A friend once shared an essay with me for feedback. It struck me as mistaken and terribly naive, and I said so, which they did not take well.
(They didn't say it, but a standard LessWrongian response here would have been "instead of insulting me, why don't you provide an actual counterargument?"—and that's often a very good move for helping conversations keep on-track.)
Why was that hard for them to be on the receiving end of? To understand, consider the difference between the following two conversations.
If I say "Many of the rooms of your house are painted red" and you respond "Hm, I can't think of any rooms in my house that are painted red" then probably I'm the one who is mistaken. I probably have only visited once or twice and you actually live there.
If I say "You're naive in your thinking" and you respond "Hm, I can't think of any times that I was naive in my thinking", well, I'm accusing you of not noticing important things, so your claim to not have noticed such cases is something I'd expect to see in world where I was right as well as worlds where I was wrong.
(It's not zero bayesian evidence, I do know people who are naive and self-aware of this, but it's far rarer, and so the lack of it is much less evidence than the red-room case.)
Calling someone naive is a kind of epistemically insidious reply. It not only indicates that you disagree with them on the object level, but it calls into question their reasoning capacity, in a way that makes their perspective and arguments less worth engaging with and more worth ignoring or dismissing.
I tend to think of an accusation of naivety as leveraged on being right. In the worlds where it's right, it's good and true to say, helping everyone's maps get better, helping the person notice their blindspots, etc. etc.. But in the worlds where it's wrong, you've muddied the waters considerably, because it's harder for the accused to defend themselves from this claim; the claim itself calls into question their reasoning, and so you've made it harder for them to show you if you're wrong.
Many accusations are similar to this. Calling someone overconfident, defensive, out of touch, gullible, brainwashed, overly emotional, arrogant, unhinged, etc. etc., are accusations that are unusually hard to respond to. Because they call into question your judgment, they undercut you using your own judgment in defense.
Yet, importantly, what if it's true? What if the person is naive? What if they are bad at tracking cynical or adversarial hypotheses, and are likely to trust surface impressions when others would notice red flags worth tracking? Surely we shouldn't avoid saying this if it's true?
Yes, it's important to make this move from time to time, but it's also good to take care with these kinds of accusations, and do them well. It's unusually important to think about if I were wrong in this accusation, what route would I be leaving them to show this? You can make this easier in a few ways.
Make your claim falsifiable. Make it rely on a checkable, factual assertion that the other person may be able to engage with. Also if you can find checkable and false statements in their case, make sure to point them out.
Ideally point to a pattern of poor judgment, rather than just disagreeing with them on this one claim. This gives them more surface area to provide counter-arguments (e.g. "actually you've assessed the other case mistakenly, here's some more concrete evidence there"), and also holds you to a higher standard of evidence.
Rule out broader interpretations. If you're making a claim about them on this issue, but you don't believe that they're epistemically suspect in general, then don't accidentally imply otherwise. It isn't a big difference to clarify between "You seem naive" versus "Your perspective on this issue seems naive", but the latter is making a much less sweeping claim about dismissing their perspectives.
Do just have a higher standard for throwing such muddying accusations around. If you are choosing whether to pivot to the meta-level and call them naive, or whether to engage further on the object level, pick the object-level a bit longer. If you want people to be able to have dialogue, and if you want people to be able to show you if you're mistaken, don't immediately jump to these sorts of accusations that are leveraged on you being right.
It's good that I told my friend that their perspective was mistaken and naive; but I wish I had taken more effort to ensure that I left a conversational path whereby they could, if I were mistaken, change my mind.
A friend once shared an essay with me for feedback. It struck me as mistaken and terribly naive, and I said so, which they did not take well.
(They didn't say it, but a standard LessWrongian response here would have been "instead of insulting me, why don't you provide an actual counterargument?"—and that's often a very good move for helping conversations keep on-track.)
Why was that hard for them to be on the receiving end of? To understand, consider the difference between the following two conversations.
If I say "Many of the rooms of your house are painted red" and you respond "Hm, I can't think of any rooms in my house that are painted red" then probably I'm the one who is mistaken. I probably have only visited once or twice and you actually live there.
If I say "You're naive in your thinking" and you respond "Hm, I can't think of any times that I was naive in my thinking", well, I'm accusing you of not noticing important things, so your claim to not have noticed such cases is something I'd expect to see in world where I was right as well as worlds where I was wrong.
(It's not zero bayesian evidence, I do know people who are naive and self-aware of this, but it's far rarer, and so the lack of it is much less evidence than the red-room case.)
Calling someone naive is a kind of epistemically insidious reply. It not only indicates that you disagree with them on the object level, but it calls into question their reasoning capacity, in a way that makes their perspective and arguments less worth engaging with and more worth ignoring or dismissing.
I tend to think of an accusation of naivety as leveraged on being right. In the worlds where it's right, it's good and true to say, helping everyone's maps get better, helping the person notice their blindspots, etc. etc.. But in the worlds where it's wrong, you've muddied the waters considerably, because it's harder for the accused to defend themselves from this claim; the claim itself calls into question their reasoning, and so you've made it harder for them to show you if you're wrong.
Many accusations are similar to this. Calling someone overconfident, defensive, out of touch, gullible, brainwashed, overly emotional, arrogant, unhinged, etc. etc., are accusations that are unusually hard to respond to. Because they call into question your judgment, they undercut you using your own judgment in defense.
Yet, importantly, what if it's true? What if the person is naive? What if they are bad at tracking cynical or adversarial hypotheses, and are likely to trust surface impressions when others would notice red flags worth tracking? Surely we shouldn't avoid saying this if it's true?
Yes, it's important to make this move from time to time, but it's also good to take care with these kinds of accusations, and do them well. It's unusually important to think about if I were wrong in this accusation, what route would I be leaving them to show this? You can make this easier in a few ways.
Make your claim falsifiable. Make it rely on a checkable, factual assertion that the other person may be able to engage with. Also if you can find checkable and false statements in their case, make sure to point them out.
Ideally point to a pattern of poor judgment, rather than just disagreeing with them on this one claim. This gives them more surface area to provide counter-arguments (e.g. "actually you've assessed the other case mistakenly, here's some more concrete evidence there"), and also holds you to a higher standard of evidence.
Rule out broader interpretations. If you're making a claim about them on this issue, but you don't believe that they're epistemically suspect in general, then don't accidentally imply otherwise. It isn't a big difference to clarify between "You seem naive" versus "Your perspective on this issue seems naive", but the latter is making a much less sweeping claim about dismissing their perspectives.
Do just have a higher standard for throwing such muddying accusations around. If you are choosing whether to pivot to the meta-level and call them naive, or whether to engage further on the object level, pick the object-level a bit longer. If you want people to be able to have dialogue, and if you want people to be able to show you if you're mistaken, don't immediately jump to these sorts of accusations that are leveraged on you being right.
It's good that I told my friend that their perspective was mistaken and naive; but I wish I had taken more effort to ensure that I left a conversational path whereby they could, if I were mistaken, change my mind.