army1987 comments on Privileging the Question - Less Wrong

102 Post author: Qiaochu_Yuan 29 April 2013 06:30PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 15 June 2013 02:40:13PM *  -1 points [-]

That sounds like a nearly fully general counterargument -- I could be asking the same question about watching a movie, playing darts, studying geology, or whatever else the hell the person I'm speaking to is doing (short of working on efficient charity and the like).

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 15 June 2013 06:50:39PM 0 points [-]

It's not a counterargument. It's a request for an explanation.

Comment author: wedrifid 15 June 2013 02:54:27PM 0 points [-]

Why do you think voting is valuable relative to the other things you could be doing? (Not a rhetorical question.)

That sounds like a nearly fully general counterargument

This interpretation requires directly contradicting the explicit and intentional claim in the grandparent.

(It is not always inappropriate to call 'bullshit' on a claim that a question is not a rhetorical question when it actually is but it seems more appropriate to do so directly rather than just casually ignoring the claim and assuming it is an argument anyway. As such I assume hasty reading is involved.)

Comment author: [deleted] 16 June 2013 09:15:18AM *  0 points [-]

A question can have presuppositions even if it's not rhetorical. If I ask you whether you have stopped beating your wife, I'm implicitly claiming you have a wife and were beating her at some point, even if I'm genuinely curious as to whether or not you're still doing so.

QY is implicitly saying that brainoil must think voting is valuable relative to the other things ey could be doing, with which I either agree or ADBOC depending on what exactly is meant by "valuable".