Somewhat related to this, I sometimes do the following and would be interested in feedback on whether I’m coming across the right way. At the start, I’m curious why another person thinks what they think, and because I can’t expect an instant answer if I post a question online, I try to guess first. If I’m not confident in any of my guesses after a while, I’ll write down and post the question, and since I already have some guesses, I write those down as well in order to signal that I’m taking the other person seriously. But I’m not sure if I’m succeeding in this signaling attempt (e.g., maybe other people think I’m straw-manning them, or something else I’m not thinking of). Here is a recent example of me trying to do this. Feedback welcome on whether this (i.e., signaling by writing down my guesses) is a good idea, and whether I’m succeeding in my attempts.
since I already have some guesses, I write those down as well in order to signal that I’m taking the other person seriously.
I am not sure how others perceive such guesses in general, but in my experience I find them very helpful for avoiding the Double Illusion of Transparency, as they can reveal assumptions that either the reader or writer was making and that the other didn’t know about.
I think it’s usually a good idea overall, but there is a less cooperative conversational tactic which tries to masquerade as this: listing a number of plausible straw-men in order to create the appearance that all possible interpretations of what the other person is saying are bad. (Feels like from the inside: all possible interpretations are bad; i’ll demonstrate it exhaustively...)
It’s not completely terrible, because even this combative version of the conversational move opens up the opportunity for the other person to point out the (n+1)th interpretation which hasn’t been enumerated.
You can try to differentiate yourself from this via tone (by not sounding like you’re trying to argue against the other person in asking the question), but, this will only be somewhat successful since someone trying to make the less cooperative move will also try to sound like they’re honestly trying to understand.
Let’s call this process of {exposing our guessed interpretations of the other person’s position}.. uh.. “batleading”
I wonder how often that impulse to batlead is not correctly understood by the batleader, and when people respond as if we’re strawmanning or failing to notice our confusion and trying prematurely to dismiss a theory we ought to realise we haven’t understood (when really we just want to batlead) we tragically lack the terms or the introspection to object to that erroneous view of our state of mind, and things just degenerate from there
Somewhat related to this, I sometimes do the following and would be interested in feedback on whether I’m coming across the right way. At the start, I’m curious why another person thinks what they think, and because I can’t expect an instant answer if I post a question online, I try to guess first. If I’m not confident in any of my guesses after a while, I’ll write down and post the question, and since I already have some guesses, I write those down as well in order to signal that I’m taking the other person seriously. But I’m not sure if I’m succeeding in this signaling attempt (e.g., maybe other people think I’m straw-manning them, or something else I’m not thinking of). Here is a recent example of me trying to do this. Feedback welcome on whether this (i.e., signaling by writing down my guesses) is a good idea, and whether I’m succeeding in my attempts.
I am not sure how others perceive such guesses in general, but in my experience I find them very helpful for avoiding the Double Illusion of Transparency, as they can reveal assumptions that either the reader or writer was making and that the other didn’t know about.
I think it’s usually a good idea overall, but there is a less cooperative conversational tactic which tries to masquerade as this: listing a number of plausible straw-men in order to create the appearance that all possible interpretations of what the other person is saying are bad. (Feels like from the inside: all possible interpretations are bad; i’ll demonstrate it exhaustively...)
It’s not completely terrible, because even this combative version of the conversational move opens up the opportunity for the other person to point out the (n+1)th interpretation which hasn’t been enumerated.
You can try to differentiate yourself from this via tone (by not sounding like you’re trying to argue against the other person in asking the question), but, this will only be somewhat successful since someone trying to make the less cooperative move will also try to sound like they’re honestly trying to understand.
Let’s call this process of {exposing our guessed interpretations of the other person’s position}.. uh.. “batleading”
I wonder how often that impulse to batlead is not correctly understood by the batleader, and when people respond as if we’re strawmanning or failing to notice our confusion and trying prematurely to dismiss a theory we ought to realise we haven’t understood (when really we just want to batlead) we tragically lack the terms or the introspection to object to that erroneous view of our state of mind, and things just degenerate from there