I think “speech of appropriate thought-like-ness” is, unfortunately, wildly contextual. I would have predicted that the precise lengthy take would go down well on LW and especially with ACX readers. This specific causal gears-level type of explanation is common and accepted here, but for audiences that aren’t expecting it, it can be jarring and derail a discussion.
Similarly, many audiences are not curious about the subject! Appropriate is the operative word. Sometimes it will be appropriate to gloss over details either because the person is not likely to be interested (and will tune out lengthy sentences about causal models of how doctors behave), or because it’s non-central to the discussion at hand.
For instance, if I was chatting to a friend with a medical (but non-rationalist) background about marijuana legalisation, the lengthy take is probably unwise; benzodiazepines are only peripherally relevant to the discussion, and the gears-level take easily leads us into one of several rabbit holes (Are they actually unlikely to cause withdrawal symptoms? What do you mean by unlikely? Does psychological addiction mean precisely that? Is that why those guidelines exist? why are you modelling doctors in this way at all, is that useful? should I be using gears-level models?).
Any of these questions can lead to a fruitful discussion (especially the last few!), but if you have specific reason to keep discussions on track I would save your gears-explanations for cruxes and similar.
I mean, what is the concept “speech of appropriate thoughtness”? Perhaps which speech fits that concept is highly contextual, but what is the concept that you are checking that speech against? Your last comment makes it sound like appropriate level of detail; are you simply using thoughtness here as a synonym for detail (perhaps to indicate the fact that nonverbal thoughts are often extremely highly detailed?), or is there an additional subtlety here? If I say “alright, I’ll try to use appropriate levels of detail when communicating”, is your response “good, you understand my point” or “that’s a start, but you’d do better still if you considered X”?
I think “speech of appropriate thought-like-ness” is, unfortunately, wildly contextual. I would have predicted that the precise lengthy take would go down well on LW and especially with ACX readers. This specific causal gears-level type of explanation is common and accepted here, but for audiences that aren’t expecting it, it can be jarring and derail a discussion.
Similarly, many audiences are not curious about the subject! Appropriate is the operative word. Sometimes it will be appropriate to gloss over details either because the person is not likely to be interested (and will tune out lengthy sentences about causal models of how doctors behave), or because it’s non-central to the discussion at hand.
For instance, if I was chatting to a friend with a medical (but non-rationalist) background about marijuana legalisation, the lengthy take is probably unwise; benzodiazepines are only peripherally relevant to the discussion, and the gears-level take easily leads us into one of several rabbit holes (Are they actually unlikely to cause withdrawal symptoms? What do you mean by unlikely? Does psychological addiction mean precisely that? Is that why those guidelines exist? why are you modelling doctors in this way at all, is that useful? should I be using gears-level models?).
Any of these questions can lead to a fruitful discussion (especially the last few!), but if you have specific reason to keep discussions on track I would save your gears-explanations for cruxes and similar.
I mean, what is the concept “speech of appropriate thoughtness”? Perhaps which speech fits that concept is highly contextual, but what is the concept that you are checking that speech against? Your last comment makes it sound like appropriate level of detail; are you simply using thoughtness here as a synonym for detail (perhaps to indicate the fact that nonverbal thoughts are often extremely highly detailed?), or is there an additional subtlety here? If I say “alright, I’ll try to use appropriate levels of detail when communicating”, is your response “good, you understand my point” or “that’s a start, but you’d do better still if you considered X”?