And you want me to explain why these things are bad?
Yes. Part of this is because my long experience is that sometimes our sense of communication or our preferences for norms have flipped signs. If you think something is bad, that’s moderate but not strong evidence that I think it’s bad, and we might be able to jump straight to our disagreement by trying to ground out in principles. I think in several previous threads I wish I had focused less on the leaves and more on the roots, and here was trying to focus on roots.
If so, then—sure, I don’t in principle object to such exercises—on the contrary, I often find them to be useful—but why do this here, now, about these specific things? Why ask me, in particular?
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On the other hand, if what you’re saying is that you disagree that the aforementioned things are bad, then… I guess I’m not sure how to respond to that, or what the point would even be…
I mean, I am genuinely uncertain about several parts of this! I think that the audience might also be uncertain, and stating things clearly might help settle them (one way or the other). I think there is value in clear statements of differences of opinion (like that you have a low opinion of interpretative labor and I have a high opinion of it), and sometimes we can ground those opinions (like by following many conversations and tracking outcomes).
Like, I understand ‘tendentious’ to be a pejorative word, but I think the underlying facts of the word are actually appropriate for this situation. That doesn’t mean it’s generically good, just that criticizing it here seems inappropriate to me. Should we not invite controversy on ban announcements? Should we not explain the point of view that leads us to make the moderation decisions we make?
But perhaps you mean something narrower. If the charge is more “this is problem only a few users have, but unfortunately one of them is an admin, and thus it is the site rule”—well, we can figure out whether or not that’s the case, but I don’t actually think that’s a problem with the first paragraph, and I think it can be pointed at more cleanly.
Well, the “sneaking in connotations” bit is a link to a Sequence post (titled, oddly enough, “Sneaking in Connotations”). I don’t think that I can explain the problem there any better than Eliezer did.
As it happens, I reread that post thru your link. I thought that it didn’t quite apply to this situation; I didn’t see how habryka was implying things about you thru an argument via definition, rather than directly stating his view (and then attempting to back it up later in the post). I thought Frame Control would’ve been a better link for your complaint here (and reread our discussion of it to see whether or not I thought anything had changed since then).
The other stuff really seems like it’s either self-explanatory or can be answered with a dictionary lookup (e.g., “begging the question”).
I also didn’t quite buy that “begging the question” applied to the first paragraph. (For the audience, this is an argument that smuggles in its conclusion as a premise.) I understood that paragraph to be the conclusion of habryka’s argument, not the premise.
Overall, my impression was—desperation, or scrambling for anything that might stick? Like, I think it fits as a criticism of any post that states its conclusion and then steps thru the argument for that conclusion, instead of essaying out from a solid premise and discovering where it takes you. I think both styles have their virtues, and think the conclusion-first style is fine for posts about bans (I’ve used it for that before), and so I don’t find that criticism persuasive. (Like, it’s bad to write your bottom line and then construct the argument, but it’s not bad to construct an argument and then edit your introduction to include your conclusion!)
But maybe I missed the thing you’re trying to convey, since we often infer different things from the same text and attend to different parts of a situation. I tried to jump us to the inferences and the salient features, and quite possibly that’s not the best path to mutual understanding.
Yes. Part of this is because my long experience is that sometimes our sense of communication or our preferences for norms have flipped signs. If you think something is bad, that’s moderate but not strong evidence that I think it’s bad, and we might be able to jump straight to our disagreement by trying to ground out in principles. I think in several previous threads I wish I had focused less on the leaves and more on the roots, and here was trying to focus on roots.
I mean, I am genuinely uncertain about several parts of this! I think that the audience might also be uncertain, and stating things clearly might help settle them (one way or the other). I think there is value in clear statements of differences of opinion (like that you have a low opinion of interpretative labor and I have a high opinion of it), and sometimes we can ground those opinions (like by following many conversations and tracking outcomes).
Like, I understand ‘tendentious’ to be a pejorative word, but I think the underlying facts of the word are actually appropriate for this situation. That doesn’t mean it’s generically good, just that criticizing it here seems inappropriate to me. Should we not invite controversy on ban announcements? Should we not explain the point of view that leads us to make the moderation decisions we make?
But perhaps you mean something narrower. If the charge is more “this is problem only a few users have, but unfortunately one of them is an admin, and thus it is the site rule”—well, we can figure out whether or not that’s the case, but I don’t actually think that’s a problem with the first paragraph, and I think it can be pointed at more cleanly.
As it happens, I reread that post thru your link. I thought that it didn’t quite apply to this situation; I didn’t see how habryka was implying things about you thru an argument via definition, rather than directly stating his view (and then attempting to back it up later in the post). I thought Frame Control would’ve been a better link for your complaint here (and reread our discussion of it to see whether or not I thought anything had changed since then).
I also didn’t quite buy that “begging the question” applied to the first paragraph. (For the audience, this is an argument that smuggles in its conclusion as a premise.) I understood that paragraph to be the conclusion of habryka’s argument, not the premise.
Overall, my impression was—desperation, or scrambling for anything that might stick? Like, I think it fits as a criticism of any post that states its conclusion and then steps thru the argument for that conclusion, instead of essaying out from a solid premise and discovering where it takes you. I think both styles have their virtues, and think the conclusion-first style is fine for posts about bans (I’ve used it for that before), and so I don’t find that criticism persuasive. (Like, it’s bad to write your bottom line and then construct the argument, but it’s not bad to construct an argument and then edit your introduction to include your conclusion!)
But maybe I missed the thing you’re trying to convey, since we often infer different things from the same text and attend to different parts of a situation. I tried to jump us to the inferences and the salient features, and quite possibly that’s not the best path to mutual understanding.