But Duncan’s suggested softening was “this sounds insane to me”, not “I think this is insane”.
Like, consider the dress. We might imagine someone saying any of
“The dress is (white/blue).”
“I think the dress is (white/blue).”
“The dress looks (white/blue) to me.”
I think that in practice (1) and (2) mean different things; on a population level, they’ll be said by people whose internal experiences are different, and they’ll justly be interpreted differently by listeners.
But even if you disagree with that, surely you’d agree that (3) is different? Like, “I think the dress is white but it’s actually blue” is admittedly a kind of weird thing to say, but “the dress looks white to me but it’s actually blue” is perfectly normal, as is ”...but I think it’s actually blue”, or ”...but I don’t know what color it actually is”.
It may be that the dress looks blue to you and also you think it’s actually blue, but these are two importantly different claims!
I would further suggest that if the dress happens to look blue to you, but also you’re aware that it looks blue to a lot of people and white to a lot of people, and you don’t know what’s going on, and you nonetheless believe confidently that the dress is blue, you are doing something wrong. (Even though you happen to be correct, in this instance.)
When it comes to insanity, I think something similar happens. Whether or not something sounds insane to me is different from whether it actually is insane. Knowing that, I can hold in my head ideas like “this sounds insane to me, but I might be misinterpreting the idea, or I might be mistaken when I think some key premise that it rests on is obviously false, or or or… and so it might not be insane”.
And so we might stipulate that Zack’s “this is insane” was no more or less justifiable than “I think this is insane” would have been. But we should acknowledge the possibility that in thinking it insane, he was doing something wrong; and that thinking and saying “this sounds insane to me” while maintaining uncertainty about whether or not it was actually insane would have been more truth-tracking.
My point is that something cannot actually be insane, it can only be insane by some entity’s judgment. Insanity exists in the map, not the territory. In the territory there’s just stuff going on. We’re that ones that decide to call it insane. Maybe that’s because there’s some stable pattern about the world we want to put the label insanity on, and we develop some collective agreement about what things to call insane, but we’re still the ones that do it.
If you take this view, these statements don’t have much difference between them on a fundamental level because “The dress is X” means something like “I assess the dress to be X” since you’re the one speaking and are making this call. We do have things that mean something different, like “I think other people think the dress is X”, but that’s making a different type of claim than your 3 statements, which I see as making essentially the same fundamental claim with minor differences about how its expressed to try to convey something about the process by which you made the claim so that others can understand your epistemic state, which is sometimes useful but you can also just say this more directly with something like “I’m 80% sure the dress is X”.
A big part of what I’m often doing in my head is simulating a room of 100-1000 people listening, and thinking about what a supermajority of them are thinking or concluding.
When you go from e.g. “that sounds insane to me” or “I think that’s crazy” to “that is crazy,” most of what I think is happening is that you’re tapping into something like ”...and 70+ out of 100 neutral observers would agree.”
Ditto with word usage; one can use a word weirdly and that’s fine; it doesn’t become a wrong usage until it’s a usage that would reliably confuse 70+% of people/reliably cause 70+% of people to conclude the wrong thing, hearing it.
“Wrong in the territory” in this case being “wrong in the maps of a supermajority” + “it’s a socially constructed thing in the first place.”
I’m baffled by this, and kinda just going to throw a bunch of reactions out there without trying to build them into a single coherent reply.
If you take this view, these statements don’t have much difference between them on a fundamental level because “The dress is X” means something like “I assess the dress to be X” since you’re the one speaking and are making this call.
If someone says “the dress looks white to me, but I think it’s actually blue”… how would you analyze that? From this it sounds like you’d think they’re saying “I assess the dress to be white, but I assess it to be blue”?
To me it has a perfectly natural meaning, along the lines of “when I look at this picture my brain tells me that it’s white. But I’m reliably informed that it’s actually blue, and that the white appearance comes from such-and-such mental process combined with the lighting conditions of the photo”.
(e: actually, “along the lines of” isn’t quite what I mean there. It’s more like “this is the kind of thing that might cause someone to say those words”.)
It sounds to me like you’re trying to say there’s, on some level, no meaningful distinction between how something is and how we assess it to be? But how something appears to be and how we assess it to be are still very different!
I see as making essentially the same fundamental claim with minor differences about how its expressed to try to convey something about the process by which you made the claim so that others can understand your epistemic state, which is sometimes useful but you can also just say this more directly with something like “I’m 80% sure the dress is X”.
But “I’m 80% sure the dress is X” doesn’t convey anything about the process by which I came to believe it? It’s simply a conclusion with no supporting argument.
Meanwhile “the dress looks X” is an argument with no ultimate conclusion. If a person says that and nothing else, we might reasonably guess that they probably think the dress is X, similar to how someone who answers “is it going to rain?” with “the forecast says yes” probably doesn’t have any particular grounds to disbelieve the forcast. But even if we assume correctly that they think that, both the explicit and implicit information they’ve conveyed to us are still different versus “I’m _% confident the dress is X” or “I’m _% confident it’s going to rain”.
But Duncan’s suggested softening was “this sounds insane to me”, not “I think this is insane”.
Like, consider the dress. We might imagine someone saying any of
“The dress is (white/blue).”
“I think the dress is (white/blue).”
“The dress looks (white/blue) to me.”
I think that in practice (1) and (2) mean different things; on a population level, they’ll be said by people whose internal experiences are different, and they’ll justly be interpreted differently by listeners.
But even if you disagree with that, surely you’d agree that (3) is different? Like, “I think the dress is white but it’s actually blue” is admittedly a kind of weird thing to say, but “the dress looks white to me but it’s actually blue” is perfectly normal, as is ”...but I think it’s actually blue”, or ”...but I don’t know what color it actually is”.
It may be that the dress looks blue to you and also you think it’s actually blue, but these are two importantly different claims!
I would further suggest that if the dress happens to look blue to you, but also you’re aware that it looks blue to a lot of people and white to a lot of people, and you don’t know what’s going on, and you nonetheless believe confidently that the dress is blue, you are doing something wrong. (Even though you happen to be correct, in this instance.)
When it comes to insanity, I think something similar happens. Whether or not something sounds insane to me is different from whether it actually is insane. Knowing that, I can hold in my head ideas like “this sounds insane to me, but I might be misinterpreting the idea, or I might be mistaken when I think some key premise that it rests on is obviously false, or or or… and so it might not be insane”.
And so we might stipulate that Zack’s “this is insane” was no more or less justifiable than “I think this is insane” would have been. But we should acknowledge the possibility that in thinking it insane, he was doing something wrong; and that thinking and saying “this sounds insane to me” while maintaining uncertainty about whether or not it was actually insane would have been more truth-tracking.
My point is that something cannot actually be insane, it can only be insane by some entity’s judgment. Insanity exists in the map, not the territory. In the territory there’s just stuff going on. We’re that ones that decide to call it insane. Maybe that’s because there’s some stable pattern about the world we want to put the label insanity on, and we develop some collective agreement about what things to call insane, but we’re still the ones that do it.
If you take this view, these statements don’t have much difference between them on a fundamental level because “The dress is X” means something like “I assess the dress to be X” since you’re the one speaking and are making this call. We do have things that mean something different, like “I think other people think the dress is X”, but that’s making a different type of claim than your 3 statements, which I see as making essentially the same fundamental claim with minor differences about how its expressed to try to convey something about the process by which you made the claim so that others can understand your epistemic state, which is sometimes useful but you can also just say this more directly with something like “I’m 80% sure the dress is X”.
A big part of what I’m often doing in my head is simulating a room of 100-1000 people listening, and thinking about what a supermajority of them are thinking or concluding.
When you go from e.g. “that sounds insane to me” or “I think that’s crazy” to “that is crazy,” most of what I think is happening is that you’re tapping into something like ”...and 70+ out of 100 neutral observers would agree.”
Ditto with word usage; one can use a word weirdly and that’s fine; it doesn’t become a wrong usage until it’s a usage that would reliably confuse 70+% of people/reliably cause 70+% of people to conclude the wrong thing, hearing it.
“Wrong in the territory” in this case being “wrong in the maps of a supermajority” + “it’s a socially constructed thing in the first place.”
I’m baffled by this, and kinda just going to throw a bunch of reactions out there without trying to build them into a single coherent reply.
If someone says “the dress looks white to me, but I think it’s actually blue”… how would you analyze that? From this it sounds like you’d think they’re saying “I assess the dress to be white, but I assess it to be blue”?
To me it has a perfectly natural meaning, along the lines of “when I look at this picture my brain tells me that it’s white. But I’m reliably informed that it’s actually blue, and that the white appearance comes from such-and-such mental process combined with the lighting conditions of the photo”.
(e: actually, “along the lines of” isn’t quite what I mean there. It’s more like “this is the kind of thing that might cause someone to say those words”.)
It sounds to me like you’re trying to say there’s, on some level, no meaningful distinction between how something is and how we assess it to be? But how something appears to be and how we assess it to be are still very different!
But “I’m 80% sure the dress is X” doesn’t convey anything about the process by which I came to believe it? It’s simply a conclusion with no supporting argument.
Meanwhile “the dress looks X” is an argument with no ultimate conclusion. If a person says that and nothing else, we might reasonably guess that they probably think the dress is X, similar to how someone who answers “is it going to rain?” with “the forecast says yes” probably doesn’t have any particular grounds to disbelieve the forcast. But even if we assume correctly that they think that, both the explicit and implicit information they’ve conveyed to us are still different versus “I’m _% confident the dress is X” or “I’m _% confident it’s going to rain”.