The thing is, if “frame” is just another way of saying [insert list of various ways of saying “people sometimes think about a thing in one way and sometimes in another way”], then the concept is so diffuse, general, and banal as to not be worth elevating to any special status.
Huh, I find this surprising, mostly because I’m not sure about the “special status” claim.
It seems to me like there’s something of a dilemma here—either the concept is obvious (at which point being diffuse or general is not much of a drawback), and so the problem with the post is that it is ‘reinventing the wheel’, or the concept is nonobvious (and thus we can’t be sure we’re pointing at the same thing, and being diffuse now makes this communication much more difficult). Up until this point, I had gotten the second impression from you (stuff like “Without knowing what you mean by the word, I cannot answer your question.”), and not something like “wait, is this just rediscovering ‘maps’ from the map-territory distinction?”.
Also, I think that while this sort of “noticing maps” is basic rationality, it empirically does not seem obvious to everyone, and I think people finding it non-obvious or difficult to talk about or so on is interesting. That is, I don’t see this post as trying to make “frame” any more special a word than “perspective” or “standpoint” or so on; I see this post as trying to make more people both 1) see frame differences and 2) see frame manipulation, especially the sort of frame manipulation that tries to not be seen as frame manipulation.
[To be clear, I share some of your sense that ‘someone who had traumatic experiences around frame manipulation’ is probably not an unbiased source of information/frames about frames, and is likely more allergic / less likely to see that the same knife can be used constructively and destructively. I nevertheless put frames in the “general, basic, and useful concept” category, whereas you seem pretty sure they’re a bad frame.]
Huh, I find this surprising, mostly because I’m not sure about the “special status” claim.
It seems to me like there’s something of a dilemma here—either the concept is obvious (at which point being diffuse or general is not much of a drawback), and so the problem with the post is that it is ‘reinventing the wheel’, or the concept is nonobvious (and thus we can’t be sure we’re pointing at the same thing, and being diffuse now makes this communication much more difficult). Up until this point, I had gotten the second impression from you (stuff like “Without knowing what you mean by the word, I cannot answer your question.”), and not something like “wait, is this just rediscovering ‘maps’ from the map-territory distinction?”.
Also, I think that while this sort of “noticing maps” is basic rationality, it empirically does not seem obvious to everyone, and I think people finding it non-obvious or difficult to talk about or so on is interesting. That is, I don’t see this post as trying to make “frame” any more special a word than “perspective” or “standpoint” or so on; I see this post as trying to make more people both 1) see frame differences and 2) see frame manipulation, especially the sort of frame manipulation that tries to not be seen as frame manipulation.
[To be clear, I share some of your sense that ‘someone who had traumatic experiences around frame manipulation’ is probably not an unbiased source of information/frames about frames, and is likely more allergic / less likely to see that the same knife can be used constructively and destructively. I nevertheless put frames in the “general, basic, and useful concept” category, whereas you seem pretty sure they’re a bad frame.]