All of which leaves me with the same question I started with. If I know what questions you and I give different answers to -- be they questions about facts, values, goals, or whatever else -- what is added to my understanding of the situation by asserting that we disagree, or don't disagree?
ata's reply was that "we disagree" additionally indicates that we can potentially converge on a common answer by arguing. That also seems to be what EY was getting at about hot air and rocks.
That makes sense to me, and sure, it's additionally worth clarifying whether you and I can potentially converge on a common answer by arguing.
Anything else?
Because all of this dueling-definitions stuff strikes me as a pointless distraction. I use words to communicate concepts; if a word no longer clearly communicates concepts it's no longer worth anything to me.
ata's reply was that "we disagree" additionally indicates that we can potentially converge on a common answer by arguing
That doesn't seem to be what the dictionary says "disagreement" means.
Maybe if both sides realise that the argument is pointless, they would not waste their time - but what if they don't know what will happen? - or what if their disagreement is intended to sway not their debating partner, but a watching audience?
In You Provably Can't Trust Yourself, Eliezer tried to figured out why his audience didn't understand his meta-ethics sequence even after they had followed him through philosophy of language and quantum physics. Meta-ethics is my specialty, and I can't figure out what Eliezer's meta-ethical position is. And at least at this point, professionals like Robin Hanson and Toby Ord couldn't figure it out, either.
Part of the problem is that because Eliezer has gotten little value from professional philosophy, he writes about morality in a highly idiosyncratic way, using terms that would require reading hundreds of posts to understand. I might understand Eliezer's meta-ethics better if he would just cough up his positions on standard meta-ethical debates like cognitivism, motivation, the sources of normativity, moral epistemology, and so on. Nick Beckstead recently told me he thinks Eliezer's meta-ethical views are similar to those of Michael Smith, but I'm not seeing it.
If you think you can help me (and others) understand Eliezer's meta-ethical theory, please leave a comment!
Update: This comment by Richard Chappell made sense of Eliezer's meta-ethics for me.