I kinda want to flag something like “yes, that’s the point”? If Martín’s position is hard to pin down, then… like, it’s better to say “I don’t know what he’s trying to say” than “he’s trying to say [concrete thing he’s not trying to say]”, but both of them seem like they fit for the purposes of this post. (And if Elizabeth had said “I don’t know what he’s trying to say” then I anticipate three different commenters giving four different explanations of what Martín had obviously been saying.)
And, part of the point here is “it is very hard to talk about this kind of thing”. And I think that if the response to this post is a bunch of “gotcha! You said this comment was bad in one particular way, but it’s actually bad in an interestingly different way”, that kinda feels like it proves Elizabeth right?
But also I do want there to be space for that kind of thing, so uh. Idk. I think if I was making a comment like that I’d try to explicitly flag it as “not a crux, feel free to ignore”.
And, part of the point here is “it is very hard to talk about this kind of thing”. And I think that if the response to this post is a bunch of “gotcha! You said this comment was bad in one particular way, but it’s actually bad in an interestingly different way”, that kinda feels like it proves Elizabeth right?
This seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I wrote a post that said:
It’s common for people on LessWrong to accuse others of misquoting them. For example, just the other day, Elizabeth said:
wilkox is always misquoting me! He claimed that I said the moon is made of rubber, when of course I actually believe it is made of cheese.
and philh said:
I wish wilkox would stop attributing made-up positions to me. He quoted me as saying that the sky is blue. I’m a very well-documented theskyisgreenist.
The responses to that post would quite likely provide evidence in favour of my central claim. But this doesn’t mean that the evidence I provided was sound, or that it shouldn’t be open to criticism.
I don’t think this is a great analogy, but basically yeah. This sort of thing is why I included the last paragraph in my previous comment (“I do want there to be space for that kind of thing”).
So I haven’t reread to figure out an opinion on most of this, but wrt this specific point
I kinda want to flag something like “yes, that’s the point”? If Martín’s position is hard to pin down, then… like, it’s better to say “I don’t know what he’s trying to say” than “he’s trying to say [concrete thing he’s not trying to say]”, but both of them seem like they fit for the purposes of this post. (And if Elizabeth had said “I don’t know what he’s trying to say” then I anticipate three different commenters giving four different explanations of what Martín had obviously been saying.)
And, part of the point here is “it is very hard to talk about this kind of thing”. And I think that if the response to this post is a bunch of “gotcha! You said this comment was bad in one particular way, but it’s actually bad in an interestingly different way”, that kinda feels like it proves Elizabeth right?
But also I do want there to be space for that kind of thing, so uh. Idk. I think if I was making a comment like that I’d try to explicitly flag it as “not a crux, feel free to ignore”.
This seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I wrote a post that said:
The responses to that post would quite likely provide evidence in favour of my central claim. But this doesn’t mean that the evidence I provided was sound, or that it shouldn’t be open to criticism.
I don’t think this is a great analogy, but basically yeah. This sort of thing is why I included the last paragraph in my previous comment (“I do want there to be space for that kind of thing”).