The more private a debate, the more likely people will be generous enough for this to happen; the more public, the more hostile they will be. Hostility is a status-grab, and people in arguments (including this forum) reward it if they think the grabber deserving. Similarly, generosity is low-status, and people who are generous in public debates have very little to gain. Publicly failing in the quantity necessary to maximize your learning growth is very low-status and not many people have the stomach for it.
EDIT: Being low-status also makes it much easier for people to stop responding to your arguments, as “That’s not worthy of a response” is much more believable from the higher-status arguer when the status difference is high.
Try privately arguing with a holocaust denier or a moon hoaxer. The ones I argued with seem to be more arrogant and more hostile the more they knew that they no third party is observing the “argument”
This is a great point, but maybe I’m just saying that because it’s the exception that proves the rule. Just by arguing with someone with a fringe viewpoint, you’ve granted them roughly equal status, so they will be highly hostile as a status grab. However, in a group, these fringe viewpoints have a history of rewarding their advocate with exile—so the advocates will make a show of giving away status in that circumstance.
Compare this vs. mainstream, acceptable views—say, conservative vs. liberal in private vs. public. It’s much easier to have a productive conversation in private about these views than in public.
“the exception that proves the rule” seems like a very un-Bayesian thing to say. The implication is that both X and ~X provide evidence for the hypothesis. (Not that I always communicate my actual and complete hypothesis—sometimes that is a distraction from my main point.)
I think the implication is not that both X and ~X provide evidence for the hypothesis, but rather something like, “yes, there are a few exceptions to the rule, but if you look at what the exceptions are they’re so unusual that they just underline the fact that the rule is generally (though not universally) applicable.”
The more private a debate, the more likely people will be generous enough for this to happen; the more public, the more hostile they will be. Hostility is a status-grab, and people in arguments (including this forum) reward it if they think the grabber deserving. Similarly, generosity is low-status, and people who are generous in public debates have very little to gain. Publicly failing in the quantity necessary to maximize your learning growth is very low-status and not many people have the stomach for it.
EDIT: Being low-status also makes it much easier for people to stop responding to your arguments, as “That’s not worthy of a response” is much more believable from the higher-status arguer when the status difference is high.
Wait, what?
When the pecking order is well-defined, we like to see it, but in a neck-and-neck competition, generosity is interpreted as deferral.
Try privately arguing with a holocaust denier or a moon hoaxer. The ones I argued with seem to be more arrogant and more hostile the more they knew that they no third party is observing the “argument”
This is a great point, but maybe I’m just saying that because it’s the exception that proves the rule. Just by arguing with someone with a fringe viewpoint, you’ve granted them roughly equal status, so they will be highly hostile as a status grab. However, in a group, these fringe viewpoints have a history of rewarding their advocate with exile—so the advocates will make a show of giving away status in that circumstance.
Compare this vs. mainstream, acceptable views—say, conservative vs. liberal in private vs. public. It’s much easier to have a productive conversation in private about these views than in public.
“the exception that proves the rule” seems like a very un-Bayesian thing to say. The implication is that both X and ~X provide evidence for the hypothesis. (Not that I always communicate my actual and complete hypothesis—sometimes that is a distraction from my main point.)
I think the implication is not that both X and ~X provide evidence for the hypothesis, but rather something like, “yes, there are a few exceptions to the rule, but if you look at what the exceptions are they’re so unusual that they just underline the fact that the rule is generally (though not universally) applicable.”