
The Dying Art of Disagreement - w-m
https://nytimes.com/2017/09/24/opinion/dying-art-of-disagreement.html
======
Mz
Dupe:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15335753](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15335753)

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Chiba-City
There are no debates. There are dialogs. Any contest is staged. I avoid all
contests. Our education system, media messaging and fictional narratives are
all conflict based. Nothing in real life is like that. Anyone SHOUTING-AT
someone at Harvard (or around me) gets kicked out. You just call the police.

Young folks (some older ones) here never realize the is nothing to win and
there are no prizes. Go on YouTube and hear great dialogues between Buddhists,
Catholics, Anglicans, Suffis and so on. There are no cage fights. That is 100%
propaganda. None of us will "Win the Matrix." The Matrix is a silly fiction.

It can take modern people raised on propaganda hero/villain narratives months,
years or lifetimes to readjust. Disagreement is not conflict. Positional goods
(first, fastest, best) worth having are very rare. Life is pretty good
24/7/365 depending upon distributions of our mutual attentions. I am autistic
and had to read the finer manuals to liberate myself. I try to help others
(including some DC vets).

Just to repeat: there are no debates and all contests are staged. [Edits:
typos, paras]

~~~
jacobolus
At the same time, we do have to collectively make decisions with real impacts,
involving some people benefiting and some others getting hurt, and not always
can everyone be persuaded to sign onto the socially agreed decision.

* * *

But for more on your point, I recommend Carse’s book _Finite and Infinite
Games_ , [https://amzn.com/0029059801/](https://amzn.com/0029059801/)

~~~
Chiba-City
I have "fight" in me. Fight is good. The trick is applying it. I am trying to
write an article, but provisionally we find "contours of adversity." There are
tons of examples like "HVAC power consumption" for servers or "inflammation"
for North American eaters. Once we map out stakeholders in the current "state
of adversity" we find human specific institutional obstacles in our supply
chains habitually feeding off the adversities. Those become the de facto
"enemies" of better new options absent much moral theorizing or imagination. A
very sound and shared 1980-90's Netizen principle was "IP routes around
obstacles." In the field, those obstacles fight back like crazy and often
enjoy political allies. Separating those concerns between "problem space" and
"solution space" makes for better shared strategies for early teams and
growing companies. I am trying to lay down schematic methodological
formulations for better conceptualization of value adding and enduring
entrepreneurship channeling that beautiful "fight" of human progress.

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woopwoop
The following is not commentary on the current climate and politics of college
campuses in the United States.

It is impossible for two honest, truth-seeking people to disagree about a fact
in perpetuity. Eventually, they will realize that either (a) one or another of
them is correct or (b) neither is able to convince the other, and both realize
that neither has figured out the right answer. This is not an opinion, it is a
logical fact. I disagree with other mathematicians about mathematics
frequently; it never ends that we "agree to disagree". Either one of us is
right, or neither is, and in any case we figure it out and agree by the time
we let the issue go.

Many political disagreements are, of course, not factual, but rather based on
values. But often what we talk about is facts. So part of my belief that first
world countries should accept more immigrants is based on my view that people
outside of one's own country have substantial moral worth. But it's also based
on my belief that, e.g., U.S. immigrants will not substantially increase the
U.S. crime rate, or worsen the U.S. fiscal situation, and will in fact make
Americans on net wealthier. These are all factual questions, and I suspect
that they drive my disagreement with immigration restrictionists as much, if
not more so, than our philosophical disagreements. But the thing is, either me
or the people I'm disagreeing with are just wrong, and the fact that neither
of us seems to be convinced means that at least one of us is wrong and
intellectually dishonest. And I have a hard time believing that I'm never the
one being intellectually dishonest.

~~~
dragonwriter
> It is impossible for two honest, truth-seeking people to disagree about a
> fact in perpetuity

Since people are mortal, the “honest” and “truth-seeking” qualifiers are
superfluous.

It is, on the other hand, for honest and truth-seeking people to disagree on a
matter of fact for as long as either lives, which is as close to “in
perpetuity” as can matter for them.

More relevantly, perhaps, it is quite possible for an honest and truth-seeking
individual to decide that the cost in time and other resources to resolve a
disagreement with another such person is not justified, and for such a
decision to be reciprocal, hence an agreement to disagree on a matter D fact.

> Many political disagreements are, of course, not factual, but rather based
> on values.

Almost all political disagreements are, at root, disagreements about values or
definitions, not facts, and those few that are about facts are often rooted in
different fundamental beliefs about epistemology, rather than being resolvable
in a shared epistemic framework.

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huac
I, too, like to present climate change denial, horrific logic, and blatant
falsehoods as the 'art of disagreement.'

~~~
oldandtired
Just to point something that is implicit in your statement. As it stands, your
belief is that the majority of climate change is anthropogenic and has little
natural causes.

The problem in the climate change debate is that there are at least three
viewpoints:

1) No climate change 2) Climate change exists and in the majority is natural
3) Climate change exists and in the majority is anthropogenic 4) Climate
exists and we have no clue as to how little or large any of the effects are
anthropogenic

Now for those who believe in 3) above, all of those who are in 1), 2) and 4)
are climate change deniers. Go figure.

I have two additional questions for you.

1) What you mean by "horrific logic"? Please give examples.

2) What do you consider "Blatant falsehoods"? Please give examples.

The reason I ask this is that these are blanket statements and your examples
will highlight whether or not they can be categorised in each of the
classifications you have made.

~~~
549362-30499
NASA has a great page with links at the bottom for the papers that
specifically find evidence of anthropogenic climate change:
[https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/](https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/)

I'm not sure what you're trying to get at, but the science of climate change
really isn't a debate. There is widespread consensus among experts that the
evidence supports the general idea of anthropogenic climate change.

~~~
oldandtired
Sorry, who are you including in the term "experts"? Having had interaction
with climate scientists over the last two decades, I have come to the point of
expecting the majority of them to toe the PC line and participate in the
"dogma" of anthropogenic climate change. They have been unwilling to discuss
the energy requirements for their scenarios.

There are many scientists (including some climate scientists) who have pointed
out the inconsistencies that are in the standard "dogma". Many have come out
with a similar view. That view being that we don't know and we should be doing
much more research in the question. I am of the same viewpoint, with the added
position that I consider most of the climate change we see as mostly natural.

One specific example is the frequency of high impact cyclones and anti-
cyclones being experienced in the last few years. Much ado has been said by
climate scientists in claiming that this is unprecedented. If you go back and
look at records from the mid 1800's to the early 1900's, one finds quite a bit
of information about similar size events taking place during that period of
time. Since it didn't affect major populations (as they didn't exist in those
areas at that time), little has been reported in the news of that time.

Looking at those records, one gets the impression that they may have been even
more destructive that those of the last few years.

Just because those who believe in anthropogenic climate change as the major
effects don't have any debate amongst themselves, it doesn't mean that others
who look at the situation logically can't debate the conclusion reached in the
"dogma".

I have challenged various supporters of the anthropogenic climate change
viewpoint to to the energy requirements calculations for the disaster
scenarios. Nary a one them has taken up the challenge. It's not hard to do.
Only one person has even responded in a logical and thoughtful and found a
couple of papers that he thought supported his view. He was a pleasure to talk
with, even though we disagree on what those papers showed.

The point I am making is that there are many (scientists, engineers,
programmers) who see major discrepancies in the anthropogenic climate change
viewpoint and are pointing out the simple fact that we do not know to what
extent (how little or how large) any anthropogenic causes are effected
climate.

I have yet to see any of the computer code used in the climate models released
for general public review. Some may have been but I have not yet seen any such
event. Until that is done and competent programmers can analyse the code and
other scientists can analyse the code assumptions, we really have to take a
sceptical view of any of the climate scientists claims.

I have stated before that if climate scientists can show a reasonable and
reasoned discussion on the energy requirements for their scenarios that
actually match what we see, I am willing to give them the argument. They
haven't so I won't.

Climate change is real and it is ongoing. Whether or not there are any
significant anthropogenic causes that we can mitigate is unknown at this time.
Getting your knickers in a twist over this is a futile and unproductive
effort.

Man is greedy and many of the problems experienced in recent years due to the
major weather events has been due to man's greed ignoring the historical
evidence about not building in specific areas and not building to high enough
standards.

I have seen building approvals for areas that were flood prone when I was a
child (as it flooded there every year) but due to 20 or more years of drought,
those events faded from memory and greed allowed building to occur. When I was
a child, there were specific cyclone standards in place for building. You were
considered a fool to not build to those standards then and in some
circumstances, it was a requirement to build to those standards. When the
drought had been in play for a decade or so, people no longer considered it
appropriate to build to those standards, so house frames were constructed with
lower grade softwoods (like pine) instead of the higher grade hardwoods.

A last note, many years ago, NASA published an interesting set of observations
about surface temperature variations amongst the planets in our solar system
and that (at that time) the changes were all in the same direction. As one
comedic observer remarked, humans are pretty good at causing climate change,
we even cause it on other planets.

[EDIT corrected spelling mistake]

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powvans
It was not very long ago that we got facts that we agreed upon from relatively
centralized media. This is no longer the case.

When you cannot agree about the facts, you have little basis for discussion
and productive disagreement about the interpretation of those facts. We are no
longer having disagreements about values, but instead fighting about what we
perceive to be the facts.

------
renaudg
Here's the money quote :

"44 percent [of U.S. college students] — do not believe the First Amendment to
the U.S. Constitution protects so-called “hate speech,” when of course it
absolutely does. More shockingly, a narrow majority of students — 51 percent —
think it is “acceptable” for a student group to shout down a speaker with whom
they disagree. An astonishing 20 percent also agree that it’s acceptable to
use violence to prevent a speaker from speaking."

Well, f __* you millennials, I suppose ?

~~~
SandersAK
Or you know, hate speech is illegal:
[https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/95-815.pdf](https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/95-815.pdf)

updating for the angry: hate speech, as in "fighting words," which is to say
language used to incite violence towards a specific person.

~~~
didgeoridoo
Listen, you ignorant little wannabe totalitarian: "hate speech" is protected
speech, and that link says nothing contradicting that principle.

Where did you think this was going to get you? Did you think people wouldn't
click through to read it?

~~~
dang
That's seriously not ok on HN and will get your account banned. Your other
comment in this thread was much better. More of that, please, and none of
this—regardless of how wrong someone else is.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

