4 ms·

> "this sentence could mean y as well as x so you can’t prove I meant x" It's interesting that a lot of online debate and media commentary uses the opposite te

by Veen 7y ago

> "this sentence could mean y as well as x so you can’t prove I meant x" It's interesting that a lot of online debate and media commentary uses the opposite technique: > "this sentence could—with varying degrees of plausibility—mean bad thing y as well as good thing x, so you can't prove you didn't really mean to say the bad thing." The principle of anti-charity.

ebg13 7y ago
I think that the problem with this as a steering wheel for discussion is that sometimes what you just said is extremely accurate but also sometimes both happen at the same time, for and against some figure by their defenders vs their offendees, and also often the sentence is part of a long pattern of behavior that has implication tendrils. No sentence exists in a vacuum, but different people have differing desires to reach further in different moments, some based on whether they like the person's face, but also occasionally by guiding principle.
yboris 7y ago
Reminds me of the "motte and bailey doctrine" [1]. You make a claim; when attacked you retreat to an easy-to-hold position; when attackers leave you make the claim again. Example: "God exist" is attacked; speaker retreats to "but God is just another name for beauty in the universe, do you disagree with that?" [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-bri...
dkarl 7y ago
And of course whether charity is applied or not is all about the presumed social fault lines in the situation. For example, in the U.S. right now, if you say, "The expert predictions about the coronavirus are all over the place and changing every day," it's an uncontroversial statement when everyone's politics are assumed to be the same. Among liberals, it will be interpreted as meaning that the coronavirus is extremely dangerous and not fully understood and we need to play it safe. Among conservatives, it will be interpreted as undermining expert authority and casting doubt on social distancing. In a mixed group, though, the important aspect will not be the meaning, which nobody will bother thinking too hard about; the only thing that matters will be the presumed intent to precipitate an argument.
- sneak 7y ago
  This is why anything partisan or partisan-adjacent in the US, which includes most current "news" events of any kind, has become so supremely boring to me. It's literally no longer about what is factual or not, or what is actually being said, simply what it it assumed that someone is attempting to imply. It's a terrible situation, and one that has infected a lot of other areas of USian everyday communication: https://sneak.berlin/20191201/american-communication/ https://sneak.berlin/20191201/american-communication/ If you're not fluent in euphemism and current-events context, making a plain factual statement can frequently be heard/interpreted by the listener as you saying the opposite, and the listener is usually totally unaware of the fact that they're flipping things around like this. It's one thing when I'm acting like like the beep boop robot I am, but it's leaked out and over, into just plain speech.
- glaugh 7y ago
  This is a nicely crafted example. Human communication is so densely laden with nuance and context and subtext that it takes soooo much work and a dose of generosity to have a real conversation that doesn’t spin off into something useless. In a technical context you can define things clearly, but in a political context it’s just too hard, there are so many things that mean different things to different people. My attempt in daily life to deal with this is to offer a place where my “side” is wrong to foster generosity then try to tightly circumscribe the thing we’re discussing. I think it sometimes works. But it’s a ton of conversational work with unclear payoffs. I don’t see how we’re not doomed to usually have largely fruitless conversation in the current climate. I don’t like the approach, but I understand why people move towards a “screw convincing them, let’s rally the base.” Bit of a prisoner’s dilemma there, I think, where the whole country is left impoverished by the individually rational approach to rallying the base
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - wool_gather 7y ago
    > My attempt in daily life to deal with this is to offer a place where my “side” is wrong to foster generosity then try to tightly circumscribe the thing we’re discussing. This sounds quite interesting; would you be able to provide an example?
pjc50 7y ago
There's a big prisoner's dilemma thing going on. If you're charitable, and the people you're discussing with are too, you can have better discussions. If you're operating in an environment like the internet where you can more or less guarantee that there will be one comment based on the the worst possible interpretation of what you said, being charitable in advance just makes things worse for you. You're playing "cooperate" with an endless stream of "defectors". Trolling has always been "defect" in this environment. Hence the value in having more closed environments for discussion. HN is open enough that people can make throwaway accounts and use them for valid points, and closed enough that the more obvious trolls get downvote-hammered quickly.
- TheSoftwareGuy 7y ago
  I've found it to be pretty effective to simply not engage with those who keep taking the worst possible interpretations of your (or others) arguments. It sort of simulates an environment where everyone is charitable. In other words, "Don't feed the trolls"
  - Benjammer 7y ago
    Tit for tat has always been the solution to prisoner's dilemma. The people who think "prisoner's dilemma" means "I should be wholly and utterly selfish, because it's the logical thing to do" are just idiots who don't understand how cooperation can work over time and repeated trials to build trust.
  - resonantjacket5 7y ago
    That's alright sometimes. But there's usually a 100 (or something) readers to 1 posters ratio. If none of the "trolls" are contested that leaves the impression that it's a legitimate opinion. I don't think the option of "don't feed the trolls" really works in such scenarios.
    - lonelappde 7y ago
      In those cases you are talking to the audience, not to the trolls. It doesn't matter what the trolls meant; it matters what you say.
mc32 7y ago
I agree and I didn’t take notice till the day I learned a woman flying to ZA wrote some quick satire on twitter before departing, when she landed many hours later she learned her tweet was taken straight and was summarily fired with the tireless assistance of the twitter-rage-mob. I agree with Cleese and Chapelle. It’s madness.
- stallmanite 7y ago
  I am curious to read about this but googling “woman flight ZA twitter outrage“ is getting me nothing. Could you provide a name?
  - mc32 7y ago
    Here you go: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-t...
- lonelappde 7y ago
  She was a PR rep who spewed vile racist hatred. And she got her job back anyway. https://www.vox.com/2018/1/19/16911074/justine-sacco-iac-match-group-return-tweet https://www.vox.com/2018/1/19/16911074/justine-sacco-iac-mat...

by Veen 7y ago

ebg13 7y ago

I think that the problem with this as a steering wheel for discussion is that sometimes what you just said is extremely accurate but also sometimes both happen at the same time, for and against some figure by their defenders vs their offendees, and also often the sentence is part of a long pattern of behavior that has implication tendrils. No sentence exists in a vacuum, but different people have differing desires to reach further in different moments, some based on whether they like the person's face, but also occasionally by guiding principle.

yboris 7y ago

Reminds me of the "motte and bailey doctrine" [1]. You make a claim; when attacked you retreat to an easy-to-hold position; when attackers leave you make the claim again. Example: "God exist" is attacked; speaker retreats to "but God is just another name for beauty in the universe, do you disagree with that?" [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-bri...

dkarl 7y ago

And of course whether charity is applied or not is all about the presumed social fault lines in the situation. For example, in the U.S. right now, if you say, "The expert predictions about the coronavirus are all over the place and changing every day," it's an uncontroversial statement when everyone's politics are assumed to be the same. Among liberals, it will be interpreted as meaning that the coronavirus is extremely dangerous and not fully understood and we need to play it safe. Among conservatives, it will be interpreted as undermining expert authority and casting doubt on social distancing. In a mixed group, though, the important aspect will not be the meaning, which nobody will bother thinking too hard about; the only thing that matters will be the presumed intent to precipitate an argument.

sneak 7y ago
This is why anything partisan or partisan-adjacent in the US, which includes most current "news" events of any kind, has become so supremely boring to me. It's literally no longer about what is factual or not, or what is actually being said, simply what it it assumed that someone is attempting to imply. It's a terrible situation, and one that has infected a lot of other areas of USian everyday communication: https://sneak.berlin/20191201/american-communication/ https://sneak.berlin/20191201/american-communication/ If you're not fluent in euphemism and current-events context, making a plain factual statement can frequently be heard/interpreted by the listener as you saying the opposite, and the listener is usually totally unaware of the fact that they're flipping things around like this. It's one thing when I'm acting like like the beep boop robot I am, but it's leaked out and over, into just plain speech.
glaugh 7y ago
This is a nicely crafted example. Human communication is so densely laden with nuance and context and subtext that it takes soooo much work and a dose of generosity to have a real conversation that doesn’t spin off into something useless. In a technical context you can define things clearly, but in a political context it’s just too hard, there are so many things that mean different things to different people. My attempt in daily life to deal with this is to offer a place where my “side” is wrong to foster generosity then try to tightly circumscribe the thing we’re discussing. I think it sometimes works. But it’s a ton of conversational work with unclear payoffs. I don’t see how we’re not doomed to usually have largely fruitless conversation in the current climate. I don’t like the approach, but I understand why people move towards a “screw convincing them, let’s rally the base.” Bit of a prisoner’s dilemma there, I think, where the whole country is left impoverished by the individually rational approach to rallying the base
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- wool_gather 7y ago
  > My attempt in daily life to deal with this is to offer a place where my “side” is wrong to foster generosity then try to tightly circumscribe the thing we’re discussing. This sounds quite interesting; would you be able to provide an example?

pjc50 7y ago

There's a big prisoner's dilemma thing going on. If you're charitable, and the people you're discussing with are too, you can have better discussions. If you're operating in an environment like the internet where you can more or less guarantee that there will be one comment based on the the worst possible interpretation of what you said, being charitable in advance just makes things worse for you. You're playing "cooperate" with an endless stream of "defectors". Trolling has always been "defect" in this environment. Hence the value in having more closed environments for discussion. HN is open enough that people can make throwaway accounts and use them for valid points, and closed enough that the more obvious trolls get downvote-hammered quickly.

TheSoftwareGuy 7y ago
I've found it to be pretty effective to simply not engage with those who keep taking the worst possible interpretations of your (or others) arguments. It sort of simulates an environment where everyone is charitable. In other words, "Don't feed the trolls"
- Benjammer 7y ago
  Tit for tat has always been the solution to prisoner's dilemma. The people who think "prisoner's dilemma" means "I should be wholly and utterly selfish, because it's the logical thing to do" are just idiots who don't understand how cooperation can work over time and repeated trials to build trust.
- resonantjacket5 7y ago
  That's alright sometimes. But there's usually a 100 (or something) readers to 1 posters ratio. If none of the "trolls" are contested that leaves the impression that it's a legitimate opinion. I don't think the option of "don't feed the trolls" really works in such scenarios.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    In those cases you are talking to the audience, not to the trolls. It doesn't matter what the trolls meant; it matters what you say.

mc32 7y ago

I agree and I didn’t take notice till the day I learned a woman flying to ZA wrote some quick satire on twitter before departing, when she landed many hours later she learned her tweet was taken straight and was summarily fired with the tireless assistance of the twitter-rage-mob. I agree with Cleese and Chapelle. It’s madness.

stallmanite 7y ago
I am curious to read about this but googling “woman flight ZA twitter outrage“ is getting me nothing. Could you provide a name?
- mc32 7y ago
  Here you go: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-t...
lonelappde 7y ago
She was a PR rep who spewed vile racist hatred. And she got her job back anyway. https://www.vox.com/2018/1/19/16911074/justine-sacco-iac-match-group-return-tweet https://www.vox.com/2018/1/19/16911074/justine-sacco-iac-mat...