If the Boubas have an internally consistent definition then the Kikis are right to make them produce it so that a productive conversation can be had, the Kikis would no doubt readily supply their own if asked. I do not understand the instinct to suggest the Kikis are doing something not on the level here, productive discussions require work and sometimes rigor from both participants. If the Boubas are incapable or unwilling of doing their part it is a bit silly to blame the Kikis for not doing it for them.
If you are imagining that the Boubas do produce an internally consistent definition and then the conversation devolves into whose is “right” then I would agree that both parties are foolish in that instance.
Sadly, this assumes that all good arguments are legible.
I think we would both agree that there is a nonempty subset of chemicals that is dangerous for humans to eat, and that it would be very difficult to provide an exact definition of that set.
But that definition becomes useless if it isn’t legible. The Boubas don’t want chemicals in their food. If “chemical” means “harmful substance that I don’t know how to specify”, it’s useless to say that they don’t want chemicals in their food—how are they going to even deetermine that the food contains “chemicals” by their standard?
Also, the fact that they are even using the existing word “chemical” and not some phrase like “harmful chemical” implies that their definition has something to do with the characteristics of things called by the existing word, such as unfamiliar and long names. This is, of course, not a logical necessity, but people in the real world think this way, so it’s a good bet.
So don’t use the definition if it’s useless. The object level conversation is very easy to access here. Say something like “do you mean GMOs?” and then ask them why they think GMOs are harmful. If their answer is “because GMOs are chemicals” then you say “why do you think chemicals are harmful?” and then you can continue conversing about whether GMOs are harmful.
Honestly I think it’s net virtuous to track other people’s definitions and let them modify them whenever they feel a need to. Aligning on definitions is expensive and always involves talking about edge cases that are rarely important to the subject at hand. (They’re important when you’re authoring laws or doing math, which I would count as expensive situations.) I’d just focus on object level like “GMOs are not harmful” and not concern myself with whether they take this to mean GMOs are not chemicals or chemicals are not always harmful.
It’s not just the definition that’s useless. The phrase itself becomes useless, because if the only way to know what they mean is by asking “do you mean X”, the original statement about not wanting chemicals in their food fails to communicate anything useful.
Nobody has an internally consistent definition of anything, but it works out because people are usually talking about “typical X” not “edge case X.” Bouba is probably thinking of pesticides or GMOs. So ask them why they think those things are harmful. By “not chemicals” they’re probably thinking of water and apples. If you want their opinion of alcohol you can say “do you think alcohol is bad for you?” not “do you think alcohol counts as a chemical?”
You don’t actually have to live your life by making every conversation one about hammering down definitions.
If they’re just using the word “chemical” as an arbitrary word for “bad substance”, you have the situation I already described: the word isn’t communicating anything useful.
But in practice, someone who claims that they don’t want chemicals in their food probably doesn’t just mean “harmful substances”. They probably mean that they have some criteria for what counts as a harmful substance, and that these criteria are based on traits of things that are commonly called chemicals. When you tell them “wait, water and salt are chemicals”, what you’re really doing is forcing them to state those criteria so you can contest them (and so they can become aware that that’s what they’re using).
Yeah you can totally try to force them to have a conversation about how to define chemical and you might even get into the meta about what constitutes proper rules of debate a bit. You can also say something like “by chemical you probably mean pesticides or GMOs, is that what you mean? why do you think they’re harmful?” I think the latter sounds more useful and fun.
In practice, the meta is that they are confused and don’t have a coherent idea of things they don’t want in their food, except for superficial elements like having long names or being something they heard mentioned on Youtube. You could start questoning them about the details of things they don’t like, but 1) you’ll just end up telling them that long names and Youtube are a bad reason to avoid something and 2) their original statement about chemicals didn’t communicate anything useful.
It isn’t wrong to ask them for details of what they don’t like, but they could have just as well started by saying “I don’t like bad food additives” and you could have said exactly the same thing. The OP is pretending that “I don’t like chemicals” says more than it actually does.
Wait, why do you think “additive” is acceptable and “chemical” isn’t? I hereby force you to state your criteria for what substances count as additives so that I can contest them.
I don’t think “additive” is acceptable. It has the same problems. The point is that the original statement isn’t communicating anything. I pointed out that it is no better than other statements that don’t communicate anything.
Oh I see. After saying “I don’t like chemicals in my food” I understood something like, this person prefers organics. Are you not able to surmise this? If you’re not, then you’re definitely gaining less information when talking people than I am. I can generally communicate with people even if they use “chemical” imprecisely.
Just the fact this person makes low-information statements about a particular subject gives me information about what he thinks. But I wouldn’t count that as getting information from those statements.
The statements “gives” you information but that doesn’t “count” as you “getting” information. Furthermore the “low-information” statement mysteriously gives you information, yet not quite enough information to count as not a “low-information” statement. Okay, so this isn’t about communicating information, it’s about communicating information with a twist—it also has to count. If your interlocutor communicates successfully but it doesn’t count, you’re allowed to make a definition challenge, where they have to provide a set of criteria you’re allowed to attack. They then try to defend their criteria while you try to attack it, and if they defeat the definition challenge you’re allowed to move onto the next message in the initial communication.
Okay so why would anyone ever agree to play this game? It sounds completely not fun and like it’s optimized for the most uninformative things you could talk about.
The statements “gives” you information but that doesn’t “count” as you “getting” information.
It’s literally true that I got information, but I didn’t get information from it in the ordinary sense of “I parsed his words, and his words said something about X, so now I know the thing about X that is described by his words”.
There’s a difference between the information content of the statement, and the information that may be concluded from the statement in context. For instance, if I ask someone a question and he responds by snoring I may conclude that he is asleep. But I wouldn’t describe that (non-figuratively) as “he told me that he is asleep”. He didn’t tell me that; he told me nothing meaningful, even though I deduced things from it.
Just like I know that snoring people are often asleep, I know that people who complain about “chemicals” often like organic food. That doesn’t mean that either snores or statements about chemicals have any meaningful information.
I realized I was making inferences for what you mean by “ordinary senses” and “information content.” Can you please give your criteria for these two things so I can begin contesting them? I’m concerned you communicated no “ordinary sense” information in your preceding comment and there was zero information content, and I’m trying out your style where that preempts the rest of the conversation flow.
If the Boubas have an internally consistent definition then the Kikis are right to make them produce it so that a productive conversation can be had, the Kikis would no doubt readily supply their own if asked. I do not understand the instinct to suggest the Kikis are doing something not on the level here, productive discussions require work and sometimes rigor from both participants. If the Boubas are incapable or unwilling of doing their part it is a bit silly to blame the Kikis for not doing it for them.
If you are imagining that the Boubas do produce an internally consistent definition and then the conversation devolves into whose is “right” then I would agree that both parties are foolish in that instance.
Sadly, this assumes that all good arguments are legible.
I think we would both agree that there is a nonempty subset of chemicals that is dangerous for humans to eat, and that it would be very difficult to provide an exact definition of that set.
But that definition becomes useless if it isn’t legible. The Boubas don’t want chemicals in their food. If “chemical” means “harmful substance that I don’t know how to specify”, it’s useless to say that they don’t want chemicals in their food—how are they going to even deetermine that the food contains “chemicals” by their standard?
Also, the fact that they are even using the existing word “chemical” and not some phrase like “harmful chemical” implies that their definition has something to do with the characteristics of things called by the existing word, such as unfamiliar and long names. This is, of course, not a logical necessity, but people in the real world think this way, so it’s a good bet.
So don’t use the definition if it’s useless. The object level conversation is very easy to access here. Say something like “do you mean GMOs?” and then ask them why they think GMOs are harmful. If their answer is “because GMOs are chemicals” then you say “why do you think chemicals are harmful?” and then you can continue conversing about whether GMOs are harmful.
Honestly I think it’s net virtuous to track other people’s definitions and let them modify them whenever they feel a need to. Aligning on definitions is expensive and always involves talking about edge cases that are rarely important to the subject at hand. (They’re important when you’re authoring laws or doing math, which I would count as expensive situations.) I’d just focus on object level like “GMOs are not harmful” and not concern myself with whether they take this to mean GMOs are not chemicals or chemicals are not always harmful.
It’s not just the definition that’s useless. The phrase itself becomes useless, because if the only way to know what they mean is by asking “do you mean X”, the original statement about not wanting chemicals in their food fails to communicate anything useful.
Nobody has an internally consistent definition of anything, but it works out because people are usually talking about “typical X” not “edge case X.” Bouba is probably thinking of pesticides or GMOs. So ask them why they think those things are harmful. By “not chemicals” they’re probably thinking of water and apples. If you want their opinion of alcohol you can say “do you think alcohol is bad for you?” not “do you think alcohol counts as a chemical?”
You don’t actually have to live your life by making every conversation one about hammering down definitions.
If they’re just using the word “chemical” as an arbitrary word for “bad substance”, you have the situation I already described: the word isn’t communicating anything useful.
But in practice, someone who claims that they don’t want chemicals in their food probably doesn’t just mean “harmful substances”. They probably mean that they have some criteria for what counts as a harmful substance, and that these criteria are based on traits of things that are commonly called chemicals. When you tell them “wait, water and salt are chemicals”, what you’re really doing is forcing them to state those criteria so you can contest them (and so they can become aware that that’s what they’re using).
Yeah you can totally try to force them to have a conversation about how to define chemical and you might even get into the meta about what constitutes proper rules of debate a bit. You can also say something like “by chemical you probably mean pesticides or GMOs, is that what you mean? why do you think they’re harmful?” I think the latter sounds more useful and fun.
In practice, the meta is that they are confused and don’t have a coherent idea of things they don’t want in their food, except for superficial elements like having long names or being something they heard mentioned on Youtube. You could start questoning them about the details of things they don’t like, but 1) you’ll just end up telling them that long names and Youtube are a bad reason to avoid something and 2) their original statement about chemicals didn’t communicate anything useful.
It isn’t wrong to ask them for details of what they don’t like, but they could have just as well started by saying “I don’t like bad food additives” and you could have said exactly the same thing. The OP is pretending that “I don’t like chemicals” says more than it actually does.
Wait, why do you think “additive” is acceptable and “chemical” isn’t? I hereby force you to state your criteria for what substances count as additives so that I can contest them.
I don’t think “additive” is acceptable. It has the same problems. The point is that the original statement isn’t communicating anything. I pointed out that it is no better than other statements that don’t communicate anything.
Oh I see. After saying “I don’t like chemicals in my food” I understood something like, this person prefers organics. Are you not able to surmise this? If you’re not, then you’re definitely gaining less information when talking people than I am. I can generally communicate with people even if they use “chemical” imprecisely.
Just the fact this person makes low-information statements about a particular subject gives me information about what he thinks. But I wouldn’t count that as getting information from those statements.
The statements “gives” you information but that doesn’t “count” as you “getting” information. Furthermore the “low-information” statement mysteriously gives you information, yet not quite enough information to count as not a “low-information” statement. Okay, so this isn’t about communicating information, it’s about communicating information with a twist—it also has to count. If your interlocutor communicates successfully but it doesn’t count, you’re allowed to make a definition challenge, where they have to provide a set of criteria you’re allowed to attack. They then try to defend their criteria while you try to attack it, and if they defeat the definition challenge you’re allowed to move onto the next message in the initial communication.
Okay so why would anyone ever agree to play this game? It sounds completely not fun and like it’s optimized for the most uninformative things you could talk about.
It’s literally true that I got information, but I didn’t get information from it in the ordinary sense of “I parsed his words, and his words said something about X, so now I know the thing about X that is described by his words”.
There’s a difference between the information content of the statement, and the information that may be concluded from the statement in context. For instance, if I ask someone a question and he responds by snoring I may conclude that he is asleep. But I wouldn’t describe that (non-figuratively) as “he told me that he is asleep”. He didn’t tell me that; he told me nothing meaningful, even though I deduced things from it.
Just like I know that snoring people are often asleep, I know that people who complain about “chemicals” often like organic food. That doesn’t mean that either snores or statements about chemicals have any meaningful information.
I realized I was making inferences for what you mean by “ordinary senses” and “information content.” Can you please give your criteria for these two things so I can begin contesting them? I’m concerned you communicated no “ordinary sense” information in your preceding comment and there was zero information content, and I’m trying out your style where that preempts the rest of the conversation flow.
All conversation requires some common ground. If you actually don’t know what I meant, there’s not much I can do to help you.
(Also, notice that “ordinary sense of” is followed by an explanation? I don’t see why you’d need another explanation after that.)
Interesting, that’s how I feel about people who say the word “chemical” to mean “pesticides and stuff.”