Hopefully nobody who reads this site believes an explanation of old ideas are new ideas. The tactics described here are, by definition, old tactics because they are used by people in ordinary conversation. Furthermore, they are used often enough that I would be shocked if anybody who reads this site has not encountered a single variation of the tactics described.
However, people might not be aware that the purpose of these arguments is often simply to end all further debate, and to do so in a clearly intellectually dishonest way.
This is worth pointing out, but pointing this fact out did not, to me, imply that Eliezer had discovered the idea that these tactics are used to halt conversations. I’m not really sure why you inferred that from what was written.
In other words, just because I state the fact that the Sun is 93 million miles away does not in any way imply that I am the man who discovered that the Sun is 93 million miles away. I wouldn’t expect anybody to infer that, yet somehow you did (figuratively speaking, of course).
Yes, it’s a matter of readers expectations and assumptions. The same text can be read more generously, giving the author the benefit of the doubt, or less generously, holding the author to some more-rigorous standard.
Including specific references into the literature is more professional and more helpful to the reader.
Hopefully nobody who reads this site believes an explanation of old ideas are new ideas. The tactics described here are, by definition, old tactics because they are used by people in ordinary conversation. Furthermore, they are used often enough that I would be shocked if anybody who reads this site has not encountered a single variation of the tactics described.
However, people might not be aware that the purpose of these arguments is often simply to end all further debate, and to do so in a clearly intellectually dishonest way.
This is worth pointing out, but pointing this fact out did not, to me, imply that Eliezer had discovered the idea that these tactics are used to halt conversations. I’m not really sure why you inferred that from what was written.
In other words, just because I state the fact that the Sun is 93 million miles away does not in any way imply that I am the man who discovered that the Sun is 93 million miles away. I wouldn’t expect anybody to infer that, yet somehow you did (figuratively speaking, of course).
Yes, it’s a matter of readers expectations and assumptions. The same text can be read more generously, giving the author the benefit of the doubt, or less generously, holding the author to some more-rigorous standard.
Including specific references into the literature is more professional and more helpful to the reader.