glutamate comments on Cached Thoughts - Less Wrong

51 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 11 October 2007 11:46PM

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Comment author: Alicorn 19 April 2011 09:42:29PM 7 points [-]

Why the downvotes on the original reply? Are people so thin-skinned that they can't take their arguments being called stupid, or are they so ignorant that they bury an argument they don't agree with?

No, glutamate. Your original comment was rude and uninteresting. "Stupid" isn't an informative criticism (not even if you specify that the stupidity is "incredible"), and it signals contempt and disrespect besides. Uninformative criticisms that signal that attitude are not readily welcomed here.

You could have said - if I interpret your view correctly, which I may or may not - something like:

We're familiar with humans dying one at a time, and being mourned; this is significantly different from simultaneous annihilation. Saying that the human species deserves to die and then cashing that out in terms of individual humans evokes images of the former, whereas the latter might be a better approximation.

Comment author: glutamate 19 April 2011 10:17:32PM *  -1 points [-]

The vocabulary someone uses in an attack on an argument shouldn't be limited by the degree to which the language might offend someone. Or should it?

To be explicit: I am not calling him stupid! Only someone intelligent could write an article like this, that's obvious, and I agree with the rest of it.

And yes, that's a superior phrasing of my argument. I should have been more descriptive in the original post, that's my fault. Do you agree with it?

Comment author: Alicorn 19 April 2011 11:48:27PM 2 points [-]

The vocabulary someone uses in an attack on an argument shouldn't be limited by the degree to which the language might offend someone. Or should it?

This is an ongoing controversy, but if you can be inoffensive without sacrificing too many other virtues, it seems best to go for it.

To be explicit: I am not calling him stupid! Only someone intelligent could write an article like this, that's obvious, and I agree with the rest of it.

That's good to know. It wasn't at all clear - any of it! - from your original comment.

Do you agree with it?

I would agree with a weak, purely descriptive form of my restatement.

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