I know that this is the EA forum and it’s bad that two people are trading arch emoticons...but I know I’m not the only one enjoying Abby Hoskin’s response to someone explaining her future journey to her.
Inject this into my veins.
Maybe more constructively (?) I think the OP responses have updated others in support of Abby’s concerns.
In the past, sometimes I have said things that turned out not to be as helpful as I thought. In those situations, I think I have benefitted from someone I trust reviewing the discussion and offering another perspective to me.
I’m not sure ‘enjoy’ is the right word, but I also noticed the various attempts to patronize Hoskin.
This ranges from the straightforward “I’m sure once you know more about your own subject you’ll discover I am right”:
I would say I expect you to be surprised by certain realities of neuroscience as you complete your PhD
‘Well-meaning suggestions’ alongside implication her criticism arises from some emotional reaction rather than her strong and adverse judgement of its merit.
I’m a little baffled by the emotional intensity here but I’d suggest approaching this as an opportunity to learn about a new neuroimaging method, literally pioneered by your alma mater. :)
[Adding a smiley after something insulting or patronizing doesn’t magically make you the ‘nice guy’ in the conversation, but makes you read like a passive-aggressive ass who is nonetheless too craven for candid confrontation. I’m sure once you reflect on what I said and grow up a bit you’ll improve so your writing inflicts less of a tax on our collective intelligence and good taste. I know you’ll make us proud! :)]
Or just straight-up belittling her knowledge and expertise with varying degrees of passive-aggressiveness.
I understand it may feel significant that you have published work using fMRI, and that you hold a master’s degree in neuroscience.
I’m glad to hear you feel good about your background and are filled with confidence in yourself and your field.
I think this sort of smug and catty talking down would be odious even if the OP really did have much more expertise than their critic: I hope I wouldn’t write similarly in response to criticism (however strident) from someone more junior in my own field.
What makes this kinda amusing, though, is although the OP is trying to set himself up as some guru trying to dismiss his critic with the textual equivalent of patting her on the head, virtually any reasonable third party would judge the balance of expertise to weigh in the other direction. Typically we’d take, “Post-graduate degree, current doctoral student, and relevant publication record” over “Basically nothing I could put on an academic CV, but I’ve written loads of stuff about my grand theory of neuroscience.”
In that context (plus the genders of the participants) I guess you could call it ‘mansplaining’.
Greg, I have incredible respect for you as a thinker, and I don’t have a particularly high opinion of the Qualia Research Institute. However, I find your comment to be unnecessarily mean: every substantive point you raise could have been made more nicely and less personal, in a way more conducive to mutual understanding and more focused on an evaluation of QRI’s research program. Even if you think that Michael was condescending or disrespectful to Abby, I don’t think he deserves to be treated like this.
Hmm I have conflicting feelings about this. I think whenever you add additional roadblocks or other limitations on criticism, or suggestions that criticisms can be improved, you
a) see the apparent result that criticisms that survive the process will on average be better.
b) fail to see the (possibly larger) effect that there’s an invisible graveyard of criticisms that people choose not to voice because it’s not worth the hassle.
At the same time, being told that your life work is approximately useless is never a pleasant feeling, and it’s not always reasonable to expect people to handle it with perfect composure (Thankfully nothing of this magnitude has ever happened to me, but I was pretty upset when an EA Forum draft I wrote in only a few days had to be scrapped or at least rewritten because it assumed a mathematical falsehood). So while I think Mike’s responses to Abby are below a reasonable bar of good forum commenting norms, I think I have more sympathy for his feelings and actions here than Greg seems to.
So I’m pretty conflicted. My own current view is that I endorse Abby’s comments and tone as striking the right balance for the forum, and I endorse Greg’s content but not the tone.
But I think reasonable people can disagree here, and we should also be mindful that when we ask people to rephrase substantive criticisms to meet a certain stylistic bar (see also comments here), we are implicitly making criticisms more onerous, which arguably has pretty undesirable outcomes.
Based on how the main critic Abby was treated, how the OP replies to comments in a way that selectively chooses what content they want to respond to, the way they respond to direct questions with jargon, I place serious weight that this isn’t a good faith conversation.
This is not a stylistic issue, in fact it seems to be exactly the opposite: someone is taking the form of EA norms and styles (maintaining a positive tone, being sympathetic) while actively undermining someone odiously.
I have been in several environments where this behavior is common.
At the risk of policing or adding to the noise (I am not willing to read more of this to update myself), I am writing this because I am concerned you and others who are conscientious are being sucked into this.
Hi Charles, I think several people (myself, Abby, and now Greg) were put in some pretty uncomfortable positions across these replies. By posting, I open myself to replies, but I was pretty surprised by some of the energy of the initial comments (as apparently were others; both Abby and I edited some of our comments to be less confrontational, and I’m happy with and appreciate that).
Happy to answer any object level questions you have that haven’t been covered in other replies, but this remark seems rather strange to me.
For the avoidance of doubt, I remain entirely comfortable with the position expressed in my comment: I wholeheartedly and emphatically stand behind everything I said. I am cheerfully reconciled to the prospect some of those replying to or reading my earlier comment judge me adversely for it—I invite these folks to take my endorsement here as reinforcing whatever negative impressions they formed from what I said there.
The only thing I am uncomfortable with is that someone felt they had to be anonymous to criticise something I wrote. I hope the measure I mete out to others makes it clear I am happy for similar to be meted out to me in turn. I also hope reasonable folks like the anonymous commenter are encouraged to be forthright when they think I err—this is something I would be generally grateful to them for, regardless of whether I agree with their admonishment in a particular instance. I regret to whatever degree my behaviour has led others to doubt this is the case.
Your responses here are much more satisfying and comprehensible than your previous statements, it’s a bit of a shame we can’t reset the conversation.
2. Another anonymous commentator (thanks to Linch for posting) highlights that Abby’s line of questioning regarding EEGs ultimately resulted in a response satisfactory to her and which she didn’t have the expertise to further evaluate:
if they had given the response that they gave in one of the final comments in the discussion, right at the beginning (assuming Abby would have responded similarly) the response to their exchange might have been very different i.e. I think people would have concluded that they gave a sensible response and were talking about things that Abby didn’t have expertise to comment on:
_______
Abby Hoskin: If your answer relies on something about how modularism/functionalism is bad: why is source localization critical for your main neuroimaging analysis of interest? If source localization is not necessary: why can’t you use EEG to measure synchrony of neural oscillations?
Mike Johnson: The harmonic analysis we’re most interested in depends on accurately modeling the active harmonics (eigenmodes) of the brain. EEG doesn’t directly model eigenmodes; to infer eigenmodes we’d need fairly accurate source localization. It could be there are alternative ways to test STV without modeling brain eigenmodes, and that EEG could give us. I hope that’s the case, and I hope we find it, since EEG is certainly a lot easier to work with than fMRI.
Abby Hoskin: Ok, I appreciate this concrete response. I don’t know enough about calculating eigenmodes with EEG data to predict how tractable it is.
Thanks, but I’ve already seen them. Presuming the implication here is something like “Given these developments, don’t you think you should walk back what you originally said?”, the answer is “Not really, no”: subsequent responses may be better, but that is irrelevant to whether earlier ones were objectionable; one may be making good points, but one can still behave badly whilst making them.
(Apologies if I mistake what you are trying to say here. If it helps generally, I expect—per my parent comment—to continue to affirm what I’ve said before however the morass of commentary elsewhere on this post shakes out.)
Just want to be clear, the main post isn’t about analyzing eigenmodes with EEG data. It’s very funny that when I am intellectually honest enough to say I don’t know about one specific EEG analysis that doesn’t exist and is not referenced in the main text, people conclude that I don’t have expertise to comment on fMRI data analysis or the nature of neural representations.
Meanwhile QRI does not have expertise to comment on many of the things they discuss, but they are super confident about everything and in the original posts especially did not clearly indicate what is speculation versus what is supported by research.
I continue to be unconvinced with the arguments laid out, but I do think both the tone of the conversation and Mike Johnson’s answers improved after he was criticized. (Correlation? Causation?)
Generally speaking, I agree with the aphorism “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar;”
For what it’s worth, I interpreted Gregory’s critique as an attempt to blow up the conversation and steer away from the object level, which felt odd. I’m happiest speaking of my research, and fielding specific questions about claims.
Hi Gregory, I’ll own that emoticon. My intent was not to belittle, but to show I’m not upset and I‘m actually enjoying the interaction. To be crystal clear, I have no doubt Hoskin is a sharp scientist and cast no aspersions on her work. Text can be a pretty difficult medium for conveying emotions (things can easily come across as either flat or aggressive).
I know that this is the EA forum and it’s bad that two people are trading arch emoticons...but I know I’m not the only one enjoying Abby Hoskin’s response to someone explaining her future journey to her.
Inject this into my veins.
Maybe more constructively (?) I think the OP responses have updated others in support of Abby’s concerns.
In the past, sometimes I have said things that turned out not to be as helpful as I thought. In those situations, I think I have benefitted from someone I trust reviewing the discussion and offering another perspective to me.
[Own views]
I’m not sure ‘enjoy’ is the right word, but I also noticed the various attempts to patronize Hoskin.
This ranges from the straightforward “I’m sure once you know more about your own subject you’ll discover I am right”:
‘Well-meaning suggestions’ alongside implication her criticism arises from some emotional reaction rather than her strong and adverse judgement of its merit.
[Adding a smiley after something insulting or patronizing doesn’t magically make you the ‘nice guy’ in the conversation, but makes you read like a passive-aggressive ass who is nonetheless too craven for candid confrontation. I’m sure once you reflect on what I said and grow up a bit you’ll improve so your writing inflicts less of a tax on our collective intelligence and good taste. I know you’ll make us proud! :)]
Or just straight-up belittling her knowledge and expertise with varying degrees of passive-aggressiveness.
I think this sort of smug and catty talking down would be odious even if the OP really did have much more expertise than their critic: I hope I wouldn’t write similarly in response to criticism (however strident) from someone more junior in my own field.
What makes this kinda amusing, though, is although the OP is trying to set himself up as some guru trying to dismiss his critic with the textual equivalent of patting her on the head, virtually any reasonable third party would judge the balance of expertise to weigh in the other direction. Typically we’d take, “Post-graduate degree, current doctoral student, and relevant publication record” over “Basically nothing I could put on an academic CV, but I’ve written loads of stuff about my grand theory of neuroscience.”
In that context (plus the genders of the participants) I guess you could call it ‘mansplaining’.
Greg, I have incredible respect for you as a thinker, and I don’t have a particularly high opinion of the Qualia Research Institute. However, I find your comment to be unnecessarily mean: every substantive point you raise could have been made more nicely and less personal, in a way more conducive to mutual understanding and more focused on an evaluation of QRI’s research program. Even if you think that Michael was condescending or disrespectful to Abby, I don’t think he deserves to be treated like this.
Hmm I have conflicting feelings about this. I think whenever you add additional roadblocks or other limitations on criticism, or suggestions that criticisms can be improved, you
a) see the apparent result that criticisms that survive the process will on average be better.
b) fail to see the (possibly larger) effect that there’s an invisible graveyard of criticisms that people choose not to voice because it’s not worth the hassle.
At the same time, being told that your life work is approximately useless is never a pleasant feeling, and it’s not always reasonable to expect people to handle it with perfect composure (Thankfully nothing of this magnitude has ever happened to me, but I was pretty upset when an EA Forum draft I wrote in only a few days had to be scrapped or at least rewritten because it assumed a mathematical falsehood). So while I think Mike’s responses to Abby are below a reasonable bar of good forum commenting norms, I think I have more sympathy for his feelings and actions here than Greg seems to.
So I’m pretty conflicted. My own current view is that I endorse Abby’s comments and tone as striking the right balance for the forum, and I endorse Greg’s content but not the tone.
But I think reasonable people can disagree here, and we should also be mindful that when we ask people to rephrase substantive criticisms to meet a certain stylistic bar (see also comments here), we are implicitly making criticisms more onerous, which arguably has pretty undesirable outcomes.
I want to say something more direct:
Based on how the main critic Abby was treated, how the OP replies to comments in a way that selectively chooses what content they want to respond to, the way they respond to direct questions with jargon, I place serious weight that this isn’t a good faith conversation.
This is not a stylistic issue, in fact it seems to be exactly the opposite: someone is taking the form of EA norms and styles (maintaining a positive tone, being sympathetic) while actively undermining someone odiously.
I have been in several environments where this behavior is common.
At the risk of policing or adding to the noise (I am not willing to read more of this to update myself), I am writing this because I am concerned you and others who are conscientious are being sucked into this.
Hi Charles, I think several people (myself, Abby, and now Greg) were put in some pretty uncomfortable positions across these replies. By posting, I open myself to replies, but I was pretty surprised by some of the energy of the initial comments (as apparently were others; both Abby and I edited some of our comments to be less confrontational, and I’m happy with and appreciate that).
Happy to answer any object level questions you have that haven’t been covered in other replies, but this remark seems rather strange to me.
For the avoidance of doubt, I remain entirely comfortable with the position expressed in my comment: I wholeheartedly and emphatically stand behind everything I said. I am cheerfully reconciled to the prospect some of those replying to or reading my earlier comment judge me adversely for it—I invite these folks to take my endorsement here as reinforcing whatever negative impressions they formed from what I said there.
The only thing I am uncomfortable with is that someone felt they had to be anonymous to criticise something I wrote. I hope the measure I mete out to others makes it clear I am happy for similar to be meted out to me in turn. I also hope reasonable folks like the anonymous commenter are encouraged to be forthright when they think I err—this is something I would be generally grateful to them for, regardless of whether I agree with their admonishment in a particular instance. I regret to whatever degree my behaviour has led others to doubt this is the case.
Greg, I want to bring two comments that have been posted since your comment above to your attention:
Abby said the following to Mike:
2. Another anonymous commentator (thanks to Linch for posting) highlights that Abby’s line of questioning regarding EEGs ultimately resulted in a response satisfactory to her and which she didn’t have the expertise to further evaluate:
Thanks, but I’ve already seen them. Presuming the implication here is something like “Given these developments, don’t you think you should walk back what you originally said?”, the answer is “Not really, no”: subsequent responses may be better, but that is irrelevant to whether earlier ones were objectionable; one may be making good points, but one can still behave badly whilst making them.
(Apologies if I mistake what you are trying to say here. If it helps generally, I expect—per my parent comment—to continue to affirm what I’ve said before however the morass of commentary elsewhere on this post shakes out.)
Gregory, I’ll invite you to join the object-level discussion between Abby and I.
Just want to be clear, the main post isn’t about analyzing eigenmodes with EEG data. It’s very funny that when I am intellectually honest enough to say I don’t know about one specific EEG analysis that doesn’t exist and is not referenced in the main text, people conclude that I don’t have expertise to comment on fMRI data analysis or the nature of neural representations.
Meanwhile QRI does not have expertise to comment on many of the things they discuss, but they are super confident about everything and in the original posts especially did not clearly indicate what is speculation versus what is supported by research.
I continue to be unconvinced with the arguments laid out, but I do think both the tone of the conversation and Mike Johnson’s answers improved after he was criticized. (Correlation? Causation?)
Generally speaking, I agree with the aphorism “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar;”
For what it’s worth, I interpreted Gregory’s critique as an attempt to blow up the conversation and steer away from the object level, which felt odd. I’m happiest speaking of my research, and fielding specific questions about claims.
Hi Gregory, I’ll own that emoticon. My intent was not to belittle, but to show I’m not upset and I‘m actually enjoying the interaction. To be crystal clear, I have no doubt Hoskin is a sharp scientist and cast no aspersions on her work. Text can be a pretty difficult medium for conveying emotions (things can easily come across as either flat or aggressive).