(Speaking for myself) I saw an earlier version of this post and thought that “strongest possible terms” didn’t really make sense but didn’t speak up. In retrospect this was a mistake.
I’m not sure when to surface “that doesn’t feel exactly right” intuitions and speak up at all the correct times, since I feel like I have this intuition very often and if I comment all the time about them I’ll come across as really nitpicky/uninteresting. And it’s really hard to triage, like this comes up so often that I can’t just do a (even a rushed and intuition-driven) cost-benefits analysis each time.[1]
Another salient example of a mistake in this genre was the FTX commercial. I thought it didn’t make sense as an argument but like most commercials don’t make sense on a literal level and I didn’t really think too hard about why the FTX commercial was more deceptive than the usual “high-status unrelated activity! Buy our product!” line of messaging.
But again, it’s unclear to me on how much to pay attention and when.
EDIT: One heuristic I try to go through is something like “is this mistake central to the argument?” But as established in our other comments, this itself can be a crux. Like I don’t think the exact details of condemnations of FTX is central to this piece, whereas you do.
Thanks for this comment.
(Speaking for myself) I saw an earlier version of this post and thought that “strongest possible terms” didn’t really make sense but didn’t speak up. In retrospect this was a mistake.
I’m not sure when to surface “that doesn’t feel exactly right” intuitions and speak up at all the correct times, since I feel like I have this intuition very often and if I comment all the time about them I’ll come across as really nitpicky/uninteresting. And it’s really hard to triage, like this comes up so often that I can’t just do a (even a rushed and intuition-driven) cost-benefits analysis each time.[1]
Another salient example of a mistake in this genre was the FTX commercial. I thought it didn’t make sense as an argument but like most commercials don’t make sense on a literal level and I didn’t really think too hard about why the FTX commercial was more deceptive than the usual “high-status unrelated activity! Buy our product!” line of messaging.
But again, it’s unclear to me on how much to pay attention and when.
EDIT: One heuristic I try to go through is something like “is this mistake central to the argument?” But as established in our other comments, this itself can be a crux. Like I don’t think the exact details of condemnations of FTX is central to this piece, whereas you do.