TheOtherDave comments on Please Don't Fight the Hypothetical - Less Wrong

19 Post author: TimS 20 April 2012 02:29PM

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Comment author: TheOtherDave 20 April 2012 07:58:32PM 17 points [-]

Sure. It used to infuriate me, too.

I have since then adopted the habit of responding with some variation of "I observe that you're fighting the hypothetical; I infer that's because you don't trust my motives in bringing it up. That's fair. Perhaps we can drop this subject for now, and return to it at some later time when I've earned your trust?"

Comment author: David_Gerard 20 April 2012 09:55:23PM *  2 points [-]

That's brilliant. Or looks brilliant, anyway - how does it tend to work out in practice?

Comment author: TheOtherDave 20 April 2012 11:13:44PM *  11 points [-]

Poorly.
Though better than anything else I've ever tried.
The only thing I can really say in its favor is it keeps me from getting quite so infuriated.

Edit: More precisely... the thing that works better is not approaching people who don't trust my motives with hypothetical questions. But assuming I've screwed that up, it works better than anything I've tried.

Comment author: David_Gerard 20 April 2012 11:28:40PM 0 points [-]

Heh. Oh well, it looked good!