On Oct 6, 2018, at 3:52 PM, Bruce Nielson <
brucen...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 6, 2018 at 2:00 PM Elliot Temple <
cu...@curi.us> wrote:
>> Or if you completely ignored discussion methodology, stopped reading negative into anything that isn’t a topical mistake, and just took things literally at face value, that could maybe work too (that’s hard and I’m not recommending attempting it).
>
> I do not agree with this either. I think there is a real discussion
> problem here. I'm just not convinced it's me.
I believe Bruce’s choices are:
1) to discuss the discussion problem in order to improve it
2) to tolerate the discussion problem with no hard feelings
or
3) to have hard feelings (leading to leaving)
These choices are independent of whose fault it is.
> I think you are
> coming up with an explanation of Josh's words that is a poor
> explanation because of bias in favor of a friend over a new comer. I
> think if you look at his words and seek a best explanation you'll not
> be left with this interpretation. I think there is a far more obvious
> interpretation of Josh's words.
I disagree that biased in this way and I don’t find that comment useful. Psychological criticism requires more detail (initially or available via followups) to be valuable to me because, without that detail, it's not a learning opportunity for me. To learn from it and change my mind, I need *new* details that address my doubts, questions, disagreements, etc. Short negative comments like these repeat claims I’ve heard before, and attempted to get details about before, without giving me something new. This kind of comment also isn’t very suitable for rebuttal because it doesn’t present enough reasoning to analyze.
If I’m biased here, I believe it’s the other way around (biased in Bruce’s favor). I am aware that I have a 10+ year history of (on average) overestimating people by default and then lowering my opinion of them as I get more information about them. My earlier opinions of people are higher, on average, than my later opinions when I know more, rather than the estimation errors being in random directions. You could say that my “natural” intuitions and way of seeing and dealing with the world are of an optimist or idealist variety. I know detailed reasons for why this is the case and why it’s difficult for me to change it. This is in Bruce’s favor, not Josh’s – I have much more detailed information about Josh’s flaws than Bruce’s. (Josh, btw, for example, has inadequate knowledge of Popper – which I believe Josh should have changed during the years he’s participated at FI.)
I do have previous experience interpreting Josh and anon and then checking the correctness of my interpretations afterwards. This experience (combined with general purpose interpretation skill) has reached the point where I can often be confident that I know what they mean. I am confident in the two cases at issue. Since Bruce isn’t confident, while writing this post I messaged them to double check. They each said that my interpretation of what they meant was really good.
If Bruce still wants to say that I’m mistaken about what they meant, I think he’ll have to claim either that they are lying to me, or else that they are lying to themselves and that I correctly anticipated their rationalizations. I don’t think that’s out of the question, but I also don’t think Bruce wants to make one of those claims and discuss it. (I hope he won’t want to make one of those claims in his own mind and hold it against people without discussing it to allow rebuttal.) If Bruce does want to make one of those claims, we could continue the matter. I would be interested in that matter if anyone had something to say about it that’s new to me.
>> Being clear about changing one’s mind is important to advancing discussions.
>
> Is that true for this conversation and this particular concession?
> Please explain how. I'm honestly not seeing it.
I think so. See my other post on this matter.
Also: It’s important to know whether you’re convinced, or disagree, in order to make the choice about moving on to a new issue or further discussing the current issue. It doesn’t work well to move on and build on top of a point that you disagree with, nor does it work well to keep discussing a point you’re already convinced of. Disagreeing and being convinced are different situations in a relevant, important way.
The other post:
From: Elliot Temple <
cu...@curi.us>
Subject: Re: [FI] unclear concessions (Was: Shor's algorithm)
Date: October 6, 2018 at 1:27:20 PM PDT
It’s the one which begins with me saying, "I think what Josh should have said is something like this, to better clarify the purpose of the requested clarification:”
>> You seem to have taken Josh, quoting you (quoting the wording he objected to, as part of his explanation of the problem), as telling you what wording he’d prefer. So then you wrote a new comment, in line with the old wording that Josh rejected, and then put it in double quotes?
>
> I'm not sure that you mean by double quotes.
Double quotes look like this: "
As against single quotes: '
And block quotes (in email and markdown): >
Bruce posted the following text as a complete paragraph:
> "On a separate email I already admitted you may be right and that I may have misunderstood something about NFA. [And therefore you’re harping on this point needlessly.]”
There are two problems here. First, Bruce used double quotes around it, but it’s a block quote. Double quotes are for inline quotes.
Second, and more importantly, that text *is not a quote*. It’s a new statement. It doesn’t appear previously in the discussion. Bruce never said it before. So, as a non-quote, it shouldn’t be marked as a quote at all. That’s what was confusing.
I had to guess it and then search all emails in order to determine it’s not a quote. The post is misleading.
---
Bruce, if you want a different kind of conversation, please just post about that. You’ll get replies to text you post, so the nature of the replies is largely in your control, even if it doesn’t feel that way because sometimes people pick up on things that you didn’t intend to be writing about (like the extent of your knowledge about Popper). If that’s not enough, add in short *verbal requests* about what kinds of replies (topic, shortness cuz you’re busy, or anything else) you want, and then you’ll have a much better chance of getting what you want.
I also think, as a relevant general fact about the world that I have believed for many years, that people underestimate what it takes to have a good discussion because they are used to discussions where they have more pre-existing agreement with other people (there’s less intellectual diversity). Basically what happens is people mistake prior agreement for discussion progress. Plus, as a major contributing factor, people routinely gloss over disagreements, hide disagreements, or fail to adequately search out disagreements, so they often mistake non-agreement for agreement. Due to these expectations, I find people often are too impatient with discussions to discuss less conventional ideas where more disagreements come up. (There are also related ways that people treat continuing to disagree as a productive outcome itself, instead of trying to resolve issues.)
Elliot Temple
www.curi.us