I’m somewhat confused by what people mean by “strategic” in these discussions. It seems to me like there are aspects of communication that I would call “stategic” but are uncontroversial. I would suggest the “grown not crafted” idea from IABIED. I think this is a extremely succinct and effective way to communicate the underlying technical idea, but of course expressing the idea in more technical language would also be truthful (arguably even more so). The difference isn’t that the “grown not crafted” way of communicating the idea is more truthful, but (I would infer) that it is predicted ot be more helpful in allowing others to understand the idea, even if they aren’t already famiiar with relevant technical knowledge. In other words, it is a more strategic way of communicating the idea.
I don’t think that example is particularly controversial, but I think these discussions are meant to also apply to statements that are highly contentious and subject to adversarial dynamics. When we consider statements that are more in those domains, I think we enter a kind of “messy middle” where the truthfulness of a statement is much more contested and it isn’t necessarily as easy to seperate the core content from the communication strategy.
Let’s take the “DEFUND THE POLICE” example from the post. I definitely believe that some people engage in the “window-stretching” as you describe. But I could also imagine proponents of the slogan saying something like this:
“I genuinely believe that current policing practices are so unjust that the police deserve to be defunded. It would be better for policing to be reformed to correct these injustices while still carrying out legitimate policing functions. But saying I want to “defund the police” is genuinely true under the current system. If I only advocated for more centrist reforms that would actually be misleading about what I believe and trying to fit my beliefs into the overton window, not the other way around. Its extremely important to use slogans like “DEFUND THE POLICE” when you actually believe in them because the powerful simply ignore centrist calls for reform. They need to know how strongly we actually feel about this. Calling for measures such as defunding is the only way to have our voices heard”.
I think such a view lives in this messy middle. People who agree are likely to see it as genuine while critics will be tempted to claim inappropriate use of stategy. The issue of whether the person who holds this view is being “truthful” essentially collapses back into the underlying object-level issues. Those who agree on the object-level will also agree of the meta question of whether what the person is doing is acceptable, and the reverse for someone who disagrees.
As I allude to here I think the best approach is to simply argue over the object-level question, and leave aiside the dicussions about whether someone is being stategic, how truth-seeking they are, if they are “gaslighting” etc.
I will ask to keep the discussion in one place, and not duplicate comments. I’ve responded to the original post, if any readers want to click the link below to see the reply.
(crossposting my comment from lesswrong)
I’m somewhat confused by what people mean by “strategic” in these discussions. It seems to me like there are aspects of communication that I would call “stategic” but are uncontroversial. I would suggest the “grown not crafted” idea from IABIED. I think this is a extremely succinct and effective way to communicate the underlying technical idea, but of course expressing the idea in more technical language would also be truthful (arguably even more so). The difference isn’t that the “grown not crafted” way of communicating the idea is more truthful, but (I would infer) that it is predicted ot be more helpful in allowing others to understand the idea, even if they aren’t already famiiar with relevant technical knowledge. In other words, it is a more strategic way of communicating the idea.
I don’t think that example is particularly controversial, but I think these discussions are meant to also apply to statements that are highly contentious and subject to adversarial dynamics. When we consider statements that are more in those domains, I think we enter a kind of “messy middle” where the truthfulness of a statement is much more contested and it isn’t necessarily as easy to seperate the core content from the communication strategy.
Let’s take the “DEFUND THE POLICE” example from the post. I definitely believe that some people engage in the “window-stretching” as you describe. But I could also imagine proponents of the slogan saying something like this:
“I genuinely believe that current policing practices are so unjust that the police deserve to be defunded. It would be better for policing to be reformed to correct these injustices while still carrying out legitimate policing functions. But saying I want to “defund the police” is genuinely true under the current system. If I only advocated for more centrist reforms that would actually be misleading about what I believe and trying to fit my beliefs into the overton window, not the other way around. Its extremely important to use slogans like “DEFUND THE POLICE” when you actually believe in them because the powerful simply ignore centrist calls for reform. They need to know how strongly we actually feel about this. Calling for measures such as defunding is the only way to have our voices heard”.
I think such a view lives in this messy middle. People who agree are likely to see it as genuine while critics will be tempted to claim inappropriate use of stategy. The issue of whether the person who holds this view is being “truthful” essentially collapses back into the underlying object-level issues. Those who agree on the object-level will also agree of the meta question of whether what the person is doing is acceptable, and the reverse for someone who disagrees.
As I allude to here I think the best approach is to simply argue over the object-level question, and leave aiside the dicussions about whether someone is being stategic, how truth-seeking they are, if they are “gaslighting” etc.
I will ask to keep the discussion in one place, and not duplicate comments. I’ve responded to the original post, if any readers want to click the link below to see the reply.