CAUSES OF DISAGREEMENT
1. values (/tastes)
2. facts
3. logical errors
4. semantics (definitions/descriptions of words)
5. judgements of vagueness
-> notable subtype: interests/self-protection (group or self identity) /tribalism/competition/exercise of power for thrill or mental stimulation
DISAGREE SMARTER, A SCHEMA:
In the ideal, explicitly ask the following to the interlocutor and/or yourself:
1. Non-Taste
“Is this just a matter of taste?”
2. Open-mindedness #1
“Are you willing to change your mind?”
//Their response — particularly the degree of identity protection/tribalism — determines whether you speak to persuade them, to persuade any audience, or whether to abandon the conversation entirely.
3. Utility
“What are each of our purposes for this discussion — persuading who? Is this for self-assurance?”
“Is this worth my time?”
// Don’t get addicted
4. Behavioural Incentives
“Is there a social context present for one to change their minds?”
“Will they behave?” eg airtime, interruptions, rhetoric, comprehension efforts etc
//Police the use of these power/dominance techniques
//Police the use of logic
“Do I have an existing/possible relationship with this person?”
“Should we discuss this in private?”
“Should we discuss this in-person or in voice?”
// Communicate as if face-to-face regardless
5. Open-mindedness #2
// Visualise being wrong / ‘Consider the opposite’
// Humanise; they are at worst mistaken, not evil; Starmanning
// Ataraxia and anti-tribalism/anti-identity; emotion obscures confusion
6. Comprehension
“What do you mean by X?”
“Can you elaborate?”
“Can we think of examples?”
“Can we think of analogies?”
“I understand you to be saying XYZ, is that correct?” (Get confirmation)
“What, in your words, is my position?”
7. Other-siding
“What are the arguments against this position?”
// Seek opposition / ‘Hear the other side’
// Other-siding: the ability to accurately characterise the other side
// In advance, check that you pass as a true believer with actual true believers (Ideological Turing Test + Validation)
8. Justification
“Why is that?”
“What principles underlie this position?”
// Decouple
“Can we think of counterexamples?”
“Is there a citation that we both respect?”
“Let’s flag that to provide a citation later”
“Why do you think we disagree?”
// Double-Crux
// Examine assumptions; what is unspoken?
9. Open-mindedness #3
“How confident are you in that from 1–10?”
“What could count as evidence against that position?”
“Can you think of anything in particular that would change your mind?”
Graham’s Hierarchy of Disagreement values quotation and logic, but it ignores that refuting testimony may be impossible in short time-frames, that identifying common ethical values do depend on one’s character, and it ignores the importance of communication such as checking for comprehension.
See also:
Disagreement and Inquiry > Critical thinking
LAWS OF DEBATING
The Wretched Pattern
The first two-thirds of any debate are spent ad-homming and strawmanning before finally understanding each other’s points.
The last third is spent coming to the realisation that intuitions are inexplicable and that people’s values are subjective, arbitrary and mutually irreconcilable.
The Tone Debate
There is zero chance of getting people to respond to the content of your argument rather than its perceived emotional tone.
Mencken’s Law of Democracy
In a democracy, on every political issue there’s a popular answer and it’s nearly always wrong.
Corollary: Clapping/applause is inversely proportional to the intelligence or originality of the speaker’s point
Citational Hubris
The amount which somebody quotes Einstein or Gandhi on the internet is proportional to how wrong they are.
The Old Favourites
As debate on any topic continues over time, somebody will blame abstract greed, the bankers, or Richard Dawkins
STREET EPISTEMOLOGY
… is a method to challenge beliefs in a respectful, non-confrontational way, guiding one’s interlocutor to aporia (a long pause to think).
It is not a subtype of academic epistemology.
Typical tools:
• Truth test
• Claim clarification
• Confidence scales
• Real reason check
It seems disingenuous that the aim is not to change minds.
What things persuade people?
Social attractiveness and unlearnable charm seem to overshadow syllogism, imo.
Strident, impassioned, loud or just confident speech seems to carry more weight than form or content.
How obliquely should we challenge someone’s belief?
Should we avoid presenting our own view, disagreements, or counterexamples?
Focussing on one thing for one size fits all seems imprudent and unbalanced.
One size doesn’t fit all; you cant always walk away because you might pay a personal or professional cost.
Sometimes you will need to speak to the audience.“Calling in” can also be more exhausting than simple “calling out”, and it’s not clear that the former is more effective.
Some people insult, debunk, call out or use counterspeech to unequivocally oppose political extremists.
When is stridence more useful than calm?
eg how to respond to an n-word user or an evolution-denier?
Is SE civility porn?
SE appears to require tacit consent and compliance from the interviewer.
It’s unlike a real antagonist!
Does it only bolster fringe beliefs when believers of orthodoxies lower their certainty?
Galef almost aims for reverse SE to want to change her own mind!
Does combatting falsehoods require systematic (culture/content moderation) not individual level intervention?
What are quality and uncertainty of evidence? How should evidence move you?
What is the strength of one’s belief? What determines it?
What is open-mindedness? What determines it?
Example questions:
• What do you mean by that?
• On a scale of 0 to 100, with 100 being completely sure and 0 being completely unsure, how confident are you that <the claim> is true?
• Why do you think so?
• What makes you this confident?
• What’s the main reason for your confidence?
• Should this evidence/reason of <XYZ> give us that level of confidence?
• Would that same reasoning work with other claims as well?
• If you didn’t have <reason>, how would that change your confidence?
• Can a person feel something and be mistaken about it?
• Can a person have faith in something that is not true?
• What alternative explanations can you think of?
• If there were other possible explanations, would you like to know them?
• How could we think about which of the alternate explanations is the most probable?
• How could we test whether this is really true?
• What new evidence could significantly shift your confidence about this?
• What could I possibly show you that would mean you were mistaken?
• If another person uses the same <method> and comes to a different conclusion than you, how could an outside observer decide which one of your claims is more likely to be true?
• If some methods can lead us to different and contradictory conclusions, what does that tell us about the reliability of those methods?
What belief do you hold that is not responsive or amenable to evidence?
See also:
https://streetepistemology.com/faq
OUTREACH
Some nascent and ill-informed thoughts…
• “Plant a seed”
• “Put a pebble in their shoe”
• “Our goal is not to satisfy our egos by convincing somebody right there and then.”
• “Our target audience is not everyone.”
• Target floating voters
• Disengage if heated
• Long conversations plausibly have an opportunity cost
• Appear mainstream (or in my case at least try to be less quirky!)
“Anyway, food for thought.“
“[religion/abortion/ procreation/omnicide] is an important and sensitive issue we should think about seriously, but I don’t think we have the time to do it justice right now”
“[suicide/… etc] is a sensitive and tragic issue.”
Note that if free will is false, then all advocacy is futile
“Know my place. I am likely insignificant. And despite my efforts I have to go with the current wherever it takes me so don’t beat myself up too much”
CULTURE WARS
The culture wars are opposing groups of iconoclastic proto-fascists mistaking matters of taste for fact, with each claiming their setting of the thermostat is morally correct.
Both sides suffer exaggeration, careless sloganeering, adhoc reasoning and inconsistency.
This combines with a melange of issues regarding misinformation, the media, liberties, education, worldviews…
What is the role of power asymmetry as a criterion for the wrongfulness of discrimination between categories of people?
When does non-conformity become mental illness, become danger?
Justice or hysteria? Fashion or thought?
Imagine unironically knee-jerk “supporting social justice” movements nowadays without hesitancy born of how we’ve come to view past “social justice” movements…
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.Imagine valorising “free speech”, “democracy”, “the arc of history/justice” as well-defined notions when it suits you.
Imagine thinking that you must always like changes of etiquette…
Youths will always seek power, test boundaries and annoy their elders using the means available to them.
Conflicts of interest, shifting power dynamics, contesting language and changing mores are perennial.
I propose Web 3.0: Digital Noise Reduction
RESPONSES TO PEER DISAGREEMENT
• the Equal Weight view
• the Steadfast view
• the Justificationist view
• the Total Evidence view
CRITICAL THINKING
About
Learning about deductive fallacies, Bayes’ theorem, confirmation bias and the Wason selection test is just the tip of the iceberg.
Critical thinking requires an attitude, manifesting in habits of thought and communication, complementing other techniques.
Intellectual virtues include:
Careful
inc. Methodical, Precise, considering Complexity
Curious
inc. Open-minded, Othersiding
Calm
Cautious to emotionalization, but adversarial/irreverent if required
Actions include:
• Collect context:
> Depth,
> Breadth,
> Relevance,
> Logic,
> Assumptions,
> What is going unspoken?
> Counterarguments
• Consult,
• Communicate
• Collaborate
• Recall,
• Imagine,
• Distinguish,
• Observe,
• Experiment,
• Infer,
• Judge,
• Emotionally Self-Regulate,
• Question,
• Analyse,
Perhaps they can be adequately socially distributed rather than jointly present in one person, eg some individuals in an intercommunicating group may be collaborative and some adversarial.
Some suggest education should teach “how to think, not what to think” and that “rationality is a vector, not a fixed point”.
But teaching what to think, at least provisionally, appears to be unavoidable and desirable.
The ability to accurately parrot others is underrated
Limitations
However, the non-expert’s civic duty to keep power in check seems to be an overfetishised pathology.
Appeals by Skeptic / Rationalist / public educator podcasters and essayists for more critical thinking are ultimately the veiled lament “Why cant everyone just judge things the way I do and think what I do?”
Internet intellectuals fatuously declare “<Anything that I dont believe> is biased/not based in critical thinking” for slur or self-congratulation.
Even in class, “critical thinking” often means indoctrination. To “be critical”, the student must conform, rejecting ideas unacceptable to the status quo and merely adopting the right ones.
Much of the often-bloated online critical thinking panegyric and instruction is anaemically ambiguous or inapplicable to pressing issues.
-How should we evaluate expertise and its scope?
-Are there experts on controversial topics like ethics or politics?
-What determines whether to defer to experts or answer them as best as we can?
-Can non-experts curate expertise?
-How should we attenuate speaker influence and impact, given their expertise and interests?
-How diligently should we check our comprehension of a communication?
-How much curiosity, counterargument-seeking, homophily and truth-seeking is healthy?
-How strong should our beliefs be?
-How should we deal with disagreements over intuitive judgements?
-By whom should qualitative matters be judged?
-When do we endorse majority/consensus rule?
No-one has practical answers.
Perhaps the phrase “critical thinking” could be abandoned.
We should also be cautious that a habit of constant doubt will lead to the pathology of aboulomania.
The nature of good/wise/healthy belief-formation remains uncomfortably unclear.
Critical thinking resources:
I liked:
Boghossian — How to Have Impossible Conversations
Galef — How to Want to Change Your Mind
Todd-Carroll — Teaching Critical Thinking
Facione — Delphi report Critical Thinking
Paul-Elder — The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools (sections of)
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-thinking/
Overrated:
Russell — The 10 Commandments of Critical Thinking
Sagan — The Baloney Detection Kit
Yudkovsky — Twelve Virtues of Rationality
Shermer — How Thinking Goes Wrong
THE PRIMARY INTELLECTUAL VALUE
…is being able to change your mind
“We can seldom accept even the simplest, most obvious truth if it obliges us to admit the falsity of conclusions which we have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which we have proudly taught to others, and which we have woven, thread by thread, into the very fabric of our lives.”
“If you have ever argued with a believer, you will have noticed that their self-esteem and pride are involved in the dispute, and you are asking them to give up something more than a point in argument”
“The real test is resistance to conformity with the prevailing opinion in one’s own in-group.”
Identitarianism ruins everything(?)
Religions were bad because they socially deterred criticism, not just because of their falsehoods.
It aint only what you don’t know that gets you into trouble; it’s also “what you know for sure that just aint so”
THE MEANING OF “CRITICAL”
The etymology of critical thinking, kritikos, alludes to judgement against standards.
“Critical” can mean either:
• methodical/systematic,
• diligent/scholarly,
• fault-finding/polemical, or
• socially reformist
TABOO THESE WORDS
Should the terms rational and reason be abandoned for generating more harm than good?
Yes.
Many people should try to taboo the terms critical(/ly), rational, logical, evidence, bias “the scientific method”, “extraordinary claims/evidence” and bigotry to reduce vapidity or confusion.
How should we apportion our strength of belief when we say something is “likely true”?
What is an inference to the “best” explanation?
Our favourite terms become a thought-terminating, weaponised caricature of science/facts/logic/reasoning/evidence.
“Appeal to authority” is a fallacy and “Think for yourself” is empty; different people infer different “best” explanations as information is interpreted and filtered through idiosyncratic intuitions.
One person’s “best explanation” is another’s example of bias.
“It’s so convenient a thing to be a Reasonable Creature, since it enables one to find a reason for whatever one wants to do”
Whose rationality?
Rationality and Reason have no identifiable content and no recognisable agenda over and above the interests of those appropriating their names.
Do online “Rational” communities and their techniques really produce more insightful citizens?
Ive stopped referring to myself as a Rationalist.
And I think you should too.
