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.
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 :-(