I mean, this is not a discussion platform about legal issues, I don’t think you should expect really anyone to have read any significant number of cases before reading this article.
The citation you provided seems (in isolation) not to make the point I expected it to make, given the context it was placed, which Christian accurately pointed out. The citation seems related, but I was definitely confused when I looked at the actual section of the law that you linked.
You provide some additional background here, which I think helps some, but even after reading the discussion and the article, I don’t think I have a model of the world that outputs “german law bans surrogate motherhood” for any reason other than “Vizi Andrei said it”. And while it’s obviously unavoidable that a reader will have to put some trust in the author’s word, I think it’s a good target to limit that as much as possible, and in particular to avoid placing citations in a way that suggests a more self-contained explanation than the actual text of the cited reference provides.
That’s a good point. I think I should have given a more elaborate basis for my argument. And I figured (quite late) that this article is not necessarily in harmony with the LW community perspective, as it involves a legal aspect rather than something related to rationality. So, after pondering for a while, I admit, my approach was flawed, and from now on I won’t write anything that fundamentally involves a difficult legal problem, but something related to rationality per se.
Anyhow, what I don’t personally get is why would one disagree with an argument which he does not understand. There’s one thing to state: “hei, can you provide more explanation for your argument” and there’s another to state: “I am not familiar with this topic, I am not willing to do any research, but you are wrong.” if people strongly disagree with your argument, it makes you expect that they are familiar with the topic. So whilst you are right in saying that I was wrong to expect people to be familiar with this topic, I think one who is not familiar may either ask questions, do some research or simply ignore the discussion.
I mean, this is not a discussion platform about legal issues, I don’t think you should expect really anyone to have read any significant number of cases before reading this article.
The citation you provided seems (in isolation) not to make the point I expected it to make, given the context it was placed, which Christian accurately pointed out. The citation seems related, but I was definitely confused when I looked at the actual section of the law that you linked.
You provide some additional background here, which I think helps some, but even after reading the discussion and the article, I don’t think I have a model of the world that outputs “german law bans surrogate motherhood” for any reason other than “Vizi Andrei said it”. And while it’s obviously unavoidable that a reader will have to put some trust in the author’s word, I think it’s a good target to limit that as much as possible, and in particular to avoid placing citations in a way that suggests a more self-contained explanation than the actual text of the cited reference provides.
That’s a good point. I think I should have given a more elaborate basis for my argument. And I figured (quite late) that this article is not necessarily in harmony with the LW community perspective, as it involves a legal aspect rather than something related to rationality. So, after pondering for a while, I admit, my approach was flawed, and from now on I won’t write anything that fundamentally involves a difficult legal problem, but something related to rationality per se.
Anyhow, what I don’t personally get is why would one disagree with an argument which he does not understand. There’s one thing to state: “hei, can you provide more explanation for your argument” and there’s another to state: “I am not familiar with this topic, I am not willing to do any research, but you are wrong.” if people strongly disagree with your argument, it makes you expect that they are familiar with the topic. So whilst you are right in saying that I was wrong to expect people to be familiar with this topic, I think one who is not familiar may either ask questions, do some research or simply ignore the discussion.