Public figures often avoid answering a question; going off in a different direction without recognizing that they didn’t answer it. (Sometimes they even say ‘I answered your question’ even though they didn’t.
I wish they still said ‘no comment’.
Non-answers without acknowledgement seems bad for public epistemics as well as for good governance and public choice.
In the linkpost, I report on a quick Anthropic/Claude analysis of the extent to which Harris and Trump actually answered the questions they were asked in last night’s debate. (TLDR: neither did, but Trump did substantially worse.)
I suspect it would be easy to make a fairly useable tool to judge ‘was the question answered?’ in real time. I think bringing this into debates and interviews could add a lot of value.
I’d dispute the extent to which candidates answering the questions is actually ideal. Saying “no comment” in a debate feels like losing (or at least taking a hit), but there are various legitimate reasons why a candidate might not think the question merits a direct reply, including the fact that they might think the answer is irrelevant to their constituents, and thus a waste of valuable debate time, or that it’s likely to be quoted out of context, and thus have more prejudicial than actually informative value. Overall, I feel that requiring direct answers, or explicit acknowledgement of the lack thereof, would give the anchors undue power and create a bad incentive (I also believe one can agree with that even if they think, as I personally do, that the questions actually made were pretty reasonable).
I think saying “I am not going to answer that because…” would not necessarily feel like taking a hit to the debater/interviewee. Could also bring scrutiny and pressure to moderators/interviewers to ask fair and relevant questions.
I think people would appreciate the directness. And maybe come to understand the nature of inquiry and truth a tiny bit better.
The problem is that quite often the thing which follows the “because” is the thing that has more prejudicial than informative value, and there’s no (obvious) way around it. Take an example from this debate: if Trump had asked earlier, as commentators seem to think he should have, why Harris as VP has not already done the things she promises to do as President, what should she have answered? The honest answer is that she is not the one currently calling the shots, which is obvious, but it highlights disharmony within the administration. As a purely factual matter, that the VP is not the one calling the shots is true of every single administration. But still, the fact that she would be supposedly willing to say it out loud would be taken to imply that this administration has more internal disharmony than previous ones, which is why no one ever dares saying so: even an obvious assertion (or, more precisely, the fact that someone is asserting it) is Bayesian evidence.
“Directness” is the very thing Trump is renowned for, and his people certainly appreciate it, but do you think the same is true of the other side? I’d expect them to generally prefer the circumlocution of the typical politician.