So there’s now a bunch of speculation in the comments here about what might have caused me and others to criticise this post.
I think this speculation puts me (and, FWIW, HLI) in a pretty uncomfortable spot for reasons that I don’t think are obvious, so I’ve tried to articulate some of them: - There are many reasons people might want to discuss others’ claims but not accuse them of motivated reasoning/deliberately being deceptive/other bad faith stuff, including (but importantly not limited to): a) not thinking that the mistake (or any other behaviour) justifies claims about motivated reasoning/bad faith/whatever b) not feeling comfortable publicly criticising someone’s honesty or motivations for fear of backlash c) not feeling comfortable publicly criticising someone’s honesty of motivations because that’s a much more hurtful criticism to hear than ’I think you made this specific mistake’ d) believing it violates forum norms to make this sort of public criticism without lots of evidence
- In situations where people are speculating about what I might believe but not have said, I do not have good options for moving that speculation closer to the truth, once I notice that this might not be the only time I post a comment or correction to something someone says. Examples: - If I provide positive reassurance about me not actually implying bad faith with a comment that didn’t mention it, that makes it pretty clear what I think in situations where I’m not ruling it out. - If I give my honest take on someone’s motivation in any case where I don’t think there’s any backlash risk, but don’t give a take in situations where there is backlash risk, then I’m effectively publicly identifying which places I’d be worried about backlash, which feels like the sort of thing that might cause backlash from them. If you think for a few minutes about various actions I might take in various situations, either to correct misunderstanding or to confirm correct understanding, I’m sure you’ll get the idea. To start with, you might want to think about why it doesn’t make sense to only correct speculation that seems false.
That’s a very long-winded way of saying “I posted a correction, you can make up your own mind about what that correction is evidence of, but I’d rather you didn’t spend a ton of time publicly discussing what I might think that correction is evidence of, because I won’t want to correct you if you’re wrong or confirm if you’re right”.
So there’s now a bunch of speculation in the comments here about what might have caused me and others to criticise this post.
I think this speculation puts me (and, FWIW, HLI) in a pretty uncomfortable spot for reasons that I don’t think are obvious, so I’ve tried to articulate some of them:
- There are many reasons people might want to discuss others’ claims but not accuse them of motivated reasoning/deliberately being deceptive/other bad faith stuff, including (but importantly not limited to):
a) not thinking that the mistake (or any other behaviour) justifies claims about motivated reasoning/bad faith/whatever
b) not feeling comfortable publicly criticising someone’s honesty or motivations for fear of backlash
c) not feeling comfortable publicly criticising someone’s honesty of motivations because that’s a much more hurtful criticism to hear than ’I think you made this specific mistake’
d) believing it violates forum norms to make this sort of public criticism without lots of evidence
- In situations where people are speculating about what I might believe but not have said, I do not have good options for moving that speculation closer to the truth, once I notice that this might not be the only time I post a comment or correction to something someone says.
Examples:
- If I provide positive reassurance about me not actually implying bad faith with a comment that didn’t mention it, that makes it pretty clear what I think in situations where I’m not ruling it out.
- If I give my honest take on someone’s motivation in any case where I don’t think there’s any backlash risk, but don’t give a take in situations where there is backlash risk, then I’m effectively publicly identifying which places I’d be worried about backlash, which feels like the sort of thing that might cause backlash from them.
If you think for a few minutes about various actions I might take in various situations, either to correct misunderstanding or to confirm correct understanding, I’m sure you’ll get the idea. To start with, you might want to think about why it doesn’t make sense to only correct speculation that seems false.
That’s a very long-winded way of saying “I posted a correction, you can make up your own mind about what that correction is evidence of, but I’d rather you didn’t spend a ton of time publicly discussing what I might think that correction is evidence of, because I won’t want to correct you if you’re wrong or confirm if you’re right”.