This is the first point at which I, at least, saw any indication that you thought Ben’s attempt to pass your ITT was anything less than completely accurate. If you thought his summary of your position wasn’t accurate, why didn’t you say so earlier ? Your response to the comment of his that you linked gave no indication of that, and thus seemed to give the impression that you thought it was an accurate summary (if there are places where you stated that you thought the summary wasn’t accurate and I simply missed it, feel free to point this out). My understanding is that often, when person A writes up a summary of what they believe to be person B’s position, the purpose is to ensure that the two are on the same page (not in the sense of agreeing, but in the sense that A understands what B is claiming). Thus, I think person A often hopes that person B will either confirm that “yes, that’s a pretty accurate summary of my position,” or “well, parts of that are correct, but it differs from my actual position in ways 1, 2, and 3″ or “no, you’ve completely misunderstood what I’m trying to say. Actually, I was trying to say [summary of person B’s position].”
To be perfectly clear, an underlying premise of this is that communication is hard, and thus that two people can be talking past each other even if both are putting in what feels like a normal amount of effort to write clearly and to understand what the other is saying. This implies that if a disagreement persists, one of the first things to try is to slow down for a moment and get clear on what each person is actually saying, which requires putting in more than what feels like a normal amount of effort, because what feels like a normal amount of effort is often not enough to actually facilitate understanding. I’m getting a vibe that you disagree with this line of thought. Is that correct? If so, where exactly do you disagree?
Out of politeness, and courtesy to Ben, I had hoped to avoid a head-on discussion of this topic. However, you make good points; and, in any case, given that you’ve called attention to this point, certainly it would be imprudent not to respond. So here goes, and I hope that Ben does not take this personally; the sentiment expressed in the grandparent still stands.
The truth is, Ben’s comment is an excellent example of why I am skeptical of “interpretive labor”, as well as related concepts like “principle of charity” (which was an unimpeachable idea, but was quickly corrupted, in the rationalist memesphere). When I read Ben’s comment, what I see is the following:
Perfectly clear, straightforward language (quoted from my comments) that unambiguously and effectively conveys my points, “paraphrased” in such a way that the paraphrasing is worse in almost every way than the original: more confused, less accurate, less precise, less specific.
My viewpoints (which, as mentioned, had been expressed quite clearly, and needed no rephrasing at all) distorted into caricatures of themselves.
A strange mix of more-or-less passable (if degraded) portrayals of my points, plus some caricatures / strawmen / rounding-to-the-nearest-cliche, plus some irrelevant additions, that manages to turn the entire summary of my views into a mishmash, of highly dubious value.
Ben indicates that he spent hours reading my commentary, trying to understand my views, and writing the comment in question (and I have no reason to doubt this). But if one may spend hours on such a thing, and end up with such disappointing results, what’s the point?
What’s more, I see no indication in Ben’s post that he had the same estimate of the results of his efforts as I did. If the claim is “doing interpretive labor lets you understand your interlocutor, where a straightforward reading may lead you astray”, but the reality is “doing interpretive labor leaves you with the entirely erroneous impression that you’ve understood your interlocutor when in fact you haven’t, thus wasting your time not just for no benefit, but with a negative effect”, then, again—why do it?
I think person A often hopes that person B will either confirm that “yes, that’s a pretty accurate summary of my position,” or “well, parts of that are correct, but it differs from my actual position in ways 1, 2, and 3” or “no, you’ve completely misunderstood what I’m trying to say. Actually, I was trying to say [summary of person B’s position].”
One may hope for something like this, certainly. But in practice, I find that conversations like this can easily result from that sort of attitude:
Alice: It’s raining outside.
Bob, after thinking really hard: Hmm. What I hear you saying is that there’s some sort of precipitation, possibly coming from the sky but you don’t say that specifically.
Alice: … what? No, it’s… it’s just raining. Regular rain. Like, I literally mean exactly what I said. Right now, it is raining outside.
Bob, frowning: Alice, I really wish you’d express yourself more clearly, but if I’m understanding you correctly, you’re implying that the current weather in this location is uncomfortable to walk around in? And—I’m guessing, now, since you’re not clear on this point, but—also that it’s cloudy, and not sunny?
Alice: …
Bob: …
Alice: Dude. Just… it’s raining. This isn’t hard.
Bob, frowning some more and looking thoughtful: Hmm…
And so on.
So, yes, communication is hard. But it’s not clear at all that this sort of solution really solves anything.
And at the same time, sometimes there are just actual disagreements. I think maybe some folks in this conversation forget that, or don’t like to think about it, or… heck, I don’t know. I’m speculating here. But there’s a remarkable lack of acknowledgment, here, of the fact that sometimes someone is just wrong, and people are disagreeing with that person because he’s wrong, and they’re right.
Note: I will not be engaging in much depth here, but wanted to flag one particularly important point:
Perfectly clear, straightforward language (quoted from my comments) that unambiguously and effectively conveys my points, “paraphrased” in such a way that the paraphrasing is worse in almost every way than the original: more confused, less accurate, less precise, less specific.
No. If Ben did not successfully interpret your language, your language wasn’t clear or unambiguous. The point of the ITT is the verify that any successful communication has taken place at all. If it hasn’t, everything that happens after that is just time wasting.
I’m afraid I can’t agree with this, at all. But to get into the reasons why, I’d have to speak increasingly discourteously; I do not expect this to be a productive endeavor. Feel free to contact me privately if you are interested in my further views on this, but otherwise, I will also disengage.
I see no indication in Ben’s post that he had the same estimate of the results of his efforts as I did.
This is exactly the problem that the ITT is trying to solve. Ben’s interpretation of what you said is Ben’s interpretation of what you said, whether he posts it or merely thinks it. If he merely thinks it, and then responds to you based on it, then he’ll be responding to a misunderstanding of what you actually said and the conversation won’t be productive. You’ll think he understood you, he’ll perhaps think he understood you, but he won’t have understood you, and the conversation will not go well because of it.
But if he writes it out, then you can see that he didn’t understand you, and help him understand what you actually meant before he tries to criticize something you didn’t even actually say. But this kind of thing only works if both people cooperate a little bit. (Okay, that’s a bit strong, I do think that the kind of thing Ben did has some benefit even though you didn’t respond to it. But a lot of the benefit comes from the back and forth.)
if one may spend hours on such a thing, and end up with such disappointing results, what’s the point?
Again, this is merely evidence that communication is harder than it seems. Ben not writing down his interpretation of you doesn’t magically make him understand you better. All it does is hide the fact that he didn’t understand you, and when that fact is hidden it can cause problems that seem to come from nowhere.
If the claim is “doing interpretive labor lets you understand your interlocutor, where a straightforward reading may lead you astray”
That’s not the claim at all. The claim is that the reading that seems straightforward to you may not be the reading that seems straightforward to Ben. So if Ben relies on what seems to him a “straightforward reading,” he may be relying on a wrong reading of what you said, because you wanted to communicate something different.
but the reality is “doing interpretive labor leaves you with the entirely erroneous impression that you’ve understood your interlocutor when in fact you haven’t, thus wasting your time not just for no benefit, but with a negative effect”, then, again—why do it?
I mean, yes, maybe Ben thought that after writing all that he understood what you were saying. But if he misunderstood you have the power to correct that. And him putting forward the interpretation he thinks is correct gives you a jumping-off point for helping him to understand what you meant. Without that jumping-off point you would be shooting in the dark, throwing out different ways of rephrasing what you said until one stuck, or worse (as I’ve said several times now) you wouldn’t realize he had misunderstood you at all.
sometimes there are just actual disagreements. I think maybe some folks in this conversation forget that, or don’t like to think about it, or… heck, I don’t know. I’m speculating here. But there’s a remarkable lack of acknowledgment, here, of the fact that sometimes someone is just wrong, and people are disagreeing with that person because he’s wrong, and they’re right.
Yes, but you can’t hash out the substantive disagreements until you’ve sorted out any misunderstandings first. That would be like arguing about the population size of Athens when one of you thinks you’re talking about Athens, Greece and the other thinks you’re talking about Athens, Ohio.
I mean, yes, maybe Ben thought that after writing all that he understood what you were saying. But if he misunderstood you have the power to correct that.
This, I think, is where we differ (well, this, and the relative value of spending time on “interpretive labor” vs. going ahead with the [what seems to you to be the] straightforward interpretation). I think that time spent thus is generally wasted (and sometimes, or often, even counterproductive), and I think that correcting misunderstandings that persist after such “interpretive labor” is not feasible in practice (at least, not by the direct route)—not to mention that attempting to do this anyway, detracts from the usefulness of the discussion.
By the way, I’m curious why you say that the principle of charity “was an unimpeachable idea, but was quickly corrupted, in the rationalist memesphere.” What do you think was the original, good form of the idea, what is the difference between that and the version the rationalist memesphere has adopted, and what is so bad about the rationalist version?
The original, good form of the principle of charity… well, actually, one or another principle under this name is decades old, or perhaps millennia; but in our circles, we can trace it back to Scott’s first post on Slate Star Codex, which I will quote almost in full:
This blog does not have a subject, but it has an ethos. That ethos might be summed up as: charity over absurdity.
Absurdity is the natural human tendency to dismiss anything you disagree with as so stupid it doesn’t even deserve consideration. In fact, you are virtuous for not considering it, maybe even heroic! You’re refusing to dignify the evil peddlers of bunkum by acknowledging them as legitimate debate partners.
Charity is the ability to override that response. To assume that if you don’t understand how someone could possibly believe something as stupid as they do, that this is more likely a failure of understanding on your part than a failure of reason on theirs.
There are many things charity is not. Charity is not a fuzzy-headed caricature-pomo attempt to say no one can ever be sure they’re right or wrong about anything. Once you understand the reasons a belief is attractive to someone, you can go ahead and reject it as soundly as you want. Nor is it an obligation to spend time researching every crazy belief that might come your way. Time is valuable, and the less of it you waste on intellectual wild goose chases, the better.
It’s more like Chesterton’s Fence. G.K. Chesterton gave the example of a fence in the middle of nowhere. A traveller comes across it, thinks “I can’t think of any reason to have a fence out here, it sure was dumb to build one” and so takes it down. She is then gored by an angry bull who was being kept on the other side of the fence.
Chesterton’s point is that “I can’t think of any reason to have a fence out here” is the worst reason to remove a fence. Someone had a reason to put a fence up here, and if you can’t even imagine what it was, it probably means there’s something you’re missing about the situation and that you’re meddling in things you don’t understand. None of this precludes the traveller who knows that this was historically a cattle farming area but is now abandoned – ie the traveller who understands what’s going on – from taking down the fence.
As with fences, so with arguments. If you have no clue how someone could believe something, and so you decide it’s stupid, you are much like Chesterton’s traveler dismissing the fence (and philosophers, like travelers, are at high risk of stumbling across bull.)
(Bolding mine, italics in original.)
A fair and reasonable principle, I think. We might also extend it—as, indeed, it has often been extended—to the injunction that opponents, and their arguments, ought not be dismissed merely because they appear to be evil. (For example, if it seems like I am suggesting that kittens must be tortured at every opportunity—well, who knows, perhaps I am?—but it is uncharitable to assume this, and to dismiss and denounce me for it, unless I’ve said this explicitly, or you’ve made a reasonable attempt to elicit a clarification, and I’ve confirmed that I am saying just that.)
So that is the unimpeachable idea. And what is the corruption? There are several, actually. Here’s one:
Yeah, sorry for being imprecise in my language. Can you just be charitable and see that my statement make sense if you replace “VNM” by “Dutch book” ?
Here, the suggestion is that being “charitable” requires that I mentally replace one technical term with another, totally different, technical term, turning a statement that is perfectly coherent—not absurd, not insane—but wrong, into a different statement that is correct. Evidently I am expected to do this with every one of my interlocutor’s statements. So, then what? Do I just assume that whenever anyone says anything to me that I think is wrong, what they actually mean is something correct? Is it just impossible for people to be wrong? Can I never be surprised by people’s claims? Is “huh, so what you’re saying is X? really?” totally out of the question? (Never mind the question of how I’m supposed to know what to “correct” my interlocutor’s comments to—it isn’t like there’s always, or even often, just one possible “correct” interpretation!)
And then the other corruption is the other side of the same coin. It’s what happens when people do apply this form of the “principle of charity”, and end up having conversations like some I’ve had recently, where I’ve been on the receiving end of this “charity”: I say something fairly straightforward, and my interlocutor, applying the principle of charity, and believing the literal or straightforward interpretation of my words to be evil (or something), mentally transforms my comments into something different (and, presumably, non-evil), and responds to that. Communication has not taken place; my words have not been heard.
There are other corruptions, too, more subtle ones (examples of which I’d have to take some time to hunt for), but these are more than bad enough!
Thanks for this. Sorry it’s taken me so long to reply here, didn’t mean to let this conversation hang for so long. I completely agree with about 99% of what you wrote here. The 1% I’ll hopefully address in the post I’m working on on this topic.
This substantially raised my estimate of how much harm Said’s been causing from “annoying but mostly harmless” to “actively attacking good discourse for being good”. I’ve switched my moderation policy to reign of terror because on future posts I intend to delete comments by Said that were as annoying as the initial exchange here. Not sure if that extends to other commenters, probably it should but I haven’t had other problems this bad.
This is the first point at which I, at least, saw any indication that you thought Ben’s attempt to pass your ITT was anything less than completely accurate. If you thought his summary of your position wasn’t accurate, why didn’t you say so earlier ? Your response to the comment of his that you linked gave no indication of that, and thus seemed to give the impression that you thought it was an accurate summary (if there are places where you stated that you thought the summary wasn’t accurate and I simply missed it, feel free to point this out). My understanding is that often, when person A writes up a summary of what they believe to be person B’s position, the purpose is to ensure that the two are on the same page (not in the sense of agreeing, but in the sense that A understands what B is claiming). Thus, I think person A often hopes that person B will either confirm that “yes, that’s a pretty accurate summary of my position,” or “well, parts of that are correct, but it differs from my actual position in ways 1, 2, and 3″ or “no, you’ve completely misunderstood what I’m trying to say. Actually, I was trying to say [summary of person B’s position].”
To be perfectly clear, an underlying premise of this is that communication is hard, and thus that two people can be talking past each other even if both are putting in what feels like a normal amount of effort to write clearly and to understand what the other is saying. This implies that if a disagreement persists, one of the first things to try is to slow down for a moment and get clear on what each person is actually saying, which requires putting in more than what feels like a normal amount of effort, because what feels like a normal amount of effort is often not enough to actually facilitate understanding. I’m getting a vibe that you disagree with this line of thought. Is that correct? If so, where exactly do you disagree?
Out of politeness, and courtesy to Ben, I had hoped to avoid a head-on discussion of this topic. However, you make good points; and, in any case, given that you’ve called attention to this point, certainly it would be imprudent not to respond. So here goes, and I hope that Ben does not take this personally; the sentiment expressed in the grandparent still stands.
The truth is, Ben’s comment is an excellent example of why I am skeptical of “interpretive labor”, as well as related concepts like “principle of charity” (which was an unimpeachable idea, but was quickly corrupted, in the rationalist memesphere). When I read Ben’s comment, what I see is the following:
Perfectly clear, straightforward language (quoted from my comments) that unambiguously and effectively conveys my points, “paraphrased” in such a way that the paraphrasing is worse in almost every way than the original: more confused, less accurate, less precise, less specific.
My viewpoints (which, as mentioned, had been expressed quite clearly, and needed no rephrasing at all) distorted into caricatures of themselves.
A strange mix of more-or-less passable (if degraded) portrayals of my points, plus some caricatures / strawmen / rounding-to-the-nearest-cliche, plus some irrelevant additions, that manages to turn the entire summary of my views into a mishmash, of highly dubious value.
Ben indicates that he spent hours reading my commentary, trying to understand my views, and writing the comment in question (and I have no reason to doubt this). But if one may spend hours on such a thing, and end up with such disappointing results, what’s the point?
What’s more, I see no indication in Ben’s post that he had the same estimate of the results of his efforts as I did. If the claim is “doing interpretive labor lets you understand your interlocutor, where a straightforward reading may lead you astray”, but the reality is “doing interpretive labor leaves you with the entirely erroneous impression that you’ve understood your interlocutor when in fact you haven’t, thus wasting your time not just for no benefit, but with a negative effect”, then, again—why do it?
One may hope for something like this, certainly. But in practice, I find that conversations like this can easily result from that sort of attitude:
Alice: It’s raining outside.
Bob, after thinking really hard: Hmm. What I hear you saying is that there’s some sort of precipitation, possibly coming from the sky but you don’t say that specifically.
Alice: … what? No, it’s… it’s just raining. Regular rain. Like, I literally mean exactly what I said. Right now, it is raining outside.
Bob, frowning: Alice, I really wish you’d express yourself more clearly, but if I’m understanding you correctly, you’re implying that the current weather in this location is uncomfortable to walk around in? And—I’m guessing, now, since you’re not clear on this point, but—also that it’s cloudy, and not sunny?
Alice: …
Bob: …
Alice: Dude. Just… it’s raining. This isn’t hard.
Bob, frowning some more and looking thoughtful: Hmm…
And so on.
So, yes, communication is hard. But it’s not clear at all that this sort of solution really solves anything.
And at the same time, sometimes there are just actual disagreements. I think maybe some folks in this conversation forget that, or don’t like to think about it, or… heck, I don’t know. I’m speculating here. But there’s a remarkable lack of acknowledgment, here, of the fact that sometimes someone is just wrong, and people are disagreeing with that person because he’s wrong, and they’re right.
Note: I will not be engaging in much depth here, but wanted to flag one particularly important point:
No. If Ben did not successfully interpret your language, your language wasn’t clear or unambiguous. The point of the ITT is the verify that any successful communication has taken place at all. If it hasn’t, everything that happens after that is just time wasting.
Yes, this, precisely this.
I’m afraid I can’t agree with this, at all. But to get into the reasons why, I’d have to speak increasingly discourteously; I do not expect this to be a productive endeavor. Feel free to contact me privately if you are interested in my further views on this, but otherwise, I will also disengage.
This is exactly the problem that the ITT is trying to solve. Ben’s interpretation of what you said is Ben’s interpretation of what you said, whether he posts it or merely thinks it. If he merely thinks it, and then responds to you based on it, then he’ll be responding to a misunderstanding of what you actually said and the conversation won’t be productive. You’ll think he understood you, he’ll perhaps think he understood you, but he won’t have understood you, and the conversation will not go well because of it.
But if he writes it out, then you can see that he didn’t understand you, and help him understand what you actually meant before he tries to criticize something you didn’t even actually say. But this kind of thing only works if both people cooperate a little bit. (Okay, that’s a bit strong, I do think that the kind of thing Ben did has some benefit even though you didn’t respond to it. But a lot of the benefit comes from the back and forth.)
Again, this is merely evidence that communication is harder than it seems. Ben not writing down his interpretation of you doesn’t magically make him understand you better. All it does is hide the fact that he didn’t understand you, and when that fact is hidden it can cause problems that seem to come from nowhere.
That’s not the claim at all. The claim is that the reading that seems straightforward to you may not be the reading that seems straightforward to Ben. So if Ben relies on what seems to him a “straightforward reading,” he may be relying on a wrong reading of what you said, because you wanted to communicate something different.
I mean, yes, maybe Ben thought that after writing all that he understood what you were saying. But if he misunderstood you have the power to correct that. And him putting forward the interpretation he thinks is correct gives you a jumping-off point for helping him to understand what you meant. Without that jumping-off point you would be shooting in the dark, throwing out different ways of rephrasing what you said until one stuck, or worse (as I’ve said several times now) you wouldn’t realize he had misunderstood you at all.
Yes, but you can’t hash out the substantive disagreements until you’ve sorted out any misunderstandings first. That would be like arguing about the population size of Athens when one of you thinks you’re talking about Athens, Greece and the other thinks you’re talking about Athens, Ohio.
This, I think, is where we differ (well, this, and the relative value of spending time on “interpretive labor” vs. going ahead with the [what seems to you to be the] straightforward interpretation). I think that time spent thus is generally wasted (and sometimes, or often, even counterproductive), and I think that correcting misunderstandings that persist after such “interpretive labor” is not feasible in practice (at least, not by the direct route)—not to mention that attempting to do this anyway, detracts from the usefulness of the discussion.
By the way, I’m curious why you say that the principle of charity “was an unimpeachable idea, but was quickly corrupted, in the rationalist memesphere.” What do you think was the original, good form of the idea, what is the difference between that and the version the rationalist memesphere has adopted, and what is so bad about the rationalist version?
The original, good form of the principle of charity… well, actually, one or another principle under this name is decades old, or perhaps millennia; but in our circles, we can trace it back to Scott’s first post on Slate Star Codex, which I will quote almost in full:
(Bolding mine, italics in original.)
A fair and reasonable principle, I think. We might also extend it—as, indeed, it has often been extended—to the injunction that opponents, and their arguments, ought not be dismissed merely because they appear to be evil. (For example, if it seems like I am suggesting that kittens must be tortured at every opportunity—well, who knows, perhaps I am?—but it is uncharitable to assume this, and to dismiss and denounce me for it, unless I’ve said this explicitly, or you’ve made a reasonable attempt to elicit a clarification, and I’ve confirmed that I am saying just that.)
So that is the unimpeachable idea. And what is the corruption? There are several, actually. Here’s one:
(Source.)
Here, the suggestion is that being “charitable” requires that I mentally replace one technical term with another, totally different, technical term, turning a statement that is perfectly coherent—not absurd, not insane—but wrong, into a different statement that is correct. Evidently I am expected to do this with every one of my interlocutor’s statements. So, then what? Do I just assume that whenever anyone says anything to me that I think is wrong, what they actually mean is something correct? Is it just impossible for people to be wrong? Can I never be surprised by people’s claims? Is “huh, so what you’re saying is X? really?” totally out of the question? (Never mind the question of how I’m supposed to know what to “correct” my interlocutor’s comments to—it isn’t like there’s always, or even often, just one possible “correct” interpretation!)
And then the other corruption is the other side of the same coin. It’s what happens when people do apply this form of the “principle of charity”, and end up having conversations like some I’ve had recently, where I’ve been on the receiving end of this “charity”: I say something fairly straightforward, and my interlocutor, applying the principle of charity, and believing the literal or straightforward interpretation of my words to be evil (or something), mentally transforms my comments into something different (and, presumably, non-evil), and responds to that. Communication has not taken place; my words have not been heard.
There are other corruptions, too, more subtle ones (examples of which I’d have to take some time to hunt for), but these are more than bad enough!
Thanks for this. Sorry it’s taken me so long to reply here, didn’t mean to let this conversation hang for so long. I completely agree with about 99% of what you wrote here. The 1% I’ll hopefully address in the post I’m working on on this topic.
This substantially raised my estimate of how much harm Said’s been causing from “annoying but mostly harmless” to “actively attacking good discourse for being good”. I’ve switched my moderation policy to reign of terror because on future posts I intend to delete comments by Said that were as annoying as the initial exchange here. Not sure if that extends to other commenters, probably it should but I haven’t had other problems this bad.