I find myself thinking: if you’re so consistently unable to guess what people might mean, or why people might think something, maybe the problem is (at least some of the time) with your imagination.
Who cares who “the problem” is with? Text is supposed to be understood. The thing that attracted me to the Sequences to begin with was sensible, comprehensible and coherent explanations of complex concepts. Are we giving up on this? Or are people who value clear language and want to avoid misunderstandings (and may even be, dare I say, neuroatypical) no longer part of the target group, but instead someone to be suspicious of?
The Sequences exist to provide a canon of shared information and terminology to reference. If you can’t explain something without referencing a term that is evidently not shared by everyone, and that you don’t just not bother to define but react with hostility when pressed on, then … frankly, I don’t think that behavior is in keeping with the spirit of this blog.
1) I think “I am having trouble understanding what you mean, the best guess I can come up with is X.” is far more conducive to getting to clarity than “I have no idea what you mean.” even when X feels quite unlikely to be what the person actually meant.
I am not asking the reader to read the mind of the author. I am asking them to generate at least one hypothesis about what the author might mean.
Do not forget the lesson of the Double Illusion of Transparency—just as the author will think they have communicated clearly when they have not, someone asking a question will also think the question is clear when it has not in fact been understood.
2) Asking for clarification as a form of criticism is bad form (or at lease is a move that should be used sparingly).
Perhaps you suspect the author’s thoughts are muddled and that shining the light of clarification on what they’ve written will expose this fact. You can say, “What do you mean by X?” And perhaps you will catch them in an error.
However, doing this all the time is annoying! Especially if it’s unclear to the author whether you in fact are trying to work towards mutual understanding, or are simply playing gotcha.
If you think the author might have something meaningful that they are saying, then offering your best hypothesis will work far better for finding out what it is.
And if you don’t think there’s anything to what they’re saying, it’s a bit disingenuous to state your criticism in the form of a question.
I’m actually having a little trouble expressing this second point, because I do think there’s a place for Socratic questioning, which can be very helpful. I just think there are ways to do it that are more collaborative, polite, illuminating, and other ways that are unpleasant and adversarial.
The best rule I can come up with at the moment is: If you’re going to be in collaborative mode, offer hypotheses, and if you’re going to be in adversarial mode, don’t pretend to be in collaborative mode.
I think this once again presupposes a lot of unestablished consensus: for one, that it’s trivial for people to generate hypotheses for undefined words, that this is a worthwhile skill to begin with, and that this is a proper approach to begin with. I don’t think that a post author should get to impose this level of ideological conformance onto a commenter, and it weirds me out how much the people on this site now seem to be agreeing that Said deserves censure for (verbosely and repeatedly) disagreeing with this position.
And then it seems to be doing a lot of high-distance inference from presuming a “typical” mindset on Said’s part and figuring out a lot of implications as to what they were doing, which is exactly the thing that Said wanted to avoid by not guessing a definition? Thus kind of proving their point?
More importantly, I at least consider providing hypotheses as to a definition as obviously supererogatory. If you don’t know the meaning of a word in a text, then the meaning may be either obvious or obscured; the risk you take by asking is wasting somebody’s time for no reason. But I consider it far from shown that giving a hypothesis shortens this time at all, and more importantly, there is none such Schelling point established and thus it seems a stretch of propriety to demand it as if it was an agreed upon convention. Certainly the work to establish it as a convention should be done before the readership breaks out the mass downvotes; I mean seriously- what the fuck, LessWrong?
that it’s trivial for people to generate hypotheses for undefined words
I at least consider providing hypotheses as to a definition as obviously supererogatory. If you don’t know the meaning of a word in a text, then the meaning may be either obvious or obscured
I want to clarify that asking about the meanings of particular words is not the main thing I’m talking about (even though that was the example at the top of this whole thread).
Said expresses bafflement at all sorts of things that people say. If it was always, “what do you mean by this specific word?” that would be a very different pattern.
Or if it was always expressing genuine curiosity, as opposed to making a rhetorical point, that would also be a very different pattern.
I am particularly complaining about the pattern of expressing surprise / confusion in a way that seems to be making a rhetorical point rather than seeking genuine understanding.
However, on the topic of words in particular, I do think that simply asking, “What does X mean?” is usually not the best path forward.
Consider three cases:
X is a term you’re not familiar with (and you haven’t looked it up yet)
X is a term you’re not familiar with, so you’ve looked it up, but the definitions don’t seem to match the way it’s being used
X is a common term that seems to be used in a weird way
For which of these cases does it make sense to just write, “What do you mean by X?”
1) For case 1, it seems most respectful of others’ time to just google the term. If that answers your question, consider also leaving a comment saying, “For others who weren’t familiar with X, it means …”
2) For case 2, I’d recommend saying that you’ve looked it up and the definitions don’t seem to match. Otherwise you might just get one of the standard definitions back when someone replies to your comment and still be confused. Also this lets others know that you’re extending them the courtesy recommended in case 1.
3) For case 3, I think it depends on the specific case, and how non-standard the usage is.
3A) If you’re confident that the usage is as a technical term of art, such that when it’s pointed out, the author will say, “Ah, you’re right, I’m using that in a non-standard way. I mean …” then just asking how it’s being used seems like a fine way to go. (However, I do think it’s easy to overestimate the odds that the author will understand why you find it confusing. They may be in a bubble where everyone uses that term in that way all the time.)
3B) In a case where the author might not realize that everyone wouldn’t be familiar with the particular usage, then I think it’s helpful to say something specific about how you interpret the word and what seems off about the usage. That way they’ll have a better idea what to say to resolve the confusion.
The particular case of “authentic” at the top of this thread seems like kind of a border case between 3A and 3B. Everyone reading this should be familiar with what “authentic” means in a variety of contexts. And it’s not exactly being used as a non-standard term-of-art, but it is doing a lot of work in the post, so it does seem reasonable to poke at it for a clearer picture.
I think the ideal version of Said’s question would be the one that mentioned applause lights and “healthy” as a possible substitute. That one made it a lot clearer what the issue with the usage of a fairly common term was.
But I would agree that generating that level of comment instead of a short question is supererogatory, and I wouldn’t downvote Said’s original question. (Though since Said was the one asking it, I might find myself wondering if the discussion following the comment was going to fit the pattern of rhetorical bafflement that I’ve been annoyed by before.)
I don’t think it’s so implausible for some people to be significantly more baffled by some things that we must interpret it as an attack. An unusually large imposition of costs is not inherently an attack! May as well blame the disabled for dastardly forcing us to waste money on wheelchair ramps.
May as well blame the disabled for dastardly forcing us to waste money on wheelchair ramps
I do not believe that Said is unable to generate hypotheses in all the cases where he expresses bafflement / indignation. I believe it is (at least partially) a rhetorical move.
If people pretended to need wheelchairs to prove a point, we’d be right to blame them for forcing us to spend resources on them.
I remind readers to review the “Taboo your words” posts of the Human’s Guide to Words sequence. Asking for the meaning of words, even common words, is a rationalist’s truth finding technique. It’s not something to be persecuted.
I agree, but as I put it in the great-grandparent comment:
I want to clarify that asking about the meanings of particular words is not the main thing I’m talking about (even though that was the example at the top of this whole thread).
It’s more a pattern of expressing surprise / indignation as a rhetorical move. Here is an example, where he’s not asking for clarification, but still doing the surprise / indignation thing.
You might think that comment is perfectly fine, and even from my perspective in any one single comment, it’s often no big deal. But when surprised indignation is basically your tone in seemingly almost every thread, I eventually find it annoying.
You’re right, I do find that comment to be fine. But then I have a similar approach to truth seeking myself, and I find it tremendously effective.
Part of the background I bring to this is that some of the best rationalist thinkers and mentors I’ve met in my own life had a profound impact on me simply because they asked the necessary pointed questions and let me figure out the answer, or were willing to unabashedly share a contrasting opinion. Everyone’s learning styles are different, but for me this worked remarkably well. Said is doing something similar, so I see it as a valuable contribution.
Said is doing something similar, so I see it as a valuable contribution.
I appreciate hearing this counterpoint.
I wish there was a way to get the benefit of Said’s pointed questioning w/o readers like me being so frustrated by the style. I suspect that relatively subtle tweaks to the style could make a big difference. But I’m not exactly sure how to get there from here.
For now all I can think of is to note that some users, like Wei Dai, ask lots of pointed and clarifying questions and never provoke in me the same kind of frustration that many of Said’s comments do.
Why should Said be the one to change, though? Maybe relatively subtle tweaks to your reading style could make a big difference.
A “surprised bafflement” tone is often seen as a social attack because it’s perceived as implying, “You should know this already, therefore I’m surprised that you don’t, therefore I should have higher status than you.” But that’s not the only possible narrative. What happens if you reframe your reaction as, “He’s surprised, but surprise is the measure of a poor hypothesis—the fact that he’s so cluelessly self-centered as to not be able to predict what other people know means that I should have higher status”?
Good question. When there are conflicts over norms, it’s not obvious how to resolve them in general. I suppose the easy, though less preferred, solution would be some kind of appeal to the will of the majority, or to an authority. The harder, but better, way would be an appeal to a deeper set of shared norms. I’m not sure how tractable that is in this case though.
What happens if you reframe your reaction as, “He’s surprised, but surprise is the measure of a poor hypothesis—the fact that he’s so cluelessly self-centered as to not be able to predict what other people know means that I should have higher status”?
This is in fact often my reaction. But I will note that neither social attacks nor the writings of clueless self-centered people are particularly fun to read. (Especially not when it seems to be both.)
That may be stating it overly harshly. I do think Said is an intelligent person and often has good points to make. And I find it valuable to learn that others are getting a lot of value from his comments.
The signal to noise (not exactly the right term) ratio has not seemed particularly favorable to me though. But perhaps there’s yet some different reframing that I could do to be less frustrated (in addition to whatever changes Said might make).
Why should we have one set of norms at all? Should we really be driving towards cultural unity? Isn’t it okay for there to be subsets of people who drive differently? Just learn to ignore what you don’t find useful.
When designing norms, we should take into account an asymmetry between reading and writing: each comment is only written once, but read many times. Each norm imposed on writers to not be unduly annoying constrains the information flow of the forum much more than each norm imposed on readers to not be unduly annoyed.
Who cares who “the problem” is with? Text is supposed to be understood. The thing that attracted me to the Sequences to begin with was sensible, comprehensible and coherent explanations of complex concepts. Are we giving up on this? Or are people who value clear language and want to avoid misunderstandings (and may even be, dare I say, neuroatypical) no longer part of the target group, but instead someone to be suspicious of?
The Sequences exist to provide a canon of shared information and terminology to reference. If you can’t explain something without referencing a term that is evidently not shared by everyone, and that you don’t just not bother to define but react with hostility when pressed on, then … frankly, I don’t think that behavior is in keeping with the spirit of this blog.
Let me restate my core claims:
1) I think “I am having trouble understanding what you mean, the best guess I can come up with is X.” is far more conducive to getting to clarity than “I have no idea what you mean.” even when X feels quite unlikely to be what the person actually meant.
I am not asking the reader to read the mind of the author. I am asking them to generate at least one hypothesis about what the author might mean.
Do not forget the lesson of the Double Illusion of Transparency—just as the author will think they have communicated clearly when they have not, someone asking a question will also think the question is clear when it has not in fact been understood.
2) Asking for clarification as a form of criticism is bad form (or at lease is a move that should be used sparingly).
Perhaps you suspect the author’s thoughts are muddled and that shining the light of clarification on what they’ve written will expose this fact. You can say, “What do you mean by X?” And perhaps you will catch them in an error.
However, doing this all the time is annoying! Especially if it’s unclear to the author whether you in fact are trying to work towards mutual understanding, or are simply playing gotcha.
If you think the author might have something meaningful that they are saying, then offering your best hypothesis will work far better for finding out what it is.
And if you don’t think there’s anything to what they’re saying, it’s a bit disingenuous to state your criticism in the form of a question.
I’m actually having a little trouble expressing this second point, because I do think there’s a place for Socratic questioning, which can be very helpful. I just think there are ways to do it that are more collaborative, polite, illuminating, and other ways that are unpleasant and adversarial.
The best rule I can come up with at the moment is: If you’re going to be in collaborative mode, offer hypotheses, and if you’re going to be in adversarial mode, don’t pretend to be in collaborative mode.
I think this once again presupposes a lot of unestablished consensus: for one, that it’s trivial for people to generate hypotheses for undefined words, that this is a worthwhile skill to begin with, and that this is a proper approach to begin with. I don’t think that a post author should get to impose this level of ideological conformance onto a commenter, and it weirds me out how much the people on this site now seem to be agreeing that Said deserves censure for (verbosely and repeatedly) disagreeing with this position.
And then it seems to be doing a lot of high-distance inference from presuming a “typical” mindset on Said’s part and figuring out a lot of implications as to what they were doing, which is exactly the thing that Said wanted to avoid by not guessing a definition? Thus kind of proving their point?
More importantly, I at least consider providing hypotheses as to a definition as obviously supererogatory. If you don’t know the meaning of a word in a text, then the meaning may be either obvious or obscured; the risk you take by asking is wasting somebody’s time for no reason. But I consider it far from shown that giving a hypothesis shortens this time at all, and more importantly, there is none such Schelling point established and thus it seems a stretch of propriety to demand it as if it was an agreed upon convention. Certainly the work to establish it as a convention should be done before the readership breaks out the mass downvotes; I mean seriously- what the fuck, LessWrong?
I want to clarify that asking about the meanings of particular words is not the main thing I’m talking about (even though that was the example at the top of this whole thread).
Said expresses bafflement at all sorts of things that people say. If it was always, “what do you mean by this specific word?” that would be a very different pattern.
Or if it was always expressing genuine curiosity, as opposed to making a rhetorical point, that would also be a very different pattern.
I am particularly complaining about the pattern of expressing surprise / confusion in a way that seems to be making a rhetorical point rather than seeking genuine understanding.
However, on the topic of words in particular, I do think that simply asking, “What does X mean?” is usually not the best path forward.
Consider three cases:
X is a term you’re not familiar with (and you haven’t looked it up yet)
X is a term you’re not familiar with, so you’ve looked it up, but the definitions don’t seem to match the way it’s being used
X is a common term that seems to be used in a weird way
For which of these cases does it make sense to just write, “What do you mean by X?”
1) For case 1, it seems most respectful of others’ time to just google the term. If that answers your question, consider also leaving a comment saying, “For others who weren’t familiar with X, it means …”
2) For case 2, I’d recommend saying that you’ve looked it up and the definitions don’t seem to match. Otherwise you might just get one of the standard definitions back when someone replies to your comment and still be confused. Also this lets others know that you’re extending them the courtesy recommended in case 1.
3) For case 3, I think it depends on the specific case, and how non-standard the usage is.
3A) If you’re confident that the usage is as a technical term of art, such that when it’s pointed out, the author will say, “Ah, you’re right, I’m using that in a non-standard way. I mean …” then just asking how it’s being used seems like a fine way to go. (However, I do think it’s easy to overestimate the odds that the author will understand why you find it confusing. They may be in a bubble where everyone uses that term in that way all the time.)
3B) In a case where the author might not realize that everyone wouldn’t be familiar with the particular usage, then I think it’s helpful to say something specific about how you interpret the word and what seems off about the usage. That way they’ll have a better idea what to say to resolve the confusion.
The particular case of “authentic” at the top of this thread seems like kind of a border case between 3A and 3B. Everyone reading this should be familiar with what “authentic” means in a variety of contexts. And it’s not exactly being used as a non-standard term-of-art, but it is doing a lot of work in the post, so it does seem reasonable to poke at it for a clearer picture.
I think the ideal version of Said’s question would be the one that mentioned applause lights and “healthy” as a possible substitute. That one made it a lot clearer what the issue with the usage of a fairly common term was.
But I would agree that generating that level of comment instead of a short question is supererogatory, and I wouldn’t downvote Said’s original question. (Though since Said was the one asking it, I might find myself wondering if the discussion following the comment was going to fit the pattern of rhetorical bafflement that I’ve been annoyed by before.)
I don’t think it’s so implausible for some people to be significantly more baffled by some things that we must interpret it as an attack. An unusually large imposition of costs is not inherently an attack! May as well blame the disabled for dastardly forcing us to waste money on wheelchair ramps.
I do not believe that Said is unable to generate hypotheses in all the cases where he expresses bafflement / indignation. I believe it is (at least partially) a rhetorical move.
If people pretended to need wheelchairs to prove a point, we’d be right to blame them for forcing us to spend resources on them.
I remind readers to review the “Taboo your words” posts of the Human’s Guide to Words sequence. Asking for the meaning of words, even common words, is a rationalist’s truth finding technique. It’s not something to be persecuted.
I agree, but as I put it in the great-grandparent comment:
It’s more a pattern of expressing surprise / indignation as a rhetorical move. Here is an example, where he’s not asking for clarification, but still doing the surprise / indignation thing.
You might think that comment is perfectly fine, and even from my perspective in any one single comment, it’s often no big deal. But when surprised indignation is basically your tone in seemingly almost every thread, I eventually find it annoying.
You’re right, I do find that comment to be fine. But then I have a similar approach to truth seeking myself, and I find it tremendously effective.
Part of the background I bring to this is that some of the best rationalist thinkers and mentors I’ve met in my own life had a profound impact on me simply because they asked the necessary pointed questions and let me figure out the answer, or were willing to unabashedly share a contrasting opinion. Everyone’s learning styles are different, but for me this worked remarkably well. Said is doing something similar, so I see it as a valuable contribution.
I appreciate hearing this counterpoint.
I wish there was a way to get the benefit of Said’s pointed questioning w/o readers like me being so frustrated by the style. I suspect that relatively subtle tweaks to the style could make a big difference. But I’m not exactly sure how to get there from here.
For now all I can think of is to note that some users, like Wei Dai, ask lots of pointed and clarifying questions and never provoke in me the same kind of frustration that many of Said’s comments do.
Why should Said be the one to change, though? Maybe relatively subtle tweaks to your reading style could make a big difference.
A “surprised bafflement” tone is often seen as a social attack because it’s perceived as implying, “You should know this already, therefore I’m surprised that you don’t, therefore I should have higher status than you.” But that’s not the only possible narrative. What happens if you reframe your reaction as, “He’s surprised, but surprise is the measure of a poor hypothesis—the fact that he’s so cluelessly self-centered as to not be able to predict what other people know means that I should have higher status”?
Good question. When there are conflicts over norms, it’s not obvious how to resolve them in general. I suppose the easy, though less preferred, solution would be some kind of appeal to the will of the majority, or to an authority. The harder, but better, way would be an appeal to a deeper set of shared norms. I’m not sure how tractable that is in this case though.
This is in fact often my reaction. But I will note that neither social attacks nor the writings of clueless self-centered people are particularly fun to read. (Especially not when it seems to be both.)
That may be stating it overly harshly. I do think Said is an intelligent person and often has good points to make. And I find it valuable to learn that others are getting a lot of value from his comments.
The signal to noise (not exactly the right term) ratio has not seemed particularly favorable to me though. But perhaps there’s yet some different reframing that I could do to be less frustrated (in addition to whatever changes Said might make).
Why should we have one set of norms at all? Should we really be driving towards cultural unity? Isn’t it okay for there to be subsets of people who drive differently? Just learn to ignore what you don’t find useful.
When designing norms, we should take into account an asymmetry between reading and writing: each comment is only written once, but read many times. Each norm imposed on writers to not be unduly annoying constrains the information flow of the forum much more than each norm imposed on readers to not be unduly annoyed.
Driving away other writers with annoyingness also constrains the flow of information. Trade-offs abound!