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SilasBarta comments on On Enjoying Disagreeable Company - Less Wrong
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1) When paraphrasing others' views, it's not necessary that they have used the exact words before that you use in the paraphrase. That's what makes it a paraphrase.
The question that matters is: are her actions consistent with classifying my (unapproved) replies to her as an atrocity? I say yes. For one thing, she brooks no excuse whatsoever for violating her demands, even when it goes against her interests. One time:
-She says it's okay to post replies to her top level comments, but not by PM.
-I realize that one such "okay" comment would cause her to lose face, so I say it by PM.
-She accepts that it would cause her to lose face, but that PMing her was just as bad, but would have been okay if I said it publicly.
2) I invoke terrorism to emphasize her over-the-top responses to minor offenses (as she ignores them in others). (And also to remove the sting from the word, but that's a different story.)
Then it sounds like "atrocity" is a prime candidate for tabooing. You made a step towards unpacking "atrocity" by saying that "she brooks no excuse whatsoever for violating her demands".
But your evidence does not show that she brooks no excuse. It shows only that saving her face is an insufficient excuse. Saving her face sounds like a pretty small payoff for getting a PM, at least on a scale that includes terrorism. Therefore, the fact that saving face is an insufficient excuse is weak evidence for the claim that all excuses are insufficient. (Suppose you knew that there was a carbon monoxide leak in her room, and you could only tell her by PM. Do you really think that she would be upset with you if you did?)
But, I gather, you did not mean to imply that her moral evaluation of these "minor offenses" is actually equivalent to her moral evaluation to terrorism. Is that right?
Already done, as you mention, so you don't need to belabor the issue of tabooing.
Okay, now re-interpret everything I've said or will say under standard conventions, in which one does not expect statements to be perfectly exceptionless.
No, it shows intransitive values, which suggests simplistic, trigger-happy moral evaluations.
Of course? The point was the hyperbole she uses in describing my affect on her, emphasized by reference to terrorism.
Why do you think that I took you to mean that your statement was "perfectly exceptionless"? If it is only because I used the phrase "no excuse", then you are failing to extend to me the consideration that you are requesting.
This is not relevant, because I am not challenging your contention that she ought to like you. I am challenging the following contentions:
(1) It is appropriate to say "I can't even reply to this comment . . . as she will consider it an atrocity (much like terrorism is an atrocity)".
(2) Her decision not to like you shows that she is unqualified to give the advice in the OP.
You know that her description of psychological stress is hyperbole? That doesn't seem like the kind of thing that you could establish reliably over the internet. Not without some smoking gun like her saying, "You know, Silas, I really like interacting with you."
Because you base your entire reply to it on the assumption that it is substantively refuted the moment you find one atypical exception?
Second time: I do have solid proof for this in that she very much enjoys my contributions and even makes non-specific comments attempting to draw me out, so long as she doesn't know it's me. I have the smoking gun, however implausible you might think that to be. (Though I assure you I did not seek out such a gun, as no amount of effort would have reliably gotten Alicorn to do this; it's too improbable.)
I will reveal who Jocaste is[1] once enough people can agree this would be sufficiently informative evidence.
[1] "reveal who Jocaste is" = an term I just made up which should make sense if you're familiar with the story of Oedipus.
Then why did you make this alternate identity?
For all of the reasons anyone would make a separate account here: to make an (unrelated) point, to see if my comments are modded differently if people don't know it's me, to pose questions I wouldn't want to ask under my real name, etc. etc.
Again, Blueberry, I could have gotten CIA covert ops to help me trick Alicorn into making the comments I have in mind; it still wouldn't have done any good. These are remarks you just can't reliably lure people into saying.
I'm really curious now who it is. So why don't you just switch over to your new identity?
No, that was not the assumption of my reply. The assumption of my reply was that the excuse I gave (carbon monoxide leak) would not justify committing an atrocity. Therefore, if the excuse is an exception, then PMing her would not be an atrocity.
Suppose she said, "You know, Jocaste*, I really like your comments. I wish that you would post more often, especially in reply to my comments."
That would not prove that her claims of psychological stress were hyperbole. The stress evidently arises from interacting with an entire picture of a person built from an entire comment history, not from any arbitrary subportion of that comment history.
* Here I'm using "Jocaste" as a place-holder.