I was using an applause light? Is there a better way to term that my opinions on this matter seem really weird to people who have never heard of consequentialism and don’t spend much time thinking about the nature of morality (though neither do I, really)?
I think that signaling, “See, I read the sequences!” was not 0% of your motivation in phrasing that way. I don’t actually think it’s a big problem. I don’t think it was all that significant a portion of your motivation, or I would have commented directly.
I actually think that the marking of it as a semantic stop-sign was incorrect; while the phrase, “the inferential distance is too high” could certainly be used that way, it was a tangential issue you (as I read it) were putting on hold, not washing your hands of. What would your response have been, if someone had responded with a request to look at ways to shrink the inferential distance? I therefore think Oscar’s post is more of an applause light—he could have more usefully engaged, and instead chose to simply quote scripture at you.
The fact that there was one comment which contained short snippets by two different posters that amounted to basically nothing but a reference into the sequences each seemed worth commenting on. And what better way than to make the situation worse?
I think that signaling, “See, I read the sequences!” was not 0% of your motivation in phrasing that way.
That’s probably fair. More than “See, I read the sequences!”, it was probably something like “Look, I fit in with you guys because we know the same obscure terms! And since I consider LW posters who seem smart high status this makes me high status by association!”. I didn’t verbally think that, of course, but still.
I don’t think it fits completely. I wasn’t trying to completely write off my inability to defend this view with others (it probably also has to do with the fact that my ideas aren’t fully formed) and I think the phrase does convey information. It means that the people I was referring to don’t have the background knowledge (mainly consequentialism) to make my views seem reasonable. Hence, high inferential difference.
Semantic stop-sign alert!
Applause lights?
I was using an applause light? Is there a better way to term that my opinions on this matter seem really weird to people who have never heard of consequentialism and don’t spend much time thinking about the nature of morality (though neither do I, really)?
I think that signaling, “See, I read the sequences!” was not 0% of your motivation in phrasing that way. I don’t actually think it’s a big problem. I don’t think it was all that significant a portion of your motivation, or I would have commented directly.
I actually think that the marking of it as a semantic stop-sign was incorrect; while the phrase, “the inferential distance is too high” could certainly be used that way, it was a tangential issue you (as I read it) were putting on hold, not washing your hands of. What would your response have been, if someone had responded with a request to look at ways to shrink the inferential distance? I therefore think Oscar’s post is more of an applause light—he could have more usefully engaged, and instead chose to simply quote scripture at you.
The fact that there was one comment which contained short snippets by two different posters that amounted to basically nothing but a reference into the sequences each seemed worth commenting on. And what better way than to make the situation worse?
That’s probably fair. More than “See, I read the sequences!”, it was probably something like “Look, I fit in with you guys because we know the same obscure terms! And since I consider LW posters who seem smart high status this makes me high status by association!”. I didn’t verbally think that, of course, but still.
I don’t think it fits completely. I wasn’t trying to completely write off my inability to defend this view with others (it probably also has to do with the fact that my ideas aren’t fully formed) and I think the phrase does convey information. It means that the people I was referring to don’t have the background knowledge (mainly consequentialism) to make my views seem reasonable. Hence, high inferential difference.
False positive. (Does not appear to be a semantic stop sign.)