I do think there are a subset of people who are genuinely open minded. These people are actively curious and looking to iterate toward a more accurate view of reality.
When you meet people like this there are no 'tactics' ... it's just about presenting the truth in good faith as you see it and listening actively to understand their point of view.
The problem I encounter is that many people posture as 'open-minded', but in reality they want to hear your opinion for the same reason an opponent wants you to show your cards after they've folded to a successful poker bluff. In this case it simply tells them "what side you're on" or "which tribe you belong to".
As a heuristic, I've found it's very difficult to formulate thoughtful questions if you're not genuinely curious about a topic. Therefore, I tend to use the 'questioning level of thoughtfulness' (QLOT) of my discussion partner as the signal of whether or not I'm dealing with someone who desires a good faith discussion.
> When you meet people like this there are no 'tactics' ... it's just about presenting the truth in good faith
I will argue with tactics, but it’s not necessarily out of bad faith. Usually people are terrible at having an open-minded conversation, and you need to peel back the layers because most individuals won’t tell you why they believe something.
You’ll get all these canned responses and talking points from mainstream media (Or, if we’re talking about technology, the analog would be taking points from a particular corporation or vendor). But people won’t outright say “I don’t agree with that policy because I don’t trust that person” or “I got screwed over by a traumatic experience with X therefore I’m against X”. Most people aren’t capable of engaging on that level without a great deal of emotional maturity; of course, we’re far away from reality and facts at this point but humans are emotional creatures and emotion drives our decision making.
I've found that being more like a therapist and discussing not what it is they think but trying to get to the bottom of why it is they feel as such a really good approach.
Even ignoring the issue and trying to ask them more about their values. And then going deeper and figuring out why they value those things.
And sharing the same about you to them.
A lot of disagreement I find surprisingly come from similar values but just different weights applied to how events impact those values. Or sometimes it's just different value sets, and then you have to discuss why it is we value different things.
Even if you walk away still in disagreement, because you might still just end up where you have differing values, or where you've got different weights to those values, at least you'll have an understanding of each other and why it is you don't agree on those things.
The problem is online discussions are just not conductive to this at all. You can't engage someone and really work through this process of shared understanding. Relationships online are too superficial and short lived.
> Usually people are terrible at having an open-minded conversation, and you need to peel back the layers because most individuals won’t tell you why they believe something.
What beliefs would they have? If I am having a conversation about a topic it is because I have no established beliefs about that topic. If I have firm beliefs in something, what additional benefit would be derived from discussing it? There is absolutely nothing more boring than talking about something you are certain you know everything about.
I expect I also seem closed-minded in such conversation as the most effective device I have found to be open-minded in conversation is to pick a position, any position, and see if it can be defended. Upon reflection, you can gain a lot of insight into where you fell short in understanding and learn from that.
> You’ll get all these canned responses and talking points from mainstream media
Which is fine. A weak defence is sufficient to get started. The goal isn't to "win", the goal is to learn and if canned responses greases the wheels of discussion that leads to something valuable to reflect on later, that's all that is needed. You have to start somewhere with what limited information you have available to you. After all, if you were the world's utmost expert you wouldn't be in the conversation, given the boringness and all.
Yeah and those open minded people might really be on to something there.
I didn't particularly like the premise of the article, which seems to be that the goal is to change the other's mind. But think about it, what could be more beneficial to me than having an argument that changes my mind? If I convince someone of my opinion (whether by "weapon" or by "gift") then they learned something (ideally...) but if I change my mind thanks to the conversation, then I just learned something, I got to make that improvement to myself.
A day where nobody changed your mind is a day of stagnation.
Right, that starts from the assumption that one's view is correct.
Bayesian reasoning has you start with priors, take in new information, change or adjust your credences, and possibly adjust your priors. Having that kind of conversation is far more productive, and potentially more charitable in assumption of sincerity on the other party's part.
I guess I should try to get better at asking good questions. Even if I'm genuinely curious about something, I always have trouble coming up with thoughtful questions, especially on the spot.
(I guess for me, "thoughtfulness" requires putting thought into something, and if I'm actively participating in a conversation, I can't do that. It's way easier if I have already invested time into the topic at hand at some point beforehand.)
> I tend to use the 'questioning level of thoughtfulness' (QLOT) of my discussion partner as the signal
That's easier to do if participants have aligned interests and desires. Harder when communicating with someone that is very different from yourself. In that case it's productive if the discussion is approached with patience as a learning experience. Without suspicions that the other person is only learning about you so their tribe can use it against you later.
I sometimes argue, because I feel an inner compulsion to do so — maybe as a kind of performance art — but I've given up on trying to change anyone's mind.
I spent years as a graduate student in a philosophy PhD program, and what I found is that, essentially, no professional philosopher changes any other professional philosopher's mind about anything important, ever. We're just endlessly arguing. Intelligently, usually respectfully arguing, but accomplishing nothing, getting nowhere. And philosophers are supposed to be, at least nominally, the most "rational" among us.
This is not to say that philosophers never change their minds: they occasionally do. But not as a result of arguing! It's usually more self-correction than other-correction.
I think it's better to read books than to argue. There's less personal ego involved, because you can "engage" with the author of a book in a way that's not like a sporting event. There's no winner and loser. You don't have to admit to the author that you were wrong, because you never even have to talk to the author, and the author will probably never even know that you read the book. You're almost forced to argue with yourself in this situation. You can change your own mind even if you can't change other minds.
When you argue publicly, your goal shouldn't be to change your opponent's view, but to influence the people in the audience who don't have a strong opinion yet.
I've decided that I can never expect to change someone's mind. But, I can introduce factors that are new to them that they will later consider and may change their mind.
I am trying to assess whether philosophers not changing their minds is something that is desirable or not. On one hand, they represent their theses after long periods of introspection and studying. On the other hand, their virtue signaling propensity may relate to various ego ambitions.
Definitely, debate for the shake of debate feels like an excercise for the philosopher rather than identifying why different views exist and where these fall short. In the long term, it may lead to change of the philosopher. Given everybody keeps an open mind, I don't think that this is necessary a bad thing.
> philosophers never change their minds: they occasionally do. But not as a result of arguing! It's usually more self-correction than other-correction
So, as a rational philosopher you're not trying to express an absolute truth that is generally applicable. Rather, you're iterating towards the most accurate and appropriate expression of yourself. Hmm, I think I've heard that philosophy before... existentialism?
Philosophers are paid thinkers, and they fulfill an important social function, like theologians to a God, in this case the Market. To understand them it's important to pay attention to what they ignore, most importantly: this is where all of them will agree - pawns in the great game being played by the Invisible Hand against itself.
I find it strange that this article presumes that you have all the right answers and that there isn't the possibility that you are the one who needs their mind changed. It points out that listening is valuable, but not because there's a possibility that the person you're talking to is in the right, no, you should listen to other people because studies show that listening to other people will manipulate them into seeing things your way.
I feel like if you really wanted to live in a world of open-minded people, you should probably start by being open-minded yourself.
Here's a good trick I picked up for discussing contentious things - if you're ever tempted to dish out a sick burn, try to rephrase the point into a genuine question. Then the other person will have to walk through the logic of it, and if it turns out there is a real logic to their side of things, you don't get your ego bruised, cause you just asked a genuine question.
It helps if you understand whether the person is defending their own values, or their group's values.
If you talk someone out of their group's values, you might destroy their entire life. Talking someone out of their religion is a "win" until they get shunned and lose everything they have. Are you still in the right then? What does the "objective truth" matter if you're just ruining peoples lives?
Change someone's mind on guns or abortion and you hurt them! It doesn't matter which side they start on or which side you convince them to. You're ripping and tearing at the very fabric of their social life.
Some people are unable to change their minds, but some people can't change their minds due to circumstance. It's really important to understand this before convincing anyone of anything.
If we apply this kind of belief to corporations/government/etc. we get the things that most folks at HN spend their non-tech comments complaining about. Entrenched power, inability to pursue effectiveness because "this is how its always been done" and a lot of fluff.
You are not ruining people's lives by sharing reasoning to change someone's values. You are not destroying their lives because simply talking to someone is not forcing them to accept and implement something.
Their community is not flexible enough to incorporate differing beliefs and thus not long destined for this world. Take for example, Christianity. It comes in more flavors than ice cream, and infighting occurs but is rare in the face of conversations that pit Muslims or 'heathen religions' against Christianity. flexibility
Or take Hindu social society which is literally the oldest surviving widespread religion + social group that continuously assimilates different beliefs from different pagan religions bending so far that Hindus now celebrate Valentines and Xmas Day without invalidating a single belief.
The party "destroying lives" is not the party that posits a new way of thinking.
Great comment. I suspect that we all are vulnerable to Stockholm syndrome and doing the calculation of what price we will pay for changing our mind. After all, surviving is more important than being right.
I don't know about being "in the right" or not, but I do think this comment is correct in showing why it can be difficult, if not impossible, for some people to change their minds. I experienced this in my own family in regards to covid, which made for some very stressful discussions around masking and behavior when we gathered for the holidays during the pandemic. I live in one part of the country, where certain behaviors and beliefs around that were baseline assumptions, some of my siblings in a different part of the country, with the opposite baselines. To change minds would mean going against what all your friends, neighbors, colleagues, etc believed. It would mean pretty significant social distancing, unrelated to the pandemic.
We all were able to work out some measure of compromise for the duration of the visit, but, well, there's reasons we live where we live and not in the same place.
It's all fine an dandy until objectively false group beliefs start affecting, e.g., political policy that has an effect on everybody, not just believers.
Even if you persuaded them into changing their mind on a topic intertwined with their identity or the group they are part of, can it not be that it is for the better and, ultimately for their own benifit?
On the contrary, the article concludes on this note:
> But if I truly have the good of the world at heart, then I must not fall prey to the conceit of perfect knowledge, and must be willing to entertain new and better ways to serve my ultimate goal: creating a happier world.
That means a lot less as a postscript than as the starting point. Whereas the framing of your values as a "gift" doesn't absolutely imply they're correct, but does imply they're somehow a good thing.
There's a phrase we use for saying the right words about an important idea but not actually incorporating it into your methods: "lip service".
> I find it strange that this article presumes that you have all the right answers and that there isn't the possibility that you are the one who needs their mind changed. It points out that listening is valuable, but not because there's a possibility that the person you're talking to is in the right, no, you should listen to other people because studies show that listening to other people will manipulate them into seeing things your way.
Perhaps the article is being devious here. It's not easy for people to separate intentions and actions - sometimes an intention can form to rationalise a preceding action (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Franklin_effect). Even though your initial intention may be to manipulate by appearing to genuinely listen, you may end up just genuinely listening and rationalising that this was your intent all along. This line of reasoning could trick the most ardent zealots into accidentally genuinely listening to their enemies' point of view.
Relatedly, I think another effective persuasive technique is 'seeding'. If you can engineer a 'non-defensive' conversation with your opponent in which you seed one or two critical thoughts in their mind, although they won't be instantaneously persuaded the seeds can germinate into full persuasion later on. However, this technique requires avoidance of confrontational behaviours that cause your opponent to activate their mental defenses.
To me it felt like the article lured you in pretending to be a guide on how to change other people's minds, but the arguments seem to involve that you can only do so by being open to having your own mind change.
I mean, I scrolled back up to the title - "A Gentler, Better Way to Change Minds" - and note that it doesn't even mention other people's minds; it could refer to changing your own mind as well. Point two is about being OK with your point of view being rejected, and point three about considering the other person's point of view. And then the conclusion is:
> But if I truly have the good of the world at heart, then I must not fall prey to the conceit of perfect knowledge, and must be willing to entertain new and better ways to serve my ultimate goal: creating a happier world. Launching a rhetorical grenade might give me a little satisfaction and earn me a few attaboys on social media from those who share my views, but generosity and openness have a bigger chance of making the world better in the long run.
I also read in the article that you should listen in a genuine way.
Would it be possible that this act could change your own mind? Would that fit your definition of being open-minded?
Many of his contemporaries hated his guts and ultimately they condemned him to death. It may be a good way to keep an open mind, but it may also be a terrible way to make friends and influence people.
He wasn't condemned to death because of his annoying questions, he was condemned because he was considered partly responsible for the "Thirty Tyrants" rule of terror which replaced democracy in Athens. Socrates was vehemently opposed to the democracy, and one of the leaders of the tyrants had been his student. When democracy was restored, Socrates was condemned to death.
I think it's because the political process is all about getting people into groups where they can thus cooperate with each other as an economic bloc, a perfect lie is the optimal unifying concept in this model; something that pulls everybody together into the same single political structure.
If on the other hand all you care about is the truth, you're directly corrosive to the above. You're looking at all the edge cases where the lie breaks down, and worse yet you're spreading disintegration of the otherwise unified political bloc by infecting other agents with your same methods.
It's a matter of perspective which side is "right", because those resultant atomised and fractured political blocs that can no longer bring themselves to accept the beautiful lie that otherwise would have successfully united them are now competitive rather than cooperative, and the game gradually slips closer to zero sum with the bloc most closely pursuing the optimal strategy in the light of the cold hard cynical truth winning out at the direct expense of all the other groups, and the resulting accelerating wealth inequality that implies, having real concrete negative effects on the lives of all those people in the suboptimal factions that frankly they may never have even had a chance to join letalone have been made aware of the existence of any alternatives because of the nature of their worldviews. Is it "right" to pursue truth even if it makes the quality of life of billions much worse?
It's a frightening and enlightening thing to sit down with an ideologue and come to understand not just what they think, but how they got to think that way. The common thread I have found is that default worldviews are both extremely sticky and subject to almost no critical analysis by the people that hold them, and unifying the galaxy of irrational but widely held default worldviews that exist flatly requires extensive narrative manipulation and outright lying, and that lying and manipulation is what politics actually is.
Imho this is why widespread censorship has gone from intolerable anathema to the sine qua non for the existence of the dominant shared mass hallucination about the state of the world in just a few short decades. Like it or not, politics has won out soundly over truth past a certain social scale.
Disclaimer; acknowledging reality is not approving of it. Socrates was right and should have beeen feeding his prosecutors hemlock, not the other way around. Damn the consequences and embrace the truth, whatever the outcome has always been my view. I just also know that view is extremely unpopular today.
Do you think the author might have written it with that 'presumption' intentionally?
I'd guess that the author is trying to, as gently as possible, suggest to people that there are better ways to go about thinking about those with whom you disagree, _regardless_ of who is right or wrong. Which is really a different point than "you should be less certain about your beliefs."
> Here's a good trick I picked up for discussing contentious things - if you're ever tempted to dish out a sick burn, try to rephrase the point into a genuine question. Then the other person will have to walk through the logic of it, and if it turns out there is a real logic to their side of things, you don't get your ego bruised, cause you just asked a genuine question.
And if it doesn't they can figure it out and have a way to fuck off without losing face too much
You raise an interesting question: Does the right-leaning media publish the same type of articles? And if not, what type of "conflict resolution" content do they publish instead?
Shouldn't different people in different circumstances of life, have different opinions/philosophies/ideologies anyway?
How about this: if you want to change people's minds, work on changing their circumstances first.
This is Michael Shellenberger's philosophy around saving the planet/climate. Basically, that economic justice has to come first because only people who are comfortable and middle class can afford the mental and emotional costs associated with caring about that stuff.
And yes, achieving that result on a global scale may well involve the construction of a bunch of new oil and gas infrastructure in places like Africa and South America— well meaning westerners should focus on what can be done at home to reduce, and stop protesting exactly the kind of thing that helps more people enter the middle class.
"Middle-class-ness" in this context shouldn't be the primary goal, because it's only a proxy for "have enough time and space to care." I assure you, poor people care about the environment, but we've structured our society to prevent the working poor from having enough free time and energy to advocate for things like the environment. Poor people generally don't even have enough time and energy to advocate for themselves for things like affordable housing and the end of food deserts.
Instead of just being like "lets burn more carbon to generate wealth first," we should skip the middle steps and go directly to giving people of all classes, especially the working poor that make up the majority of the human race, a voice and access to voting rights. Give the lower economic classes a larger voice in government and I think you'd be surprised how many would vote for things like investment in clean energy.
Respectfully, saying that you have to be rich enough to have time to care is missing the forest for the trees.
There are plenty of people well above middle class who still fight against any action on climate change. I doubt that lifting poor people in developing countries out of their misery by burning more coal will help change minds in rich industrialized countries.
(I don't know what that means, it's just a fact I picked up along the way. Like how more people know English in China than in North America. Just one of those weird thoughts that seems obvious in hindsight. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_education_in_China )
- - - -
> economic justice has to come first
Ecologically harmonious living is economical as well: your expenses are reduced, your health is improved, etc. In other words, ecologically harmonious living is economic justice. That's what that looks like in the real world: abundant (cheap) food, medicine, clothing, housing, etc.
The only downside to living in harmony with nature is for people who are committed to making money from waste (in the ultimate analysis.) E.g. GMO's are touted as solving world hunger, but really in practice they are used to lock-in corporate profits. The same company that sells you the poison sells you the seeds that resist the poison, seeds that you must buy each year: the contract states you can't save your own seed.
If you grow food in harmony with nature you don't need fertilizer ($$$) pesticide ($$$) GMO patented crop species ($$$) etc...
It's more profitable for the farmer and the product is healthier (reducing medical expenses, eh?)
Compare with, e.g.: Grow BIOINTENSIVE ( http://growbiointensive.org/ ) a system that uses around 5000f² (~450m²) per adult, produces a balanced complete diet, and increases soil volume and fertility year-on-year, while requiring no external inputs and little labor.
I have lots of other examples, poke me for more...
Anyway, the point is, "economic justice" is living in harmony with nature: they are the same thing.
Economic justice would be benificial for the world as a whole. Also, poorer countries have to go through economic growth more or less the same way as the steps the richer countries took. There are very few shortcuts possible since the growth is gradual.
Well fortunately we recently passed a tipping point. Over half the population of the world are now middle class. This is largely due to a few hundred million Chinese, and more in SE Asia generally, entering the urban middle income bracket over the last few decades. The next few years are probably going to be rough, but global incomes have been going in the right direction for quite a while.
As for fossil fuels, utility scale solar is now cheaper than coal. Global development definitely means more CO2, but we’re right at an inflection point towards renewables.
So shall we put the ongoing ecological and climate catastrophes on hold while we take 200 years to reach an egalitarian utopia? On the other hand, we're told that these catastrophes affect the poorest countries the most. From that point of view, environmentalism is "economic justice".
*Interesting term. Does that mean the economically better off have committed a crime, and must be punished?
If certain values are circumstantial, couldn't that just be combined into a higher-level formulation? Eg if a lower-class person values family, and a higher-class person values fulfillment, then you simply say "fulfillment is valuable when monetary and social needs are met" (aka Maslow's hierarchy of needs [1]), and that's something both people can agree on. No need to change anybody's circumstances.
Have you read the article? Do you think saying "other people make no sense" is a great way to engage in a gentler, more civilized discussion? Try to put yourself in their shoes and understand where their aguments are coming from and why you may disagree so strongly with them. Almost always, I can ensure you, it's NOT the case that "they make no sense", but that you simply have made no effort to take into account their reasoning and motivations, which may be just as valid as yours, yet lead to completely different conclusions.
If normal intelligent people doesn’t make sense to you then it is because you don’t understand where they are coming from and why they believe what they believe.
That's a damn good point. Philosophy is merely perspective's shadow (moral philosophy included!). If you want to change the way they think then change what they see.
Our #1 tool for that is drugs. So cheap and convenient. #2 is video entertainment, but that's a bit shallow and ephemeral. #3 is what... raucous demonstrations?
And speaking of demonstrations, you can't beat "scientific culture" for having a pre-existing setup for managing the "changing philosophies by changing perspectives" process. But most of us aren't scientists. (Or squishy, openminded experimentalists, even)
An interesting idea related to this: the pedagogical benefits of esotericism.
Melzer writes: “Just as education must begin by addressing the student where he is, so, as he learns and changes, it must stay with him. The internal or dialectical critique of received opinion takes place not in a single stroke but in a series of successive approximations to the truth, each of which will seem in its time to be the final one.”
As someone who's wasted too much time arguing with people online, I find it very unlikely you'll change anyone's mind that way.
If your values are so great, live them. Show by example why your values are the best way to live, by emobdying them and having an enviable life that people want to emulate. I think that would change far more minds than arguing.
> Show by example why your values are the best way to live
> I think that would change far more minds
I don't find one's personal status (in any dimension) transmits well across the internet. We may not be truly anonymous, but nobody knows you're a dog, basically. IMHO there's no way to back up a well lived life through text. And nobody is doing a docuseries on everyone.
> But just as you are not your car or your house, you are not your beliefs.
While I get what the author is trying to say here, this doesn't feel like a great analogy to me. If I'm not attached to my beliefs, wouldn't that make me aloof? Most people's beliefs are their identity. And if you detach yourself from your beliefs, it's almost like you're trying to detach yourself from self. It feels like a very relativistic mindset, which is fine, but antithetical to some worldviews.
Identifying yourself with your beliefs seems like a surefire way to stop you from changing your mind on things you might be wrong about.
I think it's better to identify with something arbitrary and static, like your heritage/nationality/ethnicity/family. Your roots. That way the identity-seeking part of you has a nice, firm rock to hold on to, and you can freely evict ideas and beliefs that aren't effectively predicting your experiences - without destroying your self-identity.
Belief-as-identity strikes me as really pernicious. It's a big problem people have with religions with orthodoxy like Christianity or Islam; these systems sustain themselves in part by training people to tie their sense of self to a particular belief about the nature of god/the universe.
Identifying as an Atheist, or Liberal, or a Conservative, or anything just lets that thing get its hooks into you. I'd like to be able to drop and change my political beliefs if it turns out I'm wrong about which form of economics leads to the greatest amount of human flourishing, for example.
Each individual ideological meme, in contrast, really wants you to build it into your self-identity, to spread its roots so deep that to extricate it would be spiritual suicide. All beliefs 'want' this, and while it's impossible to not be a slave to some meta-meta-meme, you can at least not be a memetic zombie for some object-level one! If a belief stops paying rent in useful predictions, I want it evicted, out on the street!
I purposely didn't mention any religions, because a belief doesn't need to imply religion. You can believe science is the ultimate decider, that heritage is the most important, family, friends, etc. My point is that all these things are still your belief and you need to moor yourself to something, otherwise your bound to drift around and believe in whatever is trending on social media from one moment to the next.
The idea that object level beliefs are bad is wrong. Meta level arguments are just tricks to try to confuse you into thinking one situation is like another.
> Stop wielding your values as a weapon and start offering them as a gift.
This is incredibly spot on. I might even say it differently as
“Stop treating your values as an indication of your superiority, and start treating them as a relatable story of growth.”
A lot (I mean a lot) of people I talk with are constantly trying to put on a display of how what they are is some kind of superior way of being. And it’s impossible to listen to them because they’re speaking with a childish “I’m this and your not” way of thinking.
Readit News
When you meet people like this there are no 'tactics' ... it's just about presenting the truth in good faith as you see it and listening actively to understand their point of view.
The problem I encounter is that many people posture as 'open-minded', but in reality they want to hear your opinion for the same reason an opponent wants you to show your cards after they've folded to a successful poker bluff. In this case it simply tells them "what side you're on" or "which tribe you belong to".
As a heuristic, I've found it's very difficult to formulate thoughtful questions if you're not genuinely curious about a topic. Therefore, I tend to use the 'questioning level of thoughtfulness' (QLOT) of my discussion partner as the signal of whether or not I'm dealing with someone who desires a good faith discussion.
I will argue with tactics, but it’s not necessarily out of bad faith. Usually people are terrible at having an open-minded conversation, and you need to peel back the layers because most individuals won’t tell you why they believe something.
You’ll get all these canned responses and talking points from mainstream media (Or, if we’re talking about technology, the analog would be taking points from a particular corporation or vendor). But people won’t outright say “I don’t agree with that policy because I don’t trust that person” or “I got screwed over by a traumatic experience with X therefore I’m against X”. Most people aren’t capable of engaging on that level without a great deal of emotional maturity; of course, we’re far away from reality and facts at this point but humans are emotional creatures and emotion drives our decision making.
Even ignoring the issue and trying to ask them more about their values. And then going deeper and figuring out why they value those things.
And sharing the same about you to them.
A lot of disagreement I find surprisingly come from similar values but just different weights applied to how events impact those values. Or sometimes it's just different value sets, and then you have to discuss why it is we value different things.
Even if you walk away still in disagreement, because you might still just end up where you have differing values, or where you've got different weights to those values, at least you'll have an understanding of each other and why it is you don't agree on those things.
The problem is online discussions are just not conductive to this at all. You can't engage someone and really work through this process of shared understanding. Relationships online are too superficial and short lived.
What beliefs would they have? If I am having a conversation about a topic it is because I have no established beliefs about that topic. If I have firm beliefs in something, what additional benefit would be derived from discussing it? There is absolutely nothing more boring than talking about something you are certain you know everything about.
I expect I also seem closed-minded in such conversation as the most effective device I have found to be open-minded in conversation is to pick a position, any position, and see if it can be defended. Upon reflection, you can gain a lot of insight into where you fell short in understanding and learn from that.
> You’ll get all these canned responses and talking points from mainstream media
Which is fine. A weak defence is sufficient to get started. The goal isn't to "win", the goal is to learn and if canned responses greases the wheels of discussion that leads to something valuable to reflect on later, that's all that is needed. You have to start somewhere with what limited information you have available to you. After all, if you were the world's utmost expert you wouldn't be in the conversation, given the boringness and all.
I didn't particularly like the premise of the article, which seems to be that the goal is to change the other's mind. But think about it, what could be more beneficial to me than having an argument that changes my mind? If I convince someone of my opinion (whether by "weapon" or by "gift") then they learned something (ideally...) but if I change my mind thanks to the conversation, then I just learned something, I got to make that improvement to myself.
A day where nobody changed your mind is a day of stagnation.
Bayesian reasoning has you start with priors, take in new information, change or adjust your credences, and possibly adjust your priors. Having that kind of conversation is far more productive, and potentially more charitable in assumption of sincerity on the other party's part.
(I guess for me, "thoughtfulness" requires putting thought into something, and if I'm actively participating in a conversation, I can't do that. It's way easier if I have already invested time into the topic at hand at some point beforehand.)
That's easier to do if participants have aligned interests and desires. Harder when communicating with someone that is very different from yourself. In that case it's productive if the discussion is approached with patience as a learning experience. Without suspicions that the other person is only learning about you so their tribe can use it against you later.
I spent years as a graduate student in a philosophy PhD program, and what I found is that, essentially, no professional philosopher changes any other professional philosopher's mind about anything important, ever. We're just endlessly arguing. Intelligently, usually respectfully arguing, but accomplishing nothing, getting nowhere. And philosophers are supposed to be, at least nominally, the most "rational" among us.
This is not to say that philosophers never change their minds: they occasionally do. But not as a result of arguing! It's usually more self-correction than other-correction.
I think it's better to read books than to argue. There's less personal ego involved, because you can "engage" with the author of a book in a way that's not like a sporting event. There's no winner and loser. You don't have to admit to the author that you were wrong, because you never even have to talk to the author, and the author will probably never even know that you read the book. You're almost forced to argue with yourself in this situation. You can change your own mind even if you can't change other minds.
Definitely, debate for the shake of debate feels like an excercise for the philosopher rather than identifying why different views exist and where these fall short. In the long term, it may lead to change of the philosopher. Given everybody keeps an open mind, I don't think that this is necessary a bad thing.
What does this mean?
So, as a rational philosopher you're not trying to express an absolute truth that is generally applicable. Rather, you're iterating towards the most accurate and appropriate expression of yourself. Hmm, I think I've heard that philosophy before... existentialism?
How did you get this from what I said?
Here's a good trick I picked up for discussing contentious things - if you're ever tempted to dish out a sick burn, try to rephrase the point into a genuine question. Then the other person will have to walk through the logic of it, and if it turns out there is a real logic to their side of things, you don't get your ego bruised, cause you just asked a genuine question.
If you talk someone out of their group's values, you might destroy their entire life. Talking someone out of their religion is a "win" until they get shunned and lose everything they have. Are you still in the right then? What does the "objective truth" matter if you're just ruining peoples lives?
Change someone's mind on guns or abortion and you hurt them! It doesn't matter which side they start on or which side you convince them to. You're ripping and tearing at the very fabric of their social life.
Some people are unable to change their minds, but some people can't change their minds due to circumstance. It's really important to understand this before convincing anyone of anything.
If we apply this kind of belief to corporations/government/etc. we get the things that most folks at HN spend their non-tech comments complaining about. Entrenched power, inability to pursue effectiveness because "this is how its always been done" and a lot of fluff.
You are not ruining people's lives by sharing reasoning to change someone's values. You are not destroying their lives because simply talking to someone is not forcing them to accept and implement something.
Their community is not flexible enough to incorporate differing beliefs and thus not long destined for this world. Take for example, Christianity. It comes in more flavors than ice cream, and infighting occurs but is rare in the face of conversations that pit Muslims or 'heathen religions' against Christianity. flexibility
Or take Hindu social society which is literally the oldest surviving widespread religion + social group that continuously assimilates different beliefs from different pagan religions bending so far that Hindus now celebrate Valentines and Xmas Day without invalidating a single belief.
The party "destroying lives" is not the party that posits a new way of thinking.
We all were able to work out some measure of compromise for the duration of the visit, but, well, there's reasons we live where we live and not in the same place.
> But if I truly have the good of the world at heart, then I must not fall prey to the conceit of perfect knowledge, and must be willing to entertain new and better ways to serve my ultimate goal: creating a happier world.
There's a phrase we use for saying the right words about an important idea but not actually incorporating it into your methods: "lip service".
Can you give an example?
"Why does the government want a lower population - don't they usually want more people to grow the economy?"
Perhaps the article is being devious here. It's not easy for people to separate intentions and actions - sometimes an intention can form to rationalise a preceding action (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Franklin_effect). Even though your initial intention may be to manipulate by appearing to genuinely listen, you may end up just genuinely listening and rationalising that this was your intent all along. This line of reasoning could trick the most ardent zealots into accidentally genuinely listening to their enemies' point of view.
Relatedly, I think another effective persuasive technique is 'seeding'. If you can engineer a 'non-defensive' conversation with your opponent in which you seed one or two critical thoughts in their mind, although they won't be instantaneously persuaded the seeds can germinate into full persuasion later on. However, this technique requires avoidance of confrontational behaviours that cause your opponent to activate their mental defenses.
I mean, I scrolled back up to the title - "A Gentler, Better Way to Change Minds" - and note that it doesn't even mention other people's minds; it could refer to changing your own mind as well. Point two is about being OK with your point of view being rejected, and point three about considering the other person's point of view. And then the conclusion is:
> But if I truly have the good of the world at heart, then I must not fall prey to the conceit of perfect knowledge, and must be willing to entertain new and better ways to serve my ultimate goal: creating a happier world. Launching a rhetorical grenade might give me a little satisfaction and earn me a few attaboys on social media from those who share my views, but generosity and openness have a bigger chance of making the world better in the long run.
I also read in the article that you should listen in a genuine way. Would it be possible that this act could change your own mind? Would that fit your definition of being open-minded?
Many of his contemporaries hated his guts and ultimately they condemned him to death. It may be a good way to keep an open mind, but it may also be a terrible way to make friends and influence people.
If on the other hand all you care about is the truth, you're directly corrosive to the above. You're looking at all the edge cases where the lie breaks down, and worse yet you're spreading disintegration of the otherwise unified political bloc by infecting other agents with your same methods.
It's a matter of perspective which side is "right", because those resultant atomised and fractured political blocs that can no longer bring themselves to accept the beautiful lie that otherwise would have successfully united them are now competitive rather than cooperative, and the game gradually slips closer to zero sum with the bloc most closely pursuing the optimal strategy in the light of the cold hard cynical truth winning out at the direct expense of all the other groups, and the resulting accelerating wealth inequality that implies, having real concrete negative effects on the lives of all those people in the suboptimal factions that frankly they may never have even had a chance to join letalone have been made aware of the existence of any alternatives because of the nature of their worldviews. Is it "right" to pursue truth even if it makes the quality of life of billions much worse?
It's a frightening and enlightening thing to sit down with an ideologue and come to understand not just what they think, but how they got to think that way. The common thread I have found is that default worldviews are both extremely sticky and subject to almost no critical analysis by the people that hold them, and unifying the galaxy of irrational but widely held default worldviews that exist flatly requires extensive narrative manipulation and outright lying, and that lying and manipulation is what politics actually is.
Imho this is why widespread censorship has gone from intolerable anathema to the sine qua non for the existence of the dominant shared mass hallucination about the state of the world in just a few short decades. Like it or not, politics has won out soundly over truth past a certain social scale.
Disclaimer; acknowledging reality is not approving of it. Socrates was right and should have beeen feeding his prosecutors hemlock, not the other way around. Damn the consequences and embrace the truth, whatever the outcome has always been my view. I just also know that view is extremely unpopular today.
And they are forgotten where he is remembered thousands of years later.
I'd guess that the author is trying to, as gently as possible, suggest to people that there are better ways to go about thinking about those with whom you disagree, _regardless_ of who is right or wrong. Which is really a different point than "you should be less certain about your beliefs."
And if it doesn't they can figure it out and have a way to fuck off without losing face too much
Dead Comment
And yes, achieving that result on a global scale may well involve the construction of a bunch of new oil and gas infrastructure in places like Africa and South America— well meaning westerners should focus on what can be done at home to reduce, and stop protesting exactly the kind of thing that helps more people enter the middle class.
Instead of just being like "lets burn more carbon to generate wealth first," we should skip the middle steps and go directly to giving people of all classes, especially the working poor that make up the majority of the human race, a voice and access to voting rights. Give the lower economic classes a larger voice in government and I think you'd be surprised how many would vote for things like investment in clean energy.
Respectfully, saying that you have to be rich enough to have time to care is missing the forest for the trees.
https://qz.com/africa/1486764/how-big-is-africas-middle-clas...
(I don't know what that means, it's just a fact I picked up along the way. Like how more people know English in China than in North America. Just one of those weird thoughts that seems obvious in hindsight. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_education_in_China )
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> economic justice has to come first
Ecologically harmonious living is economical as well: your expenses are reduced, your health is improved, etc. In other words, ecologically harmonious living is economic justice. That's what that looks like in the real world: abundant (cheap) food, medicine, clothing, housing, etc.
The only downside to living in harmony with nature is for people who are committed to making money from waste (in the ultimate analysis.) E.g. GMO's are touted as solving world hunger, but really in practice they are used to lock-in corporate profits. The same company that sells you the poison sells you the seeds that resist the poison, seeds that you must buy each year: the contract states you can't save your own seed.
If you grow food in harmony with nature you don't need fertilizer ($$$) pesticide ($$$) GMO patented crop species ($$$) etc...
It's more profitable for the farmer and the product is healthier (reducing medical expenses, eh?)
Compare with, e.g.: Grow BIOINTENSIVE ( http://growbiointensive.org/ ) a system that uses around 5000f² (~450m²) per adult, produces a balanced complete diet, and increases soil volume and fertility year-on-year, while requiring no external inputs and little labor.
I have lots of other examples, poke me for more...
Anyway, the point is, "economic justice" is living in harmony with nature: they are the same thing.
The rich have a much larger impact on society, themselves and through corporations.
As for fossil fuels, utility scale solar is now cheaper than coal. Global development definitely means more CO2, but we’re right at an inflection point towards renewables.
So shall we put the ongoing ecological and climate catastrophes on hold while we take 200 years to reach an egalitarian utopia? On the other hand, we're told that these catastrophes affect the poorest countries the most. From that point of view, environmentalism is "economic justice".
*Interesting term. Does that mean the economically better off have committed a crime, and must be punished?
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs
It's about reality.
I'm reading the things people write, I'm looking at the arguments they make, and they make no sense. None.
That's what this is about.
Am I going insane? Or is it "them"?
Our #1 tool for that is drugs. So cheap and convenient. #2 is video entertainment, but that's a bit shallow and ephemeral. #3 is what... raucous demonstrations?
And speaking of demonstrations, you can't beat "scientific culture" for having a pre-existing setup for managing the "changing philosophies by changing perspectives" process. But most of us aren't scientists. (Or squishy, openminded experimentalists, even)
Melzer writes: “Just as education must begin by addressing the student where he is, so, as he learns and changes, it must stay with him. The internal or dialectical critique of received opinion takes place not in a single stroke but in a series of successive approximations to the truth, each of which will seem in its time to be the final one.”
If your values are so great, live them. Show by example why your values are the best way to live, by emobdying them and having an enviable life that people want to emulate. I think that would change far more minds than arguing.
> I think that would change far more minds
I don't find one's personal status (in any dimension) transmits well across the internet. We may not be truly anonymous, but nobody knows you're a dog, basically. IMHO there's no way to back up a well lived life through text. And nobody is doing a docuseries on everyone.
While I get what the author is trying to say here, this doesn't feel like a great analogy to me. If I'm not attached to my beliefs, wouldn't that make me aloof? Most people's beliefs are their identity. And if you detach yourself from your beliefs, it's almost like you're trying to detach yourself from self. It feels like a very relativistic mindset, which is fine, but antithetical to some worldviews.
Belief-as-identity strikes me as really pernicious. It's a big problem people have with religions with orthodoxy like Christianity or Islam; these systems sustain themselves in part by training people to tie their sense of self to a particular belief about the nature of god/the universe.
Identifying as an Atheist, or Liberal, or a Conservative, or anything just lets that thing get its hooks into you. I'd like to be able to drop and change my political beliefs if it turns out I'm wrong about which form of economics leads to the greatest amount of human flourishing, for example. Each individual ideological meme, in contrast, really wants you to build it into your self-identity, to spread its roots so deep that to extricate it would be spiritual suicide. All beliefs 'want' this, and while it's impossible to not be a slave to some meta-meta-meme, you can at least not be a memetic zombie for some object-level one! If a belief stops paying rent in useful predictions, I want it evicted, out on the street!
Loyalty to people, not ideas.
Ah, so this is your belief, good to know ;)
I purposely didn't mention any religions, because a belief doesn't need to imply religion. You can believe science is the ultimate decider, that heritage is the most important, family, friends, etc. My point is that all these things are still your belief and you need to moor yourself to something, otherwise your bound to drift around and believe in whatever is trending on social media from one moment to the next.
This is incredibly spot on. I might even say it differently as
“Stop treating your values as an indication of your superiority, and start treating them as a relatable story of growth.”
A lot (I mean a lot) of people I talk with are constantly trying to put on a display of how what they are is some kind of superior way of being. And it’s impossible to listen to them because they’re speaking with a childish “I’m this and your not” way of thinking.