4 ms·
> To make the point, all nuance needs to be stripped; ambiguity calcified into surety; counterpoints strawmanned for easier demolition. This isn't really true,
by 0815test 7y ago
> To make the point, all nuance needs to be stripped; ambiguity calcified into surety; counterpoints strawmanned for easier demolition.
This isn't really true, though. Rather, I think there are tradeoffs. You can be really, really sure about a quite complex and nuanced statement, or make helpful simplifications but then have to admit to some uncertainty, if only because your statement might be misinterpreted. More than anything, you can provide clear, unambiguous, broadly available references to enable anyone who's actually relying on your claims to fact-check them.
Seeming more confident than you actually are is a common rhetorical trick, but one that we should be training the general public not to fall for so easily. Because a bad actor can seem so much more confident, no matter how fringe their claims might be - it's a loser move! One can take pride in sticking to the minimally-necessary amounts of ambiguity and/or nuance, whatever those might be in any given context.
- sago 7y ago> This isn't really true, though. Rather, I think there are tradeoffs. One might say I stripped all nuance (etc) to make my point. I agree with your second paragraph. On your first: I have a long-standing beef with references, though. The selection of references, I think, is much more significant than the contents themselves. And it takes a lot of expertise to intuit the degree of selection bias. It takes ground knowledge of the things not selected. I think a part of this Dunning Kruger trap is the illusion one can fact check and verify an argument. So the very presence of references becomes the shibboleth.