Wait a minute. You said that the concept in question (‘authenticity’) has a “pretty straightforward” meaning, to you. (This, allegedly, was the problem with my question: that the term, and concept, I asked about, was straightforward, and its meaning obvious and known, or easily inferred.)
But now you’re saying that it’s not straightforward to explain, and is “pointed at by a bunch of related concepts”, and it’s not “easy or low-effort” to write an explanation—and that this is the problem with my question (that answering it would take too much effort).
So which is it? Is my question too obvious and simple to bother answering it? Or is it too hard and complicated and time-consuming to answer? Or are you suggesting that it could be, somehow, both?
Let me ask you this: do you think I’m the only one who read this post, and thought “Hmm, ‘authentic’? ‘authenticity’? What does he mean by that…?” I mean, I’m no genius, but I’m not stupid, either; if I had trouble understanding what’s meant here, probably at least some others did, too. (Or do you disagree?)
And I’ve read a whole lot of Less Wrong stuff; do you think there might be other readers, who are, perhaps, even less immersed in the whole Less Wrong memeplex, who are even less sure that the know what any of these terms and concepts mean? (I mean, it would be one thing if the term was hyperlinked, like a Sequence post. Someone comes along and asks “Hold on, now, what in the gosh-darn heck is an ‘affective death spiral’?!”—you say “click the link, man”, and you’re done; or you respond with a hyperlink, at the worst. But that’s not the case here!)
Would you say that I’m below-average in willingness to post comments asking for clarifications, or above-average? And what do you think the answer implies, about how many other readers have similar questions, but say nothing?
Finally (as noted by someone I discussed this post with elsewhere), Vaniver, in the OP, analogizes ‘authenticity’ to truth. Indeed, as far as I can tell, the entirety of the post’s rhetorical force comes from this analogy. Yet recall how much effort Eliezer dedicated, in the Sequences and later, to explaining just what in the world he meant by ‘truth’! However much effort it takes to explain ‘truth’—Eliezer applied that effort, because it was necessary.
Does ‘truth’ deserve extensive, laborious explanation, but ‘authenticity’—only a breezy dismissal?
Hmm, so, I think you might have misunderstood my suggestion. My argument was not that in this and other cases standard usage is sufficient. My argument was that in order to actually bridge the inferential gap, it is a massive help to the author and the other commenters, if you point out a concrete problem with a plausible interpretation that comes to mind. I think generating that plausible interpretation takes about 5 minutes, is pretty straightforward, and is something that I would ask you to do.
However, in order to then actually bridge the gap, significant additional time is likely going to be required in people responding to each other. However, I would argue that how much time is required for that exchange will drastically change depending on how much you as a commenter will have given the author to work with.
This is something that both nshepperd’s and quanticle’s comments successfully do in this thread.
Finally (as noted by someone I discussed this post with elsewhere), Vaniver, in the OP, analogizes ‘authenticity’ to truth. Indeed, as far as I can tell, the entirety of the post’s rhetorical force comes from this analogy. Yet recall how much effort Eliezer dedicated, in the Sequences and later, to explaining just what in the world he meant by ‘truth’! However much effort it takes to explain ‘truth’—Eliezer applied that effort, because it was necessary.
Does ‘truth’ deserve extensive, laborious explanation, but ‘authenticity’—only a breezy dismissal?
I wanted to note here that I think this is right; that the analogy between truth and authenticity is what gives this post rhetorical force (and is a huge chunk of why I think rationality and Circling are cousins), that it was good to give truth an extensive, laborious explanation, and that it would also be good to give ‘authenticity’ an extensive, laborious explanation.
Furthermore, I think one of the ways in which Eliezer is an exceptional writer is that he notices dependencies and serializes them; “ah, in order to explain C, I must first explain B, and for B I must first explain A.” I often find myself in the opposite approach; “explain C, figure out what was missing, and then explain B, figure out what was missing, and then explain A.” (Tho I think this happens to Eliezer too.) Pushback of the form “but what do you mean by B?” is an integral part of this process.
---
That said, sometimes there’s a post intended to explain C to people who already have B, or B grounds out in experience; we talk about color without feeling a need to explain color to the blind. I think that’s not the case here; I am hoping to make the thing I like about Circling legible to the highly skeptical, systematic thinkers who want to compile the thing themselves and so want me to provide the dependency chain.
But also I’m not convinced that I can succeed, as parts of it may end up depending on experience, but at least we can figure out which parts and what experience.
Wait a minute. You said that the concept in question (‘authenticity’) has a “pretty straightforward” meaning, to you. (This, allegedly, was the problem with my question: that the term, and concept, I asked about, was straightforward, and its meaning obvious and known, or easily inferred.)
But now you’re saying that it’s not straightforward to explain, and is “pointed at by a bunch of related concepts”, and it’s not “easy or low-effort” to write an explanation—and that this is the problem with my question (that answering it would take too much effort).
So which is it? Is my question too obvious and simple to bother answering it? Or is it too hard and complicated and time-consuming to answer? Or are you suggesting that it could be, somehow, both?
Let me ask you this: do you think I’m the only one who read this post, and thought “Hmm, ‘authentic’? ‘authenticity’? What does he mean by that…?” I mean, I’m no genius, but I’m not stupid, either; if I had trouble understanding what’s meant here, probably at least some others did, too. (Or do you disagree?)
And I’ve read a whole lot of Less Wrong stuff; do you think there might be other readers, who are, perhaps, even less immersed in the whole Less Wrong memeplex, who are even less sure that the know what any of these terms and concepts mean? (I mean, it would be one thing if the term was hyperlinked, like a Sequence post. Someone comes along and asks “Hold on, now, what in the gosh-darn heck is an ‘affective death spiral’?!”—you say “click the link, man”, and you’re done; or you respond with a hyperlink, at the worst. But that’s not the case here!)
Would you say that I’m below-average in willingness to post comments asking for clarifications, or above-average? And what do you think the answer implies, about how many other readers have similar questions, but say nothing?
Finally (as noted by someone I discussed this post with elsewhere), Vaniver, in the OP, analogizes ‘authenticity’ to truth. Indeed, as far as I can tell, the entirety of the post’s rhetorical force comes from this analogy. Yet recall how much effort Eliezer dedicated, in the Sequences and later, to explaining just what in the world he meant by ‘truth’! However much effort it takes to explain ‘truth’—Eliezer applied that effort, because it was necessary.
Does ‘truth’ deserve extensive, laborious explanation, but ‘authenticity’—only a breezy dismissal?
Hmm, so, I think you might have misunderstood my suggestion. My argument was not that in this and other cases standard usage is sufficient. My argument was that in order to actually bridge the inferential gap, it is a massive help to the author and the other commenters, if you point out a concrete problem with a plausible interpretation that comes to mind. I think generating that plausible interpretation takes about 5 minutes, is pretty straightforward, and is something that I would ask you to do.
However, in order to then actually bridge the gap, significant additional time is likely going to be required in people responding to each other. However, I would argue that how much time is required for that exchange will drastically change depending on how much you as a commenter will have given the author to work with.
This is something that both nshepperd’s and quanticle’s comments successfully do in this thread.
I wanted to note here that I think this is right; that the analogy between truth and authenticity is what gives this post rhetorical force (and is a huge chunk of why I think rationality and Circling are cousins), that it was good to give truth an extensive, laborious explanation, and that it would also be good to give ‘authenticity’ an extensive, laborious explanation.
Furthermore, I think one of the ways in which Eliezer is an exceptional writer is that he notices dependencies and serializes them; “ah, in order to explain C, I must first explain B, and for B I must first explain A.” I often find myself in the opposite approach; “explain C, figure out what was missing, and then explain B, figure out what was missing, and then explain A.” (Tho I think this happens to Eliezer too.) Pushback of the form “but what do you mean by B?” is an integral part of this process.
---
That said, sometimes there’s a post intended to explain C to people who already have B, or B grounds out in experience; we talk about color without feeling a need to explain color to the blind. I think that’s not the case here; I am hoping to make the thing I like about Circling legible to the highly skeptical, systematic thinkers who want to compile the thing themselves and so want me to provide the dependency chain.
But also I’m not convinced that I can succeed, as parts of it may end up depending on experience, but at least we can figure out which parts and what experience.