TheOtherDave comments on Intellectual Hipsters and Meta-Contrarianism - LessWrong

147 Post author: Yvain 13 September 2010 09:36PM

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Comment author: TheOtherDave 30 November 2011 10:47:22PM 1 point [-]

My $0.02:

It might help to state clearly what "addressing this" would actually comprise... that is, how could you tell if a discussion had done so successfully?

It might also help if everyone involved in that discussion (should such a discussion occur) agreed to some or all of the following guidelines:

  • I will, when I reject or challenge a conclusion, state clearly why I'm doing so. E.g.: is it incoherent? Is it dangerous? Is it hurtful? Is it ambiguous? Is it unsupported? Does it conflict with my experience? Etc.

  • I will "taboo" terms where I suspect people in the conversation have significantly different understandings of those terms (for example, "pickup"), and will instead unpack my understanding.

  • I will acknowledge out loud when a line of reasoning supports a conclusion I disagree with. This does not mean I agree with the conclusion.

  • I will, insofar as I can, interpret all comments without reference to my prior beliefs about what the individual speaker (as opposed to a generic person) probably meant. Where I can't do that, and my prior beliefs about the speaker are relevantly different from my beliefs about a generic person, I will explicitly summarize those beliefs before articulating conclusions based on them.