We may have different values, or we may be imagining a different hypothetical, or something else. I’ll try to elaborate.
Like you, it seems blindingly obvious to me what Bob was trying to communicate by saying “I literally have a packet of blue BIC pens in my desk drawer”. To be explicit, Bob is stating his belief that there is a packet of blue BIC pens in his desk drawer. He doesn’t specify his credence, but it’s probably somewhere 90-99% depending on other factors.
Bob’s words imply other things that have been mentioned, all of which are straightforwardly true:
Blue BIC pens exist in the world.
There is a packet of blue BIC pens in Bob’s house.
Bob can prove the existence of blue BIC pens by showing them to Alice.
Bob remembers the packet of blue BIC pens being in the drawer.
It would be surprising to Bob if there were no packet of blue BIC pens in the drawer.
I’m okay with assigning “basically full credit” for Bob’s statement. I wouldn’t call it “sloppy”; I wouldn’t say it was “too enthusiastic”; I wouldn’t call for a “weaker version” or “more carefully worded argument”. It’s okay to make mistakes, try to fix them, and learn from them too.
The statement that I say is false and bad is:
“All I really meant was that I had blue pens at my house”
To me, Bob’s words here prioritize status-defending over clarity. They remind me of this from TurnTrout’s opening post:
An author committed to clarity might say something like: “I can see how my words led you to believe X. To be clear, what I mean is Y.” This response takes responsibility.
A status-defending author might say something more like: “You are wrong to read it as X. It obviously means Y, and you are being uncharitable.” This response deflects responsibility.
I’m not clear what your position is exactly (and it may not be mattmacdermott’s position). I guess one of:
Bob’s statement is literally false, but should be understood as something else (what?) that is true.
Bob’s statement is true, because the meaning of Bob’s earlier statements retroactively changed when Bob opened the drawer.
Bob’s statement is false, but given the low everyday-life stakes, it’s ok.
I have some sympathy with these positions, but I respectfully disagree.
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.
We may have different values, or we may be imagining a different hypothetical, or something else. I’ll try to elaborate.
Like you, it seems blindingly obvious to me what Bob was trying to communicate by saying “I literally have a packet of blue BIC pens in my desk drawer”. To be explicit, Bob is stating his belief that there is a packet of blue BIC pens in his desk drawer. He doesn’t specify his credence, but it’s probably somewhere 90-99% depending on other factors.
Bob’s words imply other things that have been mentioned, all of which are straightforwardly true:
Blue BIC pens exist in the world.
There is a packet of blue BIC pens in Bob’s house.
Bob can prove the existence of blue BIC pens by showing them to Alice.
Bob remembers the packet of blue BIC pens being in the drawer.
It would be surprising to Bob if there were no packet of blue BIC pens in the drawer.
I’m okay with assigning “basically full credit” for Bob’s statement. I wouldn’t call it “sloppy”; I wouldn’t say it was “too enthusiastic”; I wouldn’t call for a “weaker version” or “more carefully worded argument”. It’s okay to make mistakes, try to fix them, and learn from them too.
The statement that I say is false and bad is:
To me, Bob’s words here prioritize status-defending over clarity. They remind me of this from TurnTrout’s opening post:
I’m not clear what your position is exactly (and it may not be mattmacdermott’s position). I guess one of:
Bob’s statement is literally false, but should be understood as something else (what?) that is true.
Bob’s statement is true, because the meaning of Bob’s earlier statements retroactively changed when Bob opened the drawer.
Bob’s statement is false, but given the low everyday-life stakes, it’s ok.
I have some sympathy with these positions, but I respectfully disagree.
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.