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I agree time travel is nothing which applies to #1,#2 or #3. However Im curious:
Are time travel stories not taking points #1 and #2 in order to create a szenario to explore #3? Meaning I create a situation and in order to make it explorable and detatch it from people's expectations I use the literary device of time travel.
I do understand that his Free Will posts may come off confused. I'd even go so far and say they are! Purposefully so. Let me explain why by rephrasing as per your request:
If I imagine reasoning like a staircase, where each step is one step I have to overcome. I think about a problem and reach a conclusion, which seems to be satisfying. Then I realize, no it isn't. I have to take another step towards full understanding of the problem, I have to reason further, there is more to find.
When someone gives me the top of those stairs, I'll be incredulous as to how anyone might've gotten there: Priests in Temples casting magic spells to produce Yeast.
However, imagine getting the whole stair case in form of an explanaition. You'll be able to start at the lowest step and work your way up. Using the explanation You've gotten as a handrail to aid you, while all the time examining each and every step for cracks - or junctions others missed.
In my opinion accounting for missteps and pitfalls which are easily fallen into in a chain of reasoning are as much steps in that staircase as all the right steps. Scientific Philosophy, or something - the mistakes made are as much learning material as the right steps.
If you want to include all that in an explanation that, of course, neccessitates giving a confused explanation, on Eliezers part. The Free Will sequences are meant for aspiring rationalists honing their tools in a first task. Instead of simply giving the result of his reasoning - the 'top step' - and leave them to their devices, he's gone through the trouble of giving iconic steps of the staricase leading up to his result.
Try steelmanning Benquo's idea and not picking apart his bad example of it. That we have now established well.
What sort of explanation could his description encompass? I had to think of Eliezer's Free Will posts. Which built knowledge from the ground up starting at the roots, going through all the interferential steps up to his final solution to the question.
The Style of explanation used by him empowers me: I can read it jump out when I realize that my reasoing hasn't come to the end result yet, think for myself and try to get it myself. Furthermore it gives me the tools and hooks to disassemble his whole reasoning. If I, in that fully represented journey of reason, find an error, I could hypothetically take it down.
This would be my best interpretation of what Benquo might have had in mind, when he asked to explore this vague feeling/ idea about a concept.
Said, you seem resourcefull, can you help identify what 'Zeletic' might mean? Apart from that: I'm sure someone has already identified the concept and named it. Maybe we can find that?
I'd like to understand why you think the explanation of yeast is inadequate and why, in your opinion, the adequacy of the explanaiton of yeast is of importance to the topic of the article, namely the exploration and typification of a certain style of explaining things.