am confused”, but just say “I am confused” and stop attributing mental characteristics to objects in the world already. But you called it “obscure”, and what can that possibly be shorthand for? “I am obscured”? And even more, you said it was “deliberately obscure” which I cannot but interpret as a property of the world, rather than of you, because the deliberation would have had to have taken place within the original poster. There is no possible way your use of the term “obscure” was virtuous.
My point is: do not assume something is obscure because you don’t know of it, and if it really takes you a few minutes to google something, you should get a better web browser.
“Deliberately obscure” means “the speaker (of the reference called “deliberately obscure”) sought out and used a reference that, relative to the speaker’s epistemology, a given member of the audience would be unlikely to understand.”
“Obscure” by itself means that “a member of the audience is unlikely to understand the reference”, where “unlikely” might refer to the epistemology of the speaker of the reference or the one who called it obscure, which may be resolved by context.
So, just because you don’t see how the use of a word could be virtuous, don’t assume that it can’t be.
On the other hand, if you don’t know, it doesn’t hurt to ask. Not every request for clarification has to be an accusation.
The “fallacy” alleged here is not the using of acronyms, but your calling it a mind projection fallacy when I said a statement was deliberately obscure.
I was projecting a motivation onto the speaker. That’s bad, but not actually the mind projection fallacy, because it wasn’t my motivation that I was projecting. That was some other error; maybe the “Bad effects are caused by bad people” fallacy. The mind projection part would be me saying, “This statement is not clear to me; therefore, this statement is not clear.”
Is that the mind projection fallacy? Technically, yes. I could have found a more E’-like way of saying that I didn’t know what the acronym meant. But I did at least make it clear that the trouble was that I didn’t know what the acronym meant. It’s enough of a common convention to say “That statement is confusing” when you mean “That statement is confusing to me” that I don’t think we should call it the mind projection fallacy; especially when it is invoked as a justification for ignoring the issue of whether the original statement was confusing.
(I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have said anything if I hadn’t very recently puzzled over, and wasted a few minutes googling, what SWPL stood for.)
Saying it was confusing would have been kind of bad; you might argue that it would be shorthand for “I am confused”, but just say “I am confused” and stop attributing mental characteristics to objects in the world already. But you called it “obscure”, and what can that possibly be shorthand for? “I am obscured”? And even more, you said it was “deliberately obscure” which I cannot but interpret as a property of the world, rather than of you, because the deliberation would have had to have taken place within the original poster. There is no possible way your use of the term “obscure” was virtuous.
My point is: do not assume something is obscure because you don’t know of it, and if it really takes you a few minutes to google something, you should get a better web browser.
“Deliberately obscure” means “the speaker (of the reference called “deliberately obscure”) sought out and used a reference that, relative to the speaker’s epistemology, a given member of the audience would be unlikely to understand.”
“Obscure” by itself means that “a member of the audience is unlikely to understand the reference”, where “unlikely” might refer to the epistemology of the speaker of the reference or the one who called it obscure, which may be resolved by context.
So, just because you don’t see how the use of a word could be virtuous, don’t assume that it can’t be.
On the other hand, if you don’t know, it doesn’t hurt to ask. Not every request for clarification has to be an accusation.