Terms I don’t know: inferential gaps, general intelligence factor g, object-level thing, opinion-structure. There are other terms I can figure but I have to stop a moment: medical grade mental differences, baseline assumptions. I think that’s most of it.
At the risk of going too far, I’ll paraphrase one section with hopes that it’ll say the same thing and be more accessible. (Since my day job is teaching college freshmen, I think about clarity a lot!)
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”Can’t I just assume my interlocutor is intelligent?”
No.
People have different basic assumptions. People have different intuitions that generated those assumptions. This community in particular attracts people with very unbalanced skills (great at reasoning, not always great at communicating). Some have autism, or ADHD, or OCD, or depression, or chronic fatigue, or ASPD, or low working memory, or emotional reactions to thinking about certain things, or multiple issues at once.
Everyone’s read different things in the past, and interpreted them in different ways. Good luck finding 2 people who have the same opinion regarding what they’ve read.
Doesn’t this advice contradict the above point to “read charitably,” to try to assume the writer means well? No. Explain things like you would to a child: assume they’re not trying to hurt you, but don’t assume they know what you’re talking about.
In a field as new as this, in which nobody really gets it yet, we’re like a group of elite, hypercompetent, clever, deranged… children. You are not an adult talking to adults, you are a child who needs to write very clearly to talk to other children. That’s what “pre-paradigmatic” really means.
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What I tried to do here was replace words and phrases that required more thought (“writings” → “what they’ve read”), and to explain those that took a little thought (“read charitably”). IDK if others would consider this clearer, but at least that’s the direction I hope to go in. Apologies if I took this too far.
Thank you! Out of curiosity, which parts of this post made it harder to wrap your head around? (If you’re not sure, that’s also fine.)
Terms I don’t know: inferential gaps, general intelligence factor g, object-level thing, opinion-structure. There are other terms I can figure but I have to stop a moment: medical grade mental differences, baseline assumptions. I think that’s most of it.
At the risk of going too far, I’ll paraphrase one section with hopes that it’ll say the same thing and be more accessible. (Since my day job is teaching college freshmen, I think about clarity a lot!)
--
”Can’t I just assume my interlocutor is intelligent?”
No.
People have different basic assumptions. People have different intuitions that generated those assumptions. This community in particular attracts people with very unbalanced skills (great at reasoning, not always great at communicating). Some have autism, or ADHD, or OCD, or depression, or chronic fatigue, or ASPD, or low working memory, or emotional reactions to thinking about certain things, or multiple issues at once.
Everyone’s read different things in the past, and interpreted them in different ways. Good luck finding 2 people who have the same opinion regarding what they’ve read.
Doesn’t this advice contradict the above point to “read charitably,” to try to assume the writer means well? No. Explain things like you would to a child: assume they’re not trying to hurt you, but don’t assume they know what you’re talking about.
In a field as new as this, in which nobody really gets it yet, we’re like a group of elite, hypercompetent, clever, deranged… children. You are not an adult talking to adults, you are a child who needs to write very clearly to talk to other children. That’s what “pre-paradigmatic” really means.
--
What I tried to do here was replace words and phrases that required more thought (“writings” → “what they’ve read”), and to explain those that took a little thought (“read charitably”). IDK if others would consider this clearer, but at least that’s the direction I hope to go in. Apologies if I took this too far.
No worries, that makes sense!
No worries, this is definitely helpful!