I appreciate your feedback. I’m struggling with whether this idea is high enough quality to make a discussion post. And my experience is that I underestimate the problem of inferential distance.
Most people underestimate inferential distance, so that’s a pretty good theory.
If it helps, I think the primary problem I’m having is that you have a habit of substituting discussion of one idea for discussion of another (e.g, “morality’s response” to Nietzsche vs. the radical/extraordinary nature of paradigm shifts, the value system that sorts airplanes vs. the “investigative part of humanity’s attempt to control Nature,” etc.) without explicitly mapping the two.
I assume it’s entirely obvious to you, for example, how you would convert an opinion about paradigm shifts in morality into a statement about morality’s response to Nietzsche and vice-versa, so from your perspective you’re simply alternating synonyms to make your writing more interesting. But it’s not obvious to me, so from my perspective each such transition is basically changing the subject completely, so each round of discussion seems only vaguely related to the round before. Eventually the conversation feels like trying to nail Jello to a tree.
Again, I don’t mean here to accuse you of changing the subject or of having incoherent ideas; for all I know your discussion has been perfectly consistent and coherent, I just lack your ability (and, evidently, atorm’s) to map the various pieces of it to one another (let alone to my own comments). So, something that might help close the inferential distance is to start over and restate your thesis using consistent and clearly defined terms.
Thank you for defining your terms. I agree that we have the same basic neural/behavioral architecture that our stone-age ancestors had, and that we arrange the world such that others suffer less harm (per capita) than our stone-age ancestors did, and that this is a good thing.
I’m having a very hard time following your point, so if you can present it in a more systematic fashion in a discussion post, that might be best.
I think I followed the point pretty well, although I don’t know that I can explain it any better. It’s worth its own post, TimS.
I appreciate your feedback. I’m struggling with whether this idea is high enough quality to make a discussion post. And my experience is that I underestimate the problem of inferential distance.
Most people underestimate inferential distance, so that’s a pretty good theory.
If it helps, I think the primary problem I’m having is that you have a habit of substituting discussion of one idea for discussion of another (e.g, “morality’s response” to Nietzsche vs. the radical/extraordinary nature of paradigm shifts, the value system that sorts airplanes vs. the “investigative part of humanity’s attempt to control Nature,” etc.) without explicitly mapping the two.
I assume it’s entirely obvious to you, for example, how you would convert an opinion about paradigm shifts in morality into a statement about morality’s response to Nietzsche and vice-versa, so from your perspective you’re simply alternating synonyms to make your writing more interesting. But it’s not obvious to me, so from my perspective each such transition is basically changing the subject completely, so each round of discussion seems only vaguely related to the round before. Eventually the conversation feels like trying to nail Jello to a tree.
Again, I don’t mean here to accuse you of changing the subject or of having incoherent ideas; for all I know your discussion has been perfectly consistent and coherent, I just lack your ability (and, evidently, atorm’s) to map the various pieces of it to one another (let alone to my own comments). So, something that might help close the inferential distance is to start over and restate your thesis using consistent and clearly defined terms.
.
Thank you for defining your terms. I agree that we have the same basic neural/behavioral architecture that our stone-age ancestors had, and that we arrange the world such that others suffer less harm (per capita) than our stone-age ancestors did, and that this is a good thing.