I think it’s worth asking why people use dangling questions.
In a fun, friendly debate setting, dangling questions can be a positive contribution. It gives them an opportunity to demonstrate competence and wit with an effective rejoinder.
In a potentially litigious setting, framing critiques as questions (or opinions), rather than as statements of fact, protect you from being convicted of libel.
There are situations where it’s suspicious that a piece of information is missing or not easily accessible, and asking a pointed dangling question seems appropriate to me in these contexts. For certain types of questions, providing answers is assigned to a particular social role, and asking a dangling question can be done to challenge to their competence or integrity. If the question-asker answered their own question, it would not provide the truly desired information, which is whether the party being asked is able to supply it convincingly.
Sometimes, asking dangling questions is useful in its own right for signaling the confidence to criticize or probing a situation to see if it’s safe to be critical. Asking certain types of questions can also signal one’s identity, and this can be a way of providing information (“I am a critic of Effective Altruism, as you can see by the fact that I’m asking dangling questions about whether it’s possible to compare interventions on effectiveness”).
In general, I think it’s interesting to consider information exchange as a form of transaction, and to ask whether a norm is having a net benefit in terms of lowering those transactions costs. IMO, discourse around the impact of rhetoric (like this thread) is beneficial on net. It creates a perception that people are trying to be a higher-trust community and gets people thinking about the impact of their language on other people.
On the other hand, I think actually refereeing rhetoric (ie complaining about the rhetoric rather than the substance in an actual debate context) is sometimes quite costly. It can become a shibboleth. I wonder if this is a systemic or underlying reason why people sometimes say they feel unsafe in criticizing EA? It seems to me a very reasonable conclusion to draw that there’s an “insider style,” competence in which is a prerequisite for being treated inclusively or taken seriously in EA and rationalist settings. It’s meant well, I think, but it’s possible it’s a norm that benefits some aspects of community conversation and negatively impacts others, and that some people, like newcomers/outsiders/critics are more impacted by the negatives than they benefit from the positives.
I think it’s worth asking why people use dangling questions.
In a fun, friendly debate setting, dangling questions can be a positive contribution. It gives them an opportunity to demonstrate competence and wit with an effective rejoinder.
In a potentially litigious setting, framing critiques as questions (or opinions), rather than as statements of fact, protect you from being convicted of libel.
There are situations where it’s suspicious that a piece of information is missing or not easily accessible, and asking a pointed dangling question seems appropriate to me in these contexts. For certain types of questions, providing answers is assigned to a particular social role, and asking a dangling question can be done to challenge to their competence or integrity. If the question-asker answered their own question, it would not provide the truly desired information, which is whether the party being asked is able to supply it convincingly.
Sometimes, asking dangling questions is useful in its own right for signaling the confidence to criticize or probing a situation to see if it’s safe to be critical. Asking certain types of questions can also signal one’s identity, and this can be a way of providing information (“I am a critic of Effective Altruism, as you can see by the fact that I’m asking dangling questions about whether it’s possible to compare interventions on effectiveness”).
In general, I think it’s interesting to consider information exchange as a form of transaction, and to ask whether a norm is having a net benefit in terms of lowering those transactions costs. IMO, discourse around the impact of rhetoric (like this thread) is beneficial on net. It creates a perception that people are trying to be a higher-trust community and gets people thinking about the impact of their language on other people.
On the other hand, I think actually refereeing rhetoric (ie complaining about the rhetoric rather than the substance in an actual debate context) is sometimes quite costly. It can become a shibboleth. I wonder if this is a systemic or underlying reason why people sometimes say they feel unsafe in criticizing EA? It seems to me a very reasonable conclusion to draw that there’s an “insider style,” competence in which is a prerequisite for being treated inclusively or taken seriously in EA and rationalist settings. It’s meant well, I think, but it’s possible it’s a norm that benefits some aspects of community conversation and negatively impacts others, and that some people, like newcomers/outsiders/critics are more impacted by the negatives than they benefit from the positives.
Thanks for the addition, that all sounds about right to me!