Perhaps we’re coming from different perspectives, but my point of view is that you’re being gratuitously aggressive. (Consider the wording of your first two sentences and imagine it read with a snarl, as I did.) Is that going to be the general result of this post here on Less Wrong?
I don’t make big sweeping apologies unless it (a) actually matters, and I feel badly or (b) the polite context of the exchange is established so that it is not an unfair status hit.
If you insist of making me take a status hit that I think is unfair—even though I’ve lost karma for this whole exchange, and MichaelGR already told me he didn’t agree with my use of the word, and I already sound like a jerk throughout the whole exchange because I keep changing my mind about whether or not people think cryonics is a deliberate scam—then I’ll have to admit that I just don’t think my broader usage of ‘scam’ is so uncommon.
Here are 2 examples of people using ‘scam’ in the sense I mean.
So that I only want to reply sarcastically so sorry I used a word that wasn’t immediately agreed with by everyone.
I am including all of this as an immediate-case-study response relevant to the post Logical Rudeness, to write what goes through my head when I’m pressed for a formal statement of defeat when I felt I had already made polite concessions. I think otherwise—without the reason to call attention to these thoughts—I would have just written something slightly passive aggressive, but mostly even more concessionary then the latest concession.
Everyone’s in a mood on LW today, it seems, and I don’t exclude myself. I meant to come across with a much lighter tone than that, to be sure, and I don’t mean to commit the sin that C S Lewis describes so well in “The Screwtape Letters” of insisting that one’s own words be taken strictly at face value while reading every possible connotation and side meaning into the words of others.
But I really do think that using the term “scam” in this way is inadvisable, and that the links you provide are using the term in a hyperbolic way, to smuggle in the implication of insincerity on the part of the providers without proof. I really think that “scam” denotes the wrong concept and certainly strongly carries the wrong connotations. whpearson’s suggestion of “boondoggle” is a good one.
I’m not sure how to address what you say about “status”. But I like to think that one of the things we’re better at here is conceding gracefully and accepting it gracefully. If I’ve given the discussion an emotional charge that makes that difficult, that wasn’t my intent.
I voted you up. Your latest comment left me feeling expansive rather than defensive, and that feels like a much better place to be rationally.
So I’m not sure why, in this expansive mood, I’m stll not willing to fully agree. For now I’ll call it “stubbornness of purpose”—I do want to ‘smuggle in’ those negative connotations while describing the negative feelings people have for cryonics—and think about whether this is a flaw in character or rationality or something more positive or neutral.
Perhaps we’re coming from different perspectives, but my point of view is that you’re being gratuitously aggressive. (Consider the wording of your first two sentences and imagine it read with a snarl, as I did.) Is that going to be the general result of this post here on Less Wrong?
I don’t make big sweeping apologies unless it (a) actually matters, and I feel badly or (b) the polite context of the exchange is established so that it is not an unfair status hit.
If you insist of making me take a status hit that I think is unfair—even though I’ve lost karma for this whole exchange, and MichaelGR already told me he didn’t agree with my use of the word, and I already sound like a jerk throughout the whole exchange because I keep changing my mind about whether or not people think cryonics is a deliberate scam—then I’ll have to admit that I just don’t think my broader usage of ‘scam’ is so uncommon.
Here are 2 examples of people using ‘scam’ in the sense I mean.
The Bottled Water Scam
Whole Life Insurance is a Scam
So that I only want to reply sarcastically so sorry I used a word that wasn’t immediately agreed with by everyone.
I am including all of this as an immediate-case-study response relevant to the post Logical Rudeness, to write what goes through my head when I’m pressed for a formal statement of defeat when I felt I had already made polite concessions. I think otherwise—without the reason to call attention to these thoughts—I would have just written something slightly passive aggressive, but mostly even more concessionary then the latest concession.
Everyone’s in a mood on LW today, it seems, and I don’t exclude myself. I meant to come across with a much lighter tone than that, to be sure, and I don’t mean to commit the sin that C S Lewis describes so well in “The Screwtape Letters” of insisting that one’s own words be taken strictly at face value while reading every possible connotation and side meaning into the words of others.
But I really do think that using the term “scam” in this way is inadvisable, and that the links you provide are using the term in a hyperbolic way, to smuggle in the implication of insincerity on the part of the providers without proof. I really think that “scam” denotes the wrong concept and certainly strongly carries the wrong connotations. whpearson’s suggestion of “boondoggle” is a good one.
I’m not sure how to address what you say about “status”. But I like to think that one of the things we’re better at here is conceding gracefully and accepting it gracefully. If I’ve given the discussion an emotional charge that makes that difficult, that wasn’t my intent.
I voted you up. Your latest comment left me feeling expansive rather than defensive, and that feels like a much better place to be rationally.
So I’m not sure why, in this expansive mood, I’m stll not willing to fully agree. For now I’ll call it “stubbornness of purpose”—I do want to ‘smuggle in’ those negative connotations while describing the negative feelings people have for cryonics—and think about whether this is a flaw in character or rationality or something more positive or neutral.