Yes the article is indeed full of strawmen and misleading statements. But (not knowing anything about Torres) I felt the top comment was strongly violating the principle of charity when trying to understand the authorâs motivations.
I think the principle of charity is very important (especially when posting on a public forum), and saying that someoneâs true motivations are not the ones they claim should require extraordinary proof (which maybe is the case! I donât know anything about the history of this particular case).
Extraordinary proof? This seems too high to me. You need to strike the right balance between diagnosing dishonesty when it doesnât exist and failing to diagnose it when it does. Both types of errors have serious costs. Given the relatively high prevalence of deception among humans (see e.g. this book), I would be very surprised if requiring âextraordinary proofâ of dishonesty produced the best consequences on balance.
Yes the article is indeed full of strawmen and misleading statements.
But (not knowing anything about Torres) I felt the top comment was strongly violating the principle of charity when trying to understand the authorâs motivations.
I think the principle of charity is very important (especially when posting on a public forum), and saying that someoneâs true motivations are not the ones they claim should require extraordinary proof (which maybe is the case! I donât know anything about the history of this particular case).
Extraordinary proof? This seems too high to me. You need to strike the right balance between diagnosing dishonesty when it doesnât exist and failing to diagnose it when it does. Both types of errors have serious costs. Given the relatively high prevalence of deception among humans (see e.g. this book), I would be very surprised if requiring âextraordinary proofâ of dishonesty produced the best consequences on balance.