Isn't Bob 'refuting' something Alice didn't say? If she had said, "Oh, look, there's water ahead", then his reply would have been (technically) correct, if not psychologically wise. But she said it's dry, and his reply was an explanation of why it sometimes can be dry, but look 'wet'.
Why doesn't Alice just let Bob do his thing? She seems a little upset, keeps trying to interject when that's probably not the most useful move here. Bob is a low-discernment individual, at least socially, it seems, and needs to be treated differently.
I suppose I'm asking why they're together on a road trip and yet don't seem to understand each other very well. Or: I think this phenomenon has premises and contexts that are maybe more interesting than the climactic talking-past, and should inform the response. At the very least don't try to talk over him.
You must have read 'needs to be treated differently' as sympathetic - I was thinking in the vein of managing children or elderly parents, realistically and with a view to whatever your goal is.
I think I'm more skeptical of ”when you try to be 'nice' to someone instead of being direct, you often end up hurting them” than of anything else of D's that I've ever read!
In my experience it's dreadfully rare to hurt (or be hurt by) somebody in this really very roundabout manner, whereas very often ”directness” seems to be a sort of substitute-word that rude and impatient people use to self-justify their rudeness. Consequently, I would expect urging people to move away from 'niceness' (in the sense of thoughtful, informative, and non-critical responses to ideas we perceived as wrong) to have an overwhelmingly negative consequence on average.
I do agree we need a principle like ”Directly refute the central point, and only then afterwards propose an alternative explanation if it is required to support your refutation” (does this fit into Graham's Hierarchy of Argument?) - I just think that this is in practice very different to general urging to be less nice and more direct in conversation...
Interesting. For what it's worth, I am strongly in favor of more niceness! I guess I just think that IF there's a tradeoff between clarity and "niceness" then it should be resolved in favor of clarity. Your comment, for example, exemplifies pretty much what I think is basically the ideal style, in the sense that I don't think it would be possible for you to be much nicer without compromising on clarity.
in the spirit of offering direct critique that's specifically applicable to the content - this post was confusing in that
(a) Bob's main mistake is obviously in not listening to what Alice is saying and just assuming she is wrong in the way Bob expects people to be wrong in this situation -- if Alice was actually wrong in that way, his ramblings would still be not very skillful but much less fundamentally wrong-headed
(b) the explanation of the phenomenon the exchange is meant to illustrate had AFAICT nothing to do with that basic mistake
as such I am having trouble relating the example and the explanation to each other or mapping the explanation onto other specific situations, and don't think I've understood it
Hmmm, I think Bob's biggest sin isn't failing to listen to Alice, but rather claiming she is wrong without stating *how* he thinks she was wrong. If he had done that, it would be much more apparent (especially to third parties) that Bob was in error.
Edit: That said, I accept the criticism that this might be unclear. I'm not entirely sure how I could make it better, though...
but if Bob had been correct about what Alice was saying, I would say that his rant *is* saying how she's wrong, just not in a maximally streamlined way
I think I'd benefit from an example where the Bob character *isn't* hugely misreading the Alice character, but is still doing the thing you want him not to do
But that misreading is pretty core to the pattern I'm trying to identify. A "heat mirage" is something like "a compelling series of true statements that refute a mistake that's never stated and doesn't exist".
oh I see! I guess then I misunderstood the explanation? possibly because I disagree with you on the crux of the issue
(i.e. if Alice had said "looks wet " I think Bob would be just as guilty of the pattern I understand you as describing, but much less guilty of the thing I most judge him for)
It is a sad fact of life that only facts can be fact checked.
That is, a narrative can be wrong, analysis can be wrong, a take can be wrong, a policy can be wrong, morality can be wrong, but none of those can be fact checked.
You can fact check the facts in a narrative, but incorrect facts do not always disprove the point. Thus you have the fallacy fallacy - A correct conclusion from an incorrect basis.
So, if you want to disprove analysis, you've signed up for an immense amount of work - a single invalidation is not enough.
I feel it is more honest to say "Your analysis seems to be faulty because ..." rather than "Your take is wrong"
There is also the problem of low information, high satisfaction theories (conspiracy theories) - the problem of the hidden framing narrative. I have a narrative in mind, but I'm actually arguing about something downstream of that, so any argument you provide will never address my actual problem.
Finally, "proof" exists in a context and is not absolute. You can say "it was proven in court", but courts are imperfect, and there's always the appeals process. Appeal to a higher court or the media - "the trial was rigged!"
----
Lately I've been obsessed with the question "How would you know", as in, what test would you run and how expensive would that test be. If the test cannot be run, that is probably a sign that some humility is in order; unfortunately most *untestable* hypotheticals are also the most *emotional* hypotheticals.
Reminds me of these two YouTube videos by theoretical physicist Mithuna Yoganathan. She tries very hard to figure out why light travels slower through water than through air. She considers several possible explanations (ones that you can find confidently expressed online and in textbooks) and finds them all lacking.
It's taking inmense willpower to not only *not* do the heat mirage thing here as a bit, but also to not point out that I'm not going to do that bit in this comment. (Obviously, I failed)
Believe it or not, this was actually triggered by a bunch of people on hacker news doing this to someone else. But I won’t deny that it’s informed by years of personal experience…
For what it's worth, I found it very helpful that you kept to this convention; without it, I'd have read through the dialogue wondering whether the names were just placeholders or whether they represent some relevant property of the people (such as gender) that I'm supposed to consider.
(Hope the practical value doesn't detract from the charm of the homage!)
Isn't Bob 'refuting' something Alice didn't say? If she had said, "Oh, look, there's water ahead", then his reply would have been (technically) correct, if not psychologically wise. But she said it's dry, and his reply was an explanation of why it sometimes can be dry, but look 'wet'.
Yes! That's the idea! (So many people are confused about this, I think I need to acknowledge I didn't do a great job explaining this.)
Why doesn't Alice just let Bob do his thing? She seems a little upset, keeps trying to interject when that's probably not the most useful move here. Bob is a low-discernment individual, at least socially, it seems, and needs to be treated differently.
Alice prioritizes Bob's feelings lower than making it clear to people reading blog posts that Bob is missing something.
I suppose I'm asking why they're together on a road trip and yet don't seem to understand each other very well. Or: I think this phenomenon has premises and contexts that are maybe more interesting than the climactic talking-past, and should inform the response. At the very least don't try to talk over him.
You must have read 'needs to be treated differently' as sympathetic - I was thinking in the vein of managing children or elderly parents, realistically and with a view to whatever your goal is.
I think I'm more skeptical of ”when you try to be 'nice' to someone instead of being direct, you often end up hurting them” than of anything else of D's that I've ever read!
In my experience it's dreadfully rare to hurt (or be hurt by) somebody in this really very roundabout manner, whereas very often ”directness” seems to be a sort of substitute-word that rude and impatient people use to self-justify their rudeness. Consequently, I would expect urging people to move away from 'niceness' (in the sense of thoughtful, informative, and non-critical responses to ideas we perceived as wrong) to have an overwhelmingly negative consequence on average.
I do agree we need a principle like ”Directly refute the central point, and only then afterwards propose an alternative explanation if it is required to support your refutation” (does this fit into Graham's Hierarchy of Argument?) - I just think that this is in practice very different to general urging to be less nice and more direct in conversation...
Interesting. For what it's worth, I am strongly in favor of more niceness! I guess I just think that IF there's a tradeoff between clarity and "niceness" then it should be resolved in favor of clarity. Your comment, for example, exemplifies pretty much what I think is basically the ideal style, in the sense that I don't think it would be possible for you to be much nicer without compromising on clarity.
in the spirit of offering direct critique that's specifically applicable to the content - this post was confusing in that
(a) Bob's main mistake is obviously in not listening to what Alice is saying and just assuming she is wrong in the way Bob expects people to be wrong in this situation -- if Alice was actually wrong in that way, his ramblings would still be not very skillful but much less fundamentally wrong-headed
(b) the explanation of the phenomenon the exchange is meant to illustrate had AFAICT nothing to do with that basic mistake
as such I am having trouble relating the example and the explanation to each other or mapping the explanation onto other specific situations, and don't think I've understood it
Hmmm, I think Bob's biggest sin isn't failing to listen to Alice, but rather claiming she is wrong without stating *how* he thinks she was wrong. If he had done that, it would be much more apparent (especially to third parties) that Bob was in error.
Edit: That said, I accept the criticism that this might be unclear. I'm not entirely sure how I could make it better, though...
but if Bob had been correct about what Alice was saying, I would say that his rant *is* saying how she's wrong, just not in a maximally streamlined way
I think I'd benefit from an example where the Bob character *isn't* hugely misreading the Alice character, but is still doing the thing you want him not to do
But that misreading is pretty core to the pattern I'm trying to identify. A "heat mirage" is something like "a compelling series of true statements that refute a mistake that's never stated and doesn't exist".
Consider putting that summery into the main post, because it clarified a lot for me
OK, I will, thanks!
oh I see! I guess then I misunderstood the explanation? possibly because I disagree with you on the crux of the issue
(i.e. if Alice had said "looks wet " I think Bob would be just as guilty of the pattern I understand you as describing, but much less guilty of the thing I most judge him for)
Well, if Alice had said "looks wet", then at least the mistake actually exists, so it wouldn't count as a heat mirage according to my definition.
It is a sad fact of life that only facts can be fact checked.
That is, a narrative can be wrong, analysis can be wrong, a take can be wrong, a policy can be wrong, morality can be wrong, but none of those can be fact checked.
You can fact check the facts in a narrative, but incorrect facts do not always disprove the point. Thus you have the fallacy fallacy - A correct conclusion from an incorrect basis.
So, if you want to disprove analysis, you've signed up for an immense amount of work - a single invalidation is not enough.
I feel it is more honest to say "Your analysis seems to be faulty because ..." rather than "Your take is wrong"
There is also the problem of low information, high satisfaction theories (conspiracy theories) - the problem of the hidden framing narrative. I have a narrative in mind, but I'm actually arguing about something downstream of that, so any argument you provide will never address my actual problem.
Finally, "proof" exists in a context and is not absolute. You can say "it was proven in court", but courts are imperfect, and there's always the appeals process. Appeal to a higher court or the media - "the trial was rigged!"
----
Lately I've been obsessed with the question "How would you know", as in, what test would you run and how expensive would that test be. If the test cannot be run, that is probably a sign that some humility is in order; unfortunately most *untestable* hypotheticals are also the most *emotional* hypotheticals.
Reminds me of these two YouTube videos by theoretical physicist Mithuna Yoganathan. She tries very hard to figure out why light travels slower through water than through air. She considers several possible explanations (ones that you can find confidently expressed online and in textbooks) and finds them all lacking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP1kKN3ghOU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo3ds0FVpXs
There's also a 3b1b video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTzGBJPuJwM
Or maybe this one I'm not sure
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz4Q4QOuoo8
For those of us who are incapable of watching videos, is Bob's (not mine! Bob's!) explanation correct?
Beats me. I don't know physics from fettuccine. But I enjoy watching YouTube videos about it while I ride my exercise bike.
From what I remember, it is
It's taking inmense willpower to not only *not* do the heat mirage thing here as a bit, but also to not point out that I'm not going to do that bit in this comment. (Obviously, I failed)
Wrong. There are lots of instances where double-meta Heat Mirage jokes are actually funny.
Talk about adding insult (out-meta'd) to injury (ratio'd)
ok but who did this to you in the last week
Believe it or not, this was actually triggered by a bunch of people on hacker news doing this to someone else. But I won’t deny that it’s informed by years of personal experience…
I would contend that this basic dynamic is also very typical in primary relationships. Especially, male/female ones as depicted in this post.
Incidentally, I wasn't implying that, I just like to use those names as a little homage to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_and_Bob
For what it's worth, I found it very helpful that you kept to this convention; without it, I'd have read through the dialogue wondering whether the names were just placeholders or whether they represent some relevant property of the people (such as gender) that I'm supposed to consider.
(Hope the practical value doesn't detract from the charm of the homage!)
That dialog was hilarious!
And, sadly, all too typical.