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Comment by buboard | Hacker News Reader

Story would be much more readable if he had actually stated the offending Scissor and cut it short by half.

That would be missing the point. He’d have to commit to a specific statement as being a scissor. But if someone doesn’t already get the point, they’d fall into the same trap as the people in the story “what? They must misunderstand the claim. Obviously it’s true/false.”

The story’s point requires identifying the psychological state state that scissor statements put you into, where you feel reality is actually bending against you (eg “he turned her against me”).

If you think there is an explicit scissor statement Alexander could have committed to, then I think you might not appreciate the core thesis.

It is either a story or a theory. Telling a story without naming the characters ranges from cumbersome to infuriating. Telling a theory, is another story

I just explained why the specifics of the story require the scissor statement not be made explicit.

I'm with you. We see in this discussion that it's difficult even to raise some potential scissors as examples without a lot of commenters falling into them.

SSC's point is not "X is a near-universal scissor", it's that there's a scissor or ten for almost everyone, and that some scissors are likely to ensnare a lot of people.

If you've never found yourself arguing vehemently and extensively, to the death, about something and sometime later wondered what that was about, you may be a counterexample, someone who is scissor-immune.

I sure am not.

The point, though, was that a scissor statement is irrelevant to an individual. To any one person, each statement is either obviously, trivially true, or obviously, trivially false. It only becomes an argument when you start discussing it with somebody who sees it the opposite way as you do.

The scissor effect can't apply to an individual. And I suppose if most everyone falls on one side of the question, even with lots of passion, there's no scissor.

But I'm arguing (SSC may not be) that effective scissor statements create both passion and tunnel vision in people, even one at a time. And so when there are people with passion and tunnel vision on both sides, voilà, scissor. (It's a little bit like "drunken mob". You can't have a mob with just one person, but each person, arguably, gets drunk on their own.)

This is a great Scissor Statement!

I think it's like that AI Box experiment. The idea is that just because you can't imagine a sequence of words that will cause you to free a dangerous AI it does not mean the sequence does not exist.

If you don't find the AI Box thing convicting, you won't be able to suspend disbelief for a fictional story about a sequence of words that can make you hate your friends and family.

That would only be possible if the story weren't fiction. The same problem occurs with science fiction with faster-than-light travel: they can't actually include the design for a workable Alcubierre drive in the book because designing it involves scientific breakthroughs that nobody knows how to make, or even if they are possible.

The genius of this approach is that each reader will fill in the blank of what the statement could be, and therefore the story is more relatable to a more widely diverse audience. If it was made explicit, it would only resonate with the people who agree it is a scissor.

Consider this quote: “Books are mirrors. You only see in them what you already have inside of you.” -Carlos Zafon. This isn't the quote I was actually searching for but I think gets the sentiment across: a blank mirror lets you see yourself much more clearly than the Mona Lisa.

This type of rhetorical device is constantly used by politicians. Donald Trump frequently says things like "you know what they're saying about..." without ever actually saying what is being said. Then the audience fills in the blank with their preconceived notions and boom: what he said is right in _all_ of their minds.

Nah, if he did, it would tear SSC, HN and God knows what else apart.

Alexander is known for being a bit...chicken. There are very few positions to which he's willing to firmly commit beyond "don't get mad" and "don't be mean", for fear of antagonizing his rather...politically diverse audience. The charitable interpretation is that as a psychiatrist, he's been daily confronted to some of the worst aspects of human life, society and personnality and still learned to sympathize with his patients whatever they might have done. The less charitable interpretation is that he's terrified of conflict in general.

I think it's more that he is afraid of being misunderstood, and rightly so.

It is also unclear to me how one could find a true scissor statement and know it until one unleashed it and saw the effects. It would just seem obviously true or obviously false.

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