I was tempted to vote “makes no sense at all”. I did not because I’ve had far too many experiences where I dismiss a colleague’s idea as being the product of muddled thinking only to later realize that a) the idea makes sense, they just didn’t know how to express it clearly or b) the idea makes practical sense but my profession chooses to sweep it under the rug because it’s too inconvenient. On Stackoverflow and LW I see the same tendency to mistake hard/tedious problems for meaningless problems and “solve” the problem by prematurely claiming to have dissolved the question or substituting in a different question the respondent finds more convenient.
Some questions really are meaningless or misguided. But experience has taught me to usually give questions the benefit of a doubt until I have enough background information to be more sure. So, I played along and gave the technically correct answer of “I’m parts both”.
Come to think of it, “Red/Blue makes no sense at all” is not even a valid answer to the question. The question did not ask whether it made sense. Such a meta-question should really be a checkbox orthogonal to the main poll question.
Come to think of it, “Red/Blue makes no sense at all” is not even a valid answer to the question. The question did not ask whether it made sense.
There’s such a thing as a question that rests on invalid assumptions — the classic example being “Have you stopped beating your wife?” when addressed to someone who never did (or never married a woman). As in that case, questions can be used to sneak in connotations — the classic example is asked by a politician to his rival in a public debate, for the purpose of planting suspicion. The sage Hofstadter writes that “mu”#.22Unasking.22_the_question) is the answer to this question.
It sure looks like the categories being presented here introduce a lot of assumptions and connotations, though they are obvious enough that I would not use the word “sneak”.
Here are some analogous questions to illustrate the problem. In each case I take the question to be of the “radio button” format — an answer is a choice of exactly one of the presented options.
“Are you a Baptized Fooist, or hell-bound?” This question assumes that people naturally split into Fooists and those who are going to hell. Even adding an “I’m not sure” or “A little bit of both” answer doesn’t fix the question. If you believe nobody is going to hell, you are certainly not a Fooist (let’s say), so taking the question as written yields a paradox. It needs an “I don’t accept the assumption upon which this query is founded” answer.
(Yes, it is possible to wheedle here: “I share with a Fooist the property that I am not going to hell, and I share with a hell-bound person the property that I don’t believe in Fooism. So ‘a little bit of both’ describes me correctly.” This is bending over backwards to avoid dismissing a misguided assumption.)
“Are you a starving artist or a wealthy engineer?” Here the assumption is that two properties form two exclusive clusters, and that they exhaust the space. The question dismisses the existence of any wealthy artists, starving engineers, or for that matter doctors or plumbers of any wealth and nutrition level. Again, adding “a little bit both” doesn’t fix the question.
“Are you a duck who has been painted purple to protect you from polio, or are you some other kind of tree?” Here the assumptions start to stack up. Not only does the question assume that the world is divided into purple-painted ducks and other trees, but that ducks are trees, and moreover that someone out there is painting ducks purple to save them from polio. Since none of that is even remotely true, there really isn’t any way to fix the question. The right answer is “Neither one, and your categories are silly.”
I was tempted to vote “makes no sense at all”. I did not because I’ve had far too many experiences where I dismiss a colleague’s idea as being the product of muddled thinking only to later realize that a) the idea makes sense, they just didn’t know how to express it clearly or b) the idea makes practical sense but my profession chooses to sweep it under the rug because it’s too inconvenient. On Stackoverflow and LW I see the same tendency to mistake hard/tedious problems for meaningless problems and “solve” the problem by prematurely claiming to have dissolved the question or substituting in a different question the respondent finds more convenient.
Some questions really are meaningless or misguided. But experience has taught me to usually give questions the benefit of a doubt until I have enough background information to be more sure. So, I played along and gave the technically correct answer of “I’m parts both”.
Come to think of it, “Red/Blue makes no sense at all” is not even a valid answer to the question. The question did not ask whether it made sense. Such a meta-question should really be a checkbox orthogonal to the main poll question.
There’s such a thing as a question that rests on invalid assumptions — the classic example being “Have you stopped beating your wife?” when addressed to someone who never did (or never married a woman). As in that case, questions can be used to sneak in connotations — the classic example is asked by a politician to his rival in a public debate, for the purpose of planting suspicion. The sage Hofstadter writes that “mu”#.22Unasking.22_the_question) is the answer to this question.
It sure looks like the categories being presented here introduce a lot of assumptions and connotations, though they are obvious enough that I would not use the word “sneak”.
Here are some analogous questions to illustrate the problem. In each case I take the question to be of the “radio button” format — an answer is a choice of exactly one of the presented options.
“Are you a Baptized Fooist, or hell-bound?” This question assumes that people naturally split into Fooists and those who are going to hell. Even adding an “I’m not sure” or “A little bit of both” answer doesn’t fix the question. If you believe nobody is going to hell, you are certainly not a Fooist (let’s say), so taking the question as written yields a paradox. It needs an “I don’t accept the assumption upon which this query is founded” answer.
(Yes, it is possible to wheedle here: “I share with a Fooist the property that I am not going to hell, and I share with a hell-bound person the property that I don’t believe in Fooism. So ‘a little bit of both’ describes me correctly.” This is bending over backwards to avoid dismissing a misguided assumption.)
“Are you a starving artist or a wealthy engineer?” Here the assumption is that two properties form two exclusive clusters, and that they exhaust the space. The question dismisses the existence of any wealthy artists, starving engineers, or for that matter doctors or plumbers of any wealth and nutrition level. Again, adding “a little bit both” doesn’t fix the question.
“Are you a duck who has been painted purple to protect you from polio, or are you some other kind of tree?” Here the assumptions start to stack up. Not only does the question assume that the world is divided into purple-painted ducks and other trees, but that ducks are trees, and moreover that someone out there is painting ducks purple to save them from polio. Since none of that is even remotely true, there really isn’t any way to fix the question. The right answer is “Neither one, and your categories are silly.”
“Red/Blue makes no sense at all” means “I reject the framework within which you are asking this question”.