Thanks for the elaboration. My position is that Bob’s first statement is literally false but that it implies a truth and the implication is what has been important for Alice throughout the interaction; that Bob’s second statement does NOT claim that the first one should have been originally understood as something else that is true—only in the explicit context of additional evidence; that Bob does NOT claim that his earlier statement retroactively changed.
I would still say that Bob did communicate that he was “too enthusiastic originally” and that he would have wanted to make “more carefully worded argument” if the stakes were higher—the one that was implied by the original statement and that would not have been literally false but would have been literally true if worded more carefully. But since the implied argument that he meant to say is clear to all participants at the time of the second statement, Bob knows that Alice knows what Bob meant to say, thus I say it’s OK for Bob to say that the thing in his mind had the correct shape all along—in all important aspects given the stakes of the discussion—he really did mean the thing that they together discovered as the truth even if the exact thing he said turned out literally false, but it’s false in a way that doesn’t matter now that they both know better.
I believe both of us would agree that if Bob said “All I really meant to say was that I had blue pens at my house”, that would have been a better way to comment on his own mistake, without skipping the part that disambiguates between the 2 interpretations: whether he believes in equivalence between 2 literal statements that are incompatible; or whether he would have wished to think about his words more carefully and not try to bet on a statement that is too narrow (a la the “introverted librarian” vs “librarian” fallacy which I forgot the name of—edit: conjunction fallacy)...
But I believe our disagreement is that I took 1 extra charitable step and I don’t believe Bob did any status-defending at the cost of clarity. I think Bob was clear in his communication as long as I don’t take an adversarial stance towards the imperfectly-worded “All I really meant was that I had blue pens at my house”. That the imperfect wording is excusable given the low stakes.
Though I would not endorse similar imperfect wording in a scientific paper errata.
After reading your comments and @Jiro ’s below, and discussing with LLMs on various settings, I think I was too strong in saying “large demerit” and “get a grip, Bob”. While it’s notable to me that Bob expressed himself with a status-defending post-hoc rationalization, that’s just one piece of weak evidence to Bob’s overall character.
TurnTrout’s essay includes this disclaimer:
The context for this essay is serious, high-stakes communication: papers, technical blog posts, and tweet threads.
This thread was started with a thought experiment about low-stakes verbal communication. I incorrectly applied intuitions from the opening essay outside of the intended context.
Thanks for the elaboration. My position is that Bob’s first statement is literally false but that it implies a truth and the implication is what has been important for Alice throughout the interaction; that Bob’s second statement does NOT claim that the first one should have been originally understood as something else that is true—only in the explicit context of additional evidence; that Bob does NOT claim that his earlier statement retroactively changed.
I would still say that Bob did communicate that he was “too enthusiastic originally” and that he would have wanted to make “more carefully worded argument” if the stakes were higher—the one that was implied by the original statement and that would not have been literally false but would have been literally true if worded more carefully. But since the implied argument that he meant to say is clear to all participants at the time of the second statement, Bob knows that Alice knows what Bob meant to say, thus I say it’s OK for Bob to say that the thing in his mind had the correct shape all along—in all important aspects given the stakes of the discussion—he really did mean the thing that they together discovered as the truth even if the exact thing he said turned out literally false, but it’s false in a way that doesn’t matter now that they both know better.
I believe both of us would agree that if Bob said “All I really meant to say was that I had blue pens at my house”, that would have been a better way to comment on his own mistake, without skipping the part that disambiguates between the 2 interpretations: whether he believes in equivalence between 2 literal statements that are incompatible; or whether he would have wished to think about his words more carefully and not try to bet on a statement that is too narrow (a la the “introverted librarian” vs “librarian” fallacy which I forgot the name of—edit: conjunction fallacy)...
But I believe our disagreement is that I took 1 extra charitable step and I don’t believe Bob did any status-defending at the cost of clarity. I think Bob was clear in his communication as long as I don’t take an adversarial stance towards the imperfectly-worded “All I really meant was that I had blue pens at my house”. That the imperfect wording is excusable given the low stakes.
Though I would not endorse similar imperfect wording in a scientific paper errata.
After reading your comments and @Jiro ’s below, and discussing with LLMs on various settings, I think I was too strong in saying “large demerit” and “get a grip, Bob”. While it’s notable to me that Bob expressed himself with a status-defending post-hoc rationalization, that’s just one piece of weak evidence to Bob’s overall character.
TurnTrout’s essay includes this disclaimer:
This thread was started with a thought experiment about low-stakes verbal communication. I incorrectly applied intuitions from the opening essay outside of the intended context.