1. I don't really think any of the tips and strategies in this article are helpful unless both (or all) parties go in to it with this same mindset. Which means that, for example, I believe it is simply impossible to have these kind of "constructive arguments" on, say, Twitter, for example. One of the things I like most about HN is the guidelines are clear about the goals of the forums, and while of course they are not always followed (I've certainly not always followed them), they are very helpful to help recenter debates, and I think there are a lot of helpful commenters that try to get things back on track if they go off the rails (thank you, dang).
2. > When people feel that something so close to them is in question, they often lose sight of reason and argue instead from an emotional perspective.
This may sound condescending, and it's really not meant to be as I also used to believe this, but I have come to the realization over the years that this mindset is woefully naive and immature. As someone who identifies as pretty "Spock-ian" in nature, it took me a long time (and years of therapy) to realize that everyone argues from an emotional perspective. It's what it means to be human. The entire purpose of emotions is that they are they only place where human motivation comes from. Trying to separate "logic" vs. "emotion" when dealing with humans is a fools' game in my opinion.
> I don't really think any of the tips and strategies in this article are helpful unless both (or all) parties go in to it with this same mindset.
You'd be surprised. If there's a scale from 0 to 100, where 100 is "devoted follower of the Beginner's Guide to Arguing Constructively", I think it's possible to have a decent constructive argument with people who are about 30-40 and up. I've certainly done so myself.
If you lead by example, many people will conform the standards of the debate to your tenor. Not all, of course, but that's when you have to know when to quit.
> Which means that, for example, I believe it is simply impossible to have these kind of "constructive arguments" on, say, Twitter, for example.
That was mentioned in the guide :)
> everyone argues from an emotional perspective.
Certainly you'd agree that there's a scale? It's not black and white. I will edit this part to make that more clear.
> Certainly you'd agree that there's a scale? It's not black and white. I will edit this part to make that more clear.
Actually, not really. You seem to be missing my primary point, which is that thinking that things lie along a single scale where on one hand you have "pure, platonic ideal of reason" and on the other end you have "emotional hysterics". I don't think it works that way. I think the sibling commenter put it best:
>> everyone argues from an emotional perspective
> You kind of have to. If you were not emotionally invested in some way, you wouldn’t be arguing.
That is, I think step one is try to understand why you (and your debate partner) are emotionally incentivized to care about the topic in the first place.
> You kind of have to. If you were not emotionally invested in some way, you wouldn’t be arguing.
The thing is, if you're talking about an average online debater, their emotional motivation is likely quite confused. The emotional distribution might be: 20% wanting to appear smart/reasonable, 30% wanting to insult their idea of bad people, 30% wanting to reinforce their lifestyle as valid, etc or whatever. With that, you could can could translate liamrosen's comment to say "if they're motivated 30% to appear smart, you can involve them in the framework" and once you involve the person, Cialdini's commitment and consistency can strong motivators to keep them there.
That said, I think this does raise the point that there are other good way to deal with the emotions behinds arguments that aren't mentioned in liamrosen's essay (the OP). One standard approach to determine the emotion behind a given irrational claim, acknowledge the emotion, sympathize with it and then go back and show that the original claim is unnecessary.
> > You kind of have to. If you were not emotionally invested in some way, you wouldn’t be arguing.
> That is, I think step one is try to understand why you (and your debate partner) are emotionally incentivized to care about the topic in the first place.
I think this is excellent advise. To add to this, I think often minor details, like the use of some word or terminology can trigger an immediate "emotional reject" response. It then becomes impossible to have a constructive debate because the person will reject all arguments based on that emotional reaction to the minor trigger. It then is very helpful to trace back to the source of the reaction and e.g. agree on different terminology.
Sometimes I use emotion in an argument to create ambiguity that the other party fills with some new point.
So, for example, I'm arguing something, I run out of good argument. I dodge by making a vague, emotional point. Then the other party will construct a new argument based on my vague emotional point. This lets me reset and construct a new argument.
It's a way to keep arguing when following a given point down the rabbit hole gets stale.
It's to learn, and to play with whatever point we're arguing from different angles.
When the point has been prodded to death by some argument, it lets your fellow arguer back-up and poke it from another side. Maybe my argument is wrong, but myself and the person I'm arguing with haven't figured out exactly why yet. This lets us keep circling looking for weak points.
Hopefully over the course of that we both come away with a deeper understanding of the idea itself.
I think of it like when E. coli run and tumble over the course of the hunt for food. Sometimes a random walk is a weirdly great way to discover the mechanism of how an idea works or doesn't work. I'm just occasionally flipping the switch on the 'tumble' circuit:
https://www.mit.edu/~kardar/teaching/projects/chemotaxis(And...
Fwiw, I have had some discussions on FB that seemed to improve with some of these strategies.
This goes a bit against the spirit of the thing, but a side-effect seems to be that if one is using these tools in a public forum like FB (which of course goes against this article's advice), one does come off as more reasonable to anyone in the audience who is undecided. (I think...)
> The entire purpose of emotions is that they are they only place where human motivation comes from. Trying to separate "logic" vs. "emotion" when dealing with humans is a fools' game in my opinion.
Not only that. Another aspect is that emotions and "instinct" are much, much older, from an evolutionary perspective, than our very recent reasoning abilities, and way more widespread amongst the animal kingdom than reason.
So, while far from perfect, they work. Emotions and instinct kept most of our ancestors and most of the currently living animals both alive and thriving. Which means that, despite their limits, they have their place and shouldn't simply be discarded by a wave of the hand.
Took me some time to understand that. And I still have a hard time taking it into account in my everyday life and interactions.
> So, while far from perfect, they work. Emotions and instinct kept most of our ancestors and most of the currently living animals both alive and thriving.
This is the point. Instincts developed to keep you alive in a world where the classic laws of the jungle where true. Since the modern world, the definition of what is "strongest" and the threats you find yourselve exposed to differ vastly from that back in the days.
While instincts will generally give you a good direction to start with, problems are too complex today to just rely on instincts. Heck even I had my instincts tell me "this feels wrong" and upon reading and getting smart about that topic i completely changed my mind.
If you have time to prepare for a discussion, try not to rely on instinct but let it push you to gather facts to undermine it or to oppose it.
> Instincts developed to keep you alive in a world where the classic laws of the jungle where true. Since the modern world, the definition of what is "strongest" and the threats you find yourselve exposed to differ vastly from that back in the days.
I think you might be underestimating how much of human instincts have evolved to deal with a complicated network of interpersonal relationships. To ensure fairness, avoid deceit, help our neighbour, and get a good mate. That wiring – which constitutes a large part of our brain – has essentially the same job today as it did back then.
>This is the point. Instincts developed to keep you alive in a world where the classic laws of the jungle where true.
This is so very true. For example, the act of withdrawing from the TTP was an own-goal by the US against China. However this required relatively detailed understanding of the trading relationships and geopolitics of the region. It's much easier to appeal to base emotion - "strong man good for tribe, working with outsiders not good" - to gather support for what is essentially an act that furthers your opponents goals.
> So, while far from perfect, they work. Emotions and instinct kept most of our ancestors and most of the currently living animals both alive and thriving.
It's not just that they work; they matter in and of themselves. For example, it may literally be true that I'm more likely to die from falling furniture than from terrorism, but the fact that I fear terrorism more than falling furniture is relevant on its own terms. The emotions we feel about something like terrorism are real. They have a direct impact on quality of life. And you're not just going to reason people out of them. You can read me the statistics every morning, but my relative fear levels aren't likely to change.
This doesn't mean we shouldn't be educated or that we shouldn't make an effort to control our emotions; it's just to say that the emotions are real and it's ridiculous to dismiss them as irrelevant.
I agree with your point 1 and would go even further. With some people it is impossible to have constructive debates because they reject the fundamental premise of there being arguments that are supported by facts. Such people will reject any fact even if it is counter their fundamental believes.
In such case you are not arguing with the person but your argument is with the observers which might not be so fundamentalist in their views. There is in fact an excellent book that lays out this argument. Unfortunately it is only available in German, its called "Wie man mit Fundamentalisten diskutiert, ohne den Verstand zu verlieren: Anleitung zum subversiven Denken" by Hubert Schleichert. The rough translation of the title is: "how to argue with fundamentalists without loosing your mind. Instructions to subversive thinking".
He discusses some of the rhetorical tricks used by fundamentalists of every color using some historical examples and how to counter these strategies. For everyone who knows some German this is a highly recommended read.
That said, I highly appreciate the OP blog, because the arguments with fundamentalists are definitely in the minority and a more constructive argument culture is needed, especially online.
I wonder. I think some politicians argue deliberately and rationally to win over some followers. For them it does not matter what the truth is or whether they believe it themselves but how many people will be convinced to vote for them.
Their followers might not even believe it but still support and spread the argument, for their own selfish reasons.
Say Hitler pronouncing that Jews are an inferior race worthy of destroying. Did his followers really believe that when they agreed with him, or did it just seem in their self-interest to spread such propaganda further, and seize the property of Jews?
Just an example from past but I believe similar examples happen all the time. Some people argue in bad faith. If that is the case there is no reason to argue with them.
Maybe you are emotionally invested in appearing, or believing yourself to be objective? Perhaps that's why posting a terse, pithy comment felt so satisfying. ;)
> The entire purpose of emotions is that they are they only place where human motivation comes from.
I agree that this is literally true, but only so long as you include intellectual curiosity as an "emotion". In fact I would count it as an emotion, exactly for the reason that you said - ultimately all human motivation can only be explained by emotion - combined with the fact that clearly most people and even some animals do some things solely out of curiosity. Just like all emotions, curiosity exists because its presence increases your chances of survival (having hunger at the right time decreases your chances of dying due to lack of food, having curiousity at the right time decreases your chances of dying due to lack of knowledge of the environment). Of course it's a lot weaker than other emotions (e.g. if a furious lion is running towards you but has a very strange spot on its nose, you're probably going to run away rather than investigate).
All that sounds like supreme pedantry, but it's important due to this other thing you said:
> everyone argues from an emotional perspective
I think most people reading this sentence would interpret the word "emotional" here in a subtly different way: to exclude intellectual curiousity. The implication is therefore "no one ever really argues because they're just curious about the truth". I agree with the literal meaning of this sentence, but not with that interpretation of "emotion", and not with that conclusion.
I'm sure I see this sort of mix up a lot: two statements that both sound completely reasonable on their own, but use the same word with a subtly but critically different meaning, forcing you to draw a conclusion (because you can't disagree with either part individually) that isn't really true.
I agree emotions are important. Given how all of our brains work, it's not realistic to take them out of the equation.
But it is important to maintain some moderation and rein them in. Emotions are powerful, and if you don't learn to exercise some degree of control them, then they will control you.
I think it helps to understand that emotions have a purpose. For example, fear helps you avoid threats, and anger pushes you toward taking action that is needed to change a situation. If they're serving their purpose constructively, that's good.
But if they're not, they need to be controlled. For example, when fear makes you avoid something which is actually safe, or when anger makes you act in a rash manner or suffer mentally over things you cannot change.
I totally agree with what you've written, with perhaps one small clarification/caveat/nuance. A mistake I've made in the past was to think about "controlling" emotions, as if emotions and logic were mutually exclusive, opposing forces. For example, take your excellent example about how a maladjusted fear response can make you afraid of things that aren't actually dangerous. The solution to this problem is not to try to "control" the fear, e.g. by telling yourself "there is nothing logically to be afraid of". The solution is actually to experience more of that fear - in a controlled, gradual and safe manner, which is what exposure therapy is all about.
Again, I'm not saying that this is what you meant by "controlling" or "moderating" emotions, but just want to clarify that learning how to express emotions in a constructive way usually makes an argument that much more forceful that trying to "rein in" your emotions and make them subservient to logic.
Yeah, that's a valuable point. I described it as controlling, which may sound like suppression, but I probably should have said something else like managing.
Even if you call it managing, it's too easy to see emotions as something with a volume knob you can just turn down whenever you like. But it's more complicated than that. They're basically hardwired into our brains. Some people's brains are wired differently, but even in a completely normal brain (if such a thing exists), there are systems that kick in and do stuff whether you want them to or not. As in parts of the brain that activate and shift gears for other parts of the brain.
So there are some things you can control but also some things you cannot control. Which means to manage them, sometimes you need to understand how the system works and the kinds of changes you can make. It's a bit like fixing a complicated bug: you can't just comment out the code that is doing whatever you don't like. You need to understand the whole system so you can make the right change in the right place.
I think your fear example is a good illustration of this. Experts have figured out how the system works, and they know where a change can be made, and that's exposure.
I agree with the you in the general sense here, and want to point out that, in my opinion / experience, this:
> The solution is actually to experience more of that fear - in a controlled, gradual and safe manner, which is what exposure therapy is all about.
is true for some of the people some of the time. There is a wide range of approaches that will work for some and not for others, in various circumstances.
The problem for discussion is when people are dishonest about their emotional motivations. So, someone who feels bad about this or that will really go out of way to absurd arguments to make it sound like he is rational. Conversely, it makes you mis-interpret people. People can be dismissive because they think something with idea is wrong, or because they are tired and cranky.
Emotions are not just big things. It may be that weird feeling about someone you cant explain. And that weird feeling may be either unfair bias or you actually noticing a problem with that person.
The emotion-logic dichotomy where mention of emotions makes you sound irrational motivates people to hide those. And it creates discussions that happen in sort of alternative reality and emotional conflicts that mask as professional disagreements.
I don't find your second point compelling in the slightest.
From reading your other responses, my conclusion is that in any hypothetical argument, you wouldn't consider either side to have better reasoning than the other and if you did, you would chalk it up to your own emotional biases.
Your attitude seems incompatible with the concept that one argument can be better than another.
Is my assessment inaccurate or is there some nuance here that I've missed?
> It’s true, as I wrote about last week, that emotions can bias our thinking. What’s not true is that the best thinking comes from a lack of emotion. “Emotion helps us screen, organize and prioritize the information that bombards us,”
> This realization turns the scientific language of emotion on its head. What are commonly called emotion functions in humans and animals are not emotional functions at all. They do not exist to make feelings. They are survival functions essential for the continued life of the individual or the species.
Agree. What people say and what really motivates their opinion in the topic at hand are not necessarily the same, I find people not being truthful to themselves nor to the conversation, which is really why I find this arguing endevour a waste of time in many subjects
>"This may sound callous, but if you've tried every strategy in this guide and your debate partner continues to operate at the bottom of the pyramid (for example, continuing to spout inflammatory ad hominem attacks), sometimes the best way to empathize with them is to pretend they have an undiagnosed mental illness."
The article reads like you took every smartass redditor on the planet and condensed them down into an article. Why can I not express emotions in an argument, or why do I need to be 'rational', or why can I not be subjective? I don't mean this in an offensive way but why is everyone who argues supposed to pretend they're autistic, because that's honestly how this piece comes across.
Because arguing points based on who can have the biggest temper tantrum and scream the most slurs is something most are proud to have grown out of around middle school.
This applies especially to important and complicated subjects that affect many people (the type often discussed on HN) which demand reasoned thought for coming up with good responses.
If you want to argue in bad faith, use logical fallacies and hysterically scream at opposing ideas rather than use rationality and reason then what's wrong with reddit or twitter?
Getting angry in a debate is usually a public show where the person is betting on having a better position. If you are angry and wrong, you appear as a fool. If you are angry, but able to keep composure and your arguments are sound, you've demolished your counterparty. Not that you should, or that it comes with any merit to society, but it certainly is entertaining to watch.
On one hand I agree with you. On the other, if you ever argued with autistic person, they are super emotional actually. They however cant recognize own emotions and dont interpret other people emotions.
But, they get super angry and are affected by own anger a lot. They also act irrationally due to own emotions. I mean, some can go into outrage over very minor things.
Do you think that people with autism don't have emotions? I'm trying to understand your comment but I'm having a hard time coming up with a generous interpretation.
Just to clarify, here's a little more detail about what he's like during a friendly debate (usually with family members):
- He doesn't lose track of the underlying logic, despite any emotionalism that the other party might be exhibiting.
- He doesn't get flustered nearly as quickly as most of his opponents.
- He has more endurance for the debate than most of his opponents do. Usually he's willing to keep on banging away at the argument long after his opponent has lost the will to debate. (No idea if this is a common trait for people with Asperger syndrome, or just something unique to him as an individual.)
Also, I think there are two versions of "flat" speech in this context:
(1) Simply not getting worked up to the same extent as the other person in the debate, like I describe above. I imagine this is what the ancestor comment was referring to.
(2) Speaking with abnormally small variations in tone, volume, and cadence. I.e., what some people refer to "robotic" speech. I think some people associate this with Asperger syndrome.
Interestingly, although my son is shows more telltale Asperger signs than I do, I'm more prone to "flat" speech. Especially when I'm tired, and doubly so if I'm on Adderall.
> The article reads like you took every smartass redditor on the planet and condensed them down into an article. Why can I not express emotions in an argument, or why do I need to be 'rational', or why can I not be subjective? I don't mean this in an offensive way but why is everyone who argues supposed to pretend they're autistic, because that's honestly how this piece comes across.
The author never says you have to do any of those things. Just that if you want to argue constructively, then maybe being expressing a lot of hostility, irrationality, and subjectivity isn't the best way to do it.
I've had just as many constructive arguments that were angry, or subjective or whatever else. Hunter S. Thompson wasn't objective, but he was more insightful and sharper and commited to truth than most writers of the time. MLK didn't pull up an excel sheet when he advocated for a cause. Argumentation isn't just about facts, it's about expressing a state of mind and communicating authentically what one thinks, and if someone's angry then they ought to communicate it and I ought to be able to take it, they don't need to pretend to be Spok or something, I don't see the value in that.
I'm not even sure there's an objective definition of what a 'constructive argument' is. You can have an argument to settle a conflict, understand someone better, find an answer to some question, express emotions, demand justice or a hundred other things, a lot of which don't require anything on that list.
I think the author means 1 v 1 arguments where both participants are active and opposed. Your classic in person or internet argument.
Your definition of an argument is much broader and probably encompasses all of what I would call persuasion. From reading the article I never got the impression he was suggesting this is how you persuade a large group of people to act. If you are arguing with your uncle at Thanksgiving about politics and want it to be productive this guide might help. I think we can both agree if you're trying to convince a bunch of center left / left friends who mostly agree with you to take the day off and protest. This guide probably won't.
Did you come to a different understanding after reading the article?
You can do these things, but the communication would be harder. Because it's difficult to convey subjectivity. But it's easier to convey objectivity. Rationality is the language we have for that.
If you wish to convey your subjectivity, I think art would be a better venue than debate.
> Your goal should be to get so good at steelmanning all types of arguments that you can pass the so-called Ideological Turing Test. To pass this test, you should be able to argue so persuasively and passionately for the other side that your text alone would pass for an argument proposed by someone who opposes your position.
The essay could have focused on just this one technique. The worst arguments I've witnessed and been part of lacked any attempt by either side to Steelman the opposing side's position.
To take it to the next level, try actively arguing for the side you think has the weaker points. It can be a lot of fun, not to mention educational.
> True collaboration requires that both parties open an investigation into why they may be wrong and consider changing their beliefs.
> Debates about personal identity, like race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation, can easily become inflammatory. When people feel that something so close to them is in question, they often lose sight of reason and argue instead from an emotional perspective.
I think this document does a good job describing ways that people who want to can have a fact-based, clarifying discussion.
But in cases where I and my interlocutor both have the curiosity, openness of mind and desire to come to a better understanding ... I don't think we need this document to have a productive debate, and it might not even feel like a debate, but rather a conversation.
People have vitriolic debates because they feel threatened, marginalized, attacked -- and then their goal is to defend themselves. We have ugly fights because we don't want a richer understanding in that moment. And for issues in which no one feels at risk, I think people tend to have either useful conversations, or none at all due to lack of interest.
If a colleague and I, neither of whom have put a lot of work into any specific approach to building compilers for functional languages enter into a conversation about the relative merits of compiling with continuations versus administrative normal form, either we can have a good nerdy time, or one of us leaves bored.
If I, a renter in a rent-controlled apartment, and a family member who is a landlord have a conversation about rent control, property taxes, the mortgage interest deduction, and the policies which have benefitted each of us, we can both feel attacked and defensive even if neither actively wishes the other ill, even though both of those groupings are potentially temporary states which apply to us. The goal becomes not just to better understand, but to walk away feeling ok about your life. Am I a parasite for paying below market rate? Is he a villain for being subsidized by his less wealthy tenants?
Once the stakes involve how you live your life, or how you view yourself, it's hard to keep wanting it to be a collaborative and open-minded exploration.
"Once the stakes involve how you live your life, or how you view yourself, it's hard to keep wanting it to be a collaborative and open-minded exploration."
On the flip side this is why, for example, Neo-Nazis can say things that are absolutely vile so calmly; It's not about their lives. In which case the expectation that emotion won't be brought in by the other party becomes tone policing.
From the pyramid diagram I feel like the destructive argument tactics of “isolated demands for rigor” and “disputing definitions” sums up the vast majority of arguments I see around Hacker News. One step up from social shaming and gotchas that you see on many other social message boards, but not much better in all honesty.
I think that’s probably OK for the most part though. It’s easy enough to ignore bad faith demands for evidence or “citation needed” commentary. Disputing definitions can be hard to break free from, but both of these failure modes are less likely to lead to toxic behavior or social shaming like “did you even read the article?”
I think it’s way too much to expect message forum discussions will ever consist of good faith survey of evidence. Even if you have pure motives, it’s just not going to happen. You have really little time, you’re going to rattle off comments that come from your deep seated pre-baked opinions and areas where you believe you already completed a good faith survey of the evidence and already are bringing the most well-rounded opinion to the table. You have exactly enough time to unload it and then go take care of your kids or go to the gym or something.
Instead of retorting your point explore theirs and walk them through scenarios where it will be wrong. Arguing your point directly always just ends in a tennis match.
If you are part of a serious debating society you will be expected to be able to form an argument for or against a concept, viewpoint or position regardless of your personal beliefs.
This is arguing constructively without the entrenched partisan foxholes people dig for themselves which makes it so hard to have civilized discussions and conversation with many people in our current febrile social climate.
My understanding was that that was becoming more rare in collegiate debate societies these days. Have things changed since the below article was published?
I think the steady erosion of free speech, with identity politics challenging the idea of 'debate' is perfectly illustrated by your posted article about the USA.
Political debates are not about arguing with the other party. It's a show to influence the audience.
Presidential debates are an obvious example. You don't believe your candidate thinks he can change the other's mind, do you. He thinks he can change the mind of someone in the audience. Or perhaps not even that, he just wants to boost morale by petting you, the passive follower of his, the right way.
The same dynamic is in play in any twitter or online forum debate, including here. Well-written posts gets lots of upvotes, likes and "engagement" which illustrates my point nicely. It's not the other guy thinks, it's what the audience votes.
I would argue that the American people evolve in a less that ideal environment for constructive argumentation due to the biparty politics. It nearly seems by construction that if an issue is endorsed by a party, then the other must be against it. For the untrained partisan of party A, every partisans of party B disagrees on every issue by default. I can see why it becomes difficult to stay rational.
Obviously, some people are willing to meet and discuss constructively, but that requires additional efforts to think outside this biparty mold.
> The closer you can come to arguing in person, the better chance both partners have of empathizing with each other and seeing each other as human beings.
I've actually found myself having deeper debates in emails than in person. Having a debate in writing gives both parties time to consider and organize their thoughts, and provides records that can be later referenced. Granted, it only works if both parties are actually interested in putting in such an effort, but I've had deeper and more meaningful debates this way.
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I'm trying to build a community of people who want to argue constructively at conferacity.com - hope you'll take a look and get in touch with feedback on how we can improve, or even better, be willing to join and contribute on the site. I particularly hope you might be willing to help if you disagree with the existing writers on the site, that makes your views more valuable!
You can reach me at ghufran@conferacity.com, thanks+++
Just a heads up conferacity.com does not work (address not found) , I needed to go to discourse.conferacity.com, you should probably point the main domain to the discourse subdomain or create some sort of landing page.
Well put! I wish this was part of education, honestly - we usually grow up believing arguments are to be won. I’ve also written about ways our arguments go wrong: https://ochronus.online/how-to-stop-winning-arguments/
Part of the challenging is the difference between trying to persuade people and trying to resonate with them. For changing minds and creating change, resonating with people is probably more effective.
> "An argument should be a collaboration between two people to find the truth."
This makes me sad because I agree. And yet, in the USA, your right-wing uncle probably isn't that interested in the truth. And the new generation of identity-politics liberals are the generation who have grown up taught in an academic world infested with post-modernism; they are also less interested in truth, but to their credit, very interested in improving the world. One would hope the two would coincide, but honestly, it's not looking like it's going to work out that way.
I'm a leftie, but to be honest I have a left-wing and a right-wing uncle and they're both completely disinterested in the truth.
One thinks Trump is god, and the other feels the same way about Noam Chomsky. One thinks Hillary eats babies, and the other thinks the CIA did 9/11.
Meanwhile, the landscaping guy at work seems to have a pretty balanced take on things and he doesn't vote because he's not a citizen. He's one of the few people I can talk politics with over a cup of coffee and not want to pull my hair out.
I think it would benefit us all to be able to take a disinterested look at this whole deal.
You're right that it's not true, or at least that memo about a month prior makes a pretty persuasive case for them.
Currently it's only clear that a few prominent people in the executive branch of the US government had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks and then later covered up the participation of high level Saudi organizers like Prince Bandar.
Without naming it, I'm pointing at the Loose Change documentary. I found it to be a not-uncommon conspiracy theory among the left in the early Bush years that the CIA had wired the Towers to blow fight-club style, and that documentary seemed to have a lot to do with it.
If you want to step back and start talking about the CIA's role in Afghanistan in the eighties and nineties, as well as the US's covering for the Saudis, and the engineering of the Iraq war, I have an extensive rant prepared that I've been inflicting on my poor friends for years.
I wonder how these comparisons manage to take hold and spread.
Being balanced doesn't mean being somewhere in the middle between thinking the Earth is flat and thinking the Earth is spherical.
It's neither, but it's certainly closer to one of them.
What truths do you suggest these "identity-politics liberals" are ignoring?
I also can't help but notice the incredible irony in repudiating identity politics and post-modernism while simultaneously lumping them all into one group.
> What truths do you suggest these "identity-politics liberals" are ignoring?
Hi, I'm happy to debate this sensibly. Two major areas in which the identity politics movement is inconsistent with how a scientific rationalist society should behave are these:
1. The movement to deny that biological sex is an overwhelmingly important factor shaping human biology, just as it shapes the biology of other mammals. See
2. Deplatforming people with reasonable, rational viewpoints. Richard Dawkins is an example. Look at the most recent deplatforming by a university historical society that has recently become identity-politics oriented (The Hist at Trinity College Dublin). They deplatformed him because "we value our members comfort above all else". So, that is an example of what I said, and that which you took exception to: the identity politics movement being less interested in truth than other things (here "comfort").
Dawkins wasn't "deplatformed" for his legitimate views, but for islamophobia, which is completely legitimate.
> In 2013, Dawkins came under fire for a series of statements regarding Islam that seemed to blur the line between reason-based resistance to dogma and xenophobic prejudice. He views Islam as the "greatest force for evil in the world today"[35][36] and stated that "All the world's Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge,"[37].
Do you not think that criticizing a religion is an acceptable thing for someone (e.g. an academic) to do? Indeed, that it would be a terrible thing if our academics were not free to criticize cultural movements such as religions? He wasn't speaking at a kindergarten; he was speaking at a university society that exists to platform intellectual debate.
Yes, I remember when he did that with Christianity. I'm agnostic and I have his old books in my bookcase. He wasn't "criticizing" Islam, he was fearmongering. Then he started cozying up with evangelists as long as they hated "post-modernists" enough. He has (previously) had a lot of good things to say, and at some point he abandoned his ideals in favor of politics, and just became another Jordan Peterson crank.
Yes, I'm a biologist, and I also read all his old books when I was younger. I can see why you might think that he's only interested in politics based on media coverage, but it actually isn't true: I went to listen to him speak in Berkeley 3 years ago, and it was nearly all about the old stuff: gene-level selection, kin selection, etc. Two years later he was due to come again at the invitation of the same radio station, but his invitation was canceled, due to the influence of "progressives".
> abandoned his ideals
I certainly wouldn't say that about him! What makes you think so?
> Then he started cozying up with evangelists as long as they hated "post-modernists" enough.
Could you tell me what you're referring to there? I agree he hates post-modernism.
He's become a political agitator, and increasingly rarely a scientist.
This is not meant to say "stick to science", but if he wants to be political, I'm going to criticize is politics, because they suck and he does deserve scorn for them.
Maybe as an old guy don't tell a woman that her experience is wrong.
I don't think that this is a radical "post-modernist" idea.
> Pretentious postmodern nonsense is a serious menace in universities...
I'm not sure what you expect me to object to there. If you don't think postmodernism has caused serious damage and is a terrible influence on peoples minds in the humanities then we'll have to agree to disagree.
> Some event with christians and anti-postmodernists speaking
Again, I'm not sure what you think the problem is. Dawkins isn't saying Christians should be deplatformed. His tweet was doubtless intended to promote the anti-postmodernists; you can't scour every retweet for transitive ideological inconsistencies. Well, maybe people do, but I don't think that's a good use of time.
> The letter to an imaginary muslim girl
Yeah, it's a bit cringe-inducing, but it's clear what his point was: that women in muslim cultures are subjected to terrible things which don't really compare to the problems of sexual inequality in western culture.
> Maybe as an old guy don't tell a woman that her experience is wrong.
Yes, that's one way in which we differ. You're a supporter of identity politics, one consequence of which is that you believe that the truth of statements depends on who utters them. I am a traditional liberal, who simply continues to follow the tenets of rationalism that were in place before the postmodernist and identity-politics movements took over the minds of most of my generation.
I'm sorry, I guess we don't have any common ground here. I agree with pretty much everything Dawkins has ever said. I have no respect for any religious belief in the minds of anyone who has had access to a modern education, and I have no trouble saying Islam is a terrible religion -- you don't have to look further than the treatment of women. There's no need for nuance here -- all religions are childish.
And what I'm saying is that someone who has no experience being a woman, or a person of color, can at most try to imagine what it's like depending on their level of empathy, but it's anything but rational to suggest you know better what that experience is.
And suggesting me to "look no further than how [they/"islam"] treats women is exactly the problem I was pointing out.
Again, I'm also non-religious, but I don't conflate westboro baptist church/mormons/amish with "Christianity".
Once again hugely ironic while criticizing identity politics.
By identity, I mean things one cannot change, like ones skin colour, or race, or sexual orientation. I don't consider being Christian to be an identity; I consider it to be simply an indication of not being a good student, i.e. that they completely failed to understand the education they received in the 20th or 21st-century classrooms that they were lucky to have occupied. Christianity, and any religion, amounts to encouraging people to not understand the world. That is a stupid intellectual choice, not an immutable identity.
> Jordan Peterson crank
What makes you think that I think poorly of Jordan Peterson? This is a website where software engineers -- i.e. rational, logical people -- discuss things. You are completely failing to see beyond the confines of your bubble of modern progressive dogma if you think you can just assume that people think poorly of someone like Peterson. I guess you can say stuff like that around your friends and no-one would ever question it. He appears to be someone doing his best to speak out strongly against various highly problematic aspects of modern culture, in particular the way that anti-intellectual attitudes -- the practice of writing literal nonsense and publishing it in so-called academic journals! -- have become de rigeur in many areas of the humanities (and yes, I have experience of that). Why on Earth would I have a problem with him?
I think what I'm trying to say, is that you are massively underestimating how profoundly fractured the left is. Yes of course Trump is terrible. But there is a very large body of educated people on the left who cannot accept that the left be replaced with the anti-intellectualism and intolerance of the identity politics movement. You don't seem to agree that these people exist and that they might have any sort of valid point at all.
Wow, have you read the RationalWiki entry for Quillette? Just that entry is a good example of how the intolerance of the identity politics movement is spreading into domains that a rational society should be protecting. Read the articles in Quillette that I linked to by Colin Wright -- he was (before his career was ended by identity politics people) very obviously just an evolutionary biologist, not some sort of right wing nutcase!
Compare the Quillette entry with their stated purpose:
Our purpose here at RationalWiki includes:
Analyzing and refuting pseudoscience and the anti-science movement;
Documenting the full range of crank ideas;
Explorations of authoritarianism and fundamentalism;
Analysis and criticism of how these subjects are handled in the media.
I don't understand, can you expand? Here is what's on their website. It seems very much in line with the purpose of RationalWiki doesn't it?
> Quillette is a platform for free thought. We respect ideas, even dangerous ones. We also believe that free expression and the free exchange of ideas help human societies flourish and progress. Quillette aims to provide a platform for this exchange.
May I quite sincerely suggest that you take another look at RationalWiki? In the last few days I have done that. I used to have a favorable impression of it (perhaps based on ignorance?). But I think that, at least nowadays, it's not a terribly serious source -- a lot of polemicism and ideological edits, and its statement of purpose is explicit that it wants to have "snark" to make the articles "less boring". I think we might be debating something which is more the domain of teenagers when I suspect we're both at least in our 30s.
The upside is that snark doesn't change anything as long as the remarks are sourced and verifiable. Neither does the volunteers age.
They might be snarky about someone eating babies, but as long as you can verify whether the person ate a baby, you can just either agree or not agree that baby-eating is bad.
1. I don't really think any of the tips and strategies in this article are helpful unless both (or all) parties go in to it with this same mindset. Which means that, for example, I believe it is simply impossible to have these kind of "constructive arguments" on, say, Twitter, for example. One of the things I like most about HN is the guidelines are clear about the goals of the forums, and while of course they are not always followed (I've certainly not always followed them), they are very helpful to help recenter debates, and I think there are a lot of helpful commenters that try to get things back on track if they go off the rails (thank you, dang).
2. > When people feel that something so close to them is in question, they often lose sight of reason and argue instead from an emotional perspective.
This may sound condescending, and it's really not meant to be as I also used to believe this, but I have come to the realization over the years that this mindset is woefully naive and immature. As someone who identifies as pretty "Spock-ian" in nature, it took me a long time (and years of therapy) to realize that everyone argues from an emotional perspective. It's what it means to be human. The entire purpose of emotions is that they are they only place where human motivation comes from. Trying to separate "logic" vs. "emotion" when dealing with humans is a fools' game in my opinion.