Comment by rglullis
6 years ago
You just used 103 words (541 characters) to basically confirm that your reply is just one "Well, actually...". This makes a discussion forum extremely annoying and makes me regret wasting all this time writing for you.
If I am not the first one to point out your failure of understanding the Principle of Charity, do us all a favor and focus on that before continuing discussion with others online.
The flip side of being a charitable reader is that a writer should also behave decently; that involves trying to be maximally accurate about claims and factual statements one communicates. "Well, actually" comments are justified if the author failed at their duty, and welcome in honest discourse.
I understand the principle, I just think the principle of charity is more misused than not. Also, you didn't waste time writing for me. You probably did waste time counting the words in my reply though. Sorry to have annoyed you, perhaps you are taking me too literally and it might help if you imagined a version of what I said that is more pleasing.
If you truly think such a principle can be "misused", then you really haven't understood it.
Really? I could have sworn that there were a whole host of techniques within the field of political rhetoric that could quite easily be relabelled; "Many interesting ways to misuse 'The Principle of Charity'".
The point at which I start to think it might be being misused is when it is not being used to look for a more gentle version of what could be unintentional ambiguity, but rather is being used to change meaning from the literal sense of a sentence to something in favor of a current position in a discussion, as this invites people to try and have their cake and eat it.
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