I don't buy the tacit premise that most political disagreements are primarily about issues of facts and knowledge. People obviously do bicker over facts, but in most cases I've seen the hard nut to crack is that people disagree about what matters. We have different priorities shaped by different experiences. Different individuals and groups hold very different kinds of things as central to our various identities and senses of well-being and security. Something that is a mere disagreement to one person can be deeply threatening to another person (see e.g. the almost routine vandalism that occurs against atheist monuments or advertisements in some parts of the US). And especially when it comes to sociopolitical issues, our disagreements aren't just abstract philosophical disagreements; they're situated in power struggles that exploit, hurt, and kill people.
Beyond that, there are phenomena that suggest that some beliefs are held because they're indefensible on the merits, as a kind of identity signaling. By proclaiming something to be true that wider society holds to be false, one signals their commitment to the group that identifies with the belief. The more difficult it is to defend the belief in the face of mainstream arguments and ridicule against it, the more value there is in continuing to proclaim it. It demonstrates a steadfast willingness to shoulder the burden of defending the group against outsiders.
So I guess this advice is all fine as far as it goes, but I don't believe that it's especially relevant to the most pressing disagreements in the world.
> I don't buy the tacit premise that most political disagreements are primarily about issues of facts and knowledge.
I don't think that's the premise at all, tacit or explicit. I think the idea is that belief has very little to do with facts and evidence. That's why bringing facts and evidence to a political conversation often destroys the conversation and actually strengthens your partner's beliefs instead of instilling doubt.
Trying to deliver a message to enlighten my ignorant, emotional partner isn't going to work. It's condescending, confrontational, and will instantly trigger every defense mechanism.
Sometimes it's better to ask questions about why they believe what they believe, and how they know what they think they know. Instead of proving them wrong, ask them what evidence they would need to see to change their mind.
Some people believe story of Noah's Ark is literally true. They can cite can many "facts" to back their belief. But, hypothetically, what evidence would they need to see to make them even 1% less confident that one boat actually sustained two of every animal on Earth for 150 days?
Is there any evidence at all that would diminish their belief? Or is their belief not based on evidence at all? Perhaps they believe the story because if they didn't believe it, then it would mean the Bible wasn't literally true, which would undermine their faith and identity and make them a bad person.
Conversations like this often turn up gaping holes in my own beliefs and rationales. So at the end of the conversation, I've learned something, whether or not I've changed my partner's mind about anything.
beliefs are held because they're
indefensible on the merits
I wonder if this phenomenon has a name. If not, it should! (Maybe an analysis using terms of Shannon-style information theory is apt: the less probable an event, the more information it carries.)
It has been argued that the accused in
Stalin's 1930s show trials were forced to confess to their 'crimes' before execution (e.g. Bukharin) precisely for this reason: this enabled other party members publicly to defend those absurd trials, hence signalling absolute obedience to the party. It has also been argued that verses like "The Party, the party, the party is always right" of the East German communist party [1] had the same function.
There is an obvious similarity with a certain dogma in 2019 Silicon Valley culture, but I am afraid to spell it out.
There also seems to be a similarity with the controversial
handicap principle [2] in biology, and the absurdity of certain forms of conspicuous consumption [3].
I agree this signaling should have aN interesting name, but I’d also really like to know what this dogma is as well... or is the first rule of dogma that you never talk about dogma?
1. Measure your differences. Rather than devolve into Yes, it is/No, it isn't black and white argument create a scale and place your positions on it. To someone defending "US is a patriarchy", say "If Saudi Arabia is 9/10 on the patriarchy scale where do you think the US is?"
2. Imagine a world where you are wrong. Ask them "What evidence would change your mind?" or "Under what condition may that belief be wrong?"
3. Know what you know. People often confuse the ability to know something with actually knowing something, i.e. they overestimate their actual knowledge on most topic. Ask explanations and questions like "How do you know that?"
The problem with all of this is that it starts by assuming that your conversation partner is talking to you in good faith. This isn't always true. Sometimes the other party simply wishes to argue with you to show others on which side of some line they are on. In those cases, arguing with them is usually a waste of time and can instead get you in trouble with the masses on the "other side".
Most people are willing to talk about polarizing topics if you take the time to build a little rapport and demonstrate authentic respect for them as human beings.
Where I usually go wrong is that I bring a lot of facts to the conversation in an attempt to convince my partner that she's wrong, to change her mind, to "win" the argument. This almost never works.
I'm not very good at this yet, but I've been trying to move from the "debate" frame to a non-competitive, reciprocal, sharing/learning frame. That means I have to work on myself. If I want my partner to be skeptical about her beliefs, I need to show genuine skepticism about my own beliefs.
And some people are so dogmatic that they'll never question what they think they know. In these situations I switch to a "learning" mode and try to understand how they came to believe what they believe. Is it religion, or their social group?
Some people think "good people" believe X, so to be a good person they also must believe X. They won't critically examine X because if they stopped believing it, it means they haven't been a good person all these years. Instead, they latch onto every bit of confirming evidence, and ignore all evidence to the contrary.
Vaccine deniers want to be good parents, and they would feel horrible if their child got hurt by a vaccine they could have prevented. Bringing facts to discussions with vaccine deniers only strengthens their resolve. Asking questions to understand why they believe what they believe is illuminating for me, whether or not it helps instill a bit of doubt in their minds.
But sure, if you don't have rapport, if your partner doesn't argue in good faith, if they're performing for a crowd, then maybe it's best to end the conversation.
Not professional trolls, but experts in academic trolling.
Professional trolls make a living on trolling itself, these premiere experts in academic trolling have demonstrated a methodology for determining the willingness of the research community to endorse the truthfulness of deliberately-meaningless just-so nonsense and sweet nothings.
The bad-faith actors in this case are the publishers who claim to have read, understood, and verified articles which are little more than epistemological dogwhistle spaghetti.
The trolling was paying to publish nonsense papers in 0 impact score vanity rags and convincing people that implied something about the academic rigor of the fields themselves.
I agree with all the points made above, however, very few of those would have value if the person arguing against you resorts to just calling you names, yelling, or defaulting to "nazi", "racist", "white male" etc...
> To someone defending "US is a patriarchy", say "If Saudi Arabia is 9/10 on the patriarchy scale where do you think the US is?"
That does not measure difference. That sounds like bad faith attempt to shift the topic. It is the sort of tactic that makes it impossible to discuss X as long as there are places and people who got it worst.
It is not managing disagreement, it is just rightfully annoying the other side, because they cant talk about original topic and definition of patriarchy and what not.
I'm a believer in those kind of questions, but I think you are right it's hard to be able to judge such things you easily fall in the binary trap. Your disagreemnet leads you to formulate your questions in a non-neutral way, so it feels like trolling.
My favorite idea about arguing positions is the "steel man" approach. From [0]:
A straw man is a misrepresentation of someone's position or argument that is easy to defeat: a "steel man" is an improvement of someone's position or argument that is harder to defeat than their originally stated position or argument.
This idea is also given as the highest level of disagreement in the hierarchy given in [1], which builds upon pg's hierarchy given in [2].
I'm not convinced. To me it seems more ego-centered to not even let the argument of the person you are arguing with stand on its own but make up your own version - which you deem better than theirs - and argue against that. Kind of like arguing with yourself then.
The prerequisite for steelmanning is that the argument presented to you does not "stand on its own", that it has flaws that you'd normally use to reject it - but instead, you decide to patch up the flaws and see if the stronger version works better.
It's an obviously good thing to do once you stop viewing arguments as competitive endeavor, but cooperative problem solving. If your co-worker was proposing a way to solve a programming challenge and you saw some flaws in it, you wouldn't shoot them down with "oh but this is wrong here, here, and it's also offensive". You'd say, "yeah, that could work, but it would be better if we did Y instead of X, and maybe let's not do Z because of $reasons". Applied to discussions in general, that's steelmanning.
Okay, I see your point with the competition and you‘re right (the coworking example really drove that home). Still what you describe would fall under the principle of charity for me as well.
To build on your example: You‘d patch up the flaws in your coworker‘s argument (p. o. c.) and by doing that you are then able to derive new insights on the issue (just the normal function of a discussion)
Here is the difference between charity and steelmanning. Most real world arguments are not fully specified like a philosophy book because people have limited time to fully lay out all their assumptions, to treat edge case, and explore all relevant consequences of their argument.
The principle of charity is that that whenever there are two possible interpretations of the other person's words (because of limited specificity as above), you assume the one that makes their argument stronger. Eg. I was arguing with someone about veganism and omnivorous diet, and at one point they said, "aha, because you didn't explicitly say that you are against eating brain-dead humans, you must be for it." That is them NOT giving the charitable interpretation of my words.
The principle of steelmanning goes far beyond charity. You actually play the devil's advocate and reconstruct the argument, so that flaws are removed and strengths introduced. Eg. someone is trying to convince you of the benefits of nuclear power, and they use stats from 2005. You go out there and find stats from 2018 that even more strongly support their viewpoint. So in your opposing argument, you criticize their argument as if they had quoted the 2018 stats.
Discussion/Debate is an aspect the karma/voting system does not address well, and is something that could be improved upon.
This is a pet peeve of mine because karma/voting serves as a detracting feature of conversation by trying to "gamify" it, which then promotes virtue signaling, personal attacks, and a lack of personal belief development for the sake of optimizing analytics ($$$ and user engagement).
In a nutshell, it's an easy way to either throw kindling on the fire or extinguish opinions that are different.
Think of how annoying it would be to try and have a real life conversation only for people to butt in and add "Lol what a retard", "yOuRe So sMaRt", or "Fuck ____" to get handed a few pretend points and boost their ego.
In my opinion, it’s better not to have these discussions at all. The probability that they will be productive is very low. Unless you are an activist or a thought leader who is actively trying to change public opinion, your time is likely spent better elsewhere.
It's not clear to me that someone who presents "grievance studies" as a legitimate labeling for fields that he isn't politically sympathetic to is well-positioned (either morally or practically) to tell me how to "disagree better."
The main problem with modern discourse is coexistence is not enough. You either convert to the other persons position or you are sub-human and therefore not worthy of even existing.
I love how often those screeching the loudest about "tolerance" are often the least tolerant of anyone who happens to have an alternate opinion.
I think one of the most forgotten "rules" is that it's okay to disagree. Usually once a group realizes that, it opens up a window of opportunity where you can transition from an argument into a conversation - in which the different positions are being explored with curiosity.
Worldviews resist rational arguments very robustly. Even those that are supposedly scientific. The human brain has a belief system that by it's nature tries to stay fixed. It's a cognitive foundation.
The other part of it is that worldview are tied to group identity. In order to integrate into any sort of community or group, people generally have to accept that worldview.
These are a couple of reasons why the idea of opposing political groups having a rational discussion may be far-fetched.
If you want to share some videos, there must be a more sensible place to do that than this resolutely old-school hacker site (I block a load of stuff, including 3rd-party just-about-anything).
> The 2020 election is looming, and things are going to get heated. Having civil disagreements may seem impossible. But it isn’t.
My experience with the previous election (I'm in Europe, but it has us polarized as well) is that there are some disagreements not worth having.
For instance, I don't want to argue with a climate change denier, or a vaccine denier. If we reached such opposite conclusions, it means our ways of processing information are so hugely different that nothing constructive can emerge from a conversation on these topics.
People who believe different things don't process information differently. That's a sneaky way of suggesting there is something wrong with their brain.
I have a twin brother who I often find has exactly the same thinking as me when discussing a topic. He is very religious. I am an atheist.
The reason people believe different things is because they are part of different communities and/or are exposed to different streams of information.
I agree though that it's unlikely to have a constructive conversation on a topic where the two worldviews contradict each other.
Beyond that, there are phenomena that suggest that some beliefs are held because they're indefensible on the merits, as a kind of identity signaling. By proclaiming something to be true that wider society holds to be false, one signals their commitment to the group that identifies with the belief. The more difficult it is to defend the belief in the face of mainstream arguments and ridicule against it, the more value there is in continuing to proclaim it. It demonstrates a steadfast willingness to shoulder the burden of defending the group against outsiders.
So I guess this advice is all fine as far as it goes, but I don't believe that it's especially relevant to the most pressing disagreements in the world.