
Varieties of Argumentative Experience - mpweiher
http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/08/varieties-of-argumentative-experience/
======
nerdponx
This is a good excerpt for those who don't have time to read this:

 _The Center for Applied Rationality promotes double-cruxing, a specific
technique that helps people operationalize arguments. A double-crux is a
single subquestion where both sides admit that if they were wrong about the
subquestion, they would change their mind. For example, if Alice (gun control
opponent) would support gun control if she knew it lowered crime, and Bob (gun
control supporter) would oppose gun control if he knew it would make crime
worse – then the only thing they have to talk about is crime. They can ignore
whether guns are important for resisting tyranny. They can ignore the role of
mass shootings. They can ignore whether the NRA spokesman made an offensive
comment one time. They just have to focus on crime – and that’s the sort of
thing which at least in principle is tractable to studies and statistics and
scientific consensus._

~~~
throwawayjava
I think it's useful to differentiate between "arguments" and "debates". An
"argument" is a meeting of the minds, grounded in mutual respect, in which
each side has an opposing a priori belief that they might be willing to
change. A "debate" is a zero-sum game in which each person arguing is trying
to change the mind of some third party^1. People often call interactions
"arguments" when, in fact, they are actually "debates".

Doubele-cruxing can be useful in arguments, but the audience of a debate
should approach any crux with incredulity. Anyone with half a mind toward
"winning" a double-cruxed debate would choose an untenable position as their
"crux". A practiced debater will find the scientific concensus and then work
backwards to a crux. Not the other way around. Then they get the rhetorical
benefits of acting "reasonable" without actually giving up anything useful to
their opponent. In fact, if their opponent is clueless enough to accept the
crux, they've just won the game. And if their opponent complains, well now the
opponent is "meta-debating" which is apparently bad thing (and is a bad thing
anyways because it makes you sound like an egghead).

So, double-cruxing is a great strategy for an argument between people who
mutually respect one another. But audiences to a debate should be careful
about whether they're being hood-winked by a rhetorical trick.

In short, a lot of this philosophizing about how to have a good argument
really just boils down to "have the right argument with the right person". Two
people who respect each other talking about something that both have fluid
opinions on rarely devolves into a useless conversation.

\--

^1: A debate in which there's no third party present might be called "a waste
of time".

~~~
Gormisdomai
I dislike double cruxing along the lines of debating as a sport too, but I
disagree that what you describe in the second half of your comment is a
problem, in fact people should be encouraged to do what you describe.

The "double" part of double crux means that the crux you choose has to be a
crux for both people, i.e. if it's established either way, that alone has to
be sufficient to convince both people of the overall argument being true or
false.

If you pick a crux that is a truly provably untenable position, and it turns
out to also be a crux for the other person then they should happily change
their mind on seeing the proof. If they don't it's not like they're committed
to saying you've "won" against their will or anything, at worst it turns out
that the crux they agreed on wasn't really a crux for them after all. At best,
they discover that their belief rested on an untenable position.

By design it's pretty hard for a malicious actor to play double crux to win
without also playing it to discover the truth, so long as they actually choose
honest cruxes for themselves (and to some extent, even if they don't).

~~~
throwawayjava
I'm unconvinced.

The rhetorical trick is to paint the opponent as unreasonable, pretentious,
impractical, etc. if they don't agree with your double-crux. In this case, the
resolution of the double-crux is not the strong argument (your opponent would
never willinging agree to the double-crux)! The rhetorical characterization of
your opponent is the strong argument. Again, it's just something you should
watch out for _as an audience member_.

Also, inexperienced debaters will often agree to double-cruxes when they
shouldn't because they don't understand the strategy that's being deployed
agains them and the double-crux is presented in a "friendly" tone. And once
it's deployed they realie that was a stupid thing to agree to. The truth we've
discovered is that one of the debaters is inexperienced; we haven't learned
anything about the underlying topic.

In practice, debates (acdaemic or out in the real world) are almost never
searches for truth.

Again, _as an audience member in an obviously zero-sum debate_ , I'm extremely
skeptical of the double-crux. It's usually a steup for a rhetorical argument
or a way of easily beating down an inexperienced person. It's rarely a geniune
assertion that this one thing _really is_ the fundamental point of contention.

In a friendly, respectful argument designed to search for truth, double-cruxes
can be a great tool.

~~~
justinpombrio
> Again, as an audience member in an obviously zero-sum debate, I'm extremely
> skeptical of the double-crux.

For some context, double-cruxing came out of the rationalist community
(specifically CFAR), which commonly refers to persuasive rhetoric as _the dark
arts_. They do not develop tools for use in the dark arts.

------
zimablue
4\. If you hold the conversation in private, you’re almost guaranteed to avoid
everything below the lower dotted line. Everything below that is a show put on
for spectators.

This is definitely not true. I think most people have social shaming arguments
(another way of putting this is tribalism) so drilled into them that they
believe it at a very core level and will socially shame you (in a less
aggressive way) when speaking in private because it's core to how they think.

"I hate how you're always agreeing/on the side of X"

~~~
Matticus_Rex
I don't usually put myself in a position to have private conversations with
that type of person, and I suspect Scott doesn't either, but you're very
correct to point this out.

------
haZard_OS
Douglas Walton has been my go-to on these topics for years. For those
interested in a more professional presentation of some of the concepts used in
this blog post, try this:

[http://www.dougwalton.ca/papers.htm](http://www.dougwalton.ca/papers.htm)

~~~
taserian
Thank you for this! I've always wondered if there was anything similar being
done.

I will say that this is quite a large collection of papers. Do you have any
pointers as to which of these papers I should start with as a foundation?

------
mundo
I think this is a useful article. The bit that struck me as most important was
the bit about Clarifying - I think many pointless online discussions,
including most straw-men, could be rescued by that practice.

More specifically, if I were dang for a day, I'd edit the third guideline
("Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone
says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.") to
add, "When in doubt, try paraphrasing the other side's argument _in a way that
they would agree with_ before responding to it."

------
joew42k
It's no surprise that the internet is full of "meta debate" and "social
shaming" \- arguing about the terms of debate and who can participate, and not
over any core issues. For debates to be productive, all sides need to agree on
at least some facts, and come from a place of good faith. Most places online,
anyone can walk in and add their comment. They don't need to share any
assumptions with the rest of the audience, and they probably aren't invested
in having a productive debate anyway. It produces drive-by commenters.

Productive debates are more likely to happen in places with 1. Moderation and
2. an invested community. That's what makes HN successful, in my opinion.

But we can't turn every comment section into HN. Moderation is expensive. And
some sites aren't niche enough to foster a sense of community.

So we should probably remove most comment sections.

News sites are particularly bad. Anyone can just stop by, leave their shitty
opinion, and walk away.

------
iandanforth
This is why I like code. Sometimes you don't have to argue, you can just make
something work. Not arguing is hard. I'm bad at not arguing, but the older I
get the more often I repeat, "Can I demonstrate? No? Then don't engage." If
something can't be conclusively demonstrated maybe I can spend my time
productively in a way that makes me happy and maybe gets a little bit closer
to demonstrating something I care about.

------
truculation
Debate and criticism are _defence_ , it seems to me; their value lies in
averting heartache and war. For the purpose of changing the world, the
ultimate argument is to create something new and substantial and then _make
progess with it_ , giving people somewhere to jump to.

------
jahaja
I guess I'm breaking the rules of "good" argumentation described in that
article/essay now, but I'm yet to see anyone that links to "slatestarcodex" or
similar "rationalist"'ish site, link to an article that is not an absolute
massive scientificy sounding wall-of-text.

Since this is basically the exact opposite from what I remember reading -
correct me if I'm wrong - in "On Writing Well", I've started to assume that
their core discussion/argumentation technique is actually a kind of attrition
warfare - to tire the opponent out.

~~~
jerf
Classify SSC as philosophical musings, with a vague basis in science. If
philosophical musings aren't your thing, and they are not most people's thing,
it isn't going to appeal to you. SSC posts are generally "the sausage being
made", not a nicely-digested final product such as you might get in a school
course.

I mean this as neither defense of SSC nor an attack on SSC. It is simply an
explanation of what it is, and an observation that you may simply not be in
the target audience.

~~~
dnomad
The reality is that it's bad science and even worse philosophy. This stuff,
like frankly all the rationalist nonsense, suffers from very highly motivated
reasoning. The author isn't asking questions he's already decided on the
answers and is now looking to justify his ideology. I suspect this is why
rationalists are very careful to avoid actual philosophers. Philosophers make
short work of this sort of simplistic thinking.

People who really want to understand, say, the meta-ethics of modern democracy
and debate are much better of reading Plato, Foucault and Rawls. Then you'd
understand that sophism cannot be so easily dismissed because it is in fact
pee pure sophism to say that certain arguments are "social shaming" and
therefore not good arguments. The entire construction here -- the assumption
that there is a single right answer to every argument and it can be arrived at
if both sides are just reasonable enough and set aside their social biases --
is, as Foucault would show, a highly suspect assertion born of a very
privileged position. People who seriously buy in to these sorts of simplistic
models are going to have a bad time. Try having a "rational" debate with a
Jewish person about whether all Jews should be exterminated. You might dismiss
the response as "social shaming" and accuse them off being "triggered" and
emotional... but such a victory won't buy you much.

------
indescions_2018
Reference to William James' _Varieties of Religious Experience_. The first
meta-narrative to treat religious practise as social phenomenon:

[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/621/621-h/621-h.html](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/621/621-h/621-h.html)

And it's easy to see the parallel the author makes. Every minute aspect of
modern living has become "religion". And there is a very public jockeying
amongst a high priest class of prognosticating pundits all vying for influence
and attention.

But in the most fundamental matters of import beginning with the categorical
assumption is essential. Namely, that there exists for any given problem, an
optimal answer. It is simply a matter of collecting empirical evidence and
making the appropriate analysis.

Steven Pinker argues in his most recent book that if there were "no Hitler,
there would be no nukes!" It was only the pressing war that goaded formerly
peacefully inclined nuclear physicists to construct such technologies. With
the resultant problems we now face of non-proliferation, cyber command and
control, etc.

And the logical extension would then take the form: well the Five Eyes nations
or G-7 that represent our democratic allies need to develop the next
generation of weaponry. To maintain the balance of power shifted in our favor.
And so the policy of "mututally assured annihilation" continues ad infinitum
until someone happens on a doomsday apparatus ;)

But it is far from optimal. An optimal solution would be something akin to
peaceful equilibrium throughout the planet. With space based deterrents
against alien attack. But barring an actual concrete threat in that regard. We
lack the foresight and will to make it happen.

Obviously I believe part of the solution is electing more scientists and
rational thinkers in positions of power. Which brings us back to square one.
How to effectively communicate and "nudge" an outcome that foments optimal
solutions.

~~~
corey_moncure
> It was only the pressing war that goaded formerly peacefully inclined
> nuclear physicists to construct such technologies. With the resultant
> problems we now face of non-proliferation, cyber command and control, etc.

But nuclear arms have essentially put an end to total war between developed
nations. We've all agreed not to use them in conventional war, and disallowed
chemical weapons as well, as those progressed from Lewisite and Mustard gas to
terrifying V- and G- agents. In the absence of these technologies, pressing
wars would have continued.

>An optimal solution would be something akin to peaceful equilibrium
throughout the planet.

This is based on the notion that war is not necessary to maintain our species
in optimal condition, which is an assumption that bears more examination. Why
do we have war to begin with? Some species make war, many don't but some do,
including us. But why do we do so? Doesn't it serve some beneficial or
essential function for us?

------
michaelt

      “When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.”
      [...]
      could be transformed into an argument like “Since it’s
      possible to get guns illegally with some effort, and
      criminals need guns to commit their crimes and are
      comfortable with breaking laws, it might only slightly
      decrease the number of guns available to criminals. And
      it might greatly decrease the number of guns available to
      law-abiding people hoping to defend themselves. So the
      cost of people not being able to defend themselves might
      be greater than the benefit of fewer criminals being able
      to commit crimes.”
    

I think the one-line quote would persuade people more readily than the 10-line
quote.

~~~
samthecoy
You're right, but that reflects more on human psychology than the quality of
the argument. I'd argue the problem with discussion of current events on
social media is exactly this - quotes and arguments are selected for
psychological potency, and not merit.

~~~
danharaj
An argument is not always better just because it's more explicit, that's
context dependent. People can deduce the chain of reasoning of the latter from
the former, making the former a better argument if everyone is willing to
think about each others' positions in good faith. Efficient and effective
communication depends on shared understanding.

