Kind of frustrating that this high karma reply to a high karma comment on my post is based on a double misunderstanding/miscommunication:
First Vanessa understood me as claiming that a significant number of people’s morality is not based on status games. I tried to clarify in an earlier comment already, but to clarify some more: that’s not my intended distinction between the two groups. Rather the distinction is that the first group “know or at least suspect that they are confused about morality, and are eager or willing to apply reason and deliberation to find out what their real values are, or to correct their moral beliefs” (they can well be doing this because of the status game that they’re playing) whereas this quoted description doesn’t apply to the second group.
Then you (Duncan) understood Vanessa as claiming that literally everyone’s morality is based on status games, when (as the subsequent discussion revealed) the intended meaning was more like “the number of people whose morality is not based on status games is a lot fewer than (Vanessa’s misunderstanding of) Wei’s claim”.
I think it’s important and valuable to separate out “what was in fact intended” (and I straightforwardly believe Vanessa’s restatement as a truer explanation of her actual position) from “what was originally said, and how would 70+ out of 100 readers tend to interpret it.”
I think we’ve cleared up what was meant. I still think it was bad that [the perfectly reasonable thing that was meant] was said in a [predictably misleading fashion].
But I think we’ve said all that needs to be said about that, too.
This is a tangent (so maybe you prefer to direct this discussion elsewhere), but: what’s with the brackets? I see you using them regularly; what do they signify?
I use them where I’m trying to convey a single noun that’s made up of many words, and I’m scared that people will lose track of the overall sentence while in the middle of the chunk. It’s an attempt to keep the overall sentence understandable. I’ve tried hyphenating such phrases and people find that more annoying.
Kind of frustrating that this high karma reply to a high karma comment on my post is based on a double misunderstanding/miscommunication:
First Vanessa understood me as claiming that a significant number of people’s morality is not based on status games. I tried to clarify in an earlier comment already, but to clarify some more: that’s not my intended distinction between the two groups. Rather the distinction is that the first group “know or at least suspect that they are confused about morality, and are eager or willing to apply reason and deliberation to find out what their real values are, or to correct their moral beliefs” (they can well be doing this because of the status game that they’re playing) whereas this quoted description doesn’t apply to the second group.
Then you (Duncan) understood Vanessa as claiming that literally everyone’s morality is based on status games, when (as the subsequent discussion revealed) the intended meaning was more like “the number of people whose morality is not based on status games is a lot fewer than (Vanessa’s misunderstanding of) Wei’s claim”.
I think it’s important and valuable to separate out “what was in fact intended” (and I straightforwardly believe Vanessa’s restatement as a truer explanation of her actual position) from “what was originally said, and how would 70+ out of 100 readers tend to interpret it.”
I think we’ve cleared up what was meant. I still think it was bad that [the perfectly reasonable thing that was meant] was said in a [predictably misleading fashion].
But I think we’ve said all that needs to be said about that, too.
This is a tangent (so maybe you prefer to direct this discussion elsewhere), but: what’s with the brackets? I see you using them regularly; what do they signify?
I use them where I’m trying to convey a single noun that’s made up of many words, and I’m scared that people will lose track of the overall sentence while in the middle of the chunk. It’s an attempt to keep the overall sentence understandable. I’ve tried hyphenating such phrases and people find that more annoying.
Hmm, I see, thanks.