I agree with the overall post, but this sentence does not follow at all:
“Since the overall impression was changed by adding true information, the original impression must have been false.”
If there is a big pool of considerations supporting Hypothesis A, and a smaller but still large pool supporting Not-A, then repeatedly receiving different sets of true facts could take your estimate of the truth of Hypothesis A all over the map.
You’re right; that argument there was invalid. I have removed it and replaced it with a valid argument for the same conclusion: “Since the impression people got of speakers’ positions disagreed with what they would have said their positions were, that impression was false.”
It’s interesting how this article is acting as a testbed for the norm it proposes. It’ll be interesting to see whether it carries over to other threads, and how much of an effect it has. For a proper test, we’ll have to see how people respond to posts that they fully disagree with; if people just habitually start their posts with “I agree with your conclusion, however”, then eventually someone will post something like “I agree with your conclusion, however, I disagree with your conclusion”.
I agree with the overall post, but this sentence does not follow at all:
“Since the overall impression was changed by adding true information, the original impression must have been false.”
If there is a big pool of considerations supporting Hypothesis A, and a smaller but still large pool supporting Not-A, then repeatedly receiving different sets of true facts could take your estimate of the truth of Hypothesis A all over the map.
You’re right; that argument there was invalid. I have removed it and replaced it with a valid argument for the same conclusion: “Since the impression people got of speakers’ positions disagreed with what they would have said their positions were, that impression was false.”
It’s interesting how this article is acting as a testbed for the norm it proposes. It’ll be interesting to see whether it carries over to other threads, and how much of an effect it has. For a proper test, we’ll have to see how people respond to posts that they fully disagree with; if people just habitually start their posts with “I agree with your conclusion, however”, then eventually someone will post something like “I agree with your conclusion, however, I disagree with your conclusion”.