Can we please focus on one argument against cryonics at a time? Isn’t this shifting to a new counterargument whenever an old one is addressed just logical rudeness?
If you don’t dispute anything I actually say about technical feasibility, please take this discussion elsewhere.
EDIT: Downvotes are useful information, but comments explaining them are even better—thanks!
I didn’t down vote you but I do feel frustrated about the censure. First, I obviously don’t think technological feasibility is anywhere near the right question. So I should just ignore this post. (But) secondly, other people are discussing other issues—this whole thread is all about whether or not we’ll get revived and why; it has nothing to do with technology. If I don’t respond to this thread because it’s off-topic, then I’m just missing an opportunity to further an agenda that is very important to me. I like to follow rules but I’m not likely to follow them sacrificially while others disregard them.
An important subtext of the current extended discussion, which in one sense can be seen as fallout from the “Normal Cryonics” article, is how to conduct a debate in a manner that is both epistemically and instrumentally rational.
One major issue, raised by the “Logical rudeness” post, is that ordinary conversation has a nasty tendency to go in circles revolving around each interlocutor’s pet anxiety or trigger issue. No one is exempt: I tend to focus on the financial and logistical aspects, and that says something about me.
Rather than think of ciphergoth’s intervention as “censure”, please think of it as the unpleasant but necessary work of a volunteer facilitator, doing his best to keep the conversation on track.
This conversation touches on an issue that is deeply important to you, that much I understand. Perhaps your interests are better served by your drafting a separate post to lay out this issue as clearly as you can, a post in which you’d set out to apply the thinking tools you’ve learned from LW or that you wish to introduce to LW?
Your first point I think you answer yourself, is that fair? Your second is a good one, but I wonder what the right thing to do about it is. I did reply to the top-level ancestor comment of this one to say “this is off-topic”; are you saying that where discussion blossoms anyway, that railing against in-thread commenters is a mistake? Certainly where top-level comments have started talking about other arguments, I think that is logical rudeness, and you don’t seem to disagree; is there anything to be done about it beyond the comment on the top-level comment?
Your first point I think you answer yourself, is that fair?
I would have preferred if everyone were conforming, because then my argument could have waited.
I think this just represents a real difference in our goals and objectives: you want focused and on-topic comments, and I want to respond to this thread.
Given the dichotomy in objectives, I think I should make the comment, and you should complain again and down-vote me.
Logistically, you should probably have made it more clear in the Less Wrong post that you were trying to enforce this norm; I didn’t know about this until I read a comment you made far down in the thread that we needed to read and follow the rules in a paragraph at the end of your blog post.
I think we both think the other’s objective is fair enough.
you should probably have made it more clear in the Less Wrong post that you were trying to enforce this norm
I probably should have made it clear, but I’d also like to encourage the norm that with or without such explicit per-post policies, where someone makes a post focussing on counterargument A, that commenting about counterargument B is recognised as logical rudeness. This doesn’t help with the bind you find yourself in today, but might help in future.
Logical rudeness, as I read the article, was referring to switching arguments in the pattern A to B to A but only switching after A was essentially debunked. If byrnema never switches back to A it doesn’t fit the pattern.
I could have misinterpreted the article.
One develops a sense of the flow of discourse, the give and take of argument. It’s possible to do things that completely derail that flow of discourse without shouting or swearing. These may not be considered offenses against politeness, as our so-called “civilization” defines that term. But they are offenses against the cooperative exchange of arguments, or even the rules of engagement with the loyal opposition. They are logically rude.
Okay, I was misinterpreting.
As much as threads are better than anything else I have seen to track multiple participants in a conversation, I get the itch that there is a better way. Maybe I should go find one...
Can we please focus on one argument against cryonics at a time? Isn’t this shifting to a new counterargument whenever an old one is addressed just logical rudeness?
If you don’t dispute anything I actually say about technical feasibility, please take this discussion elsewhere.
EDIT: Downvotes are useful information, but comments explaining them are even better—thanks!
I didn’t down vote you but I do feel frustrated about the censure. First, I obviously don’t think technological feasibility is anywhere near the right question. So I should just ignore this post. (But) secondly, other people are discussing other issues—this whole thread is all about whether or not we’ll get revived and why; it has nothing to do with technology. If I don’t respond to this thread because it’s off-topic, then I’m just missing an opportunity to further an agenda that is very important to me. I like to follow rules but I’m not likely to follow them sacrificially while others disregard them.
An important subtext of the current extended discussion, which in one sense can be seen as fallout from the “Normal Cryonics” article, is how to conduct a debate in a manner that is both epistemically and instrumentally rational.
One major issue, raised by the “Logical rudeness” post, is that ordinary conversation has a nasty tendency to go in circles revolving around each interlocutor’s pet anxiety or trigger issue. No one is exempt: I tend to focus on the financial and logistical aspects, and that says something about me.
Rather than think of ciphergoth’s intervention as “censure”, please think of it as the unpleasant but necessary work of a volunteer facilitator, doing his best to keep the conversation on track.
This conversation touches on an issue that is deeply important to you, that much I understand. Perhaps your interests are better served by your drafting a separate post to lay out this issue as clearly as you can, a post in which you’d set out to apply the thinking tools you’ve learned from LW or that you wish to introduce to LW?
Your first point I think you answer yourself, is that fair? Your second is a good one, but I wonder what the right thing to do about it is. I did reply to the top-level ancestor comment of this one to say “this is off-topic”; are you saying that where discussion blossoms anyway, that railing against in-thread commenters is a mistake? Certainly where top-level comments have started talking about other arguments, I think that is logical rudeness, and you don’t seem to disagree; is there anything to be done about it beyond the comment on the top-level comment?
EDIT to make clear: questions are not rhetorical.
I would have preferred if everyone were conforming, because then my argument could have waited.
I think this just represents a real difference in our goals and objectives: you want focused and on-topic comments, and I want to respond to this thread.
Given the dichotomy in objectives, I think I should make the comment, and you should complain again and down-vote me.
Logistically, you should probably have made it more clear in the Less Wrong post that you were trying to enforce this norm; I didn’t know about this until I read a comment you made far down in the thread that we needed to read and follow the rules in a paragraph at the end of your blog post.
I think we both think the other’s objective is fair enough.
I probably should have made it clear, but I’d also like to encourage the norm that with or without such explicit per-post policies, where someone makes a post focussing on counterargument A, that commenting about counterargument B is recognised as logical rudeness. This doesn’t help with the bind you find yourself in today, but might help in future.
Logical rudeness, as I read the article, was referring to switching arguments in the pattern A to B to A but only switching after A was essentially debunked. If byrnema never switches back to A it doesn’t fit the pattern.
I could have misinterpreted the article.
Okay, I was misinterpreting.
As much as threads are better than anything else I have seen to track multiple participants in a conversation, I get the itch that there is a better way. Maybe I should go find one...
It would be nice if we could transplant threads to where they are appropriate, with just a link to and from the old location where they were inspired.
Let’s move this here.
I didn’t read that Ciphergoth was accusing me of logical rudeness—he meant the whole thread. And I agree.
Yes. Thanks.