Great post. I’m curious about generalizations / other things in some class. Feels like there’s a whole toolbox for “aggressively not answering the question”. Another example besides the Halo Defense is agreeing on an abstracted claim (while not addressing the particular claim). E.g.:
A: “Do you agree that Charles generally does not carry his firearm, and that on the morning of the 9th he put his firearm into his backpack?”
B: “I totally agree with you that murder is wrong. It’s wrong when Republicans do it, and it’s wrong when Democrats do it. And we can definitely discuss these things, and as I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again, if someone commits murder then he should go to jail.”
Part of how it works is simply distraction / filibustering. But also it kinda bends the Gricean implicature, where you’re kinda compelling the discourse to have been about the abstracted claim. Sometimes it works on A; even if it doesn’t, it might work on some of the audience; and even if it doesn’t, it can give B plausible deniability, where an audience member might be like “well the conversation just didn’t get clarified”, as opposed to if B more directly said “uh no comment” or something.
Great post. I’m curious about generalizations / other things in some class. Feels like there’s a whole toolbox for “aggressively not answering the question”. Another example besides the Halo Defense is agreeing on an abstracted claim (while not addressing the particular claim). E.g.:
A: “Do you agree that Charles generally does not carry his firearm, and that on the morning of the 9th he put his firearm into his backpack?” B: “I totally agree with you that murder is wrong. It’s wrong when Republicans do it, and it’s wrong when Democrats do it. And we can definitely discuss these things, and as I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again, if someone commits murder then he should go to jail.”
Part of how it works is simply distraction / filibustering. But also it kinda bends the Gricean implicature, where you’re kinda compelling the discourse to have been about the abstracted claim. Sometimes it works on A; even if it doesn’t, it might work on some of the audience; and even if it doesn’t, it can give B plausible deniability, where an audience member might be like “well the conversation just didn’t get clarified”, as opposed to if B more directly said “uh no comment” or something.