As I’m often in the habit of proposing reforms, I hear many objections. Some are thoughtful and helpful but, alas, most are not. Humans are too much in the habit of quickly throwing out simple intuitive criticisms to bother to notice whether they have much of an evidential impact on the criticized claim.
Most likely, many commentators are not actually trying to help. More plausible motivations are typically looking smart, or looking virtuous. From that perspective, not helping is frequently an expected outcome.
I had a similar reaction while still understanding the general point (basically a knee-jerk rejection of change type situation). Useless objection 4 seems to map pretty well into useful objection 1 and the phrasing in 4 doesn't seem particularly misleading.
My point is that once you know about such general considerations, it adds no info re a particular proposal. We should of course all keep them in mind, but not bring them up as objections to particulars.
General considerations can apply to particular proposals, e.g., conservation of energy is a general consideration, but it is legitimately applicable to all proposed free-energy devices without requiring a detailed case-by-case review of each one. Chesterton's fence likewise expresses a valuable/useful general principle. Do you not agree that most (not all) new ideas are ultimately determined to be bad ideas, regardless of the brilliance of the individuals who come up with them? There also are some good ideas, of course, but these are less common. Thus, the burden of proof/defense of any new idea or proposition for change can and should always fall upon those proposing the change. General objections are not useless. If you are proposing a new idea, it is your responsibility to address the objections, whether general or specific.
Great post. In the spirit of the law of equal and opposite advice: frustrations from needing to balance things for different audiences at different balance points. eg:1. Your position is too long and complex2. You are very qualified in area X, thus I suspect deformation professionelle3. This is just generic do gooder-ism4. You too heavily leaned on shared values and didn't talk enough concrete details5. This watered down response won't do anything anyway6. Surely you're not claiming that the status quo is good?7. There would be benefits to an even larger change and we should focus on that8. We know that the status quo is bad, but you don't have evidence that new thing would be bad because it hasn't actually been tried yet9. Everyone already does vaguely similar thing, and that hasn't fixed the problem10. Everyone knows you can't trust suggestions from current system anyway11. Everything is constantly changing so you grasping at stability is doomed to failure
12 through 18 have a few more degrees of freedom (ie I am lazy)
By establishing a dimension along which opposite advice pulls, one can have an easier time thinking about what pulling the rope sideways might look like.
Yes, this is a super obvious but very important thing to reiterate.
I’d add though that others of us presume these norms in our respones so when we say “but wouldn’t that cause X” we mean “but wouldn’t that cause X more than our current system.”
If you are getting lots of responses that aren’t even implicitly making a comparative argument then I’ll try to be more explicit. However, consider that some of these arguments do mean to raise a comparative claim even if you find the mechanism implausible.
At a minimum, the "useless objections" in your first list, numbered 5, 6, and 7, should not be so casually dismissed, in my view. Consider Chesterton's fence:
Completely agree and a great list to link to, but I'd still want people to continue to make objections from the first list, while finding them personally useless.
Just like you wrote in Against Free Thinkers "The problem is that on average people who support odd ideas are less desirable as associates, and less discriminating in which ideas they endorse", on average people who propose reforms and who would back off given unreasonble unity against them in the comments, are precisely status-move-making evil people (or as you say, people who "don't share our values"). It might be good for this army of bad-argument status-deniers to continue to mount pressure against these evil people getting status.
I almost always agree with the core of your radical and non radical proposals.
I almost never think that they are worth discussing because they are always too ambitious. I can rarely see a path to getting people to think about your proposals using type two cognition. Let alone start gradually implementing any of them.
Is "implementation requires a cognitive shift that the populous is incapable of" a good criticism?
Most likely, many commentators are not actually trying to help. More plausible motivations are typically looking smart, or looking virtuous. From that perspective, not helping is frequently an expected outcome.
Robin, you obviously stole all those ideas from Sir Humphey Appleby.
I had a similar reaction while still understanding the general point (basically a knee-jerk rejection of change type situation). Useless objection 4 seems to map pretty well into useful objection 1 and the phrasing in 4 doesn't seem particularly misleading.
My point is that once you know about such general considerations, it adds no info re a particular proposal. We should of course all keep them in mind, but not bring them up as objections to particulars.
Not sure if your original list was edited, but for the present list, my earlier comment should have cited #'s 6, 7, and 8.
General considerations can apply to particular proposals, e.g., conservation of energy is a general consideration, but it is legitimately applicable to all proposed free-energy devices without requiring a detailed case-by-case review of each one. Chesterton's fence likewise expresses a valuable/useful general principle. Do you not agree that most (not all) new ideas are ultimately determined to be bad ideas, regardless of the brilliance of the individuals who come up with them? There also are some good ideas, of course, but these are less common. Thus, the burden of proof/defense of any new idea or proposition for change can and should always fall upon those proposing the change. General objections are not useless. If you are proposing a new idea, it is your responsibility to address the objections, whether general or specific.
It seems like many of these objections could be usefully reworded as questions?
Great post. In the spirit of the law of equal and opposite advice: frustrations from needing to balance things for different audiences at different balance points. eg:1. Your position is too long and complex2. You are very qualified in area X, thus I suspect deformation professionelle3. This is just generic do gooder-ism4. You too heavily leaned on shared values and didn't talk enough concrete details5. This watered down response won't do anything anyway6. Surely you're not claiming that the status quo is good?7. There would be benefits to an even larger change and we should focus on that8. We know that the status quo is bad, but you don't have evidence that new thing would be bad because it hasn't actually been tried yet9. Everyone already does vaguely similar thing, and that hasn't fixed the problem10. Everyone knows you can't trust suggestions from current system anyway11. Everything is constantly changing so you grasping at stability is doomed to failure
12 through 18 have a few more degrees of freedom (ie I am lazy)
By establishing a dimension along which opposite advice pulls, one can have an easier time thinking about what pulling the rope sideways might look like.
They are general considerations, not targeted at any particular proposal.
Perhaps you would do better to analyze why they are not already standard (or even existing) practice. Status quo would be a nonconstructive answer.
Yes, this is a super obvious but very important thing to reiterate.
I’d add though that others of us presume these norms in our respones so when we say “but wouldn’t that cause X” we mean “but wouldn’t that cause X more than our current system.”
If you are getting lots of responses that aren’t even implicitly making a comparative argument then I’ll try to be more explicit. However, consider that some of these arguments do mean to raise a comparative claim even if you find the mechanism implausible.
At a minimum, the "useless objections" in your first list, numbered 5, 6, and 7, should not be so casually dismissed, in my view. Consider Chesterton's fence:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...
Completely agree and a great list to link to, but I'd still want people to continue to make objections from the first list, while finding them personally useless.
Just like you wrote in Against Free Thinkers "The problem is that on average people who support odd ideas are less desirable as associates, and less discriminating in which ideas they endorse", on average people who propose reforms and who would back off given unreasonble unity against them in the comments, are precisely status-move-making evil people (or as you say, people who "don't share our values"). It might be good for this army of bad-argument status-deniers to continue to mount pressure against these evil people getting status.
I almost always agree with the core of your radical and non radical proposals.
I almost never think that they are worth discussing because they are always too ambitious. I can rarely see a path to getting people to think about your proposals using type two cognition. Let alone start gradually implementing any of them.
Is "implementation requires a cognitive shift that the populous is incapable of" a good criticism?