buybuydandavis comments on Typical Sneer Fallacy - Less Wrong

10 Post author: calef 01 September 2015 03:13AM

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Comment author: buybuydandavis 01 September 2015 03:58:19AM 6 points [-]

I suspect the anecdote about Eliezer only sidetracks your readers.

Typical Sneer Fallacy: When you ignore or are offended by criticism because you've mistakenly identified it as coming purely from sneer.

Hence the problem with sneer in actual criticism. Not that I'm opposed to sneering. Far from it. But you'd better be making solid points while you sneer. If you make a bunch of half ass points just to sneer, don't expect people to dig your one diamond out of that pile of crap. They will look elsewhere for criticism, if they're interested in it at all. And quite reasonably so.

EY writes:

But the thought that su3su2su1 could just walk through finding errors in every chapter is laughable, and since he's clearly making up most of it, you shouldn't be surprised that he's making up all of it. If somebody started posting a list of science errors by Scott Aaronson or Scott Alexander purporting to find errors in every post, I wouldn't expect to find even a single real one mixed in.

Yep. Don't expect to find diamonds in a pile of crap. Expect to find more crap.

Comment author: calef 01 September 2015 04:14:30AM 2 points [-]

I suspect how reader's respond to my anecdote about Eliezer will fall along party lines, so to speak.

Which is kind of the point of the whole post. How one responds to the criticism shouldn't be a function of one's loyalty to Eliezer. Especially when su3su2u1 explicitly isn't just "making up most of" his criticism. Yes, his series of review-posts are snarky, but he does point out legitimate science errors. That he chooses to enjoy HPMOR via (c) rather than (a) shouldn't have any bearing on the true-or-false-ness of his criticism.

I've read su3su2u1's reviews. I agree with them. I also really enjoyed HPMOR. This doesn't actually require cognitive dissonance.

(I do agree, though, that snarkiness isn't really useful in trying to get people to listen to criticism, and often just backfires)

Comment author: buybuydandavis 01 September 2015 07:00:43PM 3 points [-]

I suspect how reader's respond to my anecdote about Eliezer will fall along party lines, so to speak.

Which makes for a handy immunizing strategy against criticisms of your post, n'est–ce pas?

(I do agree, though, that snarkiness isn't really useful in trying to get people to listen to criticism, and often just backfires)

Nor, perhaps, is yanking in opposition to people's party affiliations useful in trying to get them to listen to an idea.

I'm actually all for snark and ridicule, but then you really need to be hitting your target, because it is reasonable for people to update that a criticism is relatively unconcerned about finding the truth when it demonstrates another motivation being pursued.

Comment author: calef 01 September 2015 07:27:44PM 1 point [-]

Which makes for a handy immunizing strategy against criticisms of your post, n'est-ce pas?

It's my understanding that your criticism of my post was that the anecdote would be distracting. One of the explicit purposes of my post was to examine a polarizing example of [the fallacy of not taking criticism seriously] in action--an example which you proceed to not take seriously in your very first post in this thread simply because of a quote you have of Eliezer blowing the criticism off.

The ultimate goal here is to determine how to evaluate criticism. Learning how to do that when the criticism comes from across party lines is central.

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