I think you would be hard pressed to argue to me in seriousness that academics do not claim to have norms that peoples beliefs are open to challenge from anyone who has standing and warrant.
So, I am actually honestly confused about this dimension. My sense is that there is very little academic apparatus, or even social norm enforcement, for scientists responding to critiques or requests for clarification of their work. See for example the answers to Ben’s question a while ago on “How did academia ensure papers were correct in the early 20th Century?”, which was a question that was direct result of me and Ben wondering about how science is implementing the relevant mechanisms here.
The top-voted answer on there says:
So, to sum things up, I think the process you are looking for is the one done under less official interactions. Theories are confronted in [private] meetings and such. Less accurate theories are simply ignored in future discourse.
Which mostly updated me towards “science really has surprisingly weak norms in this space, and operates primarily on positive selection of theories that achieve traction, and does very little in terms of weeding out bad theories”. Obviously my interpretation here might be wrong, and I actually find this state of affairs quite confusing, so any further evidence would be appreciated.
However, overall I like your model a good amount and think that my concerns fit into it reasonably well.
Concretely, in your model, I think am arguing that Said does not currently have good standing in terms of the requests for clarifications and implicit associated critiques that he has a tendency to make on many user’s posts. I think this could be remedied by him sending costly signals of his comments not being low-effort critique of the type that you point to, and/or more clearly putting in interpretative labor proportional to the effort of the author.
In addition, I think I am making a claim that the audience often gets confused about the warrant of the content of those comments, since to many they just seem like optional requests for clarification which is something that has broadly accepted warrant, whereas a request for an extensive defense (which often ends up being requested in multiple rounds of follow-up) has less warrant. This is then what often results in Said’s comments getting downvoted further into the thread, as people realize that the requests that Said is making do not have the relevant warrant.
I am not confident whether this fully fits all of my concerns, but it is a start, and I appreciate the model.
This is a great comment, thanks!
So, I am actually honestly confused about this dimension. My sense is that there is very little academic apparatus, or even social norm enforcement, for scientists responding to critiques or requests for clarification of their work. See for example the answers to Ben’s question a while ago on “How did academia ensure papers were correct in the early 20th Century?”, which was a question that was direct result of me and Ben wondering about how science is implementing the relevant mechanisms here.
The top-voted answer on there says:
Which mostly updated me towards “science really has surprisingly weak norms in this space, and operates primarily on positive selection of theories that achieve traction, and does very little in terms of weeding out bad theories”. Obviously my interpretation here might be wrong, and I actually find this state of affairs quite confusing, so any further evidence would be appreciated.
However, overall I like your model a good amount and think that my concerns fit into it reasonably well.
Concretely, in your model, I think am arguing that Said does not currently have good standing in terms of the requests for clarifications and implicit associated critiques that he has a tendency to make on many user’s posts. I think this could be remedied by him sending costly signals of his comments not being low-effort critique of the type that you point to, and/or more clearly putting in interpretative labor proportional to the effort of the author.
In addition, I think I am making a claim that the audience often gets confused about the warrant of the content of those comments, since to many they just seem like optional requests for clarification which is something that has broadly accepted warrant, whereas a request for an extensive defense (which often ends up being requested in multiple rounds of follow-up) has less warrant. This is then what often results in Said’s comments getting downvoted further into the thread, as people realize that the requests that Said is making do not have the relevant warrant.
I am not confident whether this fully fits all of my concerns, but it is a start, and I appreciate the model.