Is there some way to encourage coherence in people’s stated views? For some of the posts in this thread I can’t tell whether I agree or disagree because I can’t understand what the view is. I feel an urge to downvote such posts, although this could easily be a bad idea, since extreme contrarian views will probably seem less coherent. On the other hand, if I can’t even understand what is being claimed in the first place then it’s hard for me to get much benefit out of it.
Is there some way to encourage coherence in people’s stated views? For some of the posts in this thread I can’t tell whether I agree or disagree because I can’t understand what the view is.
That’s to be expected with it comes to contrarian views. A lot of positions are not widely held because they are complicated to understand or take certain background knowledge.
If you would give me a bunch of academic math problems I wouldn’t understand the problems. In math it’s fairly easy to say: Hey math is complicated, it’s okay that I don’t know enough about the topic to understand the claim. But in other areas the same applies.
Understanding what other people think is often hard when they differ substantially from yourself.
[meta]
Is there some way to encourage coherence in people’s stated views? For some of the posts in this thread I can’t tell whether I agree or disagree because I can’t understand what the view is. I feel an urge to downvote such posts, although this could easily be a bad idea, since extreme contrarian views will probably seem less coherent. On the other hand, if I can’t even understand what is being claimed in the first place then it’s hard for me to get much benefit out of it.
That’s to be expected with it comes to contrarian views. A lot of positions are not widely held because they are complicated to understand or take certain background knowledge.
If you would give me a bunch of academic math problems I wouldn’t understand the problems. In math it’s fairly easy to say: Hey math is complicated, it’s okay that I don’t know enough about the topic to understand the claim. But in other areas the same applies. Understanding what other people think is often hard when they differ substantially from yourself.
This thread is mixed up. A top level meta comment (like in the irrationality sequence) is missing for example.