Intellectual progress requires points with nuance. However, on online discussion forums (including LW, AIAF, EA Forum), people seem to frequently lose sight of the nuanced point being made—rather than thinking of a comment thread as “this is trying to ascertain whether X is true”, they seem to instead read the comments, perform some sort of inference over what the author must believe if that comment were written in isolation, and then respond to that model of beliefs. This makes it hard to have nuance without adding a ton of clarification and qualifiers everywhere.
I find that similar dynamics happen in group conversations, and to some extent even in one-on-one conversations (though much less so).
Intellectual progress requires points with nuance. However, on online discussion forums (including LW, AIAF, EA Forum), people seem to frequently lose sight of the nuanced point being made—rather than thinking of a comment thread as “this is trying to ascertain whether X is true”, they seem to instead read the comments, perform some sort of inference over what the author must believe if that comment were written in isolation, and then respond to that model of beliefs. This makes it hard to have nuance without adding a ton of clarification and qualifiers everywhere.
I find that similar dynamics happen in group conversations, and to some extent even in one-on-one conversations (though much less so).