You aren’t expected to know how likely others are to agree or whether they will find your reasoning obvious. However, I would argue that you should try to estimate how likely others are to disagree and to give some form of explanation if you think they’re likely not to agree and not to see what your explanation would be. Most of us, most of the time, are reasonably good at making such estimates, so following this guideline makes discussion more efficient and results in better communication.
I’m skeptical of the claim of reasonable goodness if you mean it to apply to estimates of obviousness, but I do find myself agreeing that we should try to anticipate disagreement for the sake of efficient communication.
I meant it to apply to both. I agree that estimating obviousness depends very much on the individuals and topics involved, and factors like inferential distance, but we still have a huge common store of knowledge and thought processes by virtue of the psychological unity of humankind… On a site like LW, we can also all be expected to be somewhat familiar with the many topics that are discussed again and again. I’m not saying we can get anywhere near perfect, but I think we do pretty well. Most of the time that somebody says something for reasons that others will find non-obvious, they correctly anticipate this and give justification. This whole thread started because somebody didn’t anticipate and didn’t give justifications, which is somewhat unusual.
You aren’t expected to know how likely others are to agree or whether they will find your reasoning obvious. However, I would argue that you should try to estimate how likely others are to disagree and to give some form of explanation if you think they’re likely not to agree and not to see what your explanation would be. Most of us, most of the time, are reasonably good at making such estimates, so following this guideline makes discussion more efficient and results in better communication.
I’m skeptical of the claim of reasonable goodness if you mean it to apply to estimates of obviousness, but I do find myself agreeing that we should try to anticipate disagreement for the sake of efficient communication.
I meant it to apply to both. I agree that estimating obviousness depends very much on the individuals and topics involved, and factors like inferential distance, but we still have a huge common store of knowledge and thought processes by virtue of the psychological unity of humankind… On a site like LW, we can also all be expected to be somewhat familiar with the many topics that are discussed again and again. I’m not saying we can get anywhere near perfect, but I think we do pretty well. Most of the time that somebody says something for reasons that others will find non-obvious, they correctly anticipate this and give justification. This whole thread started because somebody didn’t anticipate and didn’t give justifications, which is somewhat unusual.