I don’t think the principle of charity generally extends so far as to make people reinterpret you when you don’t go to the trouble of phrasing your comments so they don’t sound obviously wrong.
If you see a claim that has one interpretation making it obviously wrong and another one sensible, and you expect a sensible claim, it’s a simple matter of robust communication to assume the sensible one and ignore the obviously wrong. It’s much more likely that the intended message behind the inapt textual transcription wasn’t the obviously wrong one, and the content of communication is that unvoiced thought, not the text used to communicate it.
it’s a simple matter of robust communication to assume the sensible one and ignore the obviously wrong.
But if the obvious interpretation of what you said was obviously wrong, then it’s your fault, not the reader’s, if you’re misunderstood.
the content of communication is that unvoiced thought, not the text used to communicate it.
All a reader can go by is the text used to communicate the thought. What we have on this site is text which responds to other text. I could just assume you said “Why yes, thoughtfulape, that’s a marvelous idea! You should do that nine times. Purple monkey dishwasher.” if I was expected to respond to things you didn’t say.
My point is that the prior under which you interpret the text is shaped by the expectations about the source of the text. If the text, taken alone, is seen as likely meaning something that you didn’t expect to be said, then the knowledge about what you expect to be said takes precedence over the knowledge of what a given piece of text could mean if taken out of context. Certainly, you can’t read minds without data, but the data is about minds, and that’s a significant factor in its interpretation.
If the text, taken alone, is seen as likely meaning something that you didn’t expect to be said, then the knowledge about what you expect to be said takes precedence
This is why people often can’t follow simple instructions for mental techniques—they do whatever they already believe is the right thing to do, not what the instructions actually say.
I don’t think the principle of charity generally extends so far as to make people reinterpret you when you don’t go to the trouble of phrasing your comments so they don’t sound obviously wrong.
If you see a claim that has one interpretation making it obviously wrong and another one sensible, and you expect a sensible claim, it’s a simple matter of robust communication to assume the sensible one and ignore the obviously wrong. It’s much more likely that the intended message behind the inapt textual transcription wasn’t the obviously wrong one, and the content of communication is that unvoiced thought, not the text used to communicate it.
But if the obvious interpretation of what you said was obviously wrong, then it’s your fault, not the reader’s, if you’re misunderstood.
All a reader can go by is the text used to communicate the thought. What we have on this site is text which responds to other text. I could just assume you said “Why yes, thoughtfulape, that’s a marvelous idea! You should do that nine times. Purple monkey dishwasher.” if I was expected to respond to things you didn’t say.
My point is that the prior under which you interpret the text is shaped by the expectations about the source of the text. If the text, taken alone, is seen as likely meaning something that you didn’t expect to be said, then the knowledge about what you expect to be said takes precedence over the knowledge of what a given piece of text could mean if taken out of context. Certainly, you can’t read minds without data, but the data is about minds, and that’s a significant factor in its interpretation.
This is why people often can’t follow simple instructions for mental techniques—they do whatever they already believe is the right thing to do, not what the instructions actually say.
That’s overconfidence, a bias, but so is underconfidence.