The exact phrasing isn’t important, but conveying the right message is. As Zvi and Ruby note, that “being”/”doing”/etc part is important. “You’re dumb” is not an acceptable alternative because it does not mean the same thing. “Your argument is bad” is also unacceptable because it also means something completely different.
“Your argument is bad” only means “your argument is bad”, and it is possible to go about things in a perfectly reasonable way and still have bad arguments sometimes. It is completely different than a situation where someone is failing to notice problems in their arguments which would be obvious to them if they weren’t engaging in motivated cognition and muddying their own thinking. An inability to think well is quite literally what “dumb” is, and “being dumb” is a literal description of what they’re doing, not a sloppy or motivated attempt to say or pretend to be saying something else.
As far as “then why does it always come out that way”, besides the fact that “you’re being dumb” is far quicker to say than the more neutral “you’re engaging in motivated cognition”, in my experience it doesn’t always or even usually come out that way — and in fact often doesn’t come out at all, which was kinda the point of my original comment.
When it does take that form, there are often good reasons which go beyond “¼ the syllables” and are completely above board, explicit, and agreed upon by both parties. Counter-signalling respect and affection is perhaps the clearest example.
There are examples of people doing it poorly or with hostile and dishonest intent, of course, but the answer to “why do those people do it that way” is a very different question than what was asked.
The exact phrasing isn’t important, but conveying the right message is. As Zvi and Ruby note, that “being”/”doing”/etc part is important. “You’re dumb” is not an acceptable alternative because it does not mean the same thing. “Your argument is bad” is also unacceptable because it also means something completely different.
“Your argument is bad” only means “your argument is bad”, and it is possible to go about things in a perfectly reasonable way and still have bad arguments sometimes. It is completely different than a situation where someone is failing to notice problems in their arguments which would be obvious to them if they weren’t engaging in motivated cognition and muddying their own thinking. An inability to think well is quite literally what “dumb” is, and “being dumb” is a literal description of what they’re doing, not a sloppy or motivated attempt to say or pretend to be saying something else.
As far as “then why does it always come out that way”, besides the fact that “you’re being dumb” is far quicker to say than the more neutral “you’re engaging in motivated cognition”, in my experience it doesn’t always or even usually come out that way — and in fact often doesn’t come out at all, which was kinda the point of my original comment.
When it does take that form, there are often good reasons which go beyond “¼ the syllables” and are completely above board, explicit, and agreed upon by both parties. Counter-signalling respect and affection is perhaps the clearest example.
There are examples of people doing it poorly or with hostile and dishonest intent, of course, but the answer to “why do those people do it that way” is a very different question than what was asked.