43 Comments

Yes, Wikipedia isn't a *terrible* approximation of this suggestion: "a single neutral writer could present all the different arguments on some subject, all using the same writing style."

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"Well, we might try to control for presentation variation by having a group of neutral writers rewrite common arguments in a standard style. That is, a single neutral writer could present all the different arguments on some subject, all using the same writing style. Readers of such presentations would have a better chance of drawing conclusions on each subject based on the logic of arguments, instead of writing styles."

I've found that the magazine "The Week" does this very well, with one writer presenting all the different opinions on the big news stories of the past week.

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The problem is that I think people are looking for that emotional element and are very unlikely to seek out something written in a very neutral style

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What you suggest at the end seems like a version of the Delphi method.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...

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> On the first, you're ignoring the huge tacit component in all communication.

Hopelessly vague an objection.

> Your (faulty) model is that information is "contained" in prose.

Bizarre, I know - that symbols and data might have meaning? Surely we are too postmodern to believe such naivetes.

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Cyc shows that a structured ontology is not what you really need for AI; however, it doesn't show data or logic is useless - 'the unreasonable effectiveness of data' etc.

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You mean something like Cyc? It seems pretty much like a failed attempt.

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"To truly "extract" the information contained in prose, you would have to read the writer's mind."

I'm inclined to agree. Words like "much", "very", "a lot", "dangerous", etc... are all subjective and even worse they depend on the mood and recent experiences of the person and the person could not consciously tell you what definitions they effectively use or which formula describes their change under the influence of moods and recent experiences. This phenomenon seems very difficult for people to understand and/or accept and it has given rise to misconceptions such as the sorites "paradox" and an infinite number of pointless political and philosophical discussions on the "true" meaning of some word.

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This is an interesting discussion you're having w/ gwern. You might find it easier to sort out your different perspectives in the context of a specific example.

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To echo John Hartman a bit - evaluating arguments entirely on their own merits is difficult. Instead, mostly we rely on a heuristic approach, which is to weight the argument based on clues about the holder of the arguments (which style and status are part of). The quality of the arguer is obviously not identical to the quality of the argument, but it's not totally unrelated. Then again this approach is profoundly vulnerable to truth-evaluation-clouding tribalism.

Why do we do this? It could just be we're using hardware that's not designed for impartial argument evaluation; we don't usually evaluate arguments accurately just because we can't. There's also the not-mutually-exclusive possibility that ***most of the things we read on a daily basis are entertainment, and we don't really expect them to affect a substantial consequential decision we're going to make at some point.*** This second possibility is most disturbing to those of us who spend our time on blogs signalling our intellects as a big part of our concept of self-worth. It's also related to the first possibility, in the sense that until very recently, humans didn't have access to powerful enough tools to make our beliefs actually matter much in terms of decisions we make in the world; there was no inclusive fitness value to such a talent, and since it's unclear that it affects inclusive fitness even today, there probably still is not.

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On the first, you're ignoring the huge tacit component in all communication.

On the second ... basically the same. Your (faulty) model is that information is "contained" in prose. Prose is a (at best, partly successful) means by which the writer tries to evoke the same ideas in his readers as he entertains. To truly "extract" the information contained in prose, you would have to read the writer's mind.

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True, I'm sorry that my "Great Writer" point seemed to allude to you proposal.

Applying the reasoning specifically to your proposal, the null hypothesis should be that we choose versions based on the writer's expressive power. If we prefer specific styles more than we prefer a single style with greater expressive power (the "stronger form"), this would accord with your hypothesis.

In fact, we do sometimes prefer the stronger single writer to the original exponents. Isn't this what textbooks in the social science present when they deal with controversial topics? There's still a flourishing market for textbooks. (Despite lack of expressive power being problematic with many.)

Why do you focus on presentations, rather than the far larger textbook market? Presentations, after all, are about personalities.

[Added.]That readers are attracted to versions for reasons other than their expressive power is not something I would challenge. (If expressive power was very important to most readers, we would see a very different best-seller's list.) But the desire to eliminate style differences remains with us. Consider the traditional American populist aversion to articulateness. (It is also part of the LW project.)

This view actually seems to accord with homo hypocritus. We at once want people to get away with influence through style, but at the same time seek to avert it.

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> descriptive language isn't completely reducible to propositional logic.

Why not? Wouldn't be just a lot of predicates and quantifiers?

> I don't understand your other point: you can rewrite ordinary prose...can only succeed through loss of expressive power.

Of course you can... and that's what's under discussion here, the best way to rewrite ordinary prose to extract the semantic content which matters (models, evidence, predictions about the future, and cost-benefits of policies) while lossily omitting the other semantic content (dog whistles, rhetoric, style).

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1. Let me be more precise, then: descriptive language isn't completely reducible to propositional logic. (To my best knowledge of the state of the debate.)

2. I don't understand your other point: you can rewrite ordinary prose. (And prose style isn't highly confounded with politics.)

3. The basic point (how I construed Charlene's) is that trying to equate styles can only succeed through loss of expressive power. (Therefore, our disinclination to seek a "neutral" style isn't irrational insofar as it can be explained by seeking expressive power.)

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I proposed having all the arguments on a single issue written by the same person. I didn't say that single person had to write everything.

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What you're missing is that—like other forms of social coordination—communication is hard.

Hard enough that any style can be improved (if not necessarily by the original writer). Every intellectual writer purports to try to write in the "strongest form possible." But in doing so, the writer can only exploit his own (modular) endowments, which are unique. Thus, each writer trying to produce the strongest possible version will write in an individualized style because he can only exploit his own strengths.

When we're attracted by particular modular configurations making up a particular writer, we're exhibiting an irrational influence of style. But, if we'd like to eliminate this bias, we still wouldn't have a single style, unless we do it by opting for a uniform mediocre one (with inferior expressive power).

[In The profession's disdain for "fine writing": The sociology (the OB software won't allow a link), I suggest that one function of legalese has been to supply a writing style that's neutral and mediocre.]

Therefore, unless everything is written by a single Great Writer (who is magically informed about all points of view), seeking the strongest form will not produce the same style.

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