gjm comments on Better Disagreement - Less Wrong

70 Post author: lukeprog 24 October 2011 09:13PM

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

Comments (84)

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

Comment author: gjm 23 October 2011 09:47:06AM 5 points [-]

If you come up with a better version of the other person's argument but keep it to yourself and only refute the original version, then later on they may think "Now, in all honesty Gil was right about X ... but no, wait a moment, that's just because I didn't get it quite right. If I'd said X' instead then his argument wouldn't have worked." and stick with their position rather than changing it.

I doubt that this outweighs the effect of antagonizing them at the time by saying "You should have said X', and I'm now going to refute that" in most cases, though.

Comment author: GilPanama 23 October 2011 10:13:48AM 1 point [-]

Ideally, a reasonable counterargument that applies to the strong form will also apply to the weak form without significant editing. If the person one was arguing with would have been receptive to DH7 in the first place, that alone should stop them from making the strong form argument - the countering evidence has already been provided.

Where this fails... well, I said "at first" in my thread-starter for a reason.