All of ametipo's Comments + Replies

ametipo160

Edge cases don't invalidate the general usefulness of abstracting messy collections of correlated observations into a single category. But they do strongly suggest that whatever rule of thumb you're using to categorize is a statistical heuristic, and not an objective criteria, because it fails in some cases. Put another way, it is correct to say that humans have 10 fingers, even though some humans have 9 fingers. But it would be incorrect to say that 9 fingered people are inhuman, because having 10 fingers is a general observed phenomenon and not an actual... (read more)

One option might be 'do the rationalist-ish thing when you're forced to because it's decision-relevant; but when you're just analyzing an interesting intellectual puzzle for fun, don't do the rationalist-ish thing'

 

This is the closest to what I was trying to say, but I would scope my criticism even more narrowly. To try and put it bluntly and briefly: Don't choose to suspend disbelief for multiple core hypotheses within your argument, while simultaneously holding that the final conclusion built off of them is objectively likely and has been supported ... (read more)

9TAG
I agree with what you are saying...but my brief version would be "don't confuse absolute plausibility with relative plausibility".

The implied claim that I took from the passage (perhaps incorrectly) is that motte and bailey is a fallacy inherent to post-modernist thought in general, rather than a bad rhetorical technique that some post-modernists commenters engage in on the internet. From that it should be easier, not harder, to cite real-world examples of it since the rhetorical fallacy is actually widespread and representative of post-modern thought. The government example isn't analogous, as it would have at least been a real-world example and the person in that hypothetical would... (read more)

Answer by ametipo220

I've been Rationalist-adjacent for over 10 years now by my ideals, but have never taken part in the community (until this post, hello!) precisely because I find this fallacy throughout a lot of Rationalist discourse and it has put me off.

The motte: "Here is some verifiable data that suggests my hypothesis. It is incomplete, and I may be wrong. I am but a humble thinker, calling out into the darkness, looking for a few pinpricks of truth's light."

The bailey: "The limitations in my data and argument are small enough that I can confidently make a complex conc... (read more)

4Rob Bensinger
This seems fine until you have to make actual decisions under uncertainty. Most decisions have multiple uncertain factors going into them, and I think it's genuinely useful to try to quantify your uncertainty in such cases (even if it's very rough, and you feel the need to re-run the analysis in several different ways to check how robust it is, etc.). What would you propose doing in such cases? I'd be interested to see an example of how you'd go about it. One option might be 'do the rationalist-ish thing when you're forced to because it's decision-relevant; but when you're just analyzing an interesting intellectual puzzle for fun, don't do the rationalist-ish thing'. My main worry there would be that only using a skill when you're forced to gives you less practice with the skill. Sharing quantitative arguments online also makes it easy for others to express disagreement, point out errors you made, etc., which I think is important for improving and getting more calibrated (and for figuring out what's true in the first place -- but it sounds like we disagree there). Apologies if I misunderstood what you're recommending somewhere -- an example or two of blog posts you think are making this mistake might help. Possibly I'd agree if I saw the actual cases you had in mind!
2Chris_Leong
Yeah, it isn't really engaging with a steelman. But then again, the purpose of the passage is to explain a very common dynamic that occurs in post-modernism. And I guess it'd be hard, considering a similar situation, to explain a dynamic that sometimes makes government act dysfunctional, whilst also steelmanning that. Although I don't think its accurate to say that its not representative of what post-modernists really argue - maybe it doesn't accurately represent what philosophers argue - but it seems to fairly accurately represent what everyday people who are a fan of post-modernism would say. And I guess there's a tension between addressing the best version of an argument and addressing the version that most comes up in real life.
7tslarm
I think Scott's claim (back in 2014) would be that you've just articulated the post-modernist motte, and in fact people often do make arguments and pronouncements that (at least implicitly) depend on the thing that you see as a weakman and he sees as the bailey. (I haven't read enough of the relevant stuff to take a position here; Scott's cynical account rings true to me, but that could be because what rises to my attention is disproportionately the extreme and easily-parodied stuff, and then I lazily pattern-match the rest without giving it a fair chance.) edit: to be fair, I can see a potential motte-and-bailey on the anti-pomo side. (Bailey: the sun hypothetical, although made up, is a pretty accurate characterisation of how postmodernists argue. Motte: that was just a throwaway tongue-in-cheek example, a punchy way to illustrate the main point of the post; you're taking it too literally if you bother pushing back against it. Or alternatively, Bailey: that is how postmodernists argue. Motte: that is how a small proportion of postmodernist philosophers, and a bunch of random people inspired by postmodernism, argue.) So I think it's fair enough to suggest that the absence of real examples is a red flag.