Point of order: I don’t think “arguments as soldiers” was supposed to be equivalent to “thinking of multiple different ideas for why something would not work”—it was about a lack of intellectual integrity in honestly viewing the opponent’s points on their merits, and simultaneously pretending their are no weaknesses in your own arguments.
Good debate requires adversarial thought, which is why we talk about Steelmanning instead of Strawmanning.
If AllAmericanBreakfast has generated even half a dozen different, seemingly unrelated ideas for why the the OP’s experiment does not measure the value it claims to be studying, that still doesn’t immediately make them a soldier. They’d also need to ignore criticism of the arguments, and ignore opposing arguments or attack the opposing arguments in a way that is hypocritical of how they treat their own arguments.
I view this pivot to focus on how someone generates their ideas (what you called “a model for commenting behavior”) as a far more troublesome road.
If we’re going to dismiss arguments because we think the intellectual process to generate them was invalid, that’s an actual “argument as soldiers” mindset in my opinion because it is diverting attention from the argument itself to a process objection instead.
In other words, if AllAmericanBreakfast had raised an important and critical point that up until now was missed, would it be rational to dismiss it because it was posted as an off-the-cuff reply after talking a walk outside, instead of only after some period of careful examination that one is expected to spend their time in prior to commenting on a new post?
I largely agree with you. Steelmanning, a focus on the object-level argument rather than the meta-process, and a certain graciousness about the messiness of intellectual labor are all helpful in promoting good debate.
If I had to guess, Dweomite might have gotten a “Gish gallop” vibe, in which every rebuttal leads to two new bjections being raised, with scarcely an acknowledgement of the rebuttal itself. Part of the art of good debate is focusing attention in a productive manner. Infodumps and Gish gallops can be counterproductive, even if the object-level information they contain is correct.
It was never my intention to equate “arguments as soldiers” with “multiple arguments for the same conclusion”, or to say that having multiple arguments is inherently bad. That’s why I described this as being (in context) a warning sign, not an error in itself.
It was also never my intention to dismiss these particular arguments. I believe I said above that they seem like valid discussion points. But my interests are not confined solely to the AC experiment; I am also interested in the meta-project of improving our tools for rationality.
(Though I can imagine some situations where I would dismiss arguments based on how they were generated. For instance, if I somehow knew that you had literally rolled dice to choose words off of a list with no regard for semantic content, and then posted the output with no filtering, then I would not feel that either rationality or fairness required me to entertain those arguments.)
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That said, I think you also got a rather different take-away from “arguments as soldiers” than I did. I see it as being about goals, not rules of conduct. If you identify with a particular side, and try to make that side win, then you’re in a soldier mindset. If, while you do that, you also feel a duty to acknowledge the opponent’s valid points and to be honest about your side’s flaws, then you’re a soldier with rules of engagement, but you’re still a soldier.
The alternative is curiosity and truth-seeking. If your goal is to find the truth, then acknowledging someone else’s valid point isn’t a mere duty, it’s good strategy.
You wrote: “Good debate requires adversarial thought”. I might or might not agree, depending on how you define “debate”. But regardless, adversarial thought is NOT a requirement for truth-seeking. You can investigate, share information, and teach others, and even resolve factual agreements without it.
For instance, Double Crux is a strategy for resolving disagreements that doesn’t rely on adversarial thought. I’m also reminded of Aumann-style consensus.
Rules of engagement are certainly better than nothing. Thus is it written:
A burning itch to know is higher than a solemn vow to pursue truth. But you can’t produce curiosity just by willing it, any more than you can will your foot to feel warm when it feels cold. Sometimes, all we have is our mere solemn vows.
But duties are not what you’re ideally hoping for.
Point of order: I don’t think “arguments as soldiers” was supposed to be equivalent to “thinking of multiple different ideas for why something would not work”—it was about a lack of intellectual integrity in honestly viewing the opponent’s points on their merits, and simultaneously pretending their are no weaknesses in your own arguments.
Good debate requires adversarial thought, which is why we talk about Steelmanning instead of Strawmanning.
If AllAmericanBreakfast has generated even half a dozen different, seemingly unrelated ideas for why the the OP’s experiment does not measure the value it claims to be studying, that still doesn’t immediately make them a soldier. They’d also need to ignore criticism of the arguments, and ignore opposing arguments or attack the opposing arguments in a way that is hypocritical of how they treat their own arguments.
I view this pivot to focus on how someone generates their ideas (what you called “a model for commenting behavior”) as a far more troublesome road.
If we’re going to dismiss arguments because we think the intellectual process to generate them was invalid, that’s an actual “argument as soldiers” mindset in my opinion because it is diverting attention from the argument itself to a process objection instead.
In other words, if AllAmericanBreakfast had raised an important and critical point that up until now was missed, would it be rational to dismiss it because it was posted as an off-the-cuff reply after talking a walk outside, instead of only after some period of careful examination that one is expected to spend their time in prior to commenting on a new post?
I largely agree with you. Steelmanning, a focus on the object-level argument rather than the meta-process, and a certain graciousness about the messiness of intellectual labor are all helpful in promoting good debate.
If I had to guess, Dweomite might have gotten a “Gish gallop” vibe, in which every rebuttal leads to two new bjections being raised, with scarcely an acknowledgement of the rebuttal itself. Part of the art of good debate is focusing attention in a productive manner. Infodumps and Gish gallops can be counterproductive, even if the object-level information they contain is correct.
It was never my intention to equate “arguments as soldiers” with “multiple arguments for the same conclusion”, or to say that having multiple arguments is inherently bad. That’s why I described this as being (in context) a warning sign, not an error in itself.
It was also never my intention to dismiss these particular arguments. I believe I said above that they seem like valid discussion points. But my interests are not confined solely to the AC experiment; I am also interested in the meta-project of improving our tools for rationality.
(Though I can imagine some situations where I would dismiss arguments based on how they were generated. For instance, if I somehow knew that you had literally rolled dice to choose words off of a list with no regard for semantic content, and then posted the output with no filtering, then I would not feel that either rationality or fairness required me to entertain those arguments.)
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That said, I think you also got a rather different take-away from “arguments as soldiers” than I did. I see it as being about goals, not rules of conduct. If you identify with a particular side, and try to make that side win, then you’re in a soldier mindset. If, while you do that, you also feel a duty to acknowledge the opponent’s valid points and to be honest about your side’s flaws, then you’re a soldier with rules of engagement, but you’re still a soldier.
The alternative is curiosity and truth-seeking. If your goal is to find the truth, then acknowledging someone else’s valid point isn’t a mere duty, it’s good strategy.
You wrote: “Good debate requires adversarial thought”. I might or might not agree, depending on how you define “debate”. But regardless, adversarial thought is NOT a requirement for truth-seeking. You can investigate, share information, and teach others, and even resolve factual agreements without it.
For instance, Double Crux is a strategy for resolving disagreements that doesn’t rely on adversarial thought. I’m also reminded of Aumann-style consensus.
Rules of engagement are certainly better than nothing. Thus is it written:
But duties are not what you’re ideally hoping for.