AlexMennen comments on How to offend a rationalist (who hasn't thought about it yet): a life lesson - Less Wrong

9 Post author: mszegedy 06 February 2013 07:22AM

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Comment author: AlexMennen 06 February 2013 05:44:17PM *  13 points [-]

A more charitable translation would be "I strongly disagree with you and have not yet been able to formulate a coherent explanation for my objection, so I'll start off simply stating my disagreement." Helping them state their argument would be a much more constructive response than confronting them for not giving an argument initially.

Comment author: Duncan 06 February 2013 06:57:11PM 0 points [-]

It is not as much that they haven't given an argument or stated their position. It is that they are telling you (forcefully) WHAT to do without any justification. From what I can tell of the OP's conversation this person has decided to stop discussing the matter and gone straight to telling the OP what to do. In my experience, when a conversation reaches that point, the other person needs to be made aware of what they are doing (politely if possible - assuming the discussion hasn't reached a dead end, which is often the case). It is very human and tempting to rush to the 'Are you crazy?!! You should __.' and skip all the hard thinking.

Comment author: AlexMennen 06 February 2013 11:13:05PM 1 point [-]

It sounds like the generic "you" to me. So "you shouldn't apply this stuff to society" means "people shouldn't apply this stuff to society." I don't see anything objectionable about statements like that.