The thing is this tactic needs the cooperation of both participants to work. If the participant getting attacked with the catch 22 just makes a clear description of the central point, and then writes quick clear answer to each sidetracking about how they are sidetracking, it’s easy to resist.
No it doesn’t, it just requires that the person engaging in the tactic is sufficiently persistent to resume immediately after the victim of the tactic has defused it using the defence you recommend. The tactic will succeed if there’s even the slightest failure in the victim’s vigilance, and your prescription still not only leaves the victim on the defensive, but also (at least in the example conversation you linked) puts the person using this defensive tactic in the position of having to make demands, which may well become repetitive if the attacker is being persistent, and which on that account opens further vulnerabilities.
Also, your example gives a grossly distorted picture because, 1., it is a case in which you are playing the role of a “helpful mediator”, or, more bluntly, that of an enabler, and 2., the tactic I am describing was not particularly central to the strategy of either person’s side in that particular case. It simply is not a relevant example to any appreciable degree.
I disagree, because Zack’s Ultimate Point is also somewhat unclear to me.
Because you like other LessWrongers are in the habit of being fooled by your own manipulations, such as the aforementioned weaponised confusion, and even then you have correctly identified Zack’s ultimate point in your reference to this original tagline.
That said, if he was purely making a philosophical point about locally valid types of reasoning for classification, then that would be OK. What I’m saying is that part of what shapes the conflict a lot is that people don’t really believe that he is purely making a philosophical point about classification.
Valid principles of classification are valid even if their proponents are advocating them with a view to some other, more specific point, and the fact that he has that point in mind when making posts about those principles of classification does not alter the fact that such posts are about principles of classification and not about the points he plans to make with them. This is not merely a high-decoupling vs low-decoupling thing; I am not suggesting that people should feign ignorance of his broader point, simply pointing out that the fact that he may advocate some principles of classification as part of a more specific line of argumentation about autogynephilia does not in fact create ambiguity surrounding the thesis/theses of a single given post. They can still straightforwardly be classified as making a point about autogynephilia, about the philosophy of classification, about the flaws of the rationalist community, or some combination of these. This post is clearly mainly a critique of the rationalist community, with the other two topics being secondary to that.
I do think there are gains to be made in increasing cooperativeness, but my experience is that there tends to be a need for greater order
I think there has been an excess of cooperativeness. Setting yourself up as a helpful mediator between Zack and his abusers is an injustice to Zack. The abusers need to be put it in their place, rather.
Yes, pretty much every time he makes a post on this topic, he is met with a barrage of abuse.
There is this particular tactic I have seen from LessWrongers[1] and nowhere else. It consists of a catch 22:
if you make a simple informal point, eg. calling attention to something absurd and pointing out its absurdity, your argument will be criticised for being manipulative or consisting of baseless assertions, or perhaps your interlocutor will simply deny that you made an argument at all, and you will be called upon to formalise it more or in some other way make the argument more rigorous.
if you make a detailed point covering enough ground to address all the obfuscations and backtracking, then you will be accused of obfuscating, people will claim they are confused about what you mean, and they will blame you for the confusion, and still other people, believing themselves to be helpful mediators, will assert that your central point isn’t clear.
This tactic is a “fully general counterargument”, but also, either prong includes some amount of moral condemnation and/or ridicule for the person putting forward the argument. It is just about the single most toxic debate tactic I have ever seen anywhere, and if you call out some instance of it, your detractors will simply use this very same tactic to dismiss your calling it out.
Ten years ago, this community was a force for unusual levels of clarity and integrity. Now it seems to be a force for unusual levels of insanity and dishonesty, but because most people here seem to believe that dishonesty is always intentional, and that intent is always honest, they implicitly assume that it is impossible to be dishonest without being aware of it, and thus a lot of the worst offenders manage to convince themselves that they are perfectly or almost perfectly honest. By contrast, when people engage in similarly toxic flamewars on eg. twitter or reddit, they are at least usually not in deep denial about being eristic in their argumentation; they do not usually pride themselves on their good faith at the same time, and on that account they are still not quite as dishonest as many LessWrongers have become.
Only because his critics insist on endless obfuscation.
Yes, but in such cases they will also go into denial about those political thoughts being well-communicated.
I suggest these fine people start with holding their own political discussion to a higher level, then.
Intended here to include LessWrong-adjacent people like ACX’ers, EAs, etc.