1- We fundamentally don't agree, you think I'm irrational on this topic and I think you are. That's fine. Personally I believe that any conversation that doesn't involve disagreement is not intelligent, it's dogmatic. So I have no problem agreeing to disagree. In my country they say 'no one owns the truth'.
2- Your fundamental position from the beginning was: agree with you or I'm ignorant. This is not only arrogant, but extremely ironic in a series of posts where you are arguing that people should be more open minded to what they don't like and more self aware of the limitations of their perspective.
3- You are correct, the term I meant to use was Steel-manning. I used ironmanning incorrectly and was wrong for using the wrong words. I always feel anything less than a direct first person acknowledgement shows an appalling lack of intellectual honesty (especially doing things like using 3rd person language to distance myself from my own shortcomings). I'll add also that I was not educated in English and grew up in a non-English speaking culture, so please bear with me on these types of mistakes.
4- Indefensible is a relative position. There are people who defend every conceivable position. So I should have used a more apt choice of words such as 'generally revolting', which more accurately depicts general feelings held by most people toward the army killing civilians on American soil. I thank you for highlighting this as it will allow me to more accurately communicate.
> 1- We fundamentally don't agree, you think I'm irrational on this topic and I think you are. That's fine. Personally I believe that any conversation that doesn't involve disagreement is not intelligent, it's dogmatic. So I have no problem agreeing to disagree. In my country they say 'no one owns the truth'.
Could be, but I do not think you're irrational. I am pretty sure you misread the prompt and suspect (that it's at least in part because) you're not used to these kinds of things—specifically, thought-experiment prompts in this kind of format and having this sort of character.
> 2- Your fundamental position from the beginning was: agree with you or I'm ignorant. This is not only arrogant, but extremely ironic in a series of posts where you are arguing that people should be more open minded to what they don't like and more self aware of the limitations of their perspective.
I think seeing the prompt as pro-authoritarian or as asking the candidate to empathize with an authoritarian position is likely the result of misreading. Seeing that as the primary difficulty or challenge in fully addressing the prompt would represent a further misunderstanding. I actually think its inviting this misreading without being overtly misleading or deceitful is very clever for a prompt like this, and probably improves its utility as a tool for evaluation.
I think any amount of concern that this prompt is part of or representative of some authoritarian grooming or selection process, intentional or otherwise, probably does betray ignorance specifically of how these kinds of questions are used and the character they often take, especially given that, by my reading, the degree to which it's "authoritarian" doesn't place it outside the mainstream of Western liberalism any time since there was such a thing (and I think not being used to these sorts of prompts or questions is likely to manifest as misreading it in the first place).
[omitted: A lengthy analysis of the prompt, including exactly what it says and doesn't say, and what it asks and doesn't ask, and how, as it went over the post-length limit. In short I'm even more convinced that a reading of it as pro-authoritarian, or especially that the primary focus or greatest challenge of a good response would be to empathize with and defend authoritarianism even if it plays along very closely with the premise and request, is all quite off the mark. The main challenge is tailoring a message to an audience to achieve a (not specified by the prompt, crucially!) goal.]
Your bringing up points we've gone over already and which I answered. Like where I talk about my university experience with such thought experiments. But never mind that. According to you, I've never seen such thought experiments.
According to you, I'm ignorant for not agreeing with you. Such a way of seeing things (combined with your reading comprehension skills) must make life really hard. So I'll concede and say sure, you're right buddy and I'm simply an ignoramus.
I hope you have a great evening and I wish you all the best in life (truly and honestly)
2- Your fundamental position from the beginning was: agree with you or I'm ignorant. This is not only arrogant, but extremely ironic in a series of posts where you are arguing that people should be more open minded to what they don't like and more self aware of the limitations of their perspective.
3- You are correct, the term I meant to use was Steel-manning. I used ironmanning incorrectly and was wrong for using the wrong words. I always feel anything less than a direct first person acknowledgement shows an appalling lack of intellectual honesty (especially doing things like using 3rd person language to distance myself from my own shortcomings). I'll add also that I was not educated in English and grew up in a non-English speaking culture, so please bear with me on these types of mistakes.
4- Indefensible is a relative position. There are people who defend every conceivable position. So I should have used a more apt choice of words such as 'generally revolting', which more accurately depicts general feelings held by most people toward the army killing civilians on American soil. I thank you for highlighting this as it will allow me to more accurately communicate.