= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
MendelSchmiedekamp comments on Catchy Fallacy Name Fallacy (and Supporting Disagreement) - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (56)
I agree that this is a danger, and that it's something we should be wary of, in both ourselves and others.
But I'm not sure we should require people to spell things out in excruciating detail every time they think someone else has committed an error. It's probably a good mental discipline to go through this process in your own head, to check that you're not firing off an unwarranted accusation, but sometimes it really is pretty obvious that a particular error has been committed, and in such cases the shorthand seems both useful and justified. If it's still unclear to others, I'm fairly sure someone will come forward and say so (and they should be encouraged to do so).
Maybe I'm wrong about this. I'd be interested in others' opinions.
Assuming your primary goal is to communicate the error then being able to communicate the reasons for the classification of the error to yourself may be of some use, but that is not equivalent to successfully communicating the reasoning to the person who has committed the error.
On the other hand, if your primary goal is to signal status, then inconspicuously failing to communicate your reasons is good, as long as others do not point out your own errors. Which makes self-checking closer to sufficient.
Admittedly, that doesn't mean that this post's obligatory explianation is the best way to communicate reasoning either. Reliably successful communication is a hard problem, which means applying serious rationality to it.