Thinking about various other conversation-stoppers, these come to mind:
Announce that you are leaving the conversation;
Declare that the conversation is insignificant;
Declare that the conversation is a digression;
Declare that the conversation is off-topic;
Declare that the issue has been resolved elsewhere;
Declare that the conversation has stooped to ad-hominen;
Invoke Godwin’s law;
I have encountered this many, many times on Less Wrong. And it is often not strictly true.
You are only saying that because you haven’t read The Sequences. ;-)
[citation needed]
But most of those items are perfectly reasonable in many contexts. The items on Eliezer’s list strike me as being more reliable indicators of flawed thought.
Yes—that was mostly the point. Terminating the debate can be a sensible thing to do sometimes. RobinZ makes a similar point.
Thinking about various other conversation-stoppers, these come to mind:
Announce that you are leaving the conversation;
Declare that the conversation is insignificant;
Declare that the conversation is a digression;
Declare that the conversation is off-topic;
Declare that the issue has been resolved elsewhere;
Declare that the conversation has stooped to ad-hominen;
Invoke Godwin’s law;
I have encountered this many, many times on Less Wrong. And it is often not strictly true.
You are only saying that because you haven’t read The Sequences. ;-)
[citation needed]
But most of those items are perfectly reasonable in many contexts. The items on Eliezer’s list strike me as being more reliable indicators of flawed thought.
Yes—that was mostly the point. Terminating the debate can be a sensible thing to do sometimes. RobinZ makes a similar point.