Actually… one reason I was careful to draw the distinction, is that the above (as it so happens) strikes me as a childish point.
Like, it was the sort of thing I never said to my parents as a teenager because it would have been too much like what a “teenager” (albeit a clever one who’d read Godel, Escher, Bach) would have said to his parents.
Is worry over appearing childish self-undermining? In general, no; it is self-undermining only if we assume that children and only children are concerned with appearing adult. As it happens, most adults are concerned with appearing adult. Are they wrong to do so? That depends on why, I’d say. A concern with appearing adult as a strictly pragmatic matter of public relations, coupled with a total unconcern over actually being adult, could well be healthy and rational in certain cases.
Of course, having actually been maneuvered into a position where you have to argue that you aren’t childish, the argument itself will seem childish; but this is a matter of being placed in a clever trap, not a matter of the audience making valid Bayesian inferences.
...okay, I’ve probably been reading too much about logic today.
Actually… one reason I was careful to draw the distinction, is that the above (as it so happens) strikes me as a childish point.
Like, it was the sort of thing I never said to my parents as a teenager because it would have been too much like what a “teenager” (albeit a clever one who’d read Godel, Escher, Bach) would have said to his parents.
Is worry over appearing childish self-undermining? In general, no; it is self-undermining only if we assume that children and only children are concerned with appearing adult. As it happens, most adults are concerned with appearing adult. Are they wrong to do so? That depends on why, I’d say. A concern with appearing adult as a strictly pragmatic matter of public relations, coupled with a total unconcern over actually being adult, could well be healthy and rational in certain cases.
Of course, having actually been maneuvered into a position where you have to argue that you aren’t childish, the argument itself will seem childish; but this is a matter of being placed in a clever trap, not a matter of the audience making valid Bayesian inferences.
...okay, I’ve probably been reading too much about logic today.