A few years later, I feel like tabooing is pretty much obsoleted by steelmanning. When someone says a vague word like “emergence”, you can ask them to taboo it or try to steelman it, and the latter is usually much more interesting.
I think tabooing (known by its conventional name “unpacking”) is done in a cooperative argumentation context, often in phil. papers.
So in that sense it’s useful if you can count on your interlocutor to be a colleague rather than an adversary. In adversarial contexts presumably the goal is to grind the opponent into dust as efficiently as possible.
I think tabooing (known by its conventional name “unpacking”)
I feel these are a bit different.
I understand “unpacking” as basically going into more detail, descending one level of abstraction. It’s a good answer to the question “But what do you mean by this?”
Tabooing to me is more like shifting frameworks or changing the point of view. Concepts tend to exist in sets and a request to taboo I would understand as a call to swap out one whole set of concepts for another set.
In hindsight it seems that steelmanning is the best idea in the LW-sphere. It was invented by Steven Kaas (whose whole blog is a great read) and popularized by Scott, who went on to use it as a writing exercise and then grew it into a hugely successful blog. I’m no Scott, but pretty much all my best posts and comments came from trying to steelman various ideas, and my mistakes often come from not steelmanning enough.
Steelmanning, and tabooing words.
But neither of these were invented here.
I’m not concerned about where the ideas were invented, just taking a look at what might be worth spreading.
A few years later, I feel like tabooing is pretty much obsoleted by steelmanning. When someone says a vague word like “emergence”, you can ask them to taboo it or try to steelman it, and the latter is usually much more interesting.
I think tabooing (known by its conventional name “unpacking”) is done in a cooperative argumentation context, often in phil. papers.
So in that sense it’s useful if you can count on your interlocutor to be a colleague rather than an adversary. In adversarial contexts presumably the goal is to grind the opponent into dust as efficiently as possible.
I feel these are a bit different.
I understand “unpacking” as basically going into more detail, descending one level of abstraction. It’s a good answer to the question “But what do you mean by this?”
Tabooing to me is more like shifting frameworks or changing the point of view. Concepts tend to exist in sets and a request to taboo I would understand as a call to swap out one whole set of concepts for another set.
Yeah that’s exactly what I’m seeing on LW :-(
In hindsight it seems that steelmanning is the best idea in the LW-sphere. It was invented by Steven Kaas (whose whole blog is a great read) and popularized by Scott, who went on to use it as a writing exercise and then grew it into a hugely successful blog. I’m no Scott, but pretty much all my best posts and comments came from trying to steelman various ideas, and my mistakes often come from not steelmanning enough.