Vaniver comments on Reductionism - Less Wrong

40 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 16 March 2008 06:26AM

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Comment author: private_messaging 05 February 2013 07:39:15AM *  1 point [-]

It feels like you use 'questions' a lot more than usual, and it looks very much like a rhetorical device because you inject counter points into your questions. Can you clarify why you do it? (see what I did there?)

Sidenote: Actually, questions are often a sneaky rhetorical device - you can modify the statement in the way of your choosing, and then ask questions about that. You see that in political debates all the time.

Comment author: Vaniver 05 February 2013 02:12:43PM 0 points [-]

Agreed that questions can be used in underhanded ways, but this example does seem more helpful at focusing the conversation than something like:

Can you clarify why you added "automated" to the discussion?

That could easily go in other directions; this makes clear that the question is "how did we get from A to B?" while sharing control of the topic change / clarification.