Respond to what they probably meant

Yes it is. I had never heard of it before, thanks for commenting.

Yes, and "steelmanning" is the stronger form of the idea.

The principle of charity more closely resembles a fairly complex skill with a lot of subskills. (That may be why it's so difficult and scarcely applied.) This is but one of them. (Others might be: assuming a common basis of reason and morality; do not ruin your relationship with the other person along the way; remember that there is such a thing as a state of mind (theirs) in which those beliefs are natural and obvious; etc.)

That's why its important to check for understanding if you're at all unsure. It's the ideological turing test thing.

Very frequently people do not find at all if you interpret them to be saying something different from what they actually meant to say, as long as you interpret them to be saying something true. They mainly mind if you interpret them to be saying something false, whether or not they actually meant to say that thing.

I'll assume that you agree that it depends on the confidence you have in your interpretation. That if you're 99% sure that they meant X, it's worth it for you to address X. You seem to be arguing that our biases make it difficult to reach such high levels of confidence.

I think that biases can sometimes make it difficult, but not always. There are still many situations where it's pretty easy to be confident in your interpretations. And in these situations, it makes sense to address what they probably meant. For example, in the story I referenced, I think it would have been quite easy to infer what my friend really meant if I thought to do so.

This advice can backfire, but it can also work well.

True, but to what extent? My impression is that it's very unlikely that it backfires. I imagine it being used primarily in situations where it's pretty obvious (if you thought about it) that the person means one thing, but that they're just being imprecise with their words.

I'm going to get very frustrated -- trying phrasing after phrasing until you hear what I'm actually saying (or I'll walk away).

I think that only one attempt would ever be made. In a face-to-face conversation, you'd probably just ask them to clarify. In an online one, if someone says, "I think you meant A, so X." and they're wrong, you'd just respond by saying, "no, I meant B".

What you mean is there's no way to write Pi with finitely many digits, in any basis."

pi=1 in base pi

... but that's not what you meant :)

Give me all the bacon and eggs you have.

Wait, wait. I'm worried what you just heard was, "Give me a lot of bacon and eggs." What I said was, "Give me all the bacon and eggs you have". Do you understand?

-Ron Swanson

This probability is adjusted up if the person you are speaking to is known for being extremely literal and adjusted down if they are known for using figurative speech(although that last sentence should be fairly obvious, I throw it in for the sake of completeness)" to your thesis.

Exactly. I think my thesis covers that in saying "Depending on how confident you are in your interpretation". I don't explicitly talk about how do the interpretation because:

1. It's usually easy enough to assign a good confidence level to your interpretation. With a good confidence level you could cater your response properly. Ie. If you're 99% confident, say, "I think you're trying to say this". If you're 50% confident you could say, "I'm not sure what you're trying to say, but I think that it may be A, B or C.".

2. It's outside of the scope of this article. Perhaps I could mention a few guidelines, but a) it's really a very intuitive thing, b) I don't know much about that topic (how to interpret), and c) I sense that it'd be rather involved to go over how to interpret, and that the benefit isn't worth it because it's something that most people could do well enough intuitively.

Yes, social intelligence is the core of it, but a lot of the time it's not so much a matter of innate ability than of mindset and values. For a long while I had this strange idea that the overly-literal way of discussing, which assumed the form but not the function of rationality, was the right way of discussing, and the huge majority of people were just doing it wrong, and needed to be informed of the rules of ~rational~ debates. Looking back, I might have been rather frustrating to talk to. :)

But then I changed my mind and reframed debate as an action undertaken by some agents with primary motivations other than debating for the hell of it, like voices in the dark. And started to look at the motivations behind what has been said, with the goal of having the most accurate model possible of how and why the other person actually generates those ideas. The chains of reasoning that output the goals the other person wants out of the debate are not terribly hard to go through, even for a self-identified social "extraterrestrial".

Those particular debate tactics aren't, however, the best idea for improving the dialogue. I've had them used on me, or rather against me, even here on LW, mostly for disingenuous purposes. They're very easy to corrupt. In particular, "so you're saying that..." seem to be the code words that herald the arrival of the Straw Man. Okay, I get it, the other person might be genuinely trying to understand your alien (to them) mind. However, when there's disagreement, in trying to assemble a coherent mental picture of you, they choose, out of the traits you could possibly have, the ones that depict you as farther away from where they come, rather than closer to that. The bottom line seems to be "... so that's why I disagree with you, because I'm too reasonable to believe all the crazy things implied by your expressed beliefs". If you're looking for feedback, it may be best if you ask rather than propose interpretations.

As well as that, telling people what their emotional states seem to be is more often than not a bit offensive. For some reason people like to come across as less emotional and more cool-headed in debates rather than the opposite. The natural reaction would be mildly defensive ("Who, me? Nah, I'm totally chill"). Even if they might be feeling a certain way, emotions aren't often consciously credited as origins of one's behavioral output. If you're using this, then a "buffer" statement might be needed, to reassure the listener that you're not considering their thoughts less legitimate because they have emotional sources, or their emotions less legitimate because they're intense ("of course, I see why you might be happy/angry/passionate about this, and that's totally okay").

I agree that what I'm describing is a subset of social intelligence (I'm sure that's what you meant). But I'd like to distinguish the ability to infer what other people mean from the sense to try to do so. The former is definitely a type of social intelligence, but I'm not sure if the latter is. My thesis really is that it's beneficial to do the latter.

As for reaffirming the emotion, I think that that's a good point - it's probably a good and underutilized thing to do. I haven't thought much about it though and don't think I have any useful thoughts on it.