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]
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.
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.
Thanks for the book recommendation. That looks like a winner. FWIW, primate biology in big organizations or around family formation have much bigger negative impacts on achievement than I would have realized as a younger man. The odd "zero sum games" around mate selection and status seeking can be too real.
Interesting, the concept of dialectic stretches all the way back to Plato, even though Hegel (and later Marx) are most known for it. The Socratic dialectic operates by the principle of questioning, and through questioning internal inconsistency is shown. The most important part here however is that this dialectic wasn't a debate, it was conducted for the purpose of improving the "opponent"'s soul by freeing them of contradictions.
Whether this is possible now, I don't know, but I think it should be fostered. In the same way, I think attachment to views is the cause of many arguments, which I am guilty of engaging in.
The concept of dialectic is so powerful it was applied to many processes, usually as thought experiment. For example, Engels wrote:
>Species of grain change extremely slowly, and so the barley of today is almost the same as it was a century ago. But if we take a plastic ornamental plant, for example a dahlia or an orchid, and treat the seed and the plant which grows from it according to the gardener’s art, we get as a result of this negation of the negation not only more seeds, but also qualitatively improved seeds, which produce more beautiful flowers, and each repetition of this process, each fresh negation of the negation, enhances this process of perfection.
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.
> 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.
Thanks for your salient comment. I also reached the conclusion you did in your second paragraph.
Does this mean that most policy debates boil down to philosophical ones, trying to convince the other person to change their value(s)? First we must agree on a set of values, then we do research to find the best way of living by those values. We must sometimes acknowledge that these facts do not yet exist, and so we can't resolve our disagreement until that research is done.
I suppose if two people have the same value (e.g. immigrants have substantial moral worth), they can still disagree on how best to help them. If the data turns out that immigration makes everyone worse off, are we forced to bar them entry? It seems at odds with my moral compass, which leads to a muddled area of bending facts to appease moral codes. If you're available I would love to pick your thoughts on this.
It's entirely possible that two people might not come to a unique solution to a problem, but whether or not they'll "disagree" over it requires the additional hypothesis that they'll pick some "solution" as their own.
For instance, someone might come to us asking for a text editor. In the absence of additional constraints (e.g. "it should be lightweight", "it should be extensible", "it should be WYSIWYG", etc), there's no unique solution. A unique solution only arises given some sufficient set of constraints. And the discussion will only degenerate into another vim vs Emacs pissing contest if there's any two people in it, one to defend each editor, who aren't keen enough to appreciate this.
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.
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/
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.
I was branded as a genocidal hater when pointing out that no, the IPCC does not anticipate tens of meters of sea rises in a discussion.
I was argued that in front of a dire dangers, facts were not important.
I am an ecologist. I am worried about climate change and peak oil. I routinely contradict other ecologist, whose positions I am close to, when they use wrong facts as arguments.
It is ok to dismiss someone as useless in a debate but it should NEVER be because of the conclusions they reach. It should be because of the methodology they use.
And in my experience, as part of a skeptic group, it is often worthwhile to patiently and gently, explain methodology errors to your interlocutor. It may serve them or your audience.
I find it interesting that some would take the position that "dire dangers" don't require facts. Without facts, how does one determine if one is facing a dire danger?
We have a low-level debate (at present, but is getting bigger) going on here in relation to a anti-bullying program being introduced into schools called the "Safe Schools" program. The premise that underlies the entire program is that the only significant bullying that occurs in schools is against LGBTI... individuals. The premise says that there is no other bullying.
As a parent, you are given no opportunity to actually see the materials to be used. In other words, one cannot see the "facts" the program is presenting to the children. The material is required to be taught in every class and if a teacher disagrees with it and won't teach it, they will be sacked.
One reason some teachers don't want a bar of it is that the material comes with strong warnings about how to deal with the psychological problems the children will have when they do their sexual role playing.
Bullying has a broad range of targets and reasons. Some of it has a sexual orientation, much of it doesn't. I was a nerd, but in my case, I suffered little bullying for the simple fact that I was of the attitude that that you attack me, I attacked right back with a bigger stick. I was generally not a target as I was considered too dangerous and unpredictable. It took a very calm father to train me not to do such.
I saw others who were also bullied and where I intervened that ceased to be a problem, again because I was too dangerous and unpredictable.
This is another area where the facts are not important only the agenda of a specific group.
Please be specific as to what you are classifying as race denial and gender denial.
Gender is an interesting word as the meaning of it has changed over a period of time. The meanings attributed to the word depend upon many things about the people using it. For all intents and purposes, it should be dropped from the English language as it has become a word of inherent conflict. There is no specific and universally accepted meaning that can be used in general discussion.
In some respects, similar problems arise with the word "race".
If I'm understanding the point you're making, it's a good one.
Concomitant with this "inability" to disagree is this post-truth phenomenon wherein everyone is free to construct their own reality. Nothing gets through; not facts, not logic. Nothing.
There's a little ink spilled bemoaning this fact in the article. But it's painted in the context of advocacy for good journalism and is so meek as to essentially form a footnote.
But, the whole of his complaint rests on this deficiency. It's not possible to constructively disagree with someone who is unwilling to acknowledge basic facts, or who promotes an alternate reality.
> But, the whole of his complaint rests on this deficiency. It's not possible to constructively disagree with someone who is unwilling to acknowledge basic facts, or who promotes an alternate reality.
This really needs to be emphasized--if you cannot agree on what the facts are, you will never come to a real conclusion. This is something the article completely glosses over. However, I also I think there's also something beneath just agreeing on what constitutes facts that is equally important, which is a (roughly) shared value system.
The old, "liberally educated" world that the author references the death of in the 1960s (i.e. "Closing of the American Mind") was one of shared values--largely white, protestant values. What replaced it was a different value system--I've seen it called the "meritocratic" value system, or similar--which had fundamentally different core values, and was/is dominant among American conservatives and liberals until recently.
Currently, the furthest left and furthest right often don't agree on core values. On the left, I think almost any argument that uses a variation on "(holy text) said so" can be dismissed off-hand as an unconvincing argument when you're talking about things beyond your own personal behavior--however, my Mormon relatives feel quite differently. This gets uglier and further away from the mainstream when you start to dig into some of the belief systems that groups on the alt-right propose (simplifying, but often things like "only white people have intrinsic value"), as opposed to the mainstream belief systems of the last ~40 years ("all people have intrinsic value"). Similarly on the far left, I've seen a lot of disagreement with other things that I'd hold up as mainstream values of the last 40 years (such as "competition between independent actors leads to good outcomes for consumers*").
Disagreements when fundamental values differ will put any argument on hold before it gets started, and I expect the only real outcome is things that devolve into shouting matches, or worse. And from what I've seen, the range of acceptable values has widened dramatically in the last 15 years--I'm curious to see if this winds up coalescing into a new set of mainstream values after a while, or if things like the structure of the internet/"filter bubbles"/increased ideological splits will mark the end of an ideological "mainstream" as it used to exist.
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.
"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."
This is not something unique to millennials, or any recent generation. As long as we've had public opinion polling, large portions of the population have supported cracking down on speech they dislike.
Why do you think the First Amendment is necessary? Because criminalizing speech has always been popular, as long as it's Bad Speech.
This sort of flamebait amounts to trolling. Would you please not vandalize HN threads like this?
We've already had to ask you to post civilly and substantively or not at all. Eventually, throwing Molotov cocktails (or peeing in the swimming pool, or whatever this is) will get you banned on HN.
This is just the US coming in line with the rest of the civilized world, which does not permit hate speech. Hate speech is speech that encourages violence towards specific groups of people. Therefore it's worthwhile to make a free speech exception for it, in the interest of keeping the peace.
Most speakers being "no-platformed" on American campuses these days absolutely do not "encourage violence towards specific groups of people".
It seems sufficient that they challenge prevailing viewpoints to be shouted down.
There's this totalitarian attempt at labelling any disagreement as "micro-aggressive", to equate it to hate speech that must be suppressed. But none of that remotely reaches the threshold for legally defined hate speech in most countries. It's even usually completely orthogonal to that scale.
Regarding your edit: Surely you recognize that the speakers that are being shouted down and violently assaulted on college campuses don't fit this description.
When college students say that it's appropriate to use violence to stop speech, they mean to stop Charles Murray, not Charles Manson.
Readit News
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]
* * *
But for more on your point, I recommend Carse’s book Finite and Infinite Games, https://amzn.com/0029059801/
Whether this is possible now, I don't know, but I think it should be fostered. In the same way, I think attachment to views is the cause of many arguments, which I am guilty of engaging in.
The concept of dialectic is so powerful it was applied to many processes, usually as thought experiment. For example, Engels wrote:
>Species of grain change extremely slowly, and so the barley of today is almost the same as it was a century ago. But if we take a plastic ornamental plant, for example a dahlia or an orchid, and treat the seed and the plant which grows from it according to the gardener’s art, we get as a result of this negation of the negation not only more seeds, but also qualitatively improved seeds, which produce more beautiful flowers, and each repetition of this process, each fresh negation of the negation, enhances this process of perfection.
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.
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.
Does this mean that most policy debates boil down to philosophical ones, trying to convince the other person to change their value(s)? First we must agree on a set of values, then we do research to find the best way of living by those values. We must sometimes acknowledge that these facts do not yet exist, and so we can't resolve our disagreement until that research is done.
I suppose if two people have the same value (e.g. immigrants have substantial moral worth), they can still disagree on how best to help them. If the data turns out that immigration makes everyone worse off, are we forced to bar them entry? It seems at odds with my moral compass, which leads to a muddled area of bending facts to appease moral codes. If you're available I would love to pick your thoughts on this.
For instance, someone might come to us asking for a text editor. In the absence of additional constraints (e.g. "it should be lightweight", "it should be extensible", "it should be WYSIWYG", etc), there's no unique solution. A unique solution only arises given some sufficient set of constraints. And the discussion will only degenerate into another vim vs Emacs pissing contest if there's any two people in it, one to defend each editor, who aren't keen enough to appreciate this.
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.
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.
I was argued that in front of a dire dangers, facts were not important.
I am an ecologist. I am worried about climate change and peak oil. I routinely contradict other ecologist, whose positions I am close to, when they use wrong facts as arguments.
It is ok to dismiss someone as useless in a debate but it should NEVER be because of the conclusions they reach. It should be because of the methodology they use.
And in my experience, as part of a skeptic group, it is often worthwhile to patiently and gently, explain methodology errors to your interlocutor. It may serve them or your audience.
We have a low-level debate (at present, but is getting bigger) going on here in relation to a anti-bullying program being introduced into schools called the "Safe Schools" program. The premise that underlies the entire program is that the only significant bullying that occurs in schools is against LGBTI... individuals. The premise says that there is no other bullying.
As a parent, you are given no opportunity to actually see the materials to be used. In other words, one cannot see the "facts" the program is presenting to the children. The material is required to be taught in every class and if a teacher disagrees with it and won't teach it, they will be sacked.
One reason some teachers don't want a bar of it is that the material comes with strong warnings about how to deal with the psychological problems the children will have when they do their sexual role playing.
Bullying has a broad range of targets and reasons. Some of it has a sexual orientation, much of it doesn't. I was a nerd, but in my case, I suffered little bullying for the simple fact that I was of the attitude that that you attack me, I attacked right back with a bigger stick. I was generally not a target as I was considered too dangerous and unpredictable. It took a very calm father to train me not to do such.
I saw others who were also bullied and where I intervened that ceased to be a problem, again because I was too dangerous and unpredictable.
This is another area where the facts are not important only the agenda of a specific group.
what about race and gender denial?
Gender is an interesting word as the meaning of it has changed over a period of time. The meanings attributed to the word depend upon many things about the people using it. For all intents and purposes, it should be dropped from the English language as it has become a word of inherent conflict. There is no specific and universally accepted meaning that can be used in general discussion.
In some respects, similar problems arise with the word "race".
Concomitant with this "inability" to disagree is this post-truth phenomenon wherein everyone is free to construct their own reality. Nothing gets through; not facts, not logic. Nothing.
There's a little ink spilled bemoaning this fact in the article. But it's painted in the context of advocacy for good journalism and is so meek as to essentially form a footnote.
But, the whole of his complaint rests on this deficiency. It's not possible to constructively disagree with someone who is unwilling to acknowledge basic facts, or who promotes an alternate reality.
This really needs to be emphasized--if you cannot agree on what the facts are, you will never come to a real conclusion. This is something the article completely glosses over. However, I also I think there's also something beneath just agreeing on what constitutes facts that is equally important, which is a (roughly) shared value system.
The old, "liberally educated" world that the author references the death of in the 1960s (i.e. "Closing of the American Mind") was one of shared values--largely white, protestant values. What replaced it was a different value system--I've seen it called the "meritocratic" value system, or similar--which had fundamentally different core values, and was/is dominant among American conservatives and liberals until recently.
Currently, the furthest left and furthest right often don't agree on core values. On the left, I think almost any argument that uses a variation on "(holy text) said so" can be dismissed off-hand as an unconvincing argument when you're talking about things beyond your own personal behavior--however, my Mormon relatives feel quite differently. This gets uglier and further away from the mainstream when you start to dig into some of the belief systems that groups on the alt-right propose (simplifying, but often things like "only white people have intrinsic value"), as opposed to the mainstream belief systems of the last ~40 years ("all people have intrinsic value"). Similarly on the far left, I've seen a lot of disagreement with other things that I'd hold up as mainstream values of the last 40 years (such as "competition between independent actors leads to good outcomes for consumers*").
Disagreements when fundamental values differ will put any argument on hold before it gets started, and I expect the only real outcome is things that devolve into shouting matches, or worse. And from what I've seen, the range of acceptable values has widened dramatically in the last 15 years--I'm curious to see if this winds up coalescing into a new set of mainstream values after a while, or if things like the structure of the internet/"filter bubbles"/increased ideological splits will mark the end of an ideological "mainstream" as it used to exist.
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.
"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 ?
Why do you think the First Amendment is necessary? Because criminalizing speech has always been popular, as long as it's Bad Speech.
(I say this as someone who strenuously agrees with the NYT article overall).
This sort of flamebait amounts to trolling. Would you please not vandalize HN threads like this?
We've already had to ask you to post civilly and substantively or not at all. Eventually, throwing Molotov cocktails (or peeing in the swimming pool, or whatever this is) will get you banned on HN.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
edit: clarity
Most speakers being "no-platformed" on American campuses these days absolutely do not "encourage violence towards specific groups of people".
It seems sufficient that they challenge prevailing viewpoints to be shouted down.
There's this totalitarian attempt at labelling any disagreement as "micro-aggressive", to equate it to hate speech that must be suppressed. But none of that remotely reaches the threshold for legally defined hate speech in most countries. It's even usually completely orthogonal to that scale.
Deleted Comment
updating for the angry: hate speech, as in "fighting words," which is to say language used to incite violence towards a specific person.
When college students say that it's appropriate to use violence to stop speech, they mean to stop Charles Murray, not Charles Manson.
Where did you think this was going to get you? Did you think people wouldn't click through to read it?