List – TheVeryMask

I collect tests or clarifying questions that are useful for quickly orienting my thinking about a subject upon a first encounter. Like the semi-recent Lexicon, this is not an exhaustive list, and I’ll add to it as I think of more. Several of these are red flag indicators for judging yourself or other people.

Tilt’d Scales: The classic response to many dichotomies such nature vs nurture is that it’s probably both, but that’s incomplete and dodges the question. How likely is it that both factors contribute exactly equally to the outcome? Usually not very. “Balance” doesn’t require perfect symmetry. Determine which factor if any is the greatest contributor, and whether it’s the dominant fraction or merely the plurality.
Infinity Analysis: Extend the contrasting possibilities of a polarizing subject to infinity and see which side is better or worse, and also what you’d consider the middle. I would prefer to totally abolish copyright and other intellectual property law rather than have permanent copyright, the latter being closer to the current state. Plays nicely with Tilt’d Scales, since the exact middle between the ridiculous extremes is often not the best possible arrangement.
Kant Universality: Would it be viable if everyone did this at every opportunity? If yes, the strategy has longterm stability. Originally in my notes as Kant Let You Do That StarFox.
4 Sides of a hypothesis: For a given test, what are the rates of: affirmative, negative, false positive, false negative, and the consequences for each?
Reversal of causality: Whenever you see “A causes B”, consider how likely it is that “B causes A”. This is a natural fit for set-subset relationships, such as hard work and success: hard work doesn’t guarantee success, but the majority of the successful were hard working because success has an inbuilt selection bias towards effort. Depression may cause weight gain due to hormone changes, or weight gain might cause depression due to hormone changes, and intuition alone is insufficient to draw an arrow of causation between the coinciding factors. Consider also that they might both be caused by a 3^rd factor.
A 4^th Option: When given a dichotomy or dilemma, the question pulls you in 2 directions and it may be tempting to find a compromise between them via a 3^rd option. I prefer responses that break the boundaries of the question entirely and choose something off-spectrum.
Conflict of interest: Is the argument preceed’d by an incentive to have that belief? Most arguments and beliefs are motivated reasoning to justify existing behaviour. See the survivorship bias of “I worked hard for what I have”, which stems from “whatever anyone has is what they deserve to have” regardless of whether that was the deciding factor.
True Aims: Does the effective goal served by an action/a series of actions match the stated goal? The education system’s stated goal is knowledge and understanding, which it fails at spectacularly. It’s effect, and thus its true aim, is flagging graduates for employment. This is why percentage of a degree doesn’t track linearly with employment nor income, and students can barely remember a third of the material after a year. Do your actions demonstrate your stated beliefs and values?
Eros & Thanatos: Does the motivation seek to go towards something good or away from something bad? Generally the former is healthier. See: drugs, exercise, diet, media consumption, etc.
Spocking: Does the distinction being made have any practical effects? From the pragmatist quote “there’s no difference anywhere that doesn’t make a difference somewhere else”, often attributed to Spock as “a difference which makes no difference is no difference.” This test is why I adopt’d the terms meaningfully and trivially distinct.
If you met yourself, would you be your friend?
Music these days: Do you enjoy new kinds of music? An inability to do so is the result of a mental calcification closing you to new experiences, and is a sign you might be over as a person.
Rhetorical Strawman: I often “confirm” what someone means using a purposefully inflammatory example to highlight cases that are excluded by their proposed framework or make explicit something unstated that’s assumed to be impossible. f.x “Are you saying it’s impossible to be both wealthy and sad?”
Subjectivity: One of the key properties of subjectivity is that it can’t have truth value. The only reason “it’s just my opinion” can work as a defense is if true and false cannot apply, which also means that any statement that’s provably true or false is by default not an opinion.
Where did you get that opinion? If you can’t support an opinion from first principles and you can’t recall what inform’d your opinion on a subject then you can’t really defend that source as a good one, which makes the opinion itself suspect. Bonus points in that this is a nice rhetorical device for undermining an opponent in a debate, since most people generally don’t keep track of their sources.
What gives you the right: True rights, rather than mere legal rights, cannot by their nature be grant’d or revoked. You gain them when you qualify by meeting the conditions to have them, such as how the capacity for feeling entitles you to a freedom from suffering. Rights are also usually pair’d with obligations, in that if you have a right not to suffer then others are obliged not to harm you. A critical reframing of this is in the negative: if something is not a right, then I can infringe it freely. If you have no right to comfort, then I can freely infringe your comfort. If you have no right to food, I can starve you, etc. Note that you may defend the capacity to infringe what seems like a right by others means: if I reject the right to life as intrinsic, I can still say that if a sapient mind desires life, then to kill it is to subvert it’s right to selfdetermination, which it qualifies for by its sapience.
Flip a coin, if you’re still unsure when you get the outcome, you want the opposite outcome that the coin gave. Not everyone has free transparent account of their thoughts and feelings in a way that allows them to organize and consolidate into a singular decision. To some people, many of their thoughts are in a shape they can’t put words to, and to some poor souls that happens mostly in the background of their minds, so their decisions aren’t clear. They still give an overall indication though, and you can force them to one side or another of a binary decision with this trick.

There are a few of these that, while useful to think about as applies to yourself, are also extremely good predictors of my dismissal of a person.

Choice of insult: Often a person’s primary or initial point of attack is one of their own central values or sensitivities, and an infringement of that offends them. f.ex “Shrimpdick virgin” means they primarily conceive of value in terms of sex.
Do you resist correction?
Do you listen, or only wait for your turn to speak?
Empathy: Do you think everyone is like you, or do you try to understand how they are? How able are you to imagine what others want, their mindset & beliefs, or how they would respond to something? An indicator of intelligence.
Manipulating abstracts: How able are you to deal with hypotheticals or general statements? An indicator of intelligence.
Complains someone else “always has to be right”.
Complains about “thinking too hard” about something.