“You don’t need to apologize for being blunt! Let me be equally blunt. The sense you’re getting is accurate: no, I am not treating you as a cooperative partner in this conversation. I think your arguments are bad, and I feel very motivated to explain the obvious counterarguments to you in public, partially for the education of third parties, and partially to raise my status at the expense of yours.”
I consider this a good faith reply. It’s certainly not a polite thing to say. But politeness is bad faith. (That’s why someone might say in response to a compliment, “Do you really mean it, or are you just being polite?”) Given that someone actually in fact thinks my arguments are bad, and actually in fact feels motivated to explain why to me in public in order to raise their status at expense of mine, I think it’s fine for them to tell me so. How would me expecting them to lie about their motives help anyone? Complying with such an expectation really would be in bad faith!
I suppose such a person would not be engaging in the “collaborative truth-seeking” that the “Basics of Rationalist Discourse” guideline list keeps talking about.
Zack supposes wrong, and this is an excellent demonstration that he cannot pass the ITT of the post he thinks he is objecting to, and is in fact objecting to a strawman of his own construction. The imagined reply is not particularly nice, and is not the sort of comment I would tend to write when there are other, better ways to convey the same accurate information, but it doesn’t break any of the guidelines listed (and note also that the guidelines are guidelines, not rules, and that they are explicitly described as only being an 80⁄20 of good discourse anyway).
Wait, sorry, on further thought, I don’t think I understand why this doesn’t break the Fifth Guideline (“[...] behave as if your interlocutors are also aiming for convergence on truth”)?
I understand that guidelines are not rules, and that you wrote an additional 900 words explaining the shorthand summary of the Fifth Guideline. But if the Fifth Guideline isn’t trying to get people to not say this kind of thing, then I’m not sure what the Fifth Guideline is saying? Is my hypothetical mean person in the clear because he’s sticking to the object-level (“your arguments are bad”) and not explicitly making any claims about his interlocutor’s motivations (e.g., “you’re here in bad faith”)?
Thanks for clarifying! I agree that I’m not yet passing your ITT. (The post itself explicitly says that I’m not sure I understand how you use some words, so this shouldn’t be surprising.) I don’t think passing an ITT is or should be a prerequisite for replying to a post (although passing is definitely desirable).
Separately:
Zack supposes wrong, and this is an excellent demonstration that he cannot pass the ITT of the post he thinks he is objecting to, and is in fact objecting to a strawman of his own construction. The imagined reply is not particularly nice, and is not the sort of comment I would tend to write when there are other, better ways to convey the same accurate information, but it doesn’t break any of the guidelines listed (and note also that the guidelines are guidelines, not rules, and that they are explicitly described as only being an 80⁄20 of good discourse anyway).
Wait, sorry, on further thought, I don’t think I understand why this doesn’t break the Fifth Guideline (“[...] behave as if your interlocutors are also aiming for convergence on truth”)?
I understand that guidelines are not rules, and that you wrote an additional 900 words explaining the shorthand summary of the Fifth Guideline. But if the Fifth Guideline isn’t trying to get people to not say this kind of thing, then I’m not sure what the Fifth Guideline is saying? Is my hypothetical mean person in the clear because he’s sticking to the object-level (“your arguments are bad”) and not explicitly making any claims about his interlocutor’s motivations (e.g., “you’re here in bad faith”)?
Thanks for clarifying! I agree that I’m not yet passing your ITT. (The post itself explicitly says that I’m not sure I understand how you use some words, so this shouldn’t be surprising.) I don’t think passing an ITT is or should be a prerequisite for replying to a post (although passing is definitely desirable).