Of course if you estimate the harmful effect of one such article on one individual, it won’t amount to very much! But the proliferation of such articles can turn LW into yet another vague self-help site, in fact from the list of posts it looks like it’s already been happening for awhile, and I don’t want that to happen.
I concede that the front page shouldn’t be overrun with vague self-helpy
stuff. But I read your original comment as a request to not allow that kind
of content on LessWrong at all and I think that would be going too far.
This all hinges on the estimated worth of sharing speculative self-help
advice. I think there are insights to be shared that can’t simply be
found by reading research literature and the potential benefit of gaining
such insights outweights the additional cost of mentally filtering unwanted
content. I also think that on LessWrong such content will be less vague and of
higher quality than on dedicated self-help sites so I’d prefer to keep it,
though perhaps relegated to the discussion section.
I don’t know of a term for the thing you’re describing, but the inverse thing—where someone who thinks “Anecdotes with conclusions should not be allowed” ends up saying “Perhaps we could institute a norm that posting anecdotes without making conclusions from them is okay” is sometimes called “indirection” or “hedging.” (Or, in some circles, “being polite.”)
They are, of course, related: my knowledge of the existence of indirection in the world makes it more likely that I will interpret “Perhaps we could institute a norm that posting anecdotes without making conclusions from them is okay” as an expression of the thought “Anecdotes with conclusions should not be allowed” (as well as a wide range of other thoughts).
Perhaps the inverse of indirection should be called “dereferencing”?
Of course if you estimate the harmful effect of one such article on one individual, it won’t amount to very much! But the proliferation of such articles can turn LW into yet another vague self-help site, in fact from the list of posts it looks like it’s already been happening for awhile, and I don’t want that to happen.
I concede that the front page shouldn’t be overrun with vague self-helpy stuff. But I read your original comment as a request to not allow that kind of content on LessWrong at all and I think that would be going too far.
This all hinges on the estimated worth of sharing speculative self-help advice. I think there are insights to be shared that can’t simply be found by reading research literature and the potential benefit of gaining such insights outweights the additional cost of mentally filtering unwanted content. I also think that on LessWrong such content will be less vague and of higher quality than on dedicated self-help sites so I’d prefer to keep it, though perhaps relegated to the discussion section.
original comment:
how its read:
I find this transition very curious and see it often. Is there a term for this kind of reactive twist of reasoning?
I don’t know of a term for the thing you’re describing, but the inverse thing—where someone who thinks “Anecdotes with conclusions should not be allowed” ends up saying “Perhaps we could institute a norm that posting anecdotes without making conclusions from them is okay” is sometimes called “indirection” or “hedging.” (Or, in some circles, “being polite.”)
They are, of course, related: my knowledge of the existence of indirection in the world makes it more likely that I will interpret “Perhaps we could institute a norm that posting anecdotes without making conclusions from them is okay” as an expression of the thought “Anecdotes with conclusions should not be allowed” (as well as a wide range of other thoughts).
Perhaps the inverse of indirection should be called “dereferencing”?