I think about Inferential Distance a lot, and I still find it very hard to work around and find myself frequently hurt by underestimating it. Part of what you’re talking about might just be that dealing with Inferential Distance is just Darn Hard.
I’m often forced to choose between spending a long, long time explaining the underpinnings of an argument, or explaining about inferential distance and referring my interlocutor to a Bostrom essay or LW article or (recently) Permutation City. As long as we’ve stayed on the “mutual learning” side of such discussions, not the adversarial side, my interlocutor is at least mildly interested in the background material.
I think about Inferential Distance a lot, and I still find it very hard to work around and find myself frequently hurt by underestimating it. Part of what you’re talking about might just be that dealing with Inferential Distance is just Darn Hard.
I’m often forced to choose between spending a long, long time explaining the underpinnings of an argument, or explaining about inferential distance and referring my interlocutor to a Bostrom essay or LW article or (recently) Permutation City. As long as we’ve stayed on the “mutual learning” side of such discussions, not the adversarial side, my interlocutor is at least mildly interested in the background material.