I had to read this many times for it to really sink in, so I’m going to try performing an ideological Turing test just to make sure that I’m on the same page as you (I assume that term applies to what I’m about to do even though the examples in that post had to do with political and theological arguments):
Our purpose, both in performing the experiment and educating people about cognitive biases, is to demonstrate that people can misinterpret reality. To make a distinction between the purposes of the two forms of demonstration—besides being a useless exercise in this context because it doesn’t allow us to anticipate experiences that we would not be able to anticipate without the distinction—is to mislead the subject into thinking that our purpose in demonstrating illusions is not the same as our purpose in demonstrating biases. Even though we are making a specious distinction, to not make it would be worse because the subject would focus on both our and their social status rather than the argument, and therefore never learn enough to be able to understand that the distinction is specious. Because we (read: all of you and not me) already know that the distinction is specious, there is no reason to make the distinction here.
Once you let me know if I’ve paraphrased your explanation correctly, I’ll edit the OP accordingly.
On the bit about the concluding remarks:
I don’t understand what you mean when you say “(albeit in “()” (brackets, that is)).” Do you mean that these sorts of end notes are usually enclosed in brackets rather than parentheses and it’s a bit confusing because I’ve used so many parentheses throughout the entire post?
Also, I wasn’t sure where else I could say the things that I said at the end of this post, and I didn’t think that things like that would really matter in discussion, only on main. I always assumed that I would eventually remove them. I do think that I needed to say those things, especially because I’m pretty lost here having not yet read the sequences and being inexperienced; I don’t know what tags are appropriate, I don’t know how what I’ve written relates to the content in the sequences and other posts, I don’t explicitly understand the purpose of all of the religious references and therefore how appropriate the title is, etc. Maybe you’re specifically referring to formatting? Is there a way that I could format the notes to make them less obtrusive? As for the part specifically to Eliezer, when I wrote this, I considered what I’m proposing as a possible solution to the problem of, to use some of his words, “generalizing the initiation of the transition.” So even though I can see how it seems unrelated, I think that if I had included the message to him in the rationalist origin story thread then he wouldn’t understand the full context of why I came to that conclusion. On the other hand, I could have put what I said in this post in my comment on that thread, but it seems to me that this subject is deserving of its own post. From my perspective at the time, what I had to say in this post and what I had to say specifically to Eliezer were inextricable, so I put it here. Now I’m thinking maybe I could put the message at the end of my comment in that thread and just include a link saying “Read this first!” Does that clarify the message’s purpose? Tell me what you think about all of that.
Also, when I edit the post, since this is in discussion, should I include notes on what I’ve changed?
Yes; your paraphrasing about covers it. Nicely done, if I may say so. Let me reemphasize that it was a minor point overall, but still one I thought worth mentioning (in passing), if only in a half-sentence.
I meant to say parentheses and just confused them with brackets (not a native speaker, or writer, for that matter). The point only being that a post in a “meta content—subject level content—meta content” format which sandwiches your important content in between meta remarks loses some of its saliency, parentheses or no.
You are doing fine, all the aspects we’re discussing are minor nitpicks. There is no need to worry about the correct tags, or even to overly fret about the amount of meta that’s along for the ride. Insight trumps in-group signalling. My remarks were about on the same order of importance as advising a really long post to include a “tl;dr” summary at the end. I often ready mostly the beginning of a post and the conclusion, to judge whether the rest is likely to be worth the time. In your case, that had the somewhat funny result of wondering what the hell your title was referring to, since all I saw was meta, hyperbolically speaking. So I read more of the middle parts to supposedly fill in the gap, imagine my surprise when I encountered a thoughtful and interesting analysis in there. So while it was my laziness more so than any fault on your part, that’s why I brought it up.
I had to read this many times for it to really sink in, so I’m going to try performing an ideological Turing test just to make sure that I’m on the same page as you (I assume that term applies to what I’m about to do even though the examples in that post had to do with political and theological arguments):
Our purpose, both in performing the experiment and educating people about cognitive biases, is to demonstrate that people can misinterpret reality. To make a distinction between the purposes of the two forms of demonstration—besides being a useless exercise in this context because it doesn’t allow us to anticipate experiences that we would not be able to anticipate without the distinction—is to mislead the subject into thinking that our purpose in demonstrating illusions is not the same as our purpose in demonstrating biases. Even though we are making a specious distinction, to not make it would be worse because the subject would focus on both our and their social status rather than the argument, and therefore never learn enough to be able to understand that the distinction is specious. Because we (read: all of you and not me) already know that the distinction is specious, there is no reason to make the distinction here.
Once you let me know if I’ve paraphrased your explanation correctly, I’ll edit the OP accordingly.
On the bit about the concluding remarks:
I don’t understand what you mean when you say “(albeit in “()” (brackets, that is)).” Do you mean that these sorts of end notes are usually enclosed in brackets rather than parentheses and it’s a bit confusing because I’ve used so many parentheses throughout the entire post?
Also, I wasn’t sure where else I could say the things that I said at the end of this post, and I didn’t think that things like that would really matter in discussion, only on main. I always assumed that I would eventually remove them. I do think that I needed to say those things, especially because I’m pretty lost here having not yet read the sequences and being inexperienced; I don’t know what tags are appropriate, I don’t know how what I’ve written relates to the content in the sequences and other posts, I don’t explicitly understand the purpose of all of the religious references and therefore how appropriate the title is, etc. Maybe you’re specifically referring to formatting? Is there a way that I could format the notes to make them less obtrusive? As for the part specifically to Eliezer, when I wrote this, I considered what I’m proposing as a possible solution to the problem of, to use some of his words, “generalizing the initiation of the transition.” So even though I can see how it seems unrelated, I think that if I had included the message to him in the rationalist origin story thread then he wouldn’t understand the full context of why I came to that conclusion. On the other hand, I could have put what I said in this post in my comment on that thread, but it seems to me that this subject is deserving of its own post. From my perspective at the time, what I had to say in this post and what I had to say specifically to Eliezer were inextricable, so I put it here. Now I’m thinking maybe I could put the message at the end of my comment in that thread and just include a link saying “Read this first!” Does that clarify the message’s purpose? Tell me what you think about all of that.
Also, when I edit the post, since this is in discussion, should I include notes on what I’ve changed?
Yes; your paraphrasing about covers it. Nicely done, if I may say so. Let me reemphasize that it was a minor point overall, but still one I thought worth mentioning (in passing), if only in a half-sentence.
I meant to say parentheses and just confused them with brackets (not a native speaker, or writer, for that matter). The point only being that a post in a “meta content—subject level content—meta content” format which sandwiches your important content in between meta remarks loses some of its saliency, parentheses or no.
You are doing fine, all the aspects we’re discussing are minor nitpicks. There is no need to worry about the correct tags, or even to overly fret about the amount of meta that’s along for the ride. Insight trumps in-group signalling. My remarks were about on the same order of importance as advising a really long post to include a “tl;dr” summary at the end. I often ready mostly the beginning of a post and the conclusion, to judge whether the rest is likely to be worth the time. In your case, that had the somewhat funny result of wondering what the hell your title was referring to, since all I saw was meta, hyperbolically speaking. So I read more of the middle parts to supposedly fill in the gap, imagine my surprise when I encountered a thoughtful and interesting analysis in there. So while it was my laziness more so than any fault on your part, that’s why I brought it up.
tl;dr: Your post is fine, now go write new posts.
Out of curiosity, what is your native language?