(random shower thoughts written with basically no editing)
Sometimes arguments have a beat that looks like “there is extreme position X, and opposing extreme position Y. what about a moderate ‘Combination’ position?” (I’ve noticed this in both my own and others’ arguments)
I think there are sometimes some problems with this.
Usually almost nobody is on the most extreme ends of the spectrum. Nearly everyone falls into the “Combination” bucket technically, so in practice you have to draw the boundary between “combination enough” vs “not combination enough to count as combination”, which is sometimes fraught. (There is a dual argument beat that looks like “people too often bucket things into distinct buckets, what about thinking of things as a spectrum.” I think this does the opposite mistake, because sometimes there really are relatively meaningful clusters to point to. (this seems quite reminiscent of one Scottpost that I can’t remember the name of rn))
In many cases, there is no easy 1d spectrum. Being a “combination” could refer to a whole set of mutually exclusive sets of views. This problem gets especially bad when the endpoints differ along many axes at once. (Another dual argument here that looks like “things are more nuanced than they seem” which has its own opposite problems)
Of the times where this is meaningful, I would guess it almost always happens when the axis one has identified is interesting and captures some interesting property of the world. That is to say, if you’ve identified some kind of quantity that seems to be very explanatory, just noting that fact actually produces lots of value, and then arguing about how or whether to bucket that quantity up into groups has sharply diminishing value.
In other words, introducing the frame that some particular latent in the world exists and is predictive is hugely valuable; when you say “and therefore my position is in between other people’s”, this is valuable due to the introduction of the frame. The actual heavy lifting happened in the frame, and the part where you point to some underexplored region of the space implied by that frame is actually not doing much work.
I hypothesize one common thing is that if you don’t draw this distinction, then it feels like the heavy lifting comes in the part where you do the pointing, and then you might want to do this within already commonly accepted frames. From the inside I think this feels like existing clusters of people being surprisingly closed minded, whereas the true reason is that the usefulness of the existing frame has been exhausted.
related take: “things are more nuanced than they seem” is valuable only as the summary of a detailed exploration of the nuance that engages heavily with object level cruxes; the heavy lifting is done by the exploration, not the summary
(random shower thoughts written with basically no editing)
Sometimes arguments have a beat that looks like “there is extreme position X, and opposing extreme position Y. what about a moderate ‘Combination’ position?” (I’ve noticed this in both my own and others’ arguments)
I think there are sometimes some problems with this.
Usually almost nobody is on the most extreme ends of the spectrum. Nearly everyone falls into the “Combination” bucket technically, so in practice you have to draw the boundary between “combination enough” vs “not combination enough to count as combination”, which is sometimes fraught. (There is a dual argument beat that looks like “people too often bucket things into distinct buckets, what about thinking of things as a spectrum.” I think this does the opposite mistake, because sometimes there really are relatively meaningful clusters to point to. (this seems quite reminiscent of one Scottpost that I can’t remember the name of rn))
In many cases, there is no easy 1d spectrum. Being a “combination” could refer to a whole set of mutually exclusive sets of views. This problem gets especially bad when the endpoints differ along many axes at once. (Another dual argument here that looks like “things are more nuanced than they seem” which has its own opposite problems)
Of the times where this is meaningful, I would guess it almost always happens when the axis one has identified is interesting and captures some interesting property of the world. That is to say, if you’ve identified some kind of quantity that seems to be very explanatory, just noting that fact actually produces lots of value, and then arguing about how or whether to bucket that quantity up into groups has sharply diminishing value.
In other words, introducing the frame that some particular latent in the world exists and is predictive is hugely valuable; when you say “and therefore my position is in between other people’s”, this is valuable due to the introduction of the frame. The actual heavy lifting happened in the frame, and the part where you point to some underexplored region of the space implied by that frame is actually not doing much work.
I hypothesize one common thing is that if you don’t draw this distinction, then it feels like the heavy lifting comes in the part where you do the pointing, and then you might want to do this within already commonly accepted frames. From the inside I think this feels like existing clusters of people being surprisingly closed minded, whereas the true reason is that the usefulness of the existing frame has been exhausted.
related take: “things are more nuanced than they seem” is valuable only as the summary of a detailed exploration of the nuance that engages heavily with object level cruxes; the heavy lifting is done by the exploration, not the summary