“Fallacy” and “Rhetoric” are both more neutral and broader than “woo”. I’d even put a label on that says “Alleged fallacy” rather than “Fallacy”. Otherwise it’s simply a matter of accusing people with no way to defend themselves.
This sort of thing broadens out very quickly into Issuepedia 2.0, if you allow replies, say. It would make more sense to think about it carefully than to do it ad-hoc (although not, of course, to try to implement all features at once).
Careful incremental steps are the way to proceed. Let me explain the current step I’m taking. People generally visit TakeOnIt from a Google search to find out opinions about a particular issue that they searched for. Let’s say that they arrive at this page, to find out opinions on whether evolution is true:
I’ve annotated some of these quotes—it’s just a start—with “woos”, or whatever we want to call them. Now let’s say none of these quotes were annotated. The result? A person can be persuaded without seeing the general patterns of how they got persuaded. This happened to a friend of mine. He got persuaded by a quote where I was like: “you can’t see why this argument is duping you?!”. It took me a while to explain the persuasion tactics used in the quote. It was basically a slow process of me identifying and communicating persuasion patterns.
That’s where labeling the quotes comes in. It allows a smaller community who’s familiar with these patterns of persuasion to pre-process those patterns for the larger community. Now, there’s an additional step we could take. We could categorize the various kinds of persuasion patterns. So X is an “alleged fallacy” while Y is “rhetoric” and so on. I actually suspect that more than one category per label is required and it’s a mistake to think these labels naturally fall into discrete mutually exclusive categories. However, this label categorization step is secondary. The highest order bit is to simply label the persuasion in the first place. That’s where most of the cognitive work is.
I considered allowing a truly broader notion than a “woo”, which was simply to allow any tag at all on a quote. However, I think restricting the tags to persuasive patterns gives good focus and avoids dilution.
Perhaps you have not realized how this blows up your whole site.
At present it is a neutral record of expert opinions. Who said what. On the record.
To label something as “woo”—or even the far more innocuous “persuasion pattern”—is not a neutral act. People disagree about what is woo or not woo. They disagree about whether persuasion patterns are being used. They disagree about what constitutes a logical fallacy, both in general and in the specific.
If someone claims that the Singularity is religious woo, do I get a chance to defend myself? How?
You have just taken a giant step from recording expert opinions to trying and provide a way for your audience to accuse and counteraccuse experts of being biased. This is not a trivial step. And allowing people to label things as “woo” does not seem like the best first step.
If someone claims that the Singularity is religious woo
That’s not the same “woo” as BenAlbahari is referring to—he’s trying to impose a new term (with a different etymology) that seems to have some accidental overlap with “woo” as you seem to be using it here (which has more negative connotations). Which is a very very bad idea.
Someone claims the Singularity is a religious, theistic persuasion pattern that offers its believers a happy afterlife while others are left in the cold—to give an example of a typical and common accusation that people just make up, not based on any evidence, but because their brain completes the pattern for what they expect.
Seriously however, I see this as highly comparable to editing a controversial Wikipedia page, such as a page on George Bush or Climate Change. Ultimately the moderators get the last say, but you make the edit history transparent. I’m happy for anyone with enough rep points on Less Wrong to be a moderator on TakeOnIt. To be honest, at this point, my hunch is that any hypothetical answer I have to this question will be overshadowed by what I discover happens in practice.
Maintaining a Neutral Point of View (NPOV) is very important. The related concept is No Original Research (NOR). To express your contention in Wikipedia terms, you’re concerned that choosing “persuasion pattern labels” violates NOR, which in turn violates NPOV.
My thoughts:
Annotations are precisely that; they’re purely suggestions about the meaning of the quotes. They don’t actually alter the quotes, so the downside is bounded. To make a strange thought experiment, consider what would happen if the Chinese Government purely inserted tags on web content, rather than filtered web content. It’s not as damaging. You could perhaps even argue it could be less biased than purely unfiltered content, because it would expose the Chinese Government’s agenda.
Selecting “persuasion pattern labels” is within the acceptable bounds of NOR. Most of the labels have very specific meanings. The important question is whether a decent sized community can reach consensus on the assigning of labels. Let’s take the Less Wrong community. I would expect in most cases we’d rapidly reach consensus. Sure, there would be vigorous debate at times, but that’s no different than for Wikipedia. There’s always going to be people who will cry NPOV foul; that’s unavoidable. They can make the Conservopedia version of TakeOnIt and have all the tags have a religious focus rather than a logical one.
There needs to be guidelines for Persuasion Pattern Labels. The existing set of labels reek of the brainstorming phase. Some will be removed and I’ve obviously gone overboard with pejorative language. When these are cleaned up, I doubt there will be a serious issue with anyone labeling the Singularity with the “Religious” label. Sure, there will be a few poorly chosen labels, but so long as there’s many more well chosen than poorly chosen labels, it’s worth labeling.
P.S. Some people have suggested the term “pitch” instead of “woo”. This certainly seems to solve some of the complaints people have had about the name.
“Fallacy” and “Rhetoric” are both more neutral and broader than “woo”. I’d even put a label on that says “Alleged fallacy” rather than “Fallacy”. Otherwise it’s simply a matter of accusing people with no way to defend themselves.
This sort of thing broadens out very quickly into Issuepedia 2.0, if you allow replies, say. It would make more sense to think about it carefully than to do it ad-hoc (although not, of course, to try to implement all features at once).
Or “technique”, or possibly “argument”.
Careful incremental steps are the way to proceed. Let me explain the current step I’m taking. People generally visit TakeOnIt from a Google search to find out opinions about a particular issue that they searched for. Let’s say that they arrive at this page, to find out opinions on whether evolution is true:
http://www.takeonit.com/question/27.aspx
I’ve annotated some of these quotes—it’s just a start—with “woos”, or whatever we want to call them. Now let’s say none of these quotes were annotated. The result? A person can be persuaded without seeing the general patterns of how they got persuaded. This happened to a friend of mine. He got persuaded by a quote where I was like: “you can’t see why this argument is duping you?!”. It took me a while to explain the persuasion tactics used in the quote. It was basically a slow process of me identifying and communicating persuasion patterns.
That’s where labeling the quotes comes in. It allows a smaller community who’s familiar with these patterns of persuasion to pre-process those patterns for the larger community. Now, there’s an additional step we could take. We could categorize the various kinds of persuasion patterns. So X is an “alleged fallacy” while Y is “rhetoric” and so on. I actually suspect that more than one category per label is required and it’s a mistake to think these labels naturally fall into discrete mutually exclusive categories. However, this label categorization step is secondary. The highest order bit is to simply label the persuasion in the first place. That’s where most of the cognitive work is.
I considered allowing a truly broader notion than a “woo”, which was simply to allow any tag at all on a quote. However, I think restricting the tags to persuasive patterns gives good focus and avoids dilution.
Perhaps you have not realized how this blows up your whole site.
At present it is a neutral record of expert opinions. Who said what. On the record.
To label something as “woo”—or even the far more innocuous “persuasion pattern”—is not a neutral act. People disagree about what is woo or not woo. They disagree about whether persuasion patterns are being used. They disagree about what constitutes a logical fallacy, both in general and in the specific.
If someone claims that the Singularity is religious woo, do I get a chance to defend myself? How?
You have just taken a giant step from recording expert opinions to trying and provide a way for your audience to accuse and counteraccuse experts of being biased. This is not a trivial step. And allowing people to label things as “woo” does not seem like the best first step.
That’s not the same “woo” as BenAlbahari is referring to—he’s trying to impose a new term (with a different etymology) that seems to have some accidental overlap with “woo” as you seem to be using it here (which has more negative connotations). Which is a very very bad idea.
Someone claims the Singularity is a religious, theistic persuasion pattern that offers its believers a happy afterlife while others are left in the cold—to give an example of a typical and common accusation that people just make up, not based on any evidence, but because their brain completes the pattern for what they expect.
Do I get to defend myself? How?
Let’s make this conversation non-hypothetical. Here’s your expert page on TakeOnIt. I tagged a few of your quotes with some pitches:
http://www.takeonit.com/expert/693.aspx
I see. Well, I don’t object to the labels that I see. But you’re allowing anyone to edit the pitch list. What happens in case of an edit war?
You get a cacophony.
Seriously however, I see this as highly comparable to editing a controversial Wikipedia page, such as a page on George Bush or Climate Change. Ultimately the moderators get the last say, but you make the edit history transparent. I’m happy for anyone with enough rep points on Less Wrong to be a moderator on TakeOnIt. To be honest, at this point, my hunch is that any hypothetical answer I have to this question will be overshadowed by what I discover happens in practice.
Matching a pattern is evidence.
Maintaining a Neutral Point of View (NPOV) is very important. The related concept is No Original Research (NOR). To express your contention in Wikipedia terms, you’re concerned that choosing “persuasion pattern labels” violates NOR, which in turn violates NPOV.
My thoughts:
Annotations are precisely that; they’re purely suggestions about the meaning of the quotes. They don’t actually alter the quotes, so the downside is bounded. To make a strange thought experiment, consider what would happen if the Chinese Government purely inserted tags on web content, rather than filtered web content. It’s not as damaging. You could perhaps even argue it could be less biased than purely unfiltered content, because it would expose the Chinese Government’s agenda.
Selecting “persuasion pattern labels” is within the acceptable bounds of NOR. Most of the labels have very specific meanings. The important question is whether a decent sized community can reach consensus on the assigning of labels. Let’s take the Less Wrong community. I would expect in most cases we’d rapidly reach consensus. Sure, there would be vigorous debate at times, but that’s no different than for Wikipedia. There’s always going to be people who will cry NPOV foul; that’s unavoidable. They can make the Conservopedia version of TakeOnIt and have all the tags have a religious focus rather than a logical one.
There needs to be guidelines for Persuasion Pattern Labels. The existing set of labels reek of the brainstorming phase. Some will be removed and I’ve obviously gone overboard with pejorative language. When these are cleaned up, I doubt there will be a serious issue with anyone labeling the Singularity with the “Religious” label. Sure, there will be a few poorly chosen labels, but so long as there’s many more well chosen than poorly chosen labels, it’s worth labeling.
P.S. Some people have suggested the term “pitch” instead of “woo”. This certainly seems to solve some of the complaints people have had about the name.
“Pitch” is much better. I had no idea what the “woo” link meant when I first saw it.
“Persuasion pattern” is perfect. Use that!