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I am sorry but this still does not seem very relevant to what I was trying to get across, I will try again.
I am specifically asking if the demand for people to disavow a position they have not advanced is an isolated demand for rigor only being brought out in this instance, or a standard practice for productive conversations.
@ymeskhout has themselves acknowledged that it is, if not an 'isolated demand for rigor' a 'specific demand for rigor' because they think it is only appropriate when the person is 'slippery' or the topic is particularly fraught. Personally, I think this allows @ymeskhout far too many degrees of freedom, that this is functionally an isolated demand, and the correct approach would be to treat people as bad actors only after they have behaved badly, state clearly what you expect from them before continuing to engage, or simply not engage with commenters who you think are bad faith.
I am not replying to the broader conversation with @ymeskhout and have not participated in it. If specific users are behaving badly and @ymeskhout knows this and wants to act on that information, I don't see any problem with that. If the initial comment was, I can't have a productive conversation with @ motte-user-i-just-made-up without them first acknowledging that all of their previous election fraud claims turned out to be wrong, I would not have commented.
Do you think, as a general rule, it is reasonable to demand that people disavow popular Bailey positions that they have not personally advanced, simply because the topic is one in which Motte and Bailey arguments are common? I have a strong instinctive dislike for this kind of compelled position taking, it feels like a 'debate tactic', which is why I also asked about tabooing the word stolen. If @ymeskhout had simply said, it is necessary to state ones positions clearly and unambiguously, which they claim is all the disavowal is supposed to accomplish anyway, I would not have commented.
I brought up the Defund the Police example because it illustrates the problem really well. If we're talking about the issue, it's helpful to know if someone means "literally abolish the police" or "reduce the police budget slightly by recategorizing 911 dispatchers as non-police". It would be annoying to have someone argue the 911 dispatcher accounting trick only to then turn around with "and therefore that's why we need to abolish the police" when the coast is clear.
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Given how many comments I’ve seen where people have expressed the “big lie” stolen/rigged plots are so obviously dumb and almost no one here believes them, I don’t think you’re identifying a real problem.
If it’s a position this hypothetical person has not advanced and presumably they don’t believe it then I fail to see a problem. Nobody is being compelled to do anything since it’s a voluntary debate with ongoing negotiations as to what would even happen.
Somebody here should be theoretically able to meet the stated requirement.
My understanding is that an ultimatum from A to B with no external enforcement mechanism would still be commonly understood as a compulsion placed on B by A.
This is exactly what I am replying to. @ymeskhout presented a conversational norm/expectation that they felt was necessary to have the conversation, and I was questioning the validity and generality of that expectation.
An isolated demand for rigor, is only a coherent concept in a world of generalized principles. Obviously it is okay to treat different cases differently, but you should be aware that you are doing it, and if you are worried about epistemic hygiene you should interrogate your reasons for the different treatment of different topics.
@ymeskhout seems to appreciate this, and offers their reason for making this specific demand in this specific situation, I just don't find "they might motte and bailey me" to be a very convincing reason for making this specific demand.
Of course, if the demand is mollified from, bolding mine,
to,
then I think it is totally reasonable.
Again, I am concerned specifically about the generalized principle of the form; Bob must disavow 2.a if they want to discuss 2.b with Alice. I think it is a bad principle and I am suspicious that anyone would actually apply it fairly. If you think that is a total normal and anodyne request, if you can't imagine a situation where it might be employed nefariously to manipulate the terrain of a discussion, that's fine. If you think you would/do apply it fairly when it is needed, and never when it is not warranted, that's also fine, I am not going to actually check.
I think you and @ymeskhout should have a podcast discussion about the appropriate rules for running a structured podcast debate on a contested topic with a million different theories and unclear evidence.
Thank you for the suggestion but I don't trust myself to articulate my ideas clearly in a spoken language format so I will stick to text for now.
I appreciate your clarity and expression of self-awareness.
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