As an author, I expect to be able to answer questions aimed to get me to say exactly what I mean! Don’t you?
I reject the framing that there is exactness about what I mean, per se. There is only what my words mean to me, and what they mean to others. I can at best say words that cause others to say words that I interpret to mean they understand what I mean, and sometimes this can be proven with high confidence by, say, using a mathematically precise model built on a agreed upon common grounding.
I’d instead say that I expect to answer questions aimed at clarifying confusion arising from differences of interpretation about what I intended to communicate, as well as questions about whether or not the world model induced in the reader’s mind (including my own mind reading my own words) by my words is accurate.
I don’t always get around to answering questions, but I would never, ever disparage someone asking real questions about my work as engaging in an “the vice of refusing to meaningfully engage” with me.
Have you never dealt with a troll whose trolling was disguised as real questions? Or more generally never dealt with someone who engaged in ways that exploited you for the purposes of their own agenda? My read is that you’re employing “real questions” to paper over a lot of complexity in how people comment on posts.
I’m not in a position to demand that they do it on my terms.
I mostly think you are, or at least are to the extent they choose to do it in the comments of something you wrote. For example, rather than a post on LessWrong, if I were hosting an academic symposium on nuclear physics, I’d reasonably be upset if a crank showed up to argue about perpetual motion. Similarly, I think there’s some good reason to push back if someone shows up and tries to yank control of the frame within the context of the comments on a post, especially if, like Said, they do it implicitly rather than explicitly.
I can’t think of a specific example, but for example I’d be much happier to see a comment that said “I think you’re wrong because you have the wrong framing. We should think about it this way...” than “You’re wrong because this contradicts this thing...” when the thing in question is a complex theory rather than some obvious, settled fact.
I reject the framing that there is exactness about what I mean, per se. There is only what my words mean to me, and what they mean to others. I can at best say words that cause others to say words that I interpret to mean they understand what I mean, and sometimes this can be proven with high confidence by, say, using a mathematically precise model built on a agreed upon common grounding.
I’d instead say that I expect to answer questions aimed at clarifying confusion arising from differences of interpretation about what I intended to communicate, as well as questions about whether or not the world model induced in the reader’s mind (including my own mind reading my own words) by my words is accurate.
Have you never dealt with a troll whose trolling was disguised as real questions? Or more generally never dealt with someone who engaged in ways that exploited you for the purposes of their own agenda? My read is that you’re employing “real questions” to paper over a lot of complexity in how people comment on posts.
I mostly think you are, or at least are to the extent they choose to do it in the comments of something you wrote. For example, rather than a post on LessWrong, if I were hosting an academic symposium on nuclear physics, I’d reasonably be upset if a crank showed up to argue about perpetual motion. Similarly, I think there’s some good reason to push back if someone shows up and tries to yank control of the frame within the context of the comments on a post, especially if, like Said, they do it implicitly rather than explicitly.
I can’t think of a specific example, but for example I’d be much happier to see a comment that said “I think you’re wrong because you have the wrong framing. We should think about it this way...” than “You’re wrong because this contradicts this thing...” when the thing in question is a complex theory rather than some obvious, settled fact.