wedrifid comments on Defecting by Accident - A Flaw Common to Analytical People - Less Wrong

86 Post author: lionhearted 01 December 2010 08:25AM

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Comment author: wedrifid 08 December 2010 05:41:00AM 0 points [-]

The one that bothers me the most is when there's an insightful criticism or question attached to a comment, and the criticism gets voted up because it makes a valid point that illustrates what seems like a fatal flaw in the parent comment's argument, but the author of the parent comment never bothers to respond, because they'd rather just pretend they never saw the comment or that it doesn't make a good point that needs addressing. I don't see how one could argue that that is a way of "facilitating communication".

I agree but at the same time would be wary about advocating a strong norm against not replying. Rules can and will be gamed. It is not hard for a clever arguer to exploit such norms and play the crowd with highly undesirable results.

Comment author: anonym 08 December 2010 04:02:48PM 0 points [-]

I thought there actually was a strong norm already that was being flouted.

The model I had in mind was:

LW's "Strong critique of comment in direct reply to a comment or post" is to "ignoring the critique and failing to reply"

as

Academia's "Strong paper that criticizes methodology, etc., of a published paper" is to "not publishing a response to the critique".

In academia, a researcher that habitually failed to address serious flaws in their publications would quickly lose status and become irrelevant. I thought something like that was a norm at LW.

Comment author: wedrifid 08 December 2010 04:23:57PM 0 points [-]

The judgement behind 'strong paper' and 'strong critique' is important and similar judgement must be used to decide whether to reply to criticism. This is particularly the case when the critic is not acting in good faith (again, in your judgement) and has a talent for obfuscation and rhetoric.

Comment author: anonym 08 December 2010 05:03:49PM 0 points [-]

Strongly agree.

I'm not advocating anything like "always respond". I'm advocating that when people actually think it's a strong critique, they should respond rather than playing the status game of pretending they don't really think it's a strong critique by ignoring it. Additionally, even if they don't think it's a strong critique, if many other people 'whose judgment they would trust in other similar situations' do think it's a strong critique, then they should also respond.

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