-7

To Whom I May Have Concerned: A standard explanation of my disagreement

by [anonymous]

12th Jun 2011

5 min read

-7

EDIT: I put this here so that it can be easily on the Internet so I can link people to it. When I link it to people, they'll be here on Less Wrong. The good it does to people who are already here, I don't really know. I feel that that makes it appropriate for a top-level post here. If you don't think so, comment, as I'm relatively new here. If three people downvote I'll remove it and put in somewhere else.

To Whom I May Have Concerned:

I write this to explain myself to someone I have just disagreed and argued with. I always feel I need to say the same things after a disagreement, so I thought I'd automate it by writing it down once, and just providing people with a link.

So we disagreed on something. Chances are, I upset or offended you. To start with, I apologize for that. I never want to upset or offend someone, and only rarely do I have to. So, I probably messed up there. Not only is offending and upsetting people a wrong thing to do, but it's also incredibly counterproductive. As soon as someone is offended, their mind closes. Arguments become like soldiers, to be fought. Good solutions are missed. Also, as a result of that, you probably like and trust me less, which is unhelpful for my goals. So I probably screwed that up. I'm sorry. I have this arrogant habit of belittling and making fun of people's beliefs when I'm pretty sure they're wrong, but can't quite explain to them why (for instance arguing about theology with people who don't understand intelligence, or arguing politics with people who don't know microeconomics). So I'm sorry for that.

Now, I need to explain some of the frequent causes of misunderstanding which I get with people. To start with, I need to clarify what I mean by truth, opinions, and such things. The first one is the difference between a fact and a belief. A belief is what you think is true. A fact is true. I can't provide an example of the distinction for myself, as Wittgenstein pointed out. But, for instance, saying "I believe that I am male" gives the same information as "I am male."

Introduction to my views on truth

I believe in philosophical realism. This means that I think two contradictory statements cannot both be true. Iron either floats on water or it doesn't. I was born in Australia or I wasn't. So if two people disagree, at least one of them is wrong.

(However, sometimes the disagreement isn't a real disagreement, just people meaning different things with their words. If that was the problem, I would have told you at the time. So, assume it was a real disagreement.)

Now, there's this idea in society that some statements are facts, and some are opinions. For example, people think that "Japan's capital city is Tokyo" is a fact, while "Japan's justice system is immoral" to be opinions. I don't believe there is any qualitative difference between these statements. I believe both.

There are some differences. "Japan's capital city is Tokyo" is a lot more likely to be considered a fact, for a few reasons.

I believe "Japan's capital city is Tokyo" is a lot more likely to be true.
More people believe it.
Fewer common assumptions must be held for us to agree on it. If we want to talk about morality, we need to decide on a moral system first, then we need to figure out how the Japanese justice system corresponds. This takes a lot longer.

But nonetheless. This is all a matter of scale rather than type. If we were all twenty times smarter, it's possible we wouldn't even notice the difference. If we were all five year olds, it's possible that there would be debate about what Japan's capital city really was. We might argue over whether perhaps Kyoto was the capital, if we had an old atlas. And so on. But overall, opinions can be just as wrong as factual statements.

English makes this inconvenient. When I say "I believe X" instead of "X is true," I'm normally trying to communicate something about myself. Saying "I believe that consequentialism is more sensible than deontology" draws attention to the fact claimer, me, rather than the fact. Which is sometimes useful. But it leads to that whole fact/opinion dichotomy which I greatly dislike.

Reactions vs opinion/facts

Except, however, in the case of what I prefer to call reactions to things. Some things which I rationally agree are equally bad upset me to different levels, and vice versa. I don't feel much sympathy towards babies. I care greatly about animals. People thinking badly of themselves makes me extremely upset. So if I enjoyed Three Worlds Collide, but someone else was offended by what it said about babyeating and rape, then I can understand them. We are not disagreeing on a fact, we are simply reporting upon our different reactions to something. Sometimes, we are called upon to make a judgement about something which is our estimation of what an average person's reaction to something would be. This is no longer a reaction, but an opinion about the reactions of others. It goes back into the realm of statements which can be argued about.

This is a common misunderstanding I have in arguments with people. I'm not saying you're wrong to have the reaction you have to something. I can't argue that, cause I'm not in your head. You know more about your feelings than I do, in most cases.

And so when I say that you're wrong about whether a movie was offensive or not, I'm not arguing that you were offended. I'm saying that the average person wouldn't be, so the movie itself is not terribly offensive. I can't control your reaction, and can't hold it against you. But you can be wrong about the average effect of something.

"Everyone is entitled to his own opinion" is pretty much the epitome of this confusion. Everyone is entitled to his own reaction. But, you're only entitled to your own opinion to the extent that you're allowed to be wrong about something.

And so, we've disagreed.

Now that we've clarified that. We disagreed, which means I think you're wrong. I hold beliefs on a probability basis: There is nothing I believe to be 100% true, but plenty of things which I believe strongly enough to round to 100% to, say, three decimal places. Assuming I respect your intelligence, which is usual, I have just adjusted the probability of me being right downwards. I'll probably check my thinking, and then adjust my probability further in whichever direction seems correct. For example, when someone I knew tried to convince me that Obama wasn't born in America, I quickly gave them about a 5% probability of being right. When I got home, I checked the internet and revised it down to about 1%.

On the other end of the spectrum, when arguing that drugs should be legal one time, someone argued that they would have taken drugs as a teenager if they were legal. I had never met someone who asserted that before, which made me less sure about drug legalization.

So, I'm checking my facts. I'll probably report back to you soon about whether I reckon you're right or not. It's very rare that I change someone's mind on something, so I may or may not bother trying. If you have evidence that I'm wrong, please tell it to me and to one of my friends. If I ignore it, my friend can complain to me.

In conclusion.

We've disagreed. I'm not angry. I hope you aren't. Sorry for any offense I may have caused.

Yours jollily,

Buck

Personal Blog

-7

To Whom I May Have Concerned: A standard explanation of my disagreement

New Comment

16 comments, sorted by

top scoring

Click to highlight new comments since: Today at 11:51 AM

[-]Yasuo15y60

Dear Buck:

All I said was "looks like rain".

[-][anonymous]15y10

...I don't get it. I looked it up, and still don't get it.

Explain please?

EDIT: I'm a massive idiot for not getting it. Dammit. I'm only leaving this here because it would be dishonest to delete it. This one goes in the "for when I'm feeling arrogant" folder.

[-]Zetetic15y20

I think he's prodding you because he thinks it's overwrought. At least that was how I interpret it.

[-]Mass_Driver15y50

Can you put it in the discussion section? It's just as easy to link to there, and considerably less likely to distract people who don't know you or disagree with you.

[-]katydee15y30

I definitely feel that this post would be more appropriate for the discussion section.

Also, keep in mind that the majority of people, at least in the US, absolutely believe that you have the right to be wrong and would probably consider "But, you're only entitled to your own opinion to the extent that you're allowed to be wrong about something." to be ludicrous or trivially answered with "So, you're totally entitled to it, then?"

[-]Zetetic15y10

I'm not sure why this is a top level post. Are we supposed to critique this? Are we supposed to come up with our own version? What are we supposed to take away from this?

[-][anonymous]15y00

I'm just leaving it here to link to people if I need to, as I expect to. I'm allowed to do that, right?

Also, it does have some relevance to the morals of Less Wrong. I'll edit it with a foreword to make it clearer.

[-]Zetetic15y20

I'm just leaving it here to link to people if I need to, as I expect to. I'm allowed to do that, right?

Um, I guess technically you're allowed to. I take that to mean you aren't even particularly concerned with it being useful to the LW community though, so I wouldn't be surprised if people down-vote it a lot (and every vote on in the main section counts as +/- 10 karma points so you'll lose some of your privileges pretty quick and it will take a while to get them back).

Personally I would suggest you delete this and put it in the discussion section instead, possibly focusing on making it open to suggestions so that it can become more useful to other people in the community. Then you might do a top level post if it turns out.

[-][anonymous]15y10

Wait, I can't edit it, because I'm below the 20 points threshold required. Hrmm. Off to think of something intelligent to say elsewhere.

Edit: Fixed, given up, deleted. This belonged elsewhere.

[-]Alicorn15y20

If you tell me what you want to edit, I can go in and do it for you.

[-]The Dao of Bayes15y00

Out of curiousity, who all has edit access? I'd assumed Eliezer was the only admin, and could merely delete posts.

[-]Alicorn15y30

Eliezer, Robin Hanson, and matt of Tricycle (and maybe I'm forgetting someone) are Editors with a capital E and you can see this on their user pages under their names. They are omnipotent (although some exertions of this omnipotence are pending software upgrades). Me, Louie, and Vladimir Nesov are invisible, small-e editors. We have the powers of mods, plus we can edit other people's top-level posts; the edits we make in this way are all recorded. Moderators are these folks, and can see and "ignore" reports on comments, and ban comments and posts (but not edit them) (but not users).

[-]komponisto15y10

the edits we make in this way are all recorded.

Where?

[-]Vladimir_Nesov15y10

See this wiki page (the diff thing needs work).

[-][anonymous]15y00

It's interesting - but it's definitely a personal post ie it's about you personally, rather than being about something that the group, as a whole, might be interested in. That means that by posting this, you're kinda using the site for your own personal reasons, rather than something to be shared with the group that actually uses this site.

For that reason, I would have put it on your own, personal website or blog instead... and I guess that's been echoed by the others here that have voted this post down.

So, I'm glad you've removed it - not because it isn't interesting, or most likely useful (to you)... just not something that goes here. :)

[-]taryneast15y00

For that reason, I would have put it on your own, personal website or blog instead... and I guess that's been echoed by the others here that have voted this post down.

So, I'm glad you've removed it - not because it isn't interesting, or most likely useful (to you)... just not something that goes here. :)

Moderation Log

Curated and popular this week

LESSWRONG
is fundraising!
LW

LESSWRONG
is fundraising!
LW

-7

To Whom I May Have Concerned: A standard explanation of my disagreement

-7

-7