Indeed, “Beware of Stephen J. Gould” would seem to have essentially the same argument structure as “Eliezer Yudkowsky Is Frequently, Confidently, Egregiously Wrong”.
The 2007 post isn’t an argument aimed at the ghost of Gould or his followers; it’s a bunch of claims about the intellectual history of the field of evolutionary biology, and Gould’s stature within it. Lots of commenters showed up to dispute or add color to Eliezer’s claims about how other eminent scientists viewed Gould, but both the post and comment section are light on object-level arguments because there simply isn’t that much to argue about, nor anyone interested in arguing about it.
(Also, Gould died in 2002. Eliezer’s comment on epistemic conduct seems more applicable to discourse between contemporaries.)
Omnizoid’s post, by contrast, opened with a bunch of inflammatory remarks about a still-living person, aimed directly at an audience with strong preexisting awareness of and opinions about that person. It then goes on to make a bunch of (wrong, laughably overconfident) object-level arguments about very obviously non-settled topics in science and philosophy.
I think someone who wants to enforce an alleged “basic rule of epistemic conduct” of the form “if you’ve got to [say X] [...] [do so] after presenting your [...] points that support [X]” should be able to explain why such a rule systematically produces maps that reflect the territory when X happens to be “negative assessments of an author’s character or authority” (what are called “personal attacks”), but not for other values of X (given how commonplace it is to make a thesis statement before laying out all the supporting arguments).
If more people read the beginning of an argument than the end, putting the personal attacks at the beginning will predictably lead to more people seeing the attacks than the arguments that support them. Even if such readers are not consciously convinced by attacks without argument, it seems implausible that their beliefs or impressions will not be moved at all.
It then goes on to make a bunch of (wrong, laughably overconfident) object-level arguments about very obviously non-settled topics in science and philosophy.
But that’s the real problem, no? If it had opened with a “bunch of inflammatory remarks” and then solidly backed them up you’d be fine with it, right?
No, it’s about whether such backup is needed in the first place.
If you’re making claims which are likely to be widely contested at the object level, it’s better to leave the inflammatory remarks to the end or not make them at all. Conversely, if you’re not claiming to make original or controversial object-level claims of your own, it’s fine to dive straight into the negative character assessments, though preferably supported with evidence and citations rather than personal attacks and charged rhetoric.
Note that you can often judge how much object-level support is required without knowing whether your object-level arguments are solid or even how your audience will react them—based on the comments section of their respective posts, both Eliezer and Omnizoid made this judgement correctly.
Or, to break it down a different way, consider the following possible claims an author can make, where X is an object-level statement:
X is fasle.
Among some particular group (e.g. academic philosophers), it is well-known and uncontroversial that X is false.
If you’re going to write a post arguing that the second claim is true, and use that as a justification to attack someone who believes X, you better be very careful not get sidetracked arguing about X, even if you’re correct that X is false! (Because if an academic philosopher happens to wander into your object-level argument on the wrong side, that falsifies your second claim, independent of the truth value of X.)
The 2007 post isn’t an argument aimed at the ghost of Gould or his followers; it’s a bunch of claims about the intellectual history of the field of evolutionary biology, and Gould’s stature within it. Lots of commenters showed up to dispute or add color to Eliezer’s claims about how other eminent scientists viewed Gould, but both the post and comment section are light on object-level arguments because there simply isn’t that much to argue about, nor anyone interested in arguing about it.
(Also, Gould died in 2002. Eliezer’s comment on epistemic conduct seems more applicable to discourse between contemporaries.)
Omnizoid’s post, by contrast, opened with a bunch of inflammatory remarks about a still-living person, aimed directly at an audience with strong preexisting awareness of and opinions about that person. It then goes on to make a bunch of (wrong, laughably overconfident) object-level arguments about very obviously non-settled topics in science and philosophy.
If more people read the beginning of an argument than the end, putting the personal attacks at the beginning will predictably lead to more people seeing the attacks than the arguments that support them. Even if such readers are not consciously convinced by attacks without argument, it seems implausible that their beliefs or impressions will not be moved at all.
But that’s the real problem, no? If it had opened with a “bunch of inflammatory remarks” and then solidly backed them up you’d be fine with it, right?
No, it’s about whether such backup is needed in the first place.
If you’re making claims which are likely to be widely contested at the object level, it’s better to leave the inflammatory remarks to the end or not make them at all. Conversely, if you’re not claiming to make original or controversial object-level claims of your own, it’s fine to dive straight into the negative character assessments, though preferably supported with evidence and citations rather than personal attacks and charged rhetoric.
Note that you can often judge how much object-level support is required without knowing whether your object-level arguments are solid or even how your audience will react them—based on the comments section of their respective posts, both Eliezer and Omnizoid made this judgement correctly.
Or, to break it down a different way, consider the following possible claims an author can make, where X is an object-level statement:
X is fasle.
Among some particular group (e.g. academic philosophers), it is well-known and uncontroversial that X is false.
If you’re going to write a post arguing that the second claim is true, and use that as a justification to attack someone who believes X, you better be very careful not get sidetracked arguing about X, even if you’re correct that X is false! (Because if an academic philosopher happens to wander into your object-level argument on the wrong side, that falsifies your second claim, independent of the truth value of X.)