For my part, my takeaway from the downvotes is this: if I respond to a question by saying RTFM, and I bother to include a link in my response, but instead of choosing to include a link to the actual FM I include a link to an etiquette guide about how not to ask dumb questions, it ought not surprise me if some folks take this as evidence that I’m being snotty rather than being helpful and appropriate.
I don’t think it’s fair to characterize gwern’s post (or the excellent ESR article he linked to, for that matter) as simply saying RTFM. The fact is that the question(s) posed by Grey are rather layered and multifaceted, i.e.. have fairly deep explanations that xe probably isn’t ready for yet. But the fact that it was all jammed together into a simple-sounding question tends to obscure that. It’s a common heuristic (frequently exploited by e.g. creationists) that when you ask a simple sounding question there should be a simple sounding answer. There has to be some way of providing people with the negative feedback they need to update on how little they really know on a topic—linking to a well-written ESR essay on how to ask more epistemically useful questions is hardly the most offensive way of so doing if you ask me.
I certainly agree that it’s far from the most offensive way of encouraging someone to “update on how little they really know.”
I sympathize with the difficulty of being asked simple-sounding questions that conceal a lot of complexity. And I agree with you that this is often maliciously exploited. Of course, it is also often the genuine consequence of being new to and interested in a subject.
I’m intrigued by the notion that Grey’s question can be so obvious that he should have obtained an answer via a simple web search without wasting anyone’s time here (which is what I understood gwern to be saying) and at the same time so layered and multifaceted that Grey probably isn’t ready for the answer. I suspect I’ll have to think about that some more before I fully understand it.
I didn’t get the impression that gwern was implying that it could be solved quickly and easily with a google search, so much as that it’s the kind of question you are better off flexing your intellectual muscles a bit and at least trying fairly hard to find an answer before offering an opinion, given the high probability that lots of smart cryonics advocates have had a similar experience already.
I didn’t provide any useful links beyond ESR’s excellent guide because I didn’t have the energy to go looking at the time. (I only had enough energy to point out why one should expect there to be a resource answering the question and that the general comment was not very thoughtful.)
I also thought that there was at least 1 obvious reason why the corpses would be kept vitrified that a person should be able to think of in a few seconds with only a passing familiarity with cryonics organizations: because that’s what the trust fund/organization is paying for!
So I was also little disgusted that Gray was ignorant, did nothing to remedy his ignorance—that involved work on his part—and didn’t even think about it a little. Which destroyed whatever was left of my motivation to make a good, as opposed to snarky, comment by doing the research he should’ve. (And cryonics is an important issue, too. If you aren’t willing to even google about a technique that plausibly promises to transport you into the distant awesome future and save your life, that says a lot.)
EDIT: Although lsparrish is quite correct when he points out that it can be dangerous to try to quickly answer a deceptively simple question. We all know that if someone argues for a position, they can brainwash themselves into believing the position more than they did before. So what happens if you fail to link the authoritative industrial-strength explanations and instead post a few quick flawed arguments, which your interlocutor then knocks down? You may have done them a deep disservice.
For my part, my takeaway from the downvotes is this: if I respond to a question by saying RTFM, and I bother to include a link in my response, but instead of choosing to include a link to the actual FM I include a link to an etiquette guide about how not to ask dumb questions, it ought not surprise me if some folks take this as evidence that I’m being snotty rather than being helpful and appropriate.
I don’t think it’s fair to characterize gwern’s post (or the excellent ESR article he linked to, for that matter) as simply saying RTFM. The fact is that the question(s) posed by Grey are rather layered and multifaceted, i.e.. have fairly deep explanations that xe probably isn’t ready for yet. But the fact that it was all jammed together into a simple-sounding question tends to obscure that. It’s a common heuristic (frequently exploited by e.g. creationists) that when you ask a simple sounding question there should be a simple sounding answer. There has to be some way of providing people with the negative feedback they need to update on how little they really know on a topic—linking to a well-written ESR essay on how to ask more epistemically useful questions is hardly the most offensive way of so doing if you ask me.
I certainly agree that it’s far from the most offensive way of encouraging someone to “update on how little they really know.”
I sympathize with the difficulty of being asked simple-sounding questions that conceal a lot of complexity. And I agree with you that this is often maliciously exploited. Of course, it is also often the genuine consequence of being new to and interested in a subject.
I’m intrigued by the notion that Grey’s question can be so obvious that he should have obtained an answer via a simple web search without wasting anyone’s time here (which is what I understood gwern to be saying) and at the same time so layered and multifaceted that Grey probably isn’t ready for the answer. I suspect I’ll have to think about that some more before I fully understand it.
I didn’t get the impression that gwern was implying that it could be solved quickly and easily with a google search, so much as that it’s the kind of question you are better off flexing your intellectual muscles a bit and at least trying fairly hard to find an answer before offering an opinion, given the high probability that lots of smart cryonics advocates have had a similar experience already.
I didn’t provide any useful links beyond ESR’s excellent guide because I didn’t have the energy to go looking at the time. (I only had enough energy to point out why one should expect there to be a resource answering the question and that the general comment was not very thoughtful.)
I also thought that there was at least 1 obvious reason why the corpses would be kept vitrified that a person should be able to think of in a few seconds with only a passing familiarity with cryonics organizations: because that’s what the trust fund/organization is paying for!
So I was also little disgusted that Gray was ignorant, did nothing to remedy his ignorance—that involved work on his part—and didn’t even think about it a little. Which destroyed whatever was left of my motivation to make a good, as opposed to snarky, comment by doing the research he should’ve. (And cryonics is an important issue, too. If you aren’t willing to even google about a technique that plausibly promises to transport you into the distant awesome future and save your life, that says a lot.)
EDIT: Although lsparrish is quite correct when he points out that it can be dangerous to try to quickly answer a deceptively simple question. We all know that if someone argues for a position, they can brainwash themselves into believing the position more than they did before. So what happens if you fail to link the authoritative industrial-strength explanations and instead post a few quick flawed arguments, which your interlocutor then knocks down? You may have done them a deep disservice.
Thanks for the clarification.
My impression was different from yours, but I agree that your impression doesn’t contradict the text.