I don’t have the conversational norm of rote performance of using weasel words. If I think X is true with high probability based on circumstantial evidence I’m probably just going to say “X”. I don’t think tacking on “I think” to the front of that adds much content. Anybody’s free to disagree with me as much as they want and that has nothing to do with whether I say “I think” or “it seems to me.” Everything is an inference.
But also, I actually don’t think I’m asking for that much effort from you. I don’t think it takes much effort to add words like “presumably”, “I think”, “it seems to me”, and then I would not have made the first bit of my comment. And that’s the only bit of my comment that feels to me like asking you to put extra effort in.
So it’s not that it’s a bunch of extra effort to just add your chosen phrases to my comments. It’s that it’s extra effort to change my writing style based on your stated communicative preference. I might do that for some people in some cases, but not for you or most any other lw poster in an online forum.
What irks me though is that you don’t follow the communicative rules you’re asking me to follow. And that’s why your comments are disturbing. You’re asking me to hamstring my rhetorical ability using these practices that you yourself don’t even follow.
I’m having trouble figuring out exactly what the accusation is, but it doesn’t ring true
where actually there was a lot of discussion and you just… think Vaniver was lying/mistaken-about-his-reasons?
I repeat: blueiris said nothing even remotely like the thing you claim is not allowed.
Where is your hedging? Where is your “I think” or “Probably”. These are as assertive as any of my comments. And they’re all inferences. Of course your comments elsewhere and the couple posts of yours that I’ve read before all have assertive statements about things that can only be inferences. That’s how people communicate and the posts don’t suffer for it. Most people have the ability to read “X” and understand that well of course the person saying “X” doesn’t mean they’ve personally observed X and believe it with 99.9999% probability. They mean they think X is true.
This is a common, dark, rhetorical trick. You’re asking me to hamstring my ability to communicate while taking full advantage of the communicative tools at your disposal. So when I see a comment where, “I’m chiding you for not flagging it as inference” I have absolutely no desire to acquiesce to the restrictive conversational rules being asked of me.
If I think X is true with high probability based on circumstantial evidence I’m probably just going to say “X”.
Well, how high? Because by my count you’ve been wrong at least once in this thread when doing this (when you accused me of not putting in much effort). If say 1⁄10 of things you flatly assert are false, that’s not very impressive.
So it’s not that it’s a bunch of extra effort to just add your chosen phrases to my comments. It’s that it’s extra effort to change my writing style based on your stated communicative preference.
Yeah, this is fair.
Like, I think your communication style is a bad fit for LW, but that doesn’t mean changing it is easy for you.
using these practices that you yourself don’t even follow.
None of your examples show me failing to live up to the standards I was asking of you. It’s possible I miscommunicated those standards, and it’s possible (even probable) I fail to live up to them in other places. But in these specific cases, I did not fail.
I’m having trouble figuring out exactly what the accusation is, but it doesn’t ring true
This is a claim about my own state of mind. I don’t need to hedge it, because in this case I’m confident about my observations of my own state of mind.
where actually there was a lot of discussion and you just… think Vaniver was lying/mistaken-about-his-reasons?
The hedging here comes from the question mark and the following words, “I dunno, I’m having trouble figuring out exactly what the accusation is”.
I repeat: blueiris said nothing even remotely like the thing you claim is not allowed.
This is observation, not inference.
(Moreover, it’s observation based on shared data. Anyone can read the thread and verify its truth or falsehood for themselves, and anyone can know they can do that based on the context.)
(I mean, sure, it’s inference in the sense that, like… photons hit my retinas and I interpret them as words written in the English language and so on. But it seems to me that there’s a real, important difference between this kind of inference and the kind of inference I’ve been criticizing. I don’t know if I can pinpoint it, and I don’t feel like trying right now. Might be worth trying at some point in future. Wouldn’t be surprised if there’s already something in the sequences about it. FWIW my sense is that there’s some combination of “how confident are you” and “where does your confidence come from” and probably also “how relevant is it” that weighs into the question. And, like, yeah it’s not great that I’m trying to enforce standards I can’t really articulate, but… I don’t think that sinks the whole idea.)
Of course your comments elsewhere and the couple posts of yours that I’ve read before all have assertive statements about things that can only be inferences.
I confess I’m not very curious about these, given the prior examples.
Most people have the ability to read “X” and understand that well of course the person saying “X” doesn’t mean they’ve personally observed X and believe it with 99.9999% probability. They mean they think X is true.
I think most people are going to distinguish between “Sweden’s national currency is the Korona” (which I would not say given my current state of knowledge) and “Sweden’s national currency is… the Korona, I think?” (which I would).
Both of them might literally mean that I think Sweden’s national currency is the Korona, but I expect most people will think I’m quite confident in the first case and not very confident in the second.
Anyway, I’m out. Mostly? I, uh, assign at least 10% probability that if you comment further, you’ll make confident false claims about me. (You’ve already done that in more than 10% of your comments on this thread.) I dislike when that happens. So like, I want to leave open the possibility that if you do that I might jump in to say “no”, and I guess I want to leave open that possibility for other things you might say too… but I’m at least going to try hard not to put effort into replying to you again. (But if you do say things and I don’t reply, that is not an endorsement.) This might be a mistake, maybe I should just cut it out entirely, but let’s give it a go.
I repeat: blueiris said nothing even remotely like the thing you claim is not allowed.
This is observation, not inference.
(I mean, sure, it’s inference in the sense that, like… photons hit my retinas and I interpret them as words written in the English language and so on. But it seems to me that there’s a real, important difference between this kind of inference and the kind of inference I’ve been criticizing.
You don’t understand what an inference is and your strawman reasoning of why this comment is inference wouldn’t fool anybody. “nothing even remotely like” is a subjective determination. It’s comparing two things and judging how similar you think they are. I think it’ similar to what he said. You think it’s dissimilar. But I’m fine with you saying it with as much assertiveness as you do because again, I don’t have your rule about inferences and hedging words.
We have disagreements about how assertive your comments are, you think they aren’t that assertive, or if they’re assertive they’re non-inferences, and assume they naturally fit into your stated communicative standards. I’ve demonstrated how that’s not true. A regular person might think, ok then if people can have reasonable disagreements as to how something can be interpreted as an inference. maybe I shouldn’t be telling others to use these weird communicative protocols that entirely rely on my own subjective classification of things as inference or not. You don’t do that. You write with more misplaced confidence than I have ever done in this thread. I’m not going to keep responding if you’re going to make incredibly poor strawmans of what I’m saying and fail to realize your own communicative failures.
I don’t have the conversational norm of rote performance of using weasel words. If I think X is true with high probability based on circumstantial evidence I’m probably just going to say “X”. I don’t think tacking on “I think” to the front of that adds much content. Anybody’s free to disagree with me as much as they want and that has nothing to do with whether I say “I think” or “it seems to me.” Everything is an inference.
So it’s not that it’s a bunch of extra effort to just add your chosen phrases to my comments. It’s that it’s extra effort to change my writing style based on your stated communicative preference. I might do that for some people in some cases, but not for you or most any other lw poster in an online forum.
What irks me though is that you don’t follow the communicative rules you’re asking me to follow. And that’s why your comments are disturbing. You’re asking me to hamstring my rhetorical ability using these practices that you yourself don’t even follow.
Where is your hedging? Where is your “I think” or “Probably”. These are as assertive as any of my comments. And they’re all inferences. Of course your comments elsewhere and the couple posts of yours that I’ve read before all have assertive statements about things that can only be inferences. That’s how people communicate and the posts don’t suffer for it. Most people have the ability to read “X” and understand that well of course the person saying “X” doesn’t mean they’ve personally observed X and believe it with 99.9999% probability. They mean they think X is true.
This is a common, dark, rhetorical trick. You’re asking me to hamstring my ability to communicate while taking full advantage of the communicative tools at your disposal. So when I see a comment where, “I’m chiding you for not flagging it as inference” I have absolutely no desire to acquiesce to the restrictive conversational rules being asked of me.
Well, how high? Because by my count you’ve been wrong at least once in this thread when doing this (when you accused me of not putting in much effort). If say 1⁄10 of things you flatly assert are false, that’s not very impressive.
Yeah, this is fair.
Like, I think your communication style is a bad fit for LW, but that doesn’t mean changing it is easy for you.
None of your examples show me failing to live up to the standards I was asking of you. It’s possible I miscommunicated those standards, and it’s possible (even probable) I fail to live up to them in other places. But in these specific cases, I did not fail.
This is a claim about my own state of mind. I don’t need to hedge it, because in this case I’m confident about my observations of my own state of mind.
The hedging here comes from the question mark and the following words, “I dunno, I’m having trouble figuring out exactly what the accusation is”.
This is observation, not inference.
(Moreover, it’s observation based on shared data. Anyone can read the thread and verify its truth or falsehood for themselves, and anyone can know they can do that based on the context.)
(I mean, sure, it’s inference in the sense that, like… photons hit my retinas and I interpret them as words written in the English language and so on. But it seems to me that there’s a real, important difference between this kind of inference and the kind of inference I’ve been criticizing. I don’t know if I can pinpoint it, and I don’t feel like trying right now. Might be worth trying at some point in future. Wouldn’t be surprised if there’s already something in the sequences about it. FWIW my sense is that there’s some combination of “how confident are you” and “where does your confidence come from” and probably also “how relevant is it” that weighs into the question. And, like, yeah it’s not great that I’m trying to enforce standards I can’t really articulate, but… I don’t think that sinks the whole idea.)
I confess I’m not very curious about these, given the prior examples.
I think most people are going to distinguish between “Sweden’s national currency is the Korona” (which I would not say given my current state of knowledge) and “Sweden’s national currency is… the Korona, I think?” (which I would).
Both of them might literally mean that I think Sweden’s national currency is the Korona, but I expect most people will think I’m quite confident in the first case and not very confident in the second.
Anyway, I’m out. Mostly? I, uh, assign at least 10% probability that if you comment further, you’ll make confident false claims about me. (You’ve already done that in more than 10% of your comments on this thread.) I dislike when that happens. So like, I want to leave open the possibility that if you do that I might jump in to say “no”, and I guess I want to leave open that possibility for other things you might say too… but I’m at least going to try hard not to put effort into replying to you again. (But if you do say things and I don’t reply, that is not an endorsement.) This might be a mistake, maybe I should just cut it out entirely, but let’s give it a go.
You don’t understand what an inference is and your strawman reasoning of why this comment is inference wouldn’t fool anybody. “nothing even remotely like” is a subjective determination. It’s comparing two things and judging how similar you think they are. I think it’ similar to what he said. You think it’s dissimilar. But I’m fine with you saying it with as much assertiveness as you do because again, I don’t have your rule about inferences and hedging words.
We have disagreements about how assertive your comments are, you think they aren’t that assertive, or if they’re assertive they’re non-inferences, and assume they naturally fit into your stated communicative standards. I’ve demonstrated how that’s not true. A regular person might think, ok then if people can have reasonable disagreements as to how something can be interpreted as an inference. maybe I shouldn’t be telling others to use these weird communicative protocols that entirely rely on my own subjective classification of things as inference or not. You don’t do that. You write with more misplaced confidence than I have ever done in this thread. I’m not going to keep responding if you’re going to make incredibly poor strawmans of what I’m saying and fail to realize your own communicative failures.