I think if someone wasn’t indignant about Alice’s ideas, but did just disagree with Alice and think she was wrong, we might see lots of comments that look something like: …
The disagreement isn’t with Alice’s ideas, it’s with Alice’s claims to have any right to impose her judgment on people who aren’t interested in hearing it. What you describe here is instead an acceptance of Alice’s premises. I’m pointing out that it’s possible to disagree with those premises entirely.
I agree that “using evidence, building models, remembering that 0 and 1 aren’t probabilities, testing our beliefs against the territory, etc.” are good habits. But they’re habits that it’s good to deploy of your own volition. If someone is trying to pressure you into doing these things—especially someone who, like Alice, quite transparently does not have your best interests in mind, and is acting in the service of ulterior motives, and who (again, like Alice) is deceptively clothing these motives in a guise of trying to help you conform to your own stated values—then the first thing you should do is tell them to fuck off (employing as much or as little tact in this as you deem fit), and only then should you consider whether and what techniques of epistemic rationality to apply to the situation.
It is a foolish, limited, and ultimately doomed sort of rationality, that ignores interpersonal conflicts when figuring out what the world is like, and what to do about it.
The point of the post is to be about ideas. Alice is only there as a framework for presenting the post’s ideas.
If Alice is expressing the ideas rudely, that’s just a deficiency in how the post presents them. Saying “I’d ignore Alice because she’s rude” is missing the point; it’s as if the post had Alice be an angel and you replied “I’d ignore Alice because angels don’t exist”.
The proper reaction is “the post is flawed in that it attributes the ideas to a rude character, but in order to engage with the thesis of the post I should ignore this flaw and address the ideas anyway”.
In this case, the ideas seem to be linked quite closely with the behavior of the ‘Alice’ character, so attempting to reply to a hypothetical alternate version of the post where the ideas are (somehow) the same but Alice is very polite… seems strange and unproductive. (For one thing, if Alice were polite, the whole conversation wouldn’t happen.)
I think you lack imagination if you think that Alice can’t express those ideas without being rude. For instance, “Alice” and “Bob” could be a metaphor for conflicting impulses and motives inside your own head. Trying to decide between Alice-type ideas and Bob-type ideas doesn’t mean that you’re being rude to yourself.
I think you lack imagination if you think that Alice can’t express those ideas without being rude.
Yep, could be. Show me a rewritten version of this dialogue which supports your suggestion, and we’ll talk. I think it would be different in instructive ways (not just incidental ones).
Thinking to yourself about the ideas expressed in the post by Alice would not mean you are being rude to yourself.
Well, perhaps “being rude to yourself” is an odd way of putting it, but something like this is precisely why I wouldn’t think these things to myself. I have no particular interest in conjuring a mental Insanity Wolf!
The disagreement isn’t with Alice’s ideas, it’s with Alice’s claims to have any right to impose her judgment on people who aren’t interested in hearing it. What you describe here is instead an acceptance of Alice’s premises. I’m pointing out that it’s possible to disagree with those premises entirely.
I agree that “using evidence, building models, remembering that 0 and 1 aren’t probabilities, testing our beliefs against the territory, etc.” are good habits. But they’re habits that it’s good to deploy of your own volition. If someone is trying to pressure you into doing these things—especially someone who, like Alice, quite transparently does not have your best interests in mind, and is acting in the service of ulterior motives, and who (again, like Alice) is deceptively clothing these motives in a guise of trying to help you conform to your own stated values—then the first thing you should do is tell them to fuck off (employing as much or as little tact in this as you deem fit), and only then should you consider whether and what techniques of epistemic rationality to apply to the situation.
It is a foolish, limited, and ultimately doomed sort of rationality, that ignores interpersonal conflicts when figuring out what the world is like, and what to do about it.
The point of the post is to be about ideas. Alice is only there as a framework for presenting the post’s ideas.
If Alice is expressing the ideas rudely, that’s just a deficiency in how the post presents them. Saying “I’d ignore Alice because she’s rude” is missing the point; it’s as if the post had Alice be an angel and you replied “I’d ignore Alice because angels don’t exist”.
The proper reaction is “the post is flawed in that it attributes the ideas to a rude character, but in order to engage with the thesis of the post I should ignore this flaw and address the ideas anyway”.
In this case, the ideas seem to be linked quite closely with the behavior of the ‘Alice’ character, so attempting to reply to a hypothetical alternate version of the post where the ideas are (somehow) the same but Alice is very polite… seems strange and unproductive. (For one thing, if Alice were polite, the whole conversation wouldn’t happen.)
I think you lack imagination if you think that Alice can’t express those ideas without being rude. For instance, “Alice” and “Bob” could be a metaphor for conflicting impulses and motives inside your own head. Trying to decide between Alice-type ideas and Bob-type ideas doesn’t mean that you’re being rude to yourself.
Yep, could be. Show me a rewritten version of this dialogue which supports your suggestion, and we’ll talk. I think it would be different in instructive ways (not just incidental ones).
Well, perhaps “being rude to yourself” is an odd way of putting it, but something like this is precisely why I wouldn’t think these things to myself. I have no particular interest in conjuring a mental Insanity Wolf!
“Should I do (list of things said by Alice in the post)? Or should I do (list of things said by Bob in the original post)?”