Beautifully written. And visibly practicing what you preach.
I was not, however, socially adroit, so what I said was “why do you care about something boring like horses?”
[...]
This is a pure tactical mistake.
I didn’t get more information this way. I wasn’t more honest by being more graceful. This is not a linear scale.
I don’t think you could have conveyed this without taking away from the clarity with which you demonstrate your thesis, but I also think you undersell the point here.
It’s easy to read this and think “Oh, so social skills and grace are kinda orthogonal to epistemic virtue, at least in cases like this”, and that alone is sufficient to justify “Maybe notice the possibility of practicing more grace so that you can do it when it is socially helpful and not epistemically harmful”.
It’s much deeper than that, because what she was pissed off about is epistemics. Back in your less skilled days, you were being a jackass by making your epistemic vices a social rationality problem. She was forced to either accept falsehoods into the social epistemics, or push back and engage in social conflict.
I’ll explain.
So, “horses are boring” asserts that horses are boring. It implies that if someone thinks horses are interesting, they’re wrong—like her. She’s wrong. This assertion presupposes that her interest in horses is not meaningful evidence about their interestingness that could change your mind—but is this presupposition justified? If it was, why the heck would he be asking her in the first place? If he really knew something she didn’t, why not just explain it to her so she can realize that horses aren’t as interesting as she thought?
Her fascination with horses is evidence that horses are or at least can be fascinating. Your desire to ask her about her interest, presuming that you’re being genuine, is evidence that her perspective is meaningful evidence to you. Noticing this, we can take a step towards improved epistemics by noticing what this does to our confidence in the idea that horses really are boring, after all. Because now it’s no longer “Horses are boring”. It’s “Huh, I always thought horses are boring, but she obviously finds something about them to be really interesting. What might she see that I do not?”.
And what comes out once you have that realization?
How about “What do you find so interesting about horses?”
Or, if you’re going to reference your initial perspective at all, it’s going to come out like “Huh, I always thought they weren’t interesting” or “I never was able to find anything interesting about horses”—not a presupposition that they are boring, as if anything she could possibly say would be wrong.
The “grace” here, is specifically in not pushing forth one’s ignorance as fact in direct contradiction to the evidence you’re responding to. It’s epistemic humility—an epistemic virtue, not merely a virtue of social harmony.
It’s a great example because it’s both relatable and not abusing an edge case to make a point. I think it’s central. It’s an easy case that we can all look at and say “okay, failing socially isn’t epistemically virtuous”, and there are harder cases where it’s harder to square social grace with epistemic virtue. But those are just that—harder.
Beautifully written. And visibly practicing what you preach.
I don’t think you could have conveyed this without taking away from the clarity with which you demonstrate your thesis, but I also think you undersell the point here.
It’s easy to read this and think “Oh, so social skills and grace are kinda orthogonal to epistemic virtue, at least in cases like this”, and that alone is sufficient to justify “Maybe notice the possibility of practicing more grace so that you can do it when it is socially helpful and not epistemically harmful”.
It’s much deeper than that, because what she was pissed off about is epistemics. Back in your less skilled days, you were being a jackass by making your epistemic vices a social rationality problem. She was forced to either accept falsehoods into the social epistemics, or push back and engage in social conflict.
I’ll explain.
So, “horses are boring” asserts that horses are boring. It implies that if someone thinks horses are interesting, they’re wrong—like her. She’s wrong. This assertion presupposes that her interest in horses is not meaningful evidence about their interestingness that could change your mind—but is this presupposition justified? If it was, why the heck would he be asking her in the first place? If he really knew something she didn’t, why not just explain it to her so she can realize that horses aren’t as interesting as she thought?
Her fascination with horses is evidence that horses are or at least can be fascinating. Your desire to ask her about her interest, presuming that you’re being genuine, is evidence that her perspective is meaningful evidence to you. Noticing this, we can take a step towards improved epistemics by noticing what this does to our confidence in the idea that horses really are boring, after all. Because now it’s no longer “Horses are boring”. It’s “Huh, I always thought horses are boring, but she obviously finds something about them to be really interesting. What might she see that I do not?”.
And what comes out once you have that realization?
How about “What do you find so interesting about horses?”
Or, if you’re going to reference your initial perspective at all, it’s going to come out like “Huh, I always thought they weren’t interesting” or “I never was able to find anything interesting about horses”—not a presupposition that they are boring, as if anything she could possibly say would be wrong.
The “grace” here, is specifically in not pushing forth one’s ignorance as fact in direct contradiction to the evidence you’re responding to. It’s epistemic humility—an epistemic virtue, not merely a virtue of social harmony.
It’s a great example because it’s both relatable and not abusing an edge case to make a point. I think it’s central. It’s an easy case that we can all look at and say “okay, failing socially isn’t epistemically virtuous”, and there are harder cases where it’s harder to square social grace with epistemic virtue. But those are just that—harder.
Still a skill issue.
At least, more often than not.