Do people really not understand where I’m coming from here?
You are obsessing over a trivial nit and then blowing up in frustration that nobody gets it. Four paragraphs over the distinction-without-a-difference between “won’t grade” and “grade 0″?
You are obsessing over a trivial nit and then blowing up in frustration that nobody gets it.
No, I’m “blowing up in frustration” (an exaggerated description, I think) that people are stubbornly disagreeing. As I said, I understand if folks think it’s a trivial matter. What I don’t understand is the apparent disagreement on the matter itself, and the best explanation I can come up with is that people are trying to show their disapproval of my having introduced the topic. (Why wouldn’t they have just said that directly? Because upvoting orthonormal’s comment was just easier.)
Actually I suspect it may run deeper, and may have to do with a reflexive tendency some people have to resist strong claims (or expressions of strong feeling) in general.
Unrequested arbitration from someone who just read the thread:
“I won’t grade it” cannot be taken literally as obvious shorthand for “I will assign it a grade of zero”. That this is what it means is obvious to many people but only because they have spent a decent amount of time in an institutional context where everyone is already clear what it means.
That said, it also isn’t obvious that “I won’t grade it” means “I won’t include the assignment as part of your final grade.” The word “grade” is ambiguous between meaning “giving a number or letter that ostensibly represents the quality of work” and “reading and analyzing the assignment so as to form an opinion regarding what number or letter would best represent the quality of the work”. Assigning a 0 without looking at the assignment is certainly a grade under the former meaning, but it isn’t really under the latter meaning.
This ambiguity is resolved only when people are aware of the context and pragmatics surrounding the statement (for example, some people will probably infer that professor won’t just let them not do the assignment and so interpreting the statement as “I won’t include the paper assignment as part of your final grade” is too optimistic).
So when orthonormal says
No, what the teacher means is “I will act as if you had not turned in anything at all”, and “I won’t grade it” is a perfectly reasonable shorthand for that.
He is basically right. We use shorthands and euphemisms all the time and their literal ambiguity or inaccuracy is not really legitimate grounds for criticizing those phrasings...
...until people misunderstand. Komponisto says the first time he heard this phrasing he didn’t understand. I don’t know if this misunderstanding persisted until he received a failing grade for an assignment without realizing that would be the consequence, but it doesn’t matter. Given that assignment failure is usually a big deal, any reasonable chance of miscommunication should be headed off at the pass (no pun intended). Many professors are explicit about this and there is no evidence that suffer significantly as a result. College freshmen are particularly likely to misunderstand because they may not have heard the phrase before and are in a new environment whose contextual cues they are not used to. Further, neurotypicality issues arise in these circumstances and it is important that language users keep in mind that the contextual cues that are obvious to them or even most others may not be obvious to everyone (Nancy and Silas’s excellent exchange covers this well). This goes for the participants in the above debate, also.
So komponisto is totally right that professors should be explicit about what they mean. But he is wrong that the professors are really, truly misspeaking (instead of just being somewhat unclear) and he should recognize that other people will sometimes get annoyed with those who insist a statement is wrong because they don’t pick up on the obvious-to-some-but-not-to-others contextual clues which supply the meaning of the statement. It kind of reminds us of the grade school teacher who, when we asked if we could go to the bathroom, replied “I don’t know. Can you?”
This ambiguity is resolved only when people are aware of the context and pragmatics surrounding the statement
Or they could ask a simple question. I don’t understand why people feel the need to go into this huge analysis when conversation is a fluid and interactive process.
Awareness of context and pragmatics can be tacit or explicit, and if you don’t tacitly understand that you need to ask a question, some explicitness might help.
My handy example for communication failure on that sort of thing is a time when I was turned away from a restaurant for not being dressed properly. It took asking the same question a bunch of times to find out that the specific issue was that I was wearing shorts.
My impression is that the person I was asking had trouble imagining that anyone didn’t already know his concept of “dressed properly”.
It’s easier to change your own behavior than it is to change the rest of the world, especially when you’re the one who reads a rationality blog and etc.
It may be negative utility since requesting explicit and clear statements are against social norms and can be taken as implicit accusations of ignorance or incompetence.
Taking things literally and lacking the ability to determine hidden or assumed social meanings is a low status trait, showing that you can be easily tricked, are easy to ridicule in a public fashion without reprisal, etc. Or maybe that’s just me.
The influence of social norms is why it isn’t always a good think to advocate and request clarity in public and normal social interactions. But LessWrong is exactly the place to flout those norms and advocate non-oblique communication. Are we actually disagreeing?
If your statement is that we should cultivate explicit speech on LessWrong, then I would agree that the members of this community already practice that norm, and advocating it here is appropriate.
If your statement is that we, as members of the LessWrong community, should spread the use of explicit speech to the masses, then I would disagree, as training people in even small ways like that takes significantly more time than is worth the effort except with very close friends.
Or did you mean something else? You really should be more explicit ;-P
My statement is that we should observe the need for explicit speech in certain contexts, even though it might be impractical to actively encourage it in the masses.
If your statement is that we, as members of the LessWrong community, should spread the use of explicit speech to the masses, then I would disagree, as training people in even small ways like that takes significantly more time than is worth the effort except with very close friends.
Wouldn’t this statement also apply to promotion of, say, atheism? Advocating atheism on an individual level also “takes significantly more time than is worth the effort except with very close friends.”
Isn’t LessWrong exactly the place to make rational arguments over subjects that many regard as trivial, and arguments that are impractical to pursue with the masses of non-rationalists?
If your statement is that we, as members of the LessWrong community, should spread the use of explicit speech to the masses, then I would disagree, as training people in even small ways like that takes significantly more time than is worth the effort except with very close friends.
Disagreeing about whether something is practical is distinct from disagreeing about whether the world would be a better place if it were done.
I view this entire thread as a masturbatory word argument that was fully answered and explored in the first couple posts, and I let the pattern of votes upset me. Sorry.
My best guess would be that you said, “How am I dressed improperly?” I would also guess that if you had changed the question to something more specific like, “What, my shirt?” then you would have received a more specific answer instead of repeating yourself so many times.
It’s quite possible that more specific questions would have led to a faster answer. My failure of imagination was that I couldn’t believe he didn’t have a clear set of rules in mind.
You are obsessing over a trivial nit and then blowing up in frustration that nobody gets it. Four paragraphs over the distinction-without-a-difference between “won’t grade” and “grade 0″?
There is a distinction, and there is a difference. Just because the difference is small doesn’t make it go away.
No, I’m “blowing up in frustration” (an exaggerated description, I think) that people are stubbornly disagreeing. As I said, I understand if folks think it’s a trivial matter. What I don’t understand is the apparent disagreement on the matter itself, and the best explanation I can come up with is that people are trying to show their disapproval of my having introduced the topic. (Why wouldn’t they have just said that directly? Because upvoting orthonormal’s comment was just easier.)
Actually I suspect it may run deeper, and may have to do with a reflexive tendency some people have to resist strong claims (or expressions of strong feeling) in general.
Unrequested arbitration from someone who just read the thread:
“I won’t grade it” cannot be taken literally as obvious shorthand for “I will assign it a grade of zero”. That this is what it means is obvious to many people but only because they have spent a decent amount of time in an institutional context where everyone is already clear what it means.
That said, it also isn’t obvious that “I won’t grade it” means “I won’t include the assignment as part of your final grade.” The word “grade” is ambiguous between meaning “giving a number or letter that ostensibly represents the quality of work” and “reading and analyzing the assignment so as to form an opinion regarding what number or letter would best represent the quality of the work”. Assigning a 0 without looking at the assignment is certainly a grade under the former meaning, but it isn’t really under the latter meaning.
This ambiguity is resolved only when people are aware of the context and pragmatics surrounding the statement (for example, some people will probably infer that professor won’t just let them not do the assignment and so interpreting the statement as “I won’t include the paper assignment as part of your final grade” is too optimistic).
So when orthonormal says
He is basically right. We use shorthands and euphemisms all the time and their literal ambiguity or inaccuracy is not really legitimate grounds for criticizing those phrasings...
...until people misunderstand. Komponisto says the first time he heard this phrasing he didn’t understand. I don’t know if this misunderstanding persisted until he received a failing grade for an assignment without realizing that would be the consequence, but it doesn’t matter. Given that assignment failure is usually a big deal, any reasonable chance of miscommunication should be headed off at the pass (no pun intended). Many professors are explicit about this and there is no evidence that suffer significantly as a result. College freshmen are particularly likely to misunderstand because they may not have heard the phrase before and are in a new environment whose contextual cues they are not used to. Further, neurotypicality issues arise in these circumstances and it is important that language users keep in mind that the contextual cues that are obvious to them or even most others may not be obvious to everyone (Nancy and Silas’s excellent exchange covers this well). This goes for the participants in the above debate, also.
So komponisto is totally right that professors should be explicit about what they mean. But he is wrong that the professors are really, truly misspeaking (instead of just being somewhat unclear) and he should recognize that other people will sometimes get annoyed with those who insist a statement is wrong because they don’t pick up on the obvious-to-some-but-not-to-others contextual clues which supply the meaning of the statement. It kind of reminds us of the grade school teacher who, when we asked if we could go to the bathroom, replied “I don’t know. Can you?”
Or they could ask a simple question. I don’t understand why people feel the need to go into this huge analysis when conversation is a fluid and interactive process.
Awareness of context and pragmatics can be tacit or explicit, and if you don’t tacitly understand that you need to ask a question, some explicitness might help.
My handy example for communication failure on that sort of thing is a time when I was turned away from a restaurant for not being dressed properly. It took asking the same question a bunch of times to find out that the specific issue was that I was wearing shorts.
My impression is that the person I was asking had trouble imagining that anyone didn’t already know his concept of “dressed properly”.
It’s easier to change your own behavior than it is to change the rest of the world, especially when you’re the one who reads a rationality blog and etc.
Anyway, have fun with your analysis.
True, but there is no contradiction between doing so, and also advocating that the world change.
It may be negative utility since requesting explicit and clear statements are against social norms and can be taken as implicit accusations of ignorance or incompetence.
Taking things literally and lacking the ability to determine hidden or assumed social meanings is a low status trait, showing that you can be easily tricked, are easy to ridicule in a public fashion without reprisal, etc. Or maybe that’s just me.
No, I agree that there’s a risk to asking questions in some social circles, and it may not even be obvious which social circles they are.
I believe we are making the world a little with our interactions, and it’s sometimes worth trying to bend the world in our preferred direction.
The influence of social norms is why it isn’t always a good think to advocate and request clarity in public and normal social interactions. But LessWrong is exactly the place to flout those norms and advocate non-oblique communication. Are we actually disagreeing?
If your statement is that we should cultivate explicit speech on LessWrong, then I would agree that the members of this community already practice that norm, and advocating it here is appropriate.
If your statement is that we, as members of the LessWrong community, should spread the use of explicit speech to the masses, then I would disagree, as training people in even small ways like that takes significantly more time than is worth the effort except with very close friends.
Or did you mean something else? You really should be more explicit ;-P
My statement is that we should observe the need for explicit speech in certain contexts, even though it might be impractical to actively encourage it in the masses.
Wouldn’t this statement also apply to promotion of, say, atheism? Advocating atheism on an individual level also “takes significantly more time than is worth the effort except with very close friends.”
Isn’t LessWrong exactly the place to make rational arguments over subjects that many regard as trivial, and arguments that are impractical to pursue with the masses of non-rationalists?
I hope that’s explicit enough ;)
Disagreeing about whether something is practical is distinct from disagreeing about whether the world would be a better place if it were done.
I’m not sure what you think I said.
I view this entire thread as a masturbatory word argument that was fully answered and explored in the first couple posts, and I let the pattern of votes upset me. Sorry.
My best guess would be that you said, “How am I dressed improperly?” I would also guess that if you had changed the question to something more specific like, “What, my shirt?” then you would have received a more specific answer instead of repeating yourself so many times.
It’s quite possible that more specific questions would have led to a faster answer. My failure of imagination was that I couldn’t believe he didn’t have a clear set of rules in mind.
Hm, are you starting to understand how I feel whenever I argue that people only pretend to have a refined palette for alcoholic drinks? ;-)