I would favor a conversation where we keep attacks on the persons to an absolute minimum and focus instead on the arguments being made (addressing the person is sometimes necessary, but entirely ignoring the argument in favor of attempting to psychoanalyze a stranger on the internet is not a good way to have a philosophical discussion). Secondly I would also like to hear a counterargument to the argument I made. And thirdly I have never deleted a comment, but you appear to have double posted, shall I delete one of them?
It’s not an attack, and I would recommend not taking it as one. People make that mistake all the time, and there’s no shame in that. Heck, maybe I’m even wrong and what I’m perceiving as an error actually isn’t faulty. Learning from mistakes (if it turns out to be one) is how we get stronger.
I try to avoid making that mistake, but if you feel like I’m erring, I would rather you be comfortable pointing out what you see instead of fearing that I will take it as an attack. Conversations (philosophical and otherwise) work much more efficiently this way.
I’m sorry if it hasn’t been sufficiently clear that I’m friendly and not attacking you. I tried to make it clear by phrasing things carefully and using a smiley face, but if you can think of anything else I can do to make it clearer, let me know.
Secondly I would also like to hear an actual counterargument to the argument I made
Which one? The “it was only studying IBS” one was only studying IBS, sure. It still shows that you can do placebos without deception in the cases they studied. It’s always going to be “in the cases they’ve studied” and it’s always conceivable that if you only knew to find the right use of placebos to test, you’ll find one where it doesn’t work. However, when placebos work without deception in every case you’ve tested, the default hypothesis is no longer “well, they require deception in every case except these two weird cases that I happen to have checked”. The default hypothesis should now be “maybe they just don’t require deception at all, and if they do maybe it’s much more rare than I thought”.
I’m not sure what point the existence of nocebo makes for you, but the same principles apply there too. I’ve gotten a guy to punch a cactus right after he told me “don’t make me punch the cactus” simply by making him expect that if I told him to do it he would. Simply replace “because drugs” with “because of the way your mind works” and you can do all the same things and more.
I’m not sure how many more times I’ll be willing to address things like this though. I’m willing to move on to further detail of how this stuff works, or to address counterarguments that I hadn’t considered and are therefore surprisingly strong, but if you still just don’t buy into the general idea as worth exploring then I can agree to disagree.
And thirdly I have never deleted a comment, but you appear to have double posted, shall I delete one of them?
Yeah, it didn’t submit properly the first time and then didn’t seem to be working the second time so it ended up posting two by the time I finally got confirmation that it worked. I’d have deleted one if I could have.
Speaking of deleting things, what happened to your other post?
It’s not an attack, and I would recommend not taking it as one.
Attack is just the way in which ‘verbal arguments against X’ are often shortened to, but while it is the common way of phrasing such a thing, I agree that it is stylistically odd. I didn’t assume you had any malice in mind, I was just using it the common way but will refrain from doing so (in similar context) in the future.
Yeah, it didn’t submit properly the first time and then didn’t seem to be working the second time so it ended up posting two by the time I finally got confirmation that it worked. I’d have deleted one if I could have.
Speaking of deleting things, what happened to your other post?
Alright no problem, things like that happen all the time so I will just delete it. I described what happend to the other post here. This was one of the difficult cases where I had to balance my desire to have a record of the things (and mistakes) people (including me) said and not wanting to clog the website with low-quality (as the downvotes indicated) content (I think I found a good solution). I’m having the same dilemma right now where my genuine comments are getting voted into the negative and I’m starting to feel really bad for trying to satisfy my own personal curiosity at the expense of eating up peoples time with content they think is low quality (yes yes, I know that that doesn’t mean it is low quality per se, but it is a close enough heuristic that I’m mostly willing to stick to it). But the downvotes are very clear so while I’m disappointed that we couldn’t talk through this issue, I will no longer be eating up peoples time.
I’m having the same dilemma right now where my genuine comments are getting voted into the negative and I’m starting to feel really bad for trying to satisfy my own personal curiosity at the expense of eating up peoples time with content they think is low quality (yes yes, I know that that doesn’t mean it is low quality per se, but it is a close enough heuristic that I’m mostly willing to stick to it). But the downvotes are very clear so while I’m disappointed that we couldn’t talk through this issue, I will no longer be eating up peoples time.
The only comments of yours that I see downvoted into the negative are the two prior conversations in this thread. Were there others that are now positive again?
While I generally support the idea that it’s better to stop posting than to continue to post things which will predictably be negative karma sum, I don’t think that’s necessary here. There’s plenty of room on LW for things other than curated posts sharing novel insights, and I think working through one’s own curiosity can be good not just for the individual in question, but any other lurkers who might have the same curiosities and for the community, as bringing people up to speed is an important part of helping them learn to interact best with the community.
I think the down votes are about something else which is a lot more easily fixable. While I’m sure they were genuine, some of your comments strike me as not particularly charitable. In order to hold a productive conversation, people have to be able to build from a common understanding. The more work you put in to understanding where the other person is coming from and how it can be a coherent and reasonable stance to hold, the less effort it takes for them to communicate something that is understood. At some point, if you don’t put enough effort in you start to miss valid points which would have been easy for you to find and would be prohibitively difficult to word in a way that you wouldn’t miss.
As an example, you responded to Richard_Kenneway as if he thought you were lying despite the fact that he explicitly stated that he was not imputing any dishonesty. I’m not sure where you simply missed that part or whether you don’t believe him, but either way it is very hard to have a conversation with someone that doesn’t engage with points like this at least enough to say why they aren’t convinced. I think, with a little more effort put into understanding how your interlocutors might be making reasonable, charitable, and valid points, you will be able to avoid the down votes in the future. That’s not to say that you have to believe that they’re being reasonable/charitable/etc, or that you have to act like you do, but it’s nice to at least put in some real effort to check and give them a chance to show when they are. Because the tendency for people to fail on the side of “insufficiently charitable” is really really strong, and even when the uncharitable view is the correct one (not that common on LW), the best way to show it is often to be charitable and have it visibly not fit.
It’s a very common problem that comes up in conversation, especially when pushing into new territory. I wouldn’t sweat it.
I would favor a conversation where we keep attacks on the persons to an absolute minimum and focus instead on the arguments being made (addressing the person is sometimes necessary, but entirely ignoring the argument in favor of attempting to psychoanalyze a stranger on the internet is not a good way to have a philosophical discussion). Secondly I would also like to hear a counterargument to the argument I made. And thirdly I have never deleted a comment, but you appear to have double posted, shall I delete one of them?
It’s not an attack, and I would recommend not taking it as one. People make that mistake all the time, and there’s no shame in that. Heck, maybe I’m even wrong and what I’m perceiving as an error actually isn’t faulty. Learning from mistakes (if it turns out to be one) is how we get stronger.
I try to avoid making that mistake, but if you feel like I’m erring, I would rather you be comfortable pointing out what you see instead of fearing that I will take it as an attack. Conversations (philosophical and otherwise) work much more efficiently this way.
I’m sorry if it hasn’t been sufficiently clear that I’m friendly and not attacking you. I tried to make it clear by phrasing things carefully and using a smiley face, but if you can think of anything else I can do to make it clearer, let me know.
Which one? The “it was only studying IBS” one was only studying IBS, sure. It still shows that you can do placebos without deception in the cases they studied. It’s always going to be “in the cases they’ve studied” and it’s always conceivable that if you only knew to find the right use of placebos to test, you’ll find one where it doesn’t work. However, when placebos work without deception in every case you’ve tested, the default hypothesis is no longer “well, they require deception in every case except these two weird cases that I happen to have checked”. The default hypothesis should now be “maybe they just don’t require deception at all, and if they do maybe it’s much more rare than I thought”.
I’m not sure what point the existence of nocebo makes for you, but the same principles apply there too. I’ve gotten a guy to punch a cactus right after he told me “don’t make me punch the cactus” simply by making him expect that if I told him to do it he would. Simply replace “because drugs” with “because of the way your mind works” and you can do all the same things and more.
I’m not sure how many more times I’ll be willing to address things like this though. I’m willing to move on to further detail of how this stuff works, or to address counterarguments that I hadn’t considered and are therefore surprisingly strong, but if you still just don’t buy into the general idea as worth exploring then I can agree to disagree.
Yeah, it didn’t submit properly the first time and then didn’t seem to be working the second time so it ended up posting two by the time I finally got confirmation that it worked. I’d have deleted one if I could have.
Speaking of deleting things, what happened to your other post?
Attack is just the way in which ‘verbal arguments against X’ are often shortened to, but while it is the common way of phrasing such a thing, I agree that it is stylistically odd. I didn’t assume you had any malice in mind, I was just using it the common way but will refrain from doing so (in similar context) in the future.
Alright no problem, things like that happen all the time so I will just delete it. I described what happend to the other post here. This was one of the difficult cases where I had to balance my desire to have a record of the things (and mistakes) people (including me) said and not wanting to clog the website with low-quality (as the downvotes indicated) content (I think I found a good solution). I’m having the same dilemma right now where my genuine comments are getting voted into the negative and I’m starting to feel really bad for trying to satisfy my own personal curiosity at the expense of eating up peoples time with content they think is low quality (yes yes, I know that that doesn’t mean it is low quality per se, but it is a close enough heuristic that I’m mostly willing to stick to it). But the downvotes are very clear so while I’m disappointed that we couldn’t talk through this issue, I will no longer be eating up peoples time.
Thanks, I hadn’t seen the edit.
The only comments of yours that I see downvoted into the negative are the two prior conversations in this thread. Were there others that are now positive again?
While I generally support the idea that it’s better to stop posting than to continue to post things which will predictably be negative karma sum, I don’t think that’s necessary here. There’s plenty of room on LW for things other than curated posts sharing novel insights, and I think working through one’s own curiosity can be good not just for the individual in question, but any other lurkers who might have the same curiosities and for the community, as bringing people up to speed is an important part of helping them learn to interact best with the community.
I think the down votes are about something else which is a lot more easily fixable. While I’m sure they were genuine, some of your comments strike me as not particularly charitable. In order to hold a productive conversation, people have to be able to build from a common understanding. The more work you put in to understanding where the other person is coming from and how it can be a coherent and reasonable stance to hold, the less effort it takes for them to communicate something that is understood. At some point, if you don’t put enough effort in you start to miss valid points which would have been easy for you to find and would be prohibitively difficult to word in a way that you wouldn’t miss.
As an example, you responded to Richard_Kenneway as if he thought you were lying despite the fact that he explicitly stated that he was not imputing any dishonesty. I’m not sure where you simply missed that part or whether you don’t believe him, but either way it is very hard to have a conversation with someone that doesn’t engage with points like this at least enough to say why they aren’t convinced. I think, with a little more effort put into understanding how your interlocutors might be making reasonable, charitable, and valid points, you will be able to avoid the down votes in the future. That’s not to say that you have to believe that they’re being reasonable/charitable/etc, or that you have to act like you do, but it’s nice to at least put in some real effort to check and give them a chance to show when they are. Because the tendency for people to fail on the side of “insufficiently charitable” is really really strong, and even when the uncharitable view is the correct one (not that common on LW), the best way to show it is often to be charitable and have it visibly not fit.
It’s a very common problem that comes up in conversation, especially when pushing into new territory. I wouldn’t sweat it.