It’s difficult for me to perceive “specific examples of what people said and how people reacted to what was said that created this dysfunction” because none have been posted. And we may have avoided disputatious arguments but we are certainly engaged in an argument. I am arguing that an argument becomes “disputatious” (heated) when it is peppered with ad hominem comments. By that definition this has not been a disputatious argument because I have resisted replying in a heated manner to your ad hominem comments. I didn’t because I knew that you probably don’t even perceive them as ad hominem and therefore didn’t intend them as such.
An example of an ad hominem comment is your answer to my comment above. I said that “I don’t see how it’s possible to reduce the purported dysfunction of discussions on Discourse without seeing specific examples of dysfunction-causing dialog”. Instead of answering this comment directly – by giving some examples of dysfunction-causing dialog or explaining why such examples are not necessary – you said “Maybe it’s difficult for you to perceive because of the absence of blame, and because of our success, so far, in avoiding disputatious argument”.
Do you not see that this is an ad hominem reply? Perhaps the ad hominem (and hurtful) nature of the comment would be more obvious to you if you were on the receiving end of it. You are saying that I might not be able to see the obviously correct answer to my comment because of a personal failing in me – my desire to see blame and disputatious argument.
Indeed, this whole thread started with an ad hominem comment from you. I had said:
And you replied:
This is ad hominem because, again, rather than answering a straightforward question you are commenting on something about me. The implication is that I’m just a mischievous guy who knows the answer to my question and was asking it just to be a provocateur. In fact, I didn’t know the answer (and still don’t) and was only trying to “provoke” an answer.
At this point you do exactly what I ask! Thank you! Here are the two things that you say I did to cause the dysfunction in the Power Law discussion:
“appeal to authority (Maoz et al 2005) that did not address the mathematical critique in commensurate terms”
" other matters of fact that remain unremarked"
In other words, I caused dysfunction by not making my case about the power law to your satisfaction.
Yes, you have mischaracterized it but that’s beside the point. The point is that the “dysfunctional” things you say I did are the kind of things that happen all the time in scientific discussions. In the discussions here on Discourse Bill Powers is regularly appealed to as an authority on PCT and the factual basis of many of the authoritative claims that are made here are often left unremarked,
As I said, people, including you Bruce, are always appealing to the authority of Powers here on PCT, which is fine since Bill is certainly the authority. But my reference to Maoz et al (2005) was not an appeal to authority. I had already shown many times that there was no mistake in my derivation of the mathematical relationship between velocity and curvature. I referred to Maoz et al to show that some of the leading figures in power law research had discovered the same thing we did, well before we did. By saying that my reference to Maoz et al was ad verecundiam (an appeal to authority) you are violating your own caveat about jumping to conclusions about what a person intends based on their overt behavior.
I don’t see what the problem was in the interchange with Erling. I wasn’t trying to be flashy or score points. I said only that the power law is, in fact, an irrelevant side effect of control. I demonstrated that in my publications on the power law with modeling, just as Erling suggested. I don’t see how my side of the interaction could be considered dysfunctional. Nor was Erling’s, though I think he could have done without implying that my analysis of the power law was “hubris”, unless he meant that it is hubris from the point of view of power law researchers.
Based on the interaction with Erling it seems to me that what is perceived by others as my being snide, supercilious, demeaning, dismissive, snarky, and sarcastic is just me disagreeing with them in as polite a way as possible.
Thanks, but I can’t see that any of the specific examples of my contributing dysfunction to discussion on Discourse are anything other than me disagreeing strongly with what you and others say relevant to PCT. To the extent that I have made comments that could be construed as ad hominem, I will try to stop that. But as long as people keep saying things that I see as being wrong about PCT I will continue to argue against them, as substantively and as politely as possible.
I dislike the idea that the goal of science is to arrive at truth and I certainly dislike the idea that that can be done by winning arguments though “facile debate”. I think science is an approach to the best understanding of how the world works and that the best way to do that is by testing models against data. That doesn’t necessarily win arguments but it’s the best way to try.
I believe that the best way to reduce the perceived dysfunction of discussions on Discourse is to hold people accountable when they post comments that appear to be ad hominem. You don’t have to blame anyone. Just politely say (in public) something like “What you just posted [quoted here] could be taken as being ad hominem. Did you intend it that way? If so, it would be nice if you could apologize and try not to do it again. Thank you.”.
Best, Rick