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0 pointskerkeslager2y ago0 comments

> I've developed antibodies to the word "pedantic", particularly when one leads with it. It seems that when people use the word, it has a tendency to make discussion harder. How often have you seen someone use the word and the conversation develop further into something interesting? Versus the opposite?

You're describing a correlation but haven't established causation. Is the causality:

someone using the word "pedantic" -> uninteresting conversation

Or could the causality be:

person being pedantic -> uninteresting conversation

AND

person being pedantic -> someone using the word "pedantic"

I have many experiences where a pedantic person shuts down a conversation and nobody uses the word "pedantic", so I feel there's strong evidence that pedantry, not the use of the word "pedantic", makes conversations uninteresting.

> Using the word "pedantic" often gets perceived as a kind of slight. It is hard to say if the speaker realizes this consciously or not. It feels to me like it conveys a subtext, as if "why are you being so detailed about this?". This goes along with a general attitude of conveying less curiosity and more certainty. Speaking for myself, on forums such as this, I'd rather learn about other's perspectives and reasoning rather than discount them.

With love, I'd like to gently ask: is that what you think you were doing when you discounted the researcher's perspective because they didn't define the word "doorway"?

In my experience, whether or not something is a slight has been irrelevant to whether it's true, so perceiving things as slights is counterproductive to maintaining an attitude of curiosity. Particularly, I'm curious about what I can do better.

It's worth noting that the reason I'm recognizing your behavior as pedantic here is that I have received the feedback that I'm prone to being pedantic, and as a result, I've worked very hard to recognize when I am being pedantic. I say this because I hope you'll recognize that I'm giving you feedback which I found helpful to myself and hope will help you, not because I think I'm better than you or I'm trying to hurt you.

I'd venture you may have received this feedback too, and received it as a slight or shutting down the conversation.

Indeed given some of the things you're referencing such as "perfect Bayesian agent", believing free will is an illusion, and Sam Harris, I strongly suspect we have very similar intellectual backgrounds.

> I don't like using "pedantic" when I want to encourage curious conversation. Speaking personally, when I hear it, it gives me the impression the other person is not demonstrating a mindset or vocabulary for the kind of communication that I find most valuable.

The person you are communicating also has a mindset and vocabulary for the kind of communication that they find most valuable. You don't get to force everyone into your communication preferences, and attempting to do so is a surefire way to prevent communication entirely. Even if your communication preferences are objectively better than theirs (which is a real possibility!), the content of the communication is likely much more valuable than the means of communication.

My experience is that the most valuable communication is a product of collaboration between both parties to build a common terminology. That collaboration can't happen if you insist on your own preferred forms of communication. Maybe if you could get the other person to use your form of communication it would be better, but you can't ever get anyone to communicate exactly how you want, so that's irrelevant. And notably, your preferred communication probably isn't perfect in every way.

> I simply want to add that I have a low-to-middling confidence in psychology based studies in general, at least out of the gate, until I dig into (or find someone else I trust who has) the study.

Same.

Part of my objection to insisting on a stricter definition of the word "doorway" is that it doesn't address any of the reasons my confidence is low. If I have 51% confidence in a study of doorways, it's not particularly interesting to me to improve that to 51% confidence in a doorways between wooden doorframes painted white that connect two rooms of equal size within a 20,000 square foot residential property that costs $70k in a top 10% school district. Specificity isn't adding anything pragmatic here because I still can't base most decisions on such low-confidence conclusions. If anything, the conclusion is less useful, because it only applies to such a narrow situation.

But, you asked about falsifiability--and I think that's a pretty different topic from confidence.

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xpe2y ago

I appreciate your response. I'm thinking it over. Here are some thoughts for now...

For myself and anyone (like you) who thinks about things more deeply, being called pedantic is unsatisfying. Why? Probably some combination of (a) it feels like a lack of engagement at the same level; (b) possibly a lack of intellectual capability and/or interest in the other party; (c) possibly indicative of a "rougher" personality -- could be merely a more direct style of conversation, but could also be indicative of a lack of awareness of social dynamics. For someone like me interested in vetting conversation partners, all of the former points are useful to gather signal. They are all tentative and subject to revision. But it is useful to recognize when someone else's criticism is likely being driven by aspects _other than_ the content.

I like how you introduced other related concepts; in particular you touched on the idea of being charitable. To try to expound a bit: if someone wants to say that I've _uncharitably_ characterized another position, I think that is worth saying -- doing so is a specific claim that I think works better to advance conversation.

> It's worth noting that the reason I'm recognizing your behavior as pedantic here is that I have received the feedback that I'm prone to being pedantic, and as a result, I've worked very hard to recognize when I am being pedantic. I say this because I hope you'll recognize that I'm giving you feedback which I found helpful to myself and hope will help you, not because I think I'm better than you or I'm trying to hurt you.

I appreciate your intention. First, may I ask what is your meaning of "being pedantic"? I have my own answer at the bottom of this book-sized message. Second, I have a concern that people who are being less thoughtful "brow-beat" those who are being more thoughtful by calling them "pedantic". I see some possibility that you've internalized this brow-beating and now are "passing it along" in the hopes of being helpful. It is helpful to think about, though what I do with it might not be what you expect. :)

I do think there are sensible definitions of "being pedantic", but I'm very reluctant to label someone else's comment as being such.

I think we'd agree: some people don't want to spend the effort in arguing against a comment -- that's fine. Even with your point about causation in mind, I don't see a need or benefit to label the post they disagree with as being _pedantic_. Calling someone's else comment _pedantic_ is rather easy, but offering constructive criticism requires more effort.

Just to explain my semantics, here is the root word of pedantic:

> pedant : a person who is excessively concerned with minor details and rules or with displaying academic learning: the royal palace (some pedants would say the ex-royal palace).

Keeping this in mind, thinking about your causation point... I think the underlying basis relies on a deeper question; namely, "What level of detail are we trying to explain here?" If one part is only interested in a relatively granular model, they might accuse someone else of being pedantic. But that other person may be seeking a more granular model. My point: rather than calling "pedantic" I think using terminology around "what are we trying to explain?" advances the conversation with minimal risk of slighting the other person.

Lastly, yes, I'm a critical reader of Harris and his guests. I get the impression he puts in a good faith effort to get at deeper truths, though I disagree with some particulars, as informed and reasonable people probably should. Again, I appreciate your comment, thanks!

kerkeslagerOP2y ago

I'd say that what I meant by "being pedantic" was something like "being unwilling to intuit aspects of what the other person is saying". This requires the other person to put a lot of effort into modifying their communication to clarify details, just so that you don't have to put effort into intuiting details or accept that things might be more vague than you like.

Another form of pedantry is when people insist on a specific definition of the word, when it might be possible to intuit that the other person means something else, even if they aren't using a more common definition of the words. Again, it's requiring a lot of effort from the other person so that you don't have to put in the effort to figure out what they might have meant.

The point is, it's exhausting to talk to someone who is being pedantic, because you have to put in all the effort to be understood while they put in very little effort to understand. That's of course not their intent in most cases--when I relapse into pedantry it's often because I want to be sure I understand the person, not because I want to maliciously exhaust them. But the best intentions don't fix the problem that it makes me hard to talk to.

Of course, the alternative to "being pedantic" is that you're going to intuit some details, and sometimes you'll get them wrong. But that's just a risk of communication: it's impossible to communicate with 100% accuracy.

Trying to communicate with extreme accurately has a lot of cost: it takes a lot of effort. It's not necessary reasonable to expect that effort of the people you want to communicate with. Case in point: I simply don't have time to continue this conversation much farther if I'm going to be expected to write out posts of this length each time to define every little detail of how I'm defining each word I use. That's not a decision I'm making because of any sort of animosity, it's a fact of my current workload.

It goes both ways: there are parts of your post I can't engage with because again, I don't have the time.

And, defining every little detail of everything hits a maximum eventually. You can write in immense detail, but eventually you'll hit the maximum ability of your audience to take it in. There are almost certainly aspects of this post which you are going to miss, simply because I wrote a lot. It's often the case that pedantry is just asking for more clarification than the pedant can actually absorb.

Additionally, there are other solutions to miscommunication than throwing a bunch of up-front effort at communicating. Often when a miscommunication happens because the other person intuited something incorrectly, they'll say something that gives you a chance to correct the miscommunication.

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