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by YeGoblynQueenne 2064 days ago
I didn't make a formal point- my comment is a comment on an internet message board, where it's very unlikely to find formal arguments being made. But perhaps we do not agree on what constitutes a "(rather) formal point"? I made a point in informal language and in a casual manner and as part of an informal discussion ... on Hacker News. We are not going to prove or disprove any theorems here.

But, to be sure, as is common when this kind of informal conversation suddendly sprouts semi-formal language, like "argument", "claim", "proof", "necessarily follows" etc, I am not even sure what exactly it is we are arguing about, anymore. What exactly is your disagreement with my comment? Could you please explain?
1 comments
mannykannot 2064 days ago
"Necessarily" has general usage as well, you know... why would you read it otherwise, especially given the reasonable observation you make about this site? And my original point is not actually wrong, either: whether reinforcement learning will proceed at the pace of evolution is a topic of speculation - it is possible that it will, and possible that it will not.

Insofar is I have an issue with your comment, it is that it is not going anywhere, as I explained in my previous post.

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YeGoblynQueenne 2063 days ago
>> Insofar is I have an issue with your comment, it is that it is not going anywhere, as I explained in my previous post.

I see this god-moding of my comment as a pretend-polite way to tell me I'm takling nonsense, that seems to be designed to avoid criticism for being rude to one's interlocutor on a site that has strong norms against that sort of thing, but without really trying to understand why those norms exist, i.e. because they make for more productive conversations and less wasting of everyone's time.

You made a comment to say that unless I claim that X (which you came up with), then my comment is not going anywhere. The intellectually corteous and honest response to a comment with which one does not agree is to try and understand the reasoning of the comment. Not to claim that there is only one possible explanation and therefore the comment must be wrong. That is just a straw man in sheep's clothing.

And this is not surprising given that it comes at the heels of nitpicking about supposedly important terminology (necessarily!). This is how discussions like this one go, very often. And that's why they should be avoided, because they just waste everyone's time.

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mannykannot 2063 days ago
"Necessarily", when read according to your own expectations for this forum, made an important difference to my original post (without it, I would have been insisting that the issue is settled already), so it was reasonable for me to point out its removal. The nitpicking over it began with your response to me doing so, and you have kept it going by taking the worst possible reading of what I write. This is, indeed, how things sometimes go.

Meanwhile, in a branching thread, I had a short discussion with the author of the post I originally replied to, in which I agreed with the points he made there. Both of us, I think, clarified our positions and reached common ground. That is how it is supposed to go.

I did not set out to pick a fight with you, and if I had anticipated how you would take my words, I would have phrased things more clearly.

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