pedanterrific comments on Rationality Lessons Learned from Irrational Adventures in Romance - Less Wrong

54 Post author: lukeprog 04 October 2011 02:45AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (609)
Tags: self-help romance

Comments (609)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: pedanterrific 12 October 2011 02:07:04AM *  1 point [-]

Do you agree?

Yes, of course. That's trivially true and not in dispute.

I still think you're rather missing the point, however. I don't see how it makes sense to object to the phrase 'mostly attributable' when that's a premise of the hypothetical. Let's look at the original comment in context:

E.g. I've often heard it claimed that the difference in average pay between women and men is mostly attributable to differences in ambition and time voluntarily spent at home with children. I haven't looked at the matter enough to know if this is true. But if it is, then denying any population-level differences between men and women seems harmful, because it implies that something that actually has an innocuous explanation is because of discrimination.

That is, IF [the difference is mostly attributable to something innocuous], THEN [denying population-level differences seems harmful]. That's all that was said. Kaj_Sotala never claimed the innocuous explanation was true.

Editeditedit: I apologize for my horrible social skills.

Comment author: Clarica 12 October 2011 03:52:23AM 1 point [-]

Your 'horrible social skills' are almost as funny as mine! no apologies necessary! And your edits are a vast relief to me personally.

Comment author: Clarica 12 October 2011 03:27:08AM 0 points [-]

let me just say that 'like, really?' comes across as dismissive of all my efforts to explain what I care about, in the context of my original remark, and why I care about the word 'innocuous' in the hypothetical statement.

I am generous to assume that are not trying to crush my will to respond with irony, and are seriously confused.

But it is more difficult for me to maintain this generosity of spirit after you have already dismissed something relevant to the hypothetical argument and my objection to the word 'innocuous' as 'trivialy true and not in dispute'.

And I am totally willing to maintain at least a pretense of generosity of spirit, because I have plenty of experience with losing my generosity of spirit, and I know that it keeps growing back.

But I wasn't faking any enthusiasm or bewilderment before I read your comment with those two apparently dismissive word choices. "trivial" and "like".

Do you believe me?

Comment author: Jack 12 October 2011 03:34:34AM *  1 point [-]

When you say:

Thank you for making clear that you do not agree that my point is valid or valuable criticism.

I'm reading you as actually being sincerely grateful but I'm guessing pedanterrific read you as being sarcastic.

Comment author: pedanterrific 12 October 2011 03:40:32AM 2 points [-]

...Oh. I think my sincerity detectors might be broken.

Comment author: Jack 12 October 2011 03:46:51AM *  0 points [-]

No, it set mine off too-- I avoided the error only by paying attention to the tone and attitude of the rest of her comments (which make sarcasm coming from her [assuming her based on gender conventions around the phonetics of the handle] look very unlikely).

Comment author: Clarica 12 October 2011 03:46:50AM 0 points [-]

No, I am sure that they are normal, and partly because my mental problem which I have mentioned elsewhere, includes depression. In person, it is very hard to tell if a depressed person is sincere or sarcastic, I just wasn't aware until now that this problem (I think call it 'affect'?) is something I also ought to consider in a pure text situation.

In person I usually fake enthusiasm, but I am fortunately not that good at it. <--serious and funny, yet again. at least it was intentional.

Comment author: pedanterrific 12 October 2011 03:37:24AM *  0 points [-]

I edited my previous comment to make my meaning clearer. Note that it's only about that one quoted line.

you have already dismissed something relevant to the hypothetical argument and my objection to the word 'innocuous' as 'trivialy true and not in dispute'.

Terminology confusion. See What is a trivial truth?. What I meant to say is,

"They interpret their findings to suggest that employers are willing to pay more for white male employees because employers are customer driven and customers are happier with white male employees. They also suggest that what is required to solve the problem of wage inequality isn't necessarily paying women more but changing customer biases."

describes a difference that is definitely not "harmless" no matter what the rest of your argument states. By "not in dispute" I meant "I agree with you, and was not aware that you thought we disagreed on this subject."

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit