You seem to be using “rude” in such a way that the property of rudeness can attach to claims on the basis of their propositional content only. That, to me, is a very strange usage.
It seems to me that either you must think that there’s nothing necessarily wrong with being rude; or, you must think that certain claims simply cannot be made, certain propositions simply cannot be expressed—regardless of their truth value (if they are not trade secrets or so on).
I disagree with the latter, and prefer a word usage that makes the former false (else the word “rude” becomes largely useless.)
It’s too late to accomplish this by this point, but the response I had planned for your CFAR comment (I actually had it planned before lahwren responded), which I didn’t have time to write before going to bed, was something like:
”I had an initial negative reaction and urge to downvote when I saw the CFAR comment, but I quickly noticed that most of that was coming from a place of tribal emotions (i.e. ‘must defend my people!’) which I didn’t endorse. I briefly considered trying to respond in a more careful way that got to the heart of the issue, but it seemed like the “yay CFAR? / boo CFAR?” was basically a distraction. There may be a time/place for it but this isn’t it.
I’d prefer if people didn’t end up having a giant discussion about “is CFAR good/bad?” and instead stuck to discussion of Double Crux as a technique.”
Having said that, in light of your other comment about wanting to see a public Double Crux, “should CFAR be positive or negative evidence of a technique’s validity” is precisely the sort of question that Double Crux is for, and I’d be interested in doing a public DC on it with you if you’re up for it (normally I’d suggest skype but since part of the point is to produce something easy for others to consume, chatlog could be fine)
(that said, I’m fairly busy in the next 30 hours or so. I might be up for it Friday night or over the weekend though)
(Edit: it looks like some other people also offered something like this, I don’t think it’s especially important I be involved, but think it’d probably be valuable in any case)
I agree with you re: the grandparent, and I appreciate the offer re: the Double Crux.
I am, sadly, unlikely to be able to take you up on it; my “commenting on or about an internet forum” time budget is already taken up by this flurry of activity here on LW 2.0.
Instead, I’d just like to reiterate my request / suggestion that you folks find some way to be able to point readers to pre-existing, publicly viewable examples of the technique being used. I think much hinges on that, at this point. Offering, when questioned, to demonstrate Double Crux, by way of trying to debate whether Double Crux is any good, is all very well, but—it simply doesn’t scale!
Doesn’t scale, but seems like it should happen at least once. (tongue sort of but not entirely in cheek). Then you can just link to it the second time.
The problem is that Double Crux is best conducted in ways that aren’t very amenable to publicizing (i.e. a private walk where people feel free-er), so there needs to be some attempts to do a public one at a time when:
- it’s high enough stakes that it matters so you can see people using the technique for real —it’s low enough stakes that it’s okay to publicly share it without you having to worry about “looking good” during the discussion —it’s convenient to record in some way
I agree, which is why I think noticing that there’s an opportunity to do a public one (i.e. now) is something that should be treated as a valuable opportunity that’s worth treating differently than arguing-on-the-internet-qua-arguing-on-the-internet.
(I also think arguing “should ‘created by CFAR’ be positive or negative evidence” is at least slightly less meta-sturbatory than “let’s double crux about double crux”)
Strong agree that it’s both true that “the lack of an example to point to produces justified skepticism” and that “that’s partly unfair because that skepticism and other ‘too busys’ keep feeding into no one taking the time to create said example.”
Yes, I think things can be rude on the basis of their propositional content. (But not only their propositional content.) If I state that you are very unintelligent, and I say it in the presence of you or of your friends, then I am being rude. I can do it in extra-rude ways (“Said is a total fucking moron”) or in less-rude ways (“I have reason to think that Said’s IQ is probably below 90″) but however you slice it it’ll be rude.
(For the avoidance of doubt, of course I do not in fact think any such thing.)
I do, indeed, think there is nothing necessarily wrong with being rude. As I said: Sometimes being rude is a good thing, and sometimes it’s a necessary evil. All else being equal, being rude is usually worse than not being rude, but many other things may outweigh the rudeness.
I don’t see that this makes the word “rude” largely useless, and I’m not sure why it should. If you mean it makes it meaningless then I strongly disagree (I take it to mean something like “predictably likely to make people upset”, though for various reasons that isn’t exactly right). If you mean it makes it unactionable then again I disagree; it just means that acting on the knowledge that something is rude is more complicated than just Not Doing It. (If you want to upset someone, which there may be good reasons for though usually there aren’t, then rudeness is beneficial. If you don’t but other things are higher-priority for you than not upsetting people, then you weigh up the benefits and harms, as always.) If you mean something other than those and the above hasn’t convinced you that my way of using “rude” isn’t useless, then you might want to explain further.
Indeed I meant “meaningless”, or perhaps “encompassing many disparate meanings under the umbrella of one word; attempting to refer to unrelated concepts as if they are the same or closely clustered; failing to cleave reality at the joints”.
I find it quite unnatural to apply the word “rude” as you do, and, to be extra clear, will certainly never mean anything like this when I use the word.
My takeaway here is that if you tell me that something is “rude”, I have not really gained any information about what you think of the thing, nor will I take you to have made any kind of definite claim about the thing, nor even do I know whether you’re attempting to ascribe positive valence to it or negative. (This is, to my mind, an unfortunate consequence of using words in strange ways, though of course you are free to use words as you please.)
I suppose I will have to remember, should you ever describe my comments as “rude” henceforth, to reply with something like—“Ok, now, what actually do you mean by this? ‘Rude’, yes, which means what…?”.
I am confused. (And also, apparently, confusing, which I regret.)
If I say something is rude then you learn that in my opinion it is likely to upset or offend a nontrivial fraction of people who read it. (Context will usually indicate roughly which people I think are likely to be upset or offended.)
How is that no information? How have I made no definite claim?
(It is true that merely from the fact that I call something rude you cannot with certainty tell whether I am being positive about it or negative. The same is true if I call something large, ingenious, conservative, wooden, complex, etc., etc., etc. I don’t see how this is a problem. For the avoidance of doubt, though, most of the time when I call something rude I am being negative about it, even if I think that the rudeness was a necessary evil.)
My use of the word “rude” doesn’t seem to me particularly nonstandard or strange. It’s more or less the same as definition 5a in the OED, which is “Unmannerly, uncivil, impolite; offensively or deliberately discourteous”. (The OED has lots of definitions, because “rude” does in fact have lots of meanings. It can e.g. sometimes mean “unrefined” or “vigorous”.)
Clearly you are dissatisfied with my usage of the word “rude”. Perhaps you might tell me yours; it is still not clear to me either what it is or why it might be better than mine. From what you say above, it seems that you want it used in such a way that “X is rude” strictly implies “X is morally wrong”, but if that’s really so then I’m unable to think of any meaning that does this while coming anywhere near the specificity that “rude” usually has. (At least for those who have moral systems not entirely based around not giving offence, which I am pretty sure includes both of us.)
You seem to be using “rude” in such a way that the property of rudeness can attach to claims on the basis of their propositional content only. That, to me, is a very strange usage.
It seems to me that either you must think that there’s nothing necessarily wrong with being rude; or, you must think that certain claims simply cannot be made, certain propositions simply cannot be expressed—regardless of their truth value (if they are not trade secrets or so on).
I disagree with the latter, and prefer a word usage that makes the former false (else the word “rude” becomes largely useless.)
It’s too late to accomplish this by this point, but the response I had planned for your CFAR comment (I actually had it planned before lahwren responded), which I didn’t have time to write before going to bed, was something like:
”I had an initial negative reaction and urge to downvote when I saw the CFAR comment, but I quickly noticed that most of that was coming from a place of tribal emotions (i.e. ‘must defend my people!’) which I didn’t endorse. I briefly considered trying to respond in a more careful way that got to the heart of the issue, but it seemed like the “yay CFAR? / boo CFAR?” was basically a distraction. There may be a time/place for it but this isn’t it.
I’d prefer if people didn’t end up having a giant discussion about “is CFAR good/bad?” and instead stuck to discussion of Double Crux as a technique.”
Having said that, in light of your other comment about wanting to see a public Double Crux, “should CFAR be positive or negative evidence of a technique’s validity” is precisely the sort of question that Double Crux is for, and I’d be interested in doing a public DC on it with you if you’re up for it (normally I’d suggest skype but since part of the point is to produce something easy for others to consume, chatlog could be fine)
(that said, I’m fairly busy in the next 30 hours or so. I might be up for it Friday night or over the weekend though)
(Edit: it looks like some other people also offered something like this, I don’t think it’s especially important I be involved, but think it’d probably be valuable in any case)
I agree with you re: the grandparent, and I appreciate the offer re: the Double Crux.
I am, sadly, unlikely to be able to take you up on it; my “commenting on or about an internet forum” time budget is already taken up by this flurry of activity here on LW 2.0.
Instead, I’d just like to reiterate my request / suggestion that you folks find some way to be able to point readers to pre-existing, publicly viewable examples of the technique being used. I think much hinges on that, at this point. Offering, when questioned, to demonstrate Double Crux, by way of trying to debate whether Double Crux is any good, is all very well, but—it simply doesn’t scale!
Doesn’t scale, but seems like it should happen at least once. (tongue sort of but not entirely in cheek). Then you can just link to it the second time.
The problem is that Double Crux is best conducted in ways that aren’t very amenable to publicizing (i.e. a private walk where people feel free-er), so there needs to be some attempts to do a public one at a time when:
- it’s high enough stakes that it matters so you can see people using the technique for real
—it’s low enough stakes that it’s okay to publicly share it without you having to worry about “looking good” during the discussion
—it’s convenient to record in some way
Well, as I say elsewhere in these comments—that does make it of rather limited utility to much of the LW readership!
I agree, which is why I think noticing that there’s an opportunity to do a public one (i.e. now) is something that should be treated as a valuable opportunity that’s worth treating differently than arguing-on-the-internet-qua-arguing-on-the-internet.
(I also think arguing “should ‘created by CFAR’ be positive or negative evidence” is at least slightly less meta-sturbatory than “let’s double crux about double crux”)
Strong agree that it’s both true that “the lack of an example to point to produces justified skepticism” and that “that’s partly unfair because that skepticism and other ‘too busys’ keep feeding into no one taking the time to create said example.”
Yes, I think things can be rude on the basis of their propositional content. (But not only their propositional content.) If I state that you are very unintelligent, and I say it in the presence of you or of your friends, then I am being rude. I can do it in extra-rude ways (“Said is a total fucking moron”) or in less-rude ways (“I have reason to think that Said’s IQ is probably below 90″) but however you slice it it’ll be rude.
(For the avoidance of doubt, of course I do not in fact think any such thing.)
I do, indeed, think there is nothing necessarily wrong with being rude. As I said: Sometimes being rude is a good thing, and sometimes it’s a necessary evil. All else being equal, being rude is usually worse than not being rude, but many other things may outweigh the rudeness.
I don’t see that this makes the word “rude” largely useless, and I’m not sure why it should. If you mean it makes it meaningless then I strongly disagree (I take it to mean something like “predictably likely to make people upset”, though for various reasons that isn’t exactly right). If you mean it makes it unactionable then again I disagree; it just means that acting on the knowledge that something is rude is more complicated than just Not Doing It. (If you want to upset someone, which there may be good reasons for though usually there aren’t, then rudeness is beneficial. If you don’t but other things are higher-priority for you than not upsetting people, then you weigh up the benefits and harms, as always.) If you mean something other than those and the above hasn’t convinced you that my way of using “rude” isn’t useless, then you might want to explain further.
Indeed I meant “meaningless”, or perhaps “encompassing many disparate meanings under the umbrella of one word; attempting to refer to unrelated concepts as if they are the same or closely clustered; failing to cleave reality at the joints”.
I find it quite unnatural to apply the word “rude” as you do, and, to be extra clear, will certainly never mean anything like this when I use the word.
My takeaway here is that if you tell me that something is “rude”, I have not really gained any information about what you think of the thing, nor will I take you to have made any kind of definite claim about the thing, nor even do I know whether you’re attempting to ascribe positive valence to it or negative. (This is, to my mind, an unfortunate consequence of using words in strange ways, though of course you are free to use words as you please.)
I suppose I will have to remember, should you ever describe my comments as “rude” henceforth, to reply with something like—“Ok, now, what actually do you mean by this? ‘Rude’, yes, which means what…?”.
I am confused. (And also, apparently, confusing, which I regret.)
If I say something is rude then you learn that in my opinion it is likely to upset or offend a nontrivial fraction of people who read it. (Context will usually indicate roughly which people I think are likely to be upset or offended.)
How is that no information? How have I made no definite claim?
(It is true that merely from the fact that I call something rude you cannot with certainty tell whether I am being positive about it or negative. The same is true if I call something large, ingenious, conservative, wooden, complex, etc., etc., etc. I don’t see how this is a problem. For the avoidance of doubt, though, most of the time when I call something rude I am being negative about it, even if I think that the rudeness was a necessary evil.)
My use of the word “rude” doesn’t seem to me particularly nonstandard or strange. It’s more or less the same as definition 5a in the OED, which is “Unmannerly, uncivil, impolite; offensively or deliberately discourteous”. (The OED has lots of definitions, because “rude” does in fact have lots of meanings. It can e.g. sometimes mean “unrefined” or “vigorous”.)
Clearly you are dissatisfied with my usage of the word “rude”. Perhaps you might tell me yours; it is still not clear to me either what it is or why it might be better than mine. From what you say above, it seems that you want it used in such a way that “X is rude” strictly implies “X is morally wrong”, but if that’s really so then I’m unable to think of any meaning that does this while coming anywhere near the specificity that “rude” usually has. (At least for those who have moral systems not entirely based around not giving offence, which I am pretty sure includes both of us.)