the strains of HIV found in these accidentally infected individuals were effectively identical to those from the source of their accidental infection, showing much less difference than is usual for strains taken from two random patients.
It seemed pretty clear from context that Vlad was talking about substrains. If there’s anything that went wrong here, judging from Jacob’s followup remark, it was an illusion of transparency failure on my part in that Vlad’s meaning seemed clear to me, and I then made the (erroneous) conclusion that someone with a basic background would also get what Vlad was talking about.
Note incidentally, that using heuristics about whether or not someone has enough background to understand or discuss something is not intrinsically a dark side issue to start with. Indeed, sometimes it is very necessary. See for example some of the discussion on cousin it’s recent post where it seemed that some individuals (well, primarily one individual) were making repeated subtle but highly relevant errors about certain ideas related to Godel’s theorems and Turing machines. After repeated attempts to explain, the mathematicians in the thread (including myself) started trying to explain that the errors in question were basic enough that further attempts to explain would likely be fruitless. That’s not a dark side tactic, sometimes that’s just true.
Note incidentally, that using heuristics about whether or not someone has enough background to understand or discuss something is not intrinsically a dark side issue to start with
Yes, I absolutely agree. But that’s not the tactic I was referring to. The tactic in question consists of finding some nitpicky objection to something your opponent said, something not directly relevant to the issue at hand, and something which isn’t even wrong, just insufficiently precise, and discounting the substance of their argument on that basis.
The tactic in question consists of finding some nitpicky objection to something your opponent said, something not directly relevant to the issue at hand, and something which isn’t even wrong, just insufficiently precise, and discounting the substance of their argument on that basis.
Hrrm? Imprecision if anything occurred on Vlad’s part, not Jacob’s. Again, see issue of illusion of transparency matter. See also Vlad’s remark below.
It seemed pretty clear from context that Vlad was talking about substrains.
Yes, of course. I’m not familiar with the finer points of terminology in this area, but the O’Brien-Goedert paper uses the term “strain” both for the two major strains and their sub-strains, and I’ve noticed the same in many other papers too. So I don’t think this was imprecise in any way.
This isn’t a “dark side” tactic. Vlad wrote:
It seemed pretty clear from context that Vlad was talking about substrains. If there’s anything that went wrong here, judging from Jacob’s followup remark, it was an illusion of transparency failure on my part in that Vlad’s meaning seemed clear to me, and I then made the (erroneous) conclusion that someone with a basic background would also get what Vlad was talking about.
Note incidentally, that using heuristics about whether or not someone has enough background to understand or discuss something is not intrinsically a dark side issue to start with. Indeed, sometimes it is very necessary. See for example some of the discussion on cousin it’s recent post where it seemed that some individuals (well, primarily one individual) were making repeated subtle but highly relevant errors about certain ideas related to Godel’s theorems and Turing machines. After repeated attempts to explain, the mathematicians in the thread (including myself) started trying to explain that the errors in question were basic enough that further attempts to explain would likely be fruitless. That’s not a dark side tactic, sometimes that’s just true.
Yes, I absolutely agree. But that’s not the tactic I was referring to. The tactic in question consists of finding some nitpicky objection to something your opponent said, something not directly relevant to the issue at hand, and something which isn’t even wrong, just insufficiently precise, and discounting the substance of their argument on that basis.
Hrrm? Imprecision if anything occurred on Vlad’s part, not Jacob’s. Again, see issue of illusion of transparency matter. See also Vlad’s remark below.
JoshuaZ:
Yes, of course. I’m not familiar with the finer points of terminology in this area, but the O’Brien-Goedert paper uses the term “strain” both for the two major strains and their sub-strains, and I’ve noticed the same in many other papers too. So I don’t think this was imprecise in any way.