I disagree with the idea that freeform text leads to bad epistemic statuses. I sense that a big reason why I disagree is because I think you can read into the connotation of a lot of the “bad” epistemic statuses, even if the denotation isn’t particularly informative.
“Casual” tells me that there wasn’t too much effort spent doing research, thinking hard about the ideas, getting feedback on them, or iterating, which implies that the author isn’t too confident in the ideas. It’s more of a brain dump. I think that the absence of elaboration is also very telling. If the author was more confident, she would have (most likely) said so. And if the author was particularly skeptical of the ideas, she also (most likely) would have said so. So the absence of elaboration makes me feel like it’s somewhere in the middle.
“political, opinionated, personal, and all the typical caveats for controversial posts” interpreted literally is more of a trigger warning than an epistemic status, but I think the implication is that the author realizes that she may have some biases, and is thus not as confident as she otherwise would be. More importantly to me is what wasn’t said. The fact that no claim was made that she is or isn’t particularly confident says a lot to me.
Yeah, I have a pretty hard time understanding that third epistemic status too.
We’ve just been having a whole big discussion that boils down to “communication is hard, you can’t be sure what anyone means when they say even very simple and straightforward things, and if you have to interpret ambiguous things? forget it”. In light of this, I think that “you can read into the connotation” is… not the most strategically sound… reason to support freeform epistemic statuses.
The other problem, of course, is that reading into connotations requires shared cultural context. In many cases, when it comes to rational-sphere writing, it requires quite a lot of shared cultural context—so much that I, with distressing frequency, find myself lacking it, despite having been reading Less Wrong since before there was a Less Wrong. (Sometimes, when reading the writing of rationalists, I find myself thinking: “who, exactly, are you talking to?” It often seems like the answer is “just me local circle of friends; if that’s not you, go away”—and this, with writing that purports to be intended as a contribution to the public, global conversation about rationality and related issues and causes.)
In short, the problem with the “connotations” approach, and with freeform epistemic statuses in general, is that they are illegible. This is fine, of course—even desirable—if what you intend to do is to build, and reinforce, a tight-knit, insular community. Is it? If not, then standardization and discipline would do better.
I think that communication can be hard, but isn’t necessarily hard. And I also believe that connotations can be confusing, but aren’t necessarily confusing.
As for connotations requiring shared cultural contexts, I agree, but I think that often times the shared cultural context that they require is pretty wide, as opposed to a narrow group of friends. Eg. if you send someone a “how are you?” text message and they reply “good” and don’t respond afterwards, it’s a pretty good signal that they don’t want to continue the conversation. It’s not a perfect signal—they could have intended to follow up with a second reply and then forgot—but I’d argue that it’s a pretty strong one. More to the point, I think that the shared cultural context that it requires is pretty broad.
Still, I agree that it is often wise to err on the side of being explicit. My opinion is that it would be good to give authors a sort of prompt like “be careful about assuming that readers understand the connotation of what you’re saying” rather than completely taking the (semi)sharp knives away from them.
I also think it’d be really cool to have a sort of meta-comments section where you could offer critiques of the general writing style, as opposed to the meat of the post. That way authors can learn what approaches do and don’t work. I suspect that the quality of writing in the community will improve if that feature existed and was used.
My opinion is that it would be good to give authors a sort of prompt like “be careful about assuming that readers understand the connotation of what you’re saying” rather than completely taking the (semi)sharp knives away from them.
I am very sympathetic to your view that it is unfortunate to remove often-useful tools from our toolbox. But we can observe what the “rationalist diaspora” has done with these “semi-sharp knives” thus far. I do not think the track record is good. A moratorium seems wise. My view on this is similar to my view on the use of fictional examples and analogies: one day, we may once more trust ourselves with these powerful and versatile tools. One day—but not today, and not for some time. There have been abuses, serious enough that erring on the side of discipline and structure is warranted, now.
I also think it’d be really cool to have a sort of meta-comments section where you could offer critiques of the general writing style, as opposed to the meat of the post. That way authors can learn what approaches do and don’t work. I suspect that the quality of writing in the community will improve if that feature existed and was used.
I think that this is an excellent idea!
But do you think that authors will be in favor of this? Recent discussions seem to suggest otherwise…
One day—but not today, and not for some time. There have been abuses, serious enough that erring on the side of discipline and structure is warranted, now.
Fair. When I query my brain, I don’t get the impression that the abuses are so bad, but my brain isn’t giving me back concrete examples, so it’s hard to support my impression. I don’t feel too, too confident in my impression though, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you were right.
But do you think that authors will be in favor of this? Recent discussions seem to suggest otherwise…
Hm, I’m not sure. But that question you pose just lead to a thought—perhaps it could be opt in! That way, if you’re looking for feedback on your writing you can opt in to have that section enabled, whereas if you just are interested in discussion of the meat of the post, you can avoid opting in.
I suppose a downside to that could be that it makes those who don’t want to opt in feel uncomfortable. It could lead to a feeling of, “If I don’t opt in, won’t people see me as thinking I’m so good that I don’t need any writing advice?”.
I suppose a downside to that could be that it makes those who don’t want to opt in feel uncomfortable. It could lead to a feeling of, “If I don’t opt in, won’t people see me as thinking I’m so good that I don’t need any writing advice?”.
That is, unfortunately, not the most disturbing concern I can think of, about your suggestion.
What is problematic, in my view, is not the perception that declining to opt in to the meta-comments is a signal of confidence in the quality of your presentation. Far more problematic is the perception that declining to opt in is a signal that you don’t care about presentation, combined with a norm that not caring about presentation is acceptable.
Such a norm is already prevalent on platforms like Tumblr, and it has made inroads into Less Wrong. (I will refrain, in public, from naming names and linking posts, but feel free to ask privately, and I will provide examples.) If “meta-comments” (i.e., critique of presentation) were opt-in, then I predict that this norm would entrench itself here. (Why? Because if you have to opt into having your presentation critiqued, then, naturally, if you don’t opt in, then that must mean that readers are not allowed to critique your presentation—right? Well, actually, that logic doesn’t stand up to scrutiny; but it seems to me that it would be naive not to expect exactly this understanding, fallacious though it may be, to become accepted local truth.)
And then Less Wrong will have taken a giant step toward becoming nothing more than “Tumblr for cultural rationalists”. Instead of improving, the quality of writing in the community would degrade dramatically.
(There are other reasons why opt-in “presentation critique” / “meta-comments” would be detrimental to quality of writing; but the one I gave above is the central one, and the others are even more unpleasant to think about, and distasteful to discuss. I hope, therefore, that what I said above is sufficient to give you pause.)
I disagree with the idea that freeform text leads to bad epistemic statuses. I sense that a big reason why I disagree is because I think you can read into the connotation of a lot of the “bad” epistemic statuses, even if the denotation isn’t particularly informative.
“Casual” tells me that there wasn’t too much effort spent doing research, thinking hard about the ideas, getting feedback on them, or iterating, which implies that the author isn’t too confident in the ideas. It’s more of a brain dump. I think that the absence of elaboration is also very telling. If the author was more confident, she would have (most likely) said so. And if the author was particularly skeptical of the ideas, she also (most likely) would have said so. So the absence of elaboration makes me feel like it’s somewhere in the middle.
“political, opinionated, personal, and all the typical caveats for controversial posts” interpreted literally is more of a trigger warning than an epistemic status, but I think the implication is that the author realizes that she may have some biases, and is thus not as confident as she otherwise would be. More importantly to me is what wasn’t said. The fact that no claim was made that she is or isn’t particularly confident says a lot to me.
Yeah, I have a pretty hard time understanding that third epistemic status too.
We’ve just been having a whole big discussion that boils down to “communication is hard, you can’t be sure what anyone means when they say even very simple and straightforward things, and if you have to interpret ambiguous things? forget it”. In light of this, I think that “you can read into the connotation” is… not the most strategically sound… reason to support freeform epistemic statuses.
The other problem, of course, is that reading into connotations requires shared cultural context. In many cases, when it comes to rational-sphere writing, it requires quite a lot of shared cultural context—so much that I, with distressing frequency, find myself lacking it, despite having been reading Less Wrong since before there was a Less Wrong. (Sometimes, when reading the writing of rationalists, I find myself thinking: “who, exactly, are you talking to?” It often seems like the answer is “just me local circle of friends; if that’s not you, go away”—and this, with writing that purports to be intended as a contribution to the public, global conversation about rationality and related issues and causes.)
In short, the problem with the “connotations” approach, and with freeform epistemic statuses in general, is that they are illegible. This is fine, of course—even desirable—if what you intend to do is to build, and reinforce, a tight-knit, insular community. Is it? If not, then standardization and discipline would do better.
I think that communication can be hard, but isn’t necessarily hard. And I also believe that connotations can be confusing, but aren’t necessarily confusing.
As for connotations requiring shared cultural contexts, I agree, but I think that often times the shared cultural context that they require is pretty wide, as opposed to a narrow group of friends. Eg. if you send someone a “how are you?” text message and they reply “good” and don’t respond afterwards, it’s a pretty good signal that they don’t want to continue the conversation. It’s not a perfect signal—they could have intended to follow up with a second reply and then forgot—but I’d argue that it’s a pretty strong one. More to the point, I think that the shared cultural context that it requires is pretty broad.
Still, I agree that it is often wise to err on the side of being explicit. My opinion is that it would be good to give authors a sort of prompt like “be careful about assuming that readers understand the connotation of what you’re saying” rather than completely taking the (semi)sharp knives away from them.
I also think it’d be really cool to have a sort of meta-comments section where you could offer critiques of the general writing style, as opposed to the meat of the post. That way authors can learn what approaches do and don’t work. I suspect that the quality of writing in the community will improve if that feature existed and was used.
I am very sympathetic to your view that it is unfortunate to remove often-useful tools from our toolbox. But we can observe what the “rationalist diaspora” has done with these “semi-sharp knives” thus far. I do not think the track record is good. A moratorium seems wise. My view on this is similar to my view on the use of fictional examples and analogies: one day, we may once more trust ourselves with these powerful and versatile tools. One day—but not today, and not for some time. There have been abuses, serious enough that erring on the side of discipline and structure is warranted, now.
I think that this is an excellent idea!
But do you think that authors will be in favor of this? Recent discussions seem to suggest otherwise…
Fair. When I query my brain, I don’t get the impression that the abuses are so bad, but my brain isn’t giving me back concrete examples, so it’s hard to support my impression. I don’t feel too, too confident in my impression though, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you were right.
Hm, I’m not sure. But that question you pose just lead to a thought—perhaps it could be opt in! That way, if you’re looking for feedback on your writing you can opt in to have that section enabled, whereas if you just are interested in discussion of the meat of the post, you can avoid opting in.
I suppose a downside to that could be that it makes those who don’t want to opt in feel uncomfortable. It could lead to a feeling of, “If I don’t opt in, won’t people see me as thinking I’m so good that I don’t need any writing advice?”.
That is, unfortunately, not the most disturbing concern I can think of, about your suggestion.
What is problematic, in my view, is not the perception that declining to opt in to the meta-comments is a signal of confidence in the quality of your presentation. Far more problematic is the perception that declining to opt in is a signal that you don’t care about presentation, combined with a norm that not caring about presentation is acceptable.
Such a norm is already prevalent on platforms like Tumblr, and it has made inroads into Less Wrong. (I will refrain, in public, from naming names and linking posts, but feel free to ask privately, and I will provide examples.) If “meta-comments” (i.e., critique of presentation) were opt-in, then I predict that this norm would entrench itself here. (Why? Because if you have to opt into having your presentation critiqued, then, naturally, if you don’t opt in, then that must mean that readers are not allowed to critique your presentation—right? Well, actually, that logic doesn’t stand up to scrutiny; but it seems to me that it would be naive not to expect exactly this understanding, fallacious though it may be, to become accepted local truth.)
And then Less Wrong will have taken a giant step toward becoming nothing more than “Tumblr for cultural rationalists”. Instead of improving, the quality of writing in the community would degrade dramatically.
(There are other reasons why opt-in “presentation critique” / “meta-comments” would be detrimental to quality of writing; but the one I gave above is the central one, and the others are even more unpleasant to think about, and distasteful to discuss. I hope, therefore, that what I said above is sufficient to give you pause.)