If I tried to make it explicit, I guess the rudeness disclaimer means that the speaker believed there was a politeness-clarity tradeoff, and decided to sacrifice politeness in order to maximize clarity.
If the observer appreciates the extra clarity, and thinks the sacrifice was worth it, the rudeness disclaimer serves as a reminder that they might want to correspondingly reduce the penalty they typically assign for rudeness.
Depending on context, the actually observer may be the addressee and/or third party. So, if the disclaimer has no effect on you, maybe you were not its intended audience. For example, people typically don’t feel grateful for being attacked more clearly.
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That said, my speech norms are not Duncan’s speech norms. From my perspective, if the tone of the message is incongruent with its meaning, it feels like a form of lying. Strong emotions correspond to strong words; writing like a lawyer/diplomat is an equivalent of talking like a robot. (And I don’t believe that talking like robots is the proper way for rationalists to communicate.) Gestures and tone of voice are also in theory not necessary to deliver the message.
From my perspective, Duncan-speech is more difficult to read; it feels like if I don’t pay sufficient attention to some words between the numerous disclaimers, I may miss the entire point. It’s like the text is “no no no no (yes), no no no no (yes), no no no no (yes)”, and if you pay enough attention, you may decipher that the intended meaning is “(yes, yes, yes)”, but if the repeated disclaimers make you doze off, you might skip the important parts and conclude that he was just saying “no no no no”. But, dunno, perhaps if you practice this often, the encoding and decoding happens automatically. I mean, this is not just about Duncan, I also know other people who talk like this, and they seem to understand each other with no problem, it’s just me who sometimes needs a translator.
I am trying to be more polite than what is my natural style, but it costs me some mental energy, and sometimes I am just like fuck this. I prefer to imagine that I am making a politeness-clarity tradeoff, but maybe I’m just rationalizing, and using a convenient excuse to indulge in my baser instincts. Upvote or downvote at your own discretion. I am not even arguing in favor of my style; perhaps I am wrong and shouldn’t be doing this; I am probably defecting at some kind of Prisonner’s Dilemma. I am just making it clear that not only I do not follow Duncan’s speech norms, but I also disagree with them. (That is, I disagree with the idea that I should follow them. I am okay with Duncan following his own norms.)
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EDIT: I am extremely impressed by Duncan’s comment, which I didn’t read before writing this. On reflection, this feels weird, because it makes me feel that I should take Duncan’s arguments more seriously… potentially including his speech norms… oh my god… I probably need to sleep on this.
This comment is excellent. I really appreciate it.
I probably share some of your views on the “no no no no (yes), no no no no (yes), no no no no (yes)” thing, and we don’t want to go too far with it, but I’ve come to like it more over time.
(Semi-relatedly: I think I rejected the sequences unfairly when I first encountered them early on for something like this kind of stylistic objection. Coming from a philosophical background I was like “Where are the premises? What is the argument? Why isn’t this stated more precisely?” Over time I’ve come to appreciate the psychological effect of these kinds of writing styles and value that more than raw precision.)
If I tried to make it explicit, I guess the rudeness disclaimer means that the speaker believed there was a politeness-clarity tradeoff, and decided to sacrifice politeness in order to maximize clarity.
If the observer appreciates the extra clarity, and thinks the sacrifice was worth it, the rudeness disclaimer serves as a reminder that they might want to correspondingly reduce the penalty they typically assign for rudeness.
Depending on context, the actually observer may be the addressee and/or third party. So, if the disclaimer has no effect on you, maybe you were not its intended audience. For example, people typically don’t feel grateful for being attacked more clearly.
.
That said, my speech norms are not Duncan’s speech norms. From my perspective, if the tone of the message is incongruent with its meaning, it feels like a form of lying. Strong emotions correspond to strong words; writing like a lawyer/diplomat is an equivalent of talking like a robot. (And I don’t believe that talking like robots is the proper way for rationalists to communicate.) Gestures and tone of voice are also in theory not necessary to deliver the message.
From my perspective, Duncan-speech is more difficult to read; it feels like if I don’t pay sufficient attention to some words between the numerous disclaimers, I may miss the entire point. It’s like the text is “no no no no (yes), no no no no (yes), no no no no (yes)”, and if you pay enough attention, you may decipher that the intended meaning is “(yes, yes, yes)”, but if the repeated disclaimers make you doze off, you might skip the important parts and conclude that he was just saying “no no no no”. But, dunno, perhaps if you practice this often, the encoding and decoding happens automatically. I mean, this is not just about Duncan, I also know other people who talk like this, and they seem to understand each other with no problem, it’s just me who sometimes needs a translator.
I am trying to be more polite than what is my natural style, but it costs me some mental energy, and sometimes I am just like fuck this. I prefer to imagine that I am making a politeness-clarity tradeoff, but maybe I’m just rationalizing, and using a convenient excuse to indulge in my baser instincts. Upvote or downvote at your own discretion. I am not even arguing in favor of my style; perhaps I am wrong and shouldn’t be doing this; I am probably defecting at some kind of Prisonner’s Dilemma. I am just making it clear that not only I do not follow Duncan’s speech norms, but I also disagree with them. (That is, I disagree with the idea that I should follow them. I am okay with Duncan following his own norms.)
.
EDIT: I am extremely impressed by Duncan’s comment, which I didn’t read before writing this. On reflection, this feels weird, because it makes me feel that I should take Duncan’s arguments more seriously… potentially including his speech norms… oh my god… I probably need to sleep on this.
This comment is excellent. I really appreciate it.
I probably share some of your views on the “no no no no (yes), no no no no (yes), no no no no (yes)” thing, and we don’t want to go too far with it, but I’ve come to like it more over time.
(Semi-relatedly: I think I rejected the sequences unfairly when I first encountered them early on for something like this kind of stylistic objection. Coming from a philosophical background I was like “Where are the premises? What is the argument? Why isn’t this stated more precisely?” Over time I’ve come to appreciate the psychological effect of these kinds of writing styles and value that more than raw precision.)