I think good new insights in practice tend to come from old commenters who rethink things one point at a time and not as much from new commenters who start out with an attitude of belligerent dismissal.
much of the time when I disagree with some “useful commenter” I still think both of our approaches ought to be explored so there’s not that much gain from arguing with them
I don’t understand. Doesn’t arguing with them constitute exploring the different approaches?
I think good new insights in practice tend to come from old commenters who rethink things one point at a time and not as much from new commenters who start out with an attitude of belligerent dismissal.
I think it’s good to have some natural contrarians/skeptics around who like to find flaws in whatever ideas they see. I guess I played this role somewhat back in the OB days, but less so now that I’m closer to the “inner circle”. Of course I was more careful to make sure the flaws are real flaws, and not very belligerent...
I don’t understand. Doesn’t arguing with them constitute exploring the different approaches?
Maybe we’re not thinking about the same things. I’m talking about like when cousin_it or Nesov has some decision theory idea that I don’t think is particularly promising, I tend to let them work on it and either reach that conclusion themselves or obtain some undeniable result, instead of trying to talk them out of it and work on my preferred approaches. What kind of arguments are you thinking of?
I suppose I was thinking of arguments more informal than decision theory, and I suppose in the context of such informal arguments, exchanging a lot of small chunks of reasoning seems more useful than it does in the context of building decision theory models.
I think good new insights in practice tend to come from old commenters who rethink things one point at a time and not as much from new commenters who start out with an attitude of belligerent dismissal.
I don’t understand. Doesn’t arguing with them constitute exploring the different approaches?
I think it’s good to have some natural contrarians/skeptics around who like to find flaws in whatever ideas they see. I guess I played this role somewhat back in the OB days, but less so now that I’m closer to the “inner circle”. Of course I was more careful to make sure the flaws are real flaws, and not very belligerent...
Maybe we’re not thinking about the same things. I’m talking about like when cousin_it or Nesov has some decision theory idea that I don’t think is particularly promising, I tend to let them work on it and either reach that conclusion themselves or obtain some undeniable result, instead of trying to talk them out of it and work on my preferred approaches. What kind of arguments are you thinking of?
I suppose I was thinking of arguments more informal than decision theory, and I suppose in the context of such informal arguments, exchanging a lot of small chunks of reasoning seems more useful than it does in the context of building decision theory models.