Do note how you obtain better results if you know to ask nicely.
Where do you get these beliefs?
That did not seem particularly impolite to me. Isn’t it ordinary to expect a rationalist to have some idea where their beliefs come from, especially for empirical generalizations?
I didn’t say it was impolite. I do assert that it was a putdown. You can try a few variants:
“What is your source for this assertion?”—more formal, clear and exact.
“Where do you get this”—the brisker, more informal version, still acceptable.
The chosen phrasing conveys incredulity and a subtext that I’m making things up: the connotationally active term is “belief” instead of “information”—the latter would convey a presumption that I’m in fact well informed, and would be a more charitable interpretation.
There is an additional charge of contempt carried by the word “these” instead of “that”, since the quoted passage about which the question was asked contained a single assertion of fact. The image that comes up is a hand waved at the context of the quoted passage, as if the latter was just one particularly outrageous example picked among others.
“These beliefs strike me as odd” would be a more respectful phrasing; the presumption of imaginings vs information is still there, but the locutor at least owns up to that presumption: “strikes me” is a useful phrase for doing that.
With “where do you get” added to the mix, you have a triple whammy. The “you” form generally puts the interlocutor on the defensive, it easily comes off as an accusation.
So “where do you get these beliefs” carries the following connotations:
you are making shit up
the above is just one example, I had to start somewhere
you should know better than to try that on me
The tone is technically polite, but that only adds to the insult. There are usually many, many ways to choose how to say any given thing, so the particular way you pick is never innocent.
Whoever masters the skill of the artful putdown wields great power indeed...
...especially if they also know the next ploy: to accuse the offended party of “reading too much” into an “innocent” remark, meant “in good humor”. That one is a mainstay of the verbal bully.
Thanks for the thorough reply! I’m often in the position of making comments like “where do you get these beliefs” (at least, judging by the responses I get) and (honestly) responding that the offended party was reading too much into an innocent remark meant in good humor. I usually try to dissect the thing after to figure out what went wrong.
It didn’t occur to me that ‘belief’ might have weird connotations since I usually mean it in the purely epistemic sense; a different phrasing might be ‘putative knowledge’ which sounds much less nice to me. It seems someone dubious about your assertion’s value might even have to call it ‘putative information’ rather than ‘information’, so I’m not sure that helps much.
Also, ‘you’ didn’t strike me as odd since it was directed at you, and the question certainly wasn’t about where some other person got their beliefs. That said, my wife complains about my use of pronouns like that regularly. For example, I might say “your car”, “my car”, or “our car” interchangeably with no particular intent since they unambiguously refer to the same car, but she will read something into particularly “your car” so I’ve been on my guard about the pronoun “you” lately. On even more of a tangent, I wonder if this relates to uncomfortableness about the various pronouns for ‘you’ in Japanese language.
Did you study how to unpack these things, or is this one of those things that goes with being neurotypical?
Reminds me of the constant teasing my wife and I trade about “your kids” and “my kids”. Denotationally the same, but the connotations of the possessive are quite strong.
Study—no, at least no more than you could say I’ve studied language in general and how we do things with words. Maybe more sensitive to “these things” than is typical.
It didn’t occur to me that ‘belief’ might have weird connotations since I usually mean it in the purely epistemic sense; a different phrasing might be ‘putative knowledge’ which sounds much less nice to me. It seems someone dubious about your assertion’s value might even have to call it ‘putative information’ rather than ‘information’, so I’m not sure that helps much.
One of my mentors once suggested “So, what led you to that conclusion?” as a relatively neutral way to probe the origin of a belief, without connoting disbelief or disagreement.
That did not seem particularly impolite to me. Isn’t it ordinary to expect a rationalist to have some idea where their beliefs come from, especially for empirical generalizations?
I didn’t say it was impolite. I do assert that it was a putdown. You can try a few variants:
“What is your source for this assertion?”—more formal, clear and exact. “Where do you get this”—the brisker, more informal version, still acceptable.
The chosen phrasing conveys incredulity and a subtext that I’m making things up: the connotationally active term is “belief” instead of “information”—the latter would convey a presumption that I’m in fact well informed, and would be a more charitable interpretation.
There is an additional charge of contempt carried by the word “these” instead of “that”, since the quoted passage about which the question was asked contained a single assertion of fact. The image that comes up is a hand waved at the context of the quoted passage, as if the latter was just one particularly outrageous example picked among others.
“These beliefs strike me as odd” would be a more respectful phrasing; the presumption of imaginings vs information is still there, but the locutor at least owns up to that presumption: “strikes me” is a useful phrase for doing that.
With “where do you get” added to the mix, you have a triple whammy. The “you” form generally puts the interlocutor on the defensive, it easily comes off as an accusation.
So “where do you get these beliefs” carries the following connotations:
you are making shit up
the above is just one example, I had to start somewhere
you should know better than to try that on me
The tone is technically polite, but that only adds to the insult. There are usually many, many ways to choose how to say any given thing, so the particular way you pick is never innocent.
Whoever masters the skill of the artful putdown wields great power indeed...
...especially if they also know the next ploy: to accuse the offended party of “reading too much” into an “innocent” remark, meant “in good humor”. That one is a mainstay of the verbal bully.
Thanks for the thorough reply! I’m often in the position of making comments like “where do you get these beliefs” (at least, judging by the responses I get) and (honestly) responding that the offended party was reading too much into an innocent remark meant in good humor. I usually try to dissect the thing after to figure out what went wrong.
It didn’t occur to me that ‘belief’ might have weird connotations since I usually mean it in the purely epistemic sense; a different phrasing might be ‘putative knowledge’ which sounds much less nice to me. It seems someone dubious about your assertion’s value might even have to call it ‘putative information’ rather than ‘information’, so I’m not sure that helps much.
Also, ‘you’ didn’t strike me as odd since it was directed at you, and the question certainly wasn’t about where some other person got their beliefs. That said, my wife complains about my use of pronouns like that regularly. For example, I might say “your car”, “my car”, or “our car” interchangeably with no particular intent since they unambiguously refer to the same car, but she will read something into particularly “your car” so I’ve been on my guard about the pronoun “you” lately. On even more of a tangent, I wonder if this relates to uncomfortableness about the various pronouns for ‘you’ in Japanese language.
Did you study how to unpack these things, or is this one of those things that goes with being neurotypical?
Reminds me of the constant teasing my wife and I trade about “your kids” and “my kids”. Denotationally the same, but the connotations of the possessive are quite strong.
Study—no, at least no more than you could say I’ve studied language in general and how we do things with words. Maybe more sensitive to “these things” than is typical.
One of my mentors once suggested “So, what led you to that conclusion?” as a relatively neutral way to probe the origin of a belief, without connoting disbelief or disagreement.
[citation needed]