7 ms·

The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb

144 points by landonshoop 11y ago

exolymph 11y ago
Accepting epistemic uncertainty is very difficult and unsettling but totally worthwhile.
- rewqfdsa 11y ago
  Agreed
hammock 11y ago
There have been a few articles posted to HN pointing out the folly of assuming your competitors are stupid. You're better off assuming that for reasons unknown, they rationally have made the decisions they did.
wfo 11y ago
Yes but what if the other side doesn't extend you the same courtesy? What if the other side sees your thoughtfulness as weakness, your careful consideration as waffling and flip-flopping and leaps onto the opportunity to push even more extreme views, becomes even more absurdly divisive? On the whole in terms of writing, social media, op eds, etc I feel intellectuals (left and right) have taken this advice too much and been stomped all over because of it. Be polite, respectful, but firm and unyielding. Don't concede points without needing to. Don't give credence where credence is not due. Don't allow people to exploit your willingness to respectfully consider their arguments to shift the Overton window and win before you even open your mouth. Because the person who is arguing back doesn't want to win the argument. He just wants the audience to consider his ridiculous, extremist views just as or almost as reasonable as yours. So you can meet in the middle, which has been pushed so far towards him that it was where he wanted to be in the first place. I think this is excellent advice if you're talking to someone you know and respect in real life.
- caf 11y ago
  Prisoner's Dilemma?
- ethbro 11y ago
  A lot of this in media is scientific laziness on the author's part. Which I admit is partially science's fault in saying "the facts speak for themselves" and failing to engage in a responsible manner (e.g. Sagan, Nye, or Tyson). But I feel as though at some point in journalism school, it's drilled into students never to say "this thing is, and I stand behind it." Instead, we get either the global negative ("People who are not me say this thing is") or an artificial alternative ("Some say this thing is, others hold this [uncredible but nevertheless presented] view"). Scientists issue retractions all the time - that's how the process works. Media should be comfortable with the same when it's interfacing on science questions.
- dang 11y ago
  > Yes but what if the other side doesn't extend you the same courtesy? Extend it anyway. It's the only way not to make things worse, and neutral readers will respect you more.
ethbro 11y ago
> A dare for the next time you’re in discussion with someone you disagree with: Don’t try to “win.” Don’t try to “convince” anyone of your viewpoint. Don’t score points by mocking them to your peers. Instead try to “lose.” Hear them out. Ask them to convince you and mean it. I'm going to dream about what that world would look like tonight.
Animats 11y ago
The "Other side" is scared, not dumb. Molly Ivins used to point this out. For the white lower middle class, life has been a slow downhill slide since the mid-1970s. Those are the people who support Trump and the Tea Party. Unfortunately, exploiting that fear is politically effective. This is a problem with a long history. There are records of it back as far as Cicero. It's not their fault that they don't know what to do. Nobody knows what to do. We have all this productivity, and we don't need that many people to make all the stuff. Economic policymakers don't know how to deal with that. If you want to look for dumb, look at what comes out of economists. There's a sizable faction that says there can never be a shortage of demand. Tell that to Wal-Mart's CEO, who says their customers are spent out. (Sometimes they really are dumb, as in that Oregon "militia" group camping out in the bird sanctuary.)
- Dylan16807 11y ago
  Fear makes you dumb.
- wrong_internet 11y ago
  There's also the 130+ IQ group of neoreactionaries who like Trump from a perspective informed by history.
  - EvanPlaice 11y ago
    They're opportunists at best. Demagoguery isn't exactly a new art. It has been a driving force to centralize power since the dawn of human civilization. IMHO, it's sick and pathetic that many who are capable of having the greatest positive impact on society often squander it on vanity and narcissism.
  - zardo 11y ago
    I had not heard the term. The current top post in their subreddit is "How to genocide inferior kinds in a properly Christian manner" Sounds like a great group of folks.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
cryoshon 11y ago
What if the other side is actually rejecting factual reality, though? Are they still "not dumb"? What if facts have no hold on them whatsoever? Can we even have a productive conversation? See: vaccine deniers/vaccine scheduling skeptics, climate change deniers, evolution deniers, etc.
- emgoldstein 11y ago
  Be careful in selecting your "other side" -- the examples you use to define it may have been brought by "your side." I can't speak for the other two, but I'm guessing you're not thinking of Steve McIntyre. Eg, go here and have a productive conversation: http://climateaudit.org/2016/01/05/update-of-model-observation-comparisons/ http://climateaudit.org/2016/01/05/update-of-model-observati...
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  The examples you provided have nothing to do with facts, actually. They're about trustworthiness of the fact sources. Given all the shenanigans pharmaceutical companies pull, given how FDA itself is often reported in the news as unreliable or even corrupt, given that so many studies keep turning out to be unreliable - ask yourself, why do you believe you're right about vaccines? :).
  - danieltillett 11y ago
    Unreliable agents do not make something false. If you are lucky enough to have great grandparents go and ask them about the time before the polio vaccine. I asked mine and it was a nightmare.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      Unfortunately, I'm not lucky enough. I'm not defending anti-vaccination beliefs. All I'm saying is that with all the moral bankruptcy of our governments, corporations and journalists, it's no surprise movements like anti-vaccination started to appear. I believe the core issue has nothing to do with facts, or people being "dumb" or uneducated - that it's mostly about lack of trust in authorities. And so we won't solve it by throwing even more scientific papers at the antivaxx crowd.
poke111 11y ago
I like that he mentions the Ideological Turing Test, though not by name (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_Turing_Test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_Turing_Test) "As any debate club veteran knows, if you can’t make your opponent’s point for them, you don’t truly grasp the issue."
- gweinberg 11y ago
  That's bullshit though. On many issues, one or both sides don't have any argument beyond "me not like". But that's enough, if you can find enough people that feel the same way.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    No, that's actually a very insightful observation. The process of taking your opponent's argument, improving it and defeating its stronger form is sometimes known as "steelmanning"[0]. "If you’re interested in being on the right side of disputes, you will refute your opponents' arguments. But if you're interested in producing truth, you will fix your opponents' arguments for them. To win, you must fight not only the creature you encounter; you [also] must fight the most horrible thing that can be constructed from its corpse."[1] If the other side's argument boils down to "me not like", then you have your job made even easier for you. Seeing the stronger arguments for their position and how (and where exactly) it still falls apart can be enlightening to your conversation partner. Conversely, if you can't fathom why a reasonable person could hold the opinion your partner holds, it means you don't understand the issue itself at all. Most people are not dumb, their beliefs always form some structure that's plausible for them. It usually doesn't take much work to build yourself a model of someone else's beliefs, if you're willing to do so. The only requirement, obviously, is that the other person at least tries to be honest. I think most people are, but sometimes you need to first work around their (and yours) ego issues. [0] - https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Steel_man https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Steel_man [1] - http://lesswrong.com/lw/85h/better_disagreement/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/85h/better_disagreement/
    - emmelaich 11y ago
joolze 11y ago
You seem to be describing what is commonly known as a "conversation". I find it hilarious that western society has gradually devolved itself to such an extent with fear-fear mongering, hate-hate speech, and an absurd amount of righteous indignation that people are literally terrified to have opinions outside the groupthink; and you not only have to invent a game to feel human again, but that game is apparently novel enough to reach the front page of HN. This is literally an analysis of how to have a disagreement without reacting like a fourth grader.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Be it as it may, the fact is that quite a lot of people tend to react like a fourth-graders when facing disagreement. Try to ask a random family member about vaccines, GMOs or nuclear power and see how it goes.
- state 11y ago
  This seems to me to be even more true online, although we like to think that information technology has the opposite effect.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    One of the side effects of the Internet is that you can find pretty much any plausibly sounding justification for any view. Couple that with the modern world being insanely complicated - acknowledging which leads to feelings of helplessness - and there's no surprise people end up believing different things depending on what they happened to read. People want to feel they understand things. Nobody wants to feel stupid.
    - memracom 11y ago
      In the British tradition, university students used to participate in debates where two people argued the opposite sides of a question. The debaters got brownie points for winning the debate, not for arguing the RIGHT opinion. Often the debaters had to argue for a question which they themselves were against, or vice versa. The audiences who voted the winner, paid more attention to the quality of the debate, not to the question itself. In a culture where this type of debate is practiced in the schools, people of all ages will be more open to discussing an issue in a social setting without strapping on revolvers and a bulletproof vest. It is not a question of identifying who is the enemy, it is a question of figuring out which path will lead to a better world 100 moves in the future. Because real life really is like a chess game. The outcome of the next move is not the be all and end all.
gweinberg 11y ago
This article has it exactly wrong. Most people on the other side ARE stupid. Most people on your side are stupid also.
- onewaystreet 11y ago
  The thing that someone who has a firm grasp on an issue will often find is that most people on both sides don't actually know what they are talking about.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    This is a painfully true observation. I think the first time I really realized it was when I was drifting away from my religion of birth, and actually started to listen to atheist people around me. I soon discovered that the only difference between most of them and the religious people I know was the value of $religion variable. For one group it was "God", for the other it was "no God". The thought patterns were exactly the same. Neither of them could actually justify their beliefs.
    - jeremyt 11y ago
      Ah yes, the old "prove that something doesn't exist" argument.
    - nadagast 11y ago
      I don't think this is very true--what significant/majority of religious thought patterns are the same in atheism? The only one I think you could make a case for is ingroup/outgroup thinking, but that is not a majority of religious belief.
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        Acquiring the belief because it's popular in your ingroup, along with a strawman-based view of the outgroup(s). No real effort spent on thinking the belief through; lack of any real argument against the beliefs of the outgroup(s).
woodandsteel 11y ago
This is an excellent article. It occurs to me that it would be good if someone put up a web site where pairs of people could publicly or privately practice the sorts of respectful interviewing and dialogue that he is advocating. Let me add that I have found the active listening skill of just saying back to the other person what they said is very useful here. I have run workshops where people did this and it is remarkable what a difference it makes. I also like Marshall Rosenberg's book Nonviolent Communication. I think part of the problem is that people don't realize there is a more productive way of going about things, and in addition there certainly are many parties today that profit from having people screaming at each other.
- JoBrad 11y ago
  I frequent two sites that do something like this. I found them from this article (which was also very helpful for me): http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/read-intelligent-content-2016-35-sites/ http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/read-intelligent-content-2016-3... The Conversation https://theconversation.com/ https://theconversation.com/ Aeon http://aeon.co/magazine/ http://aeon.co/magazine/
- humanrebar 11y ago
  The EconTalk podcasts are great examples of this, though with an economics flavor.
gpsx 11y ago
Having grown up in West Virginia and now living Silicon Valley, I see extremes from both sides. And they both _really_ think the other side is dumb. And that the president (Obama or Bush) is purposely trying to destroy the country. It is like two people in a marriage that has gone bad. Is there any way to fix it? My two cents is that a place to start is to try to make a single news source that both sides can read, to help us try to get on the same page. The news source would have to not generate viewers by inciting them to anger. Maybe some thing like a newspaper but with peer reviewed articles by people from both sides?
- ethbro 11y ago
  That's a culture shift (I've got family who worked DNR in WV). The "single news source" came up heavily in pg's recent writing on inequality et al. The cogent point he made, I think, was that the important part is not whether the source is authoritative or accurate but that it's universally experienced. And I don't think we'll get that back. I think the best we can hope for is benevolent mix algorithms in Facebook, Google, etc that incorporate reliably sourced articles by people with different viewpoints than our own.
  - DrScump 11y ago
    "the important part is not whether the source is authoritative or accurate but that it's universally experienced." This is very well said. In Silicon Valley, for example, there has been only one major newspaper publisher for over 60 years.
- caf 11y ago
  My experience is that such a news source would quickly be denounced as irretrievably biased by both sides.
  - gpsx 11y ago
    I think you are right. But maybe it can be made such that some segment of both sides of the population could buy into what it says. After all, contrary to the popular saying, there are not just two types of people.
andrewclunn 11y ago
I recall one time talking with a guy in the back of a church after the service was over (back when I attended church). The sermon had been about acceptance and had specifically touched on gay acceptance. The man had only come to the church twice, and we were talking, and he was quoting the bible in support of his view that homosexuality is a sin. I listened and was engaging him in conversation. Multiple people came up to me and tried to "help me escape" the conversation because they had no interest in engaging with someone who didn't agree with them. I read this article and I couldn't help but see lines like this, "To be sure, there are hateful, racist, people not worthy of the small amount of electricity it takes just one of your synapses to fire." Really? It just seems like the same old play at being accepting and open minded, but not really. I would also say that this IS a political correctness issue. This isn't really a problem for the political right because they don't mind being offended, and they don't feel the need to pretend to be open minded (at least in the US). This seems very much in the vain of when Jon Stewart had the "Rally to Restore Sanity." It claimed to be about being open minded, but it was really just about presenting the notion that "we" (see people on the political left) value being open minded.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
Another observation about the "Other side" (that is, really, about all of us) to add to excellent points made by others here. Most disagreements happen around things that have no direct impact on day-to-day life. People can hold widely different opinions about politics because... it's politics. Most of it is bullshit, and rest doesn't affect your daily life anyway, at least not immediately or directly. Take two people who are in fierce disagreement about the balance between government intervention and market freedom - take them, and go see how they manage their personal checkbooks or how they maintain their homes and cars. Suddenly, you'll see agreement, similar solutions, and both people being generally smart. People are pragmatic. We tend to invest in knowing the actual truth proportionally to how the issue is actually important to us. Hence most disagreements are about things that actually cost us nothing when we get them wrong.
- enraged_camel 11y ago
  >>People can hold widely different opinions about politics because... it's politics. Most of it is bullshit, and rest doesn't affect your daily life anyway, at least not immediately or directly. I completely disagree. Most political issues have a direct impact on people. Affordable Care Act is requiring millions of people to buy health insurance. Defunding Planned Parenthood would cut aid from millions of young women. Gun control laws have a direct impact on our nation's safety from internal threats. Legalized gay marriage is allowing tons of gay couples to finally get married and enjoy many of the benefits (especially financial) of the institution. I can go on. The only debates that don't have a direct and immediate impact on people are the abstract ones, such as the example you gave about government intervention vs. market freedom. But even those debates happen within the the context of concrete issues, proposed laws or ongoing lawsuits.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Ask yourself - how many of those issues affect you directly? And by directly I mean something you'll suddenly have to account for in your daily life and spending patterns. Personally, their equivalents in my country don't affect me at all. I'm young and relatively healthy, my employer pays for my health insurance. Yes, accidents can happen, but it's an abstract possibility. Gun control - when have you last seen people shooting each other on the streets in real life? It's another topic that's just abstract for most people. Gay marriage is something that naturally affects only LGBT people. The opposition argues against same-sex marriages mostly from a moral standpoint, which is again something abstract. Say, on the other hand, that we'd have confirmed reports about zombies (or evil commie nazi aliens) showing up in various places in the US. I'm pretty sure the gun control debate would be resolved unanimously in a single hearing. That of course doesn't account for all policy disagreements. But the most I've seen so far always involve at least one side with no immediate, tangible stake in the issue. -- EDIT: Replying to the three (so far) responses. Thanks for sharing your perspectives. I guess I might be underestimating the direct importance of some of those issues to people, as well as the amount of disagreements that are about conflicting interests. I will reevaluate my opinions on this topic.
bitwize 11y ago
If this were in reference to France or Germany or the UK or Australia or New Zealand, it'd be very on point. In reference to the USA, where just around half the population believe that God literally created the universe in six literal days, no, I'm sorry, the "other side" really is willfully, dangerously stupid.
nikdaheratik 11y ago
As a former card carrying Debate Club member, I suppose this article may be helpful for people who aren't used to having these arguments. But I don't believe it is very helpful for most interactions on anything really controversial right now. Most people making arguments for "the other side" haven't actually had to defend them against real criticism. They also are usually not the originators of their position, they're forwarding the ideas from someone else, so they don't necessarily even understand what it is they are articulating. Trying to engage with someone who doesn't know how to argue and doesn't actually grasp their ideas is about as productive as trying to argue with a 4-chan meme. I've long ago decided to just put my 2-cents in a single time, if I feel they're saying something really stupid, then move on.
- nadagast 11y ago
  This attitude ignores the other 90+% of people who read your replies: people who aren't actually engaging, just reading and considering. I think the meme of 'debate online is pointless' is wrong because the vast majority of people who read anything you write publicly will be able to read from a position where they could have their mind changed, maybe. Write for those people.
  - tamana 11y ago
    This is explained in Thank You For Smoking, and illustrated every day on C-SPAN
    - nadagast 11y ago
      Interesting, I didn't know that--is it worth watching?
- rtpg 11y ago
  Isn't this kind of the reasoning the article is talking about? I mean, I assume you think your positions are reasonably thought out. Perhaps other people also think their positions are reasonably thought out? My takeaway from this article is to give people this benefit of the doubt. Sometimes this means acknowledging that _I_ am the one who is parroting something I heard from someone I agree with generally. On a practical level, Onion articles aren't going to stop people from Trump/Cruz/Le Pen/Farage(well nobody votes for Farage anyways ;)). Though sometimes there's good fun in circlejerking, if you're legitimately worried about the other side's positioning, not taking them seriously from the outset you won't be able to do much convincing/persuading.
Nursie 11y ago
I don't share links on social media, and I've basically blocked all news sources and link-factories so I don't see when others do either. It took some time, but my facebook is now more or less back to inane chatter and cat/baby/both pictures. Everyone else is free to get on with signalling their hearts out, I don't want to know.
golemotron 11y ago
This is a good analysis but it misses something. People on the "other side" in most social media conversations are either "red tribe" if you are "blue tribe" or "blue tribe" if you are "red tribe." Scott Anderson gets into that filter-bubble issue: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything...
memracom 11y ago
Ever think that on most issues, say 985 times out of 100, the other side is roughly 50% of those that are not undecided. If you look at the issue overall, and allow for shades of gray between the positions, then most people are in rough agreement around some central position. I think that if you can construct a survey on the issue that correctly breaks out several shades of gray in the position, then the results will plot out on a normal curve. Only when the normal curve is heavily weighted to one side or the other, i.e. there is a larger group on one side of the median, do you have a winnable issue. It's too bad that media just spends so much time groveling in the mud with everyone else, when they could actually be doing such surveys and illuminating the issue. Take gun control for instance. How many of you have any idea what shape of curve would result from such a survey? And if you compared it to the results 25 years ago, how would it differ? If you had a series of such surveys over time, then what trends would they show? Without this info, there is no point in debating. I don't doubt that somebody has done such surveys and does have this info. And those people do influence politicians. But that just reinforces an elite separate from the masses, and is fundamentally anti-democratic.
- DrScump 11y ago
  ...say 985 times out of 100... 985 times out of 100, people in general will mistrust the data. ;)
sandworm101 11y ago
>> I implore you to seek out your opposite. When you hear someone cite “facts” that don’t support your viewpoint don’t think “that can’t be true!” Instead consider, “Hm, maybe that person is right? I should look into this.” Nooop. When the crazy uncle starts going on about how the lizard people at the US have formed a world government for the express purpose of using solar panels to take guns away from seniors ... no. There are ideas that are not worth my time to explore or disprove. So long as the crazy people stick to their crazy shacks, I am not going to engage. Of course those crazies seem to be breeding uncontrollably. It may be time to reverse my position and actually start researching the vril.
- ocdtrekkie 11y ago
  Well, we all generally agree that there aren't 'lizard people' in the US (we do agree that, right? ...right?), but increasingly less crazy ideas are now being regarded as similarly crazy.
  - sandworm101 11y ago
    Like the US president is a secret muslim from kenya in office to take away the guns in furtherance of the global warming hoax? I see aspects of that narrative on TV almost every day. It's a daily reality for millions and millions of americans.
    - ocdtrekkie 11y ago
      None of those concepts are as crazy as lizard people, are they?
      - sandworm101 11y ago
        Well they are both rather unlikely, but at least the lizard thing is testable. Poke the guy with a stick and see. Question answered. The other theories cannot be so easily disproved.
overgard 11y ago
I usually think of this sort of thing in terms of cached thoughts: http://lesswrong.com/lw/k5/cached_thoughts/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/k5/cached_thoughts/ Once you get over the smug thought of "ha! all those people and their cached thoughts!", you have to stop to think, which of your own principles have you actually really thought about? I don't think it's so much about considering "The Other Side", instead it's about having clarity by knowing why you believe what you believe. Generally speaking, if it's "us vs them", you're being played anyway. Some tribe has a vested interest in playing you against another tribe.
orionblastar 11y ago
Actually it is quite confusing for me as I am a moderate and liberals see me as a conservative and conservatives see me as a liberal and I get blasted by both sides for being dumb because I don't have 100% of their views. I am for social programs so conservatives think me a liberal. I am for freedom of religion and gun rights so liberals think me conservative. However there can be like 30 different political viewpoints besides liberal and conservative. It is not a black and white issue but shades of grey and colors as well. The political charts they use are misleading and based on questions they ask I am either on the left or the right and never the same place. I'm for basic income because people lose their jobs when websites automate stuff and AI programs and robots take over jobs. People need something to live on in order to get an education to qualify for a better job. You see new jobs are created but require a different skill set than the jobs that are eliminated. People used to learn how a typewriter worked and would have a room of 100 people typing letters and memos all day until the Word Processor and Laser Printer came into play and put them out of work. My own father had worked for AT&T with 1ESS Switches they had tried to convert to computers using Unix and he lost his job when AT&T was broken up, nobody else used the 1ESS they used IBM AS/400 systems instead or the PC and he wasn't trained in it. He struggled with finding jobs to make ends meet. Working as a janitor or working on factory machines for a pasta company. We went from being middle class to poor or lower middle class. Anyway I never consider the other person I debate with on the other side of the screen is stupid or dumb. I figure they were educated in a different way than I was, grew up different, have a different view on life than I do. The problem is citing sources to back up your claims, the Internet has websites that will support almost any claim. For even website I cite the other person can cite a website that says the opposite. Even more they can say the other website supports a contrary view to theirs so it must be biased, and thus discarded. In college I had an Astronomy class, and the Professor argued with the book, and countered every theory with his own personal theory. The universe is not expanding, he would claim, Hubble is wrong about red shifts. Instead of a Big Bang, he claimed the universe always existed, etc. It as hard for me to learn from such a person. I was lucky to get a C from his class because I had to take notes on his personal theories to get test answers correct and not use the book to study. At times I get voted down here because I write a comment that people disagree with. Then sometimes it gets voted back up by people who agree with me.

144 points by landonshoop 11y ago

exolymph 11y ago

Accepting epistemic uncertainty is very difficult and unsettling but totally worthwhile.

rewqfdsa 11y ago
Agreed

hammock 11y ago

There have been a few articles posted to HN pointing out the folly of assuming your competitors are stupid. You're better off assuming that for reasons unknown, they rationally have made the decisions they did.

wfo 11y ago

Yes but what if the other side doesn't extend you the same courtesy? What if the other side sees your thoughtfulness as weakness, your careful consideration as waffling and flip-flopping and leaps onto the opportunity to push even more extreme views, becomes even more absurdly divisive? On the whole in terms of writing, social media, op eds, etc I feel intellectuals (left and right) have taken this advice too much and been stomped all over because of it. Be polite, respectful, but firm and unyielding. Don't concede points without needing to. Don't give credence where credence is not due. Don't allow people to exploit your willingness to respectfully consider their arguments to shift the Overton window and win before you even open your mouth. Because the person who is arguing back doesn't want to win the argument. He just wants the audience to consider his ridiculous, extremist views just as or almost as reasonable as yours. So you can meet in the middle, which has been pushed so far towards him that it was where he wanted to be in the first place. I think this is excellent advice if you're talking to someone you know and respect in real life.

caf 11y ago
Prisoner's Dilemma?
ethbro 11y ago
A lot of this in media is scientific laziness on the author's part. Which I admit is partially science's fault in saying "the facts speak for themselves" and failing to engage in a responsible manner (e.g. Sagan, Nye, or Tyson). But I feel as though at some point in journalism school, it's drilled into students never to say "this thing is, and I stand behind it." Instead, we get either the global negative ("People who are not me say this thing is") or an artificial alternative ("Some say this thing is, others hold this [uncredible but nevertheless presented] view"). Scientists issue retractions all the time - that's how the process works. Media should be comfortable with the same when it's interfacing on science questions.
dang 11y ago
> Yes but what if the other side doesn't extend you the same courtesy? Extend it anyway. It's the only way not to make things worse, and neutral readers will respect you more.

ethbro 11y ago

> A dare for the next time you’re in discussion with someone you disagree with: Don’t try to “win.” Don’t try to “convince” anyone of your viewpoint. Don’t score points by mocking them to your peers. Instead try to “lose.” Hear them out. Ask them to convince you and mean it. I'm going to dream about what that world would look like tonight.

Animats 11y ago

The "Other side" is scared, not dumb. Molly Ivins used to point this out. For the white lower middle class, life has been a slow downhill slide since the mid-1970s. Those are the people who support Trump and the Tea Party. Unfortunately, exploiting that fear is politically effective. This is a problem with a long history. There are records of it back as far as Cicero. It's not their fault that they don't know what to do. Nobody knows what to do. We have all this productivity, and we don't need that many people to make all the stuff. Economic policymakers don't know how to deal with that. If you want to look for dumb, look at what comes out of economists. There's a sizable faction that says there can never be a shortage of demand. Tell that to Wal-Mart's CEO, who says their customers are spent out. (Sometimes they really are dumb, as in that Oregon "militia" group camping out in the bird sanctuary.)

Dylan16807 11y ago
Fear makes you dumb.
wrong_internet 11y ago
There's also the 130+ IQ group of neoreactionaries who like Trump from a perspective informed by history.
- EvanPlaice 11y ago
  They're opportunists at best. Demagoguery isn't exactly a new art. It has been a driving force to centralize power since the dawn of human civilization. IMHO, it's sick and pathetic that many who are capable of having the greatest positive impact on society often squander it on vanity and narcissism.
- zardo 11y ago
  I had not heard the term. The current top post in their subreddit is "How to genocide inferior kinds in a properly Christian manner" Sounds like a great group of folks.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

cryoshon 11y ago

What if the other side is actually rejecting factual reality, though? Are they still "not dumb"? What if facts have no hold on them whatsoever? Can we even have a productive conversation? See: vaccine deniers/vaccine scheduling skeptics, climate change deniers, evolution deniers, etc.

emgoldstein 11y ago
Be careful in selecting your "other side" -- the examples you use to define it may have been brought by "your side." I can't speak for the other two, but I'm guessing you're not thinking of Steve McIntyre. Eg, go here and have a productive conversation: http://climateaudit.org/2016/01/05/update-of-model-observation-comparisons/ http://climateaudit.org/2016/01/05/update-of-model-observati...
TeMPOraL 11y ago
The examples you provided have nothing to do with facts, actually. They're about trustworthiness of the fact sources. Given all the shenanigans pharmaceutical companies pull, given how FDA itself is often reported in the news as unreliable or even corrupt, given that so many studies keep turning out to be unreliable - ask yourself, why do you believe you're right about vaccines? :).
- danieltillett 11y ago
  Unreliable agents do not make something false. If you are lucky enough to have great grandparents go and ask them about the time before the polio vaccine. I asked mine and it was a nightmare.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Unfortunately, I'm not lucky enough. I'm not defending anti-vaccination beliefs. All I'm saying is that with all the moral bankruptcy of our governments, corporations and journalists, it's no surprise movements like anti-vaccination started to appear. I believe the core issue has nothing to do with facts, or people being "dumb" or uneducated - that it's mostly about lack of trust in authorities. And so we won't solve it by throwing even more scientific papers at the antivaxx crowd.

poke111 11y ago

I like that he mentions the Ideological Turing Test, though not by name (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_Turing_Test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_Turing_Test) "As any debate club veteran knows, if you can’t make your opponent’s point for them, you don’t truly grasp the issue."

gweinberg 11y ago
That's bullshit though. On many issues, one or both sides don't have any argument beyond "me not like". But that's enough, if you can find enough people that feel the same way.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  No, that's actually a very insightful observation. The process of taking your opponent's argument, improving it and defeating its stronger form is sometimes known as "steelmanning"[0]. "If you’re interested in being on the right side of disputes, you will refute your opponents' arguments. But if you're interested in producing truth, you will fix your opponents' arguments for them. To win, you must fight not only the creature you encounter; you [also] must fight the most horrible thing that can be constructed from its corpse."[1] If the other side's argument boils down to "me not like", then you have your job made even easier for you. Seeing the stronger arguments for their position and how (and where exactly) it still falls apart can be enlightening to your conversation partner. Conversely, if you can't fathom why a reasonable person could hold the opinion your partner holds, it means you don't understand the issue itself at all. Most people are not dumb, their beliefs always form some structure that's plausible for them. It usually doesn't take much work to build yourself a model of someone else's beliefs, if you're willing to do so. The only requirement, obviously, is that the other person at least tries to be honest. I think most people are, but sometimes you need to first work around their (and yours) ego issues. [0] - https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Steel_man https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Steel_man [1] - http://lesswrong.com/lw/85h/better_disagreement/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/85h/better_disagreement/
  - emmelaich 11y ago

joolze 11y ago

You seem to be describing what is commonly known as a "conversation". I find it hilarious that western society has gradually devolved itself to such an extent with fear-fear mongering, hate-hate speech, and an absurd amount of righteous indignation that people are literally terrified to have opinions outside the groupthink; and you not only have to invent a game to feel human again, but that game is apparently novel enough to reach the front page of HN. This is literally an analysis of how to have a disagreement without reacting like a fourth grader.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
Be it as it may, the fact is that quite a lot of people tend to react like a fourth-graders when facing disagreement. Try to ask a random family member about vaccines, GMOs or nuclear power and see how it goes.
state 11y ago
This seems to me to be even more true online, although we like to think that information technology has the opposite effect.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  One of the side effects of the Internet is that you can find pretty much any plausibly sounding justification for any view. Couple that with the modern world being insanely complicated - acknowledging which leads to feelings of helplessness - and there's no surprise people end up believing different things depending on what they happened to read. People want to feel they understand things. Nobody wants to feel stupid.
  - memracom 11y ago
    In the British tradition, university students used to participate in debates where two people argued the opposite sides of a question. The debaters got brownie points for winning the debate, not for arguing the RIGHT opinion. Often the debaters had to argue for a question which they themselves were against, or vice versa. The audiences who voted the winner, paid more attention to the quality of the debate, not to the question itself. In a culture where this type of debate is practiced in the schools, people of all ages will be more open to discussing an issue in a social setting without strapping on revolvers and a bulletproof vest. It is not a question of identifying who is the enemy, it is a question of figuring out which path will lead to a better world 100 moves in the future. Because real life really is like a chess game. The outcome of the next move is not the be all and end all.

gweinberg 11y ago

This article has it exactly wrong. Most people on the other side ARE stupid. Most people on your side are stupid also.

onewaystreet 11y ago
The thing that someone who has a firm grasp on an issue will often find is that most people on both sides don't actually know what they are talking about.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  This is a painfully true observation. I think the first time I really realized it was when I was drifting away from my religion of birth, and actually started to listen to atheist people around me. I soon discovered that the only difference between most of them and the religious people I know was the value of $religion variable. For one group it was "God", for the other it was "no God". The thought patterns were exactly the same. Neither of them could actually justify their beliefs.
  - jeremyt 11y ago
    Ah yes, the old "prove that something doesn't exist" argument.
  - nadagast 11y ago
    I don't think this is very true--what significant/majority of religious thought patterns are the same in atheism? The only one I think you could make a case for is ingroup/outgroup thinking, but that is not a majority of religious belief.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      Acquiring the belief because it's popular in your ingroup, along with a strawman-based view of the outgroup(s). No real effort spent on thinking the belief through; lack of any real argument against the beliefs of the outgroup(s).

woodandsteel 11y ago

This is an excellent article. It occurs to me that it would be good if someone put up a web site where pairs of people could publicly or privately practice the sorts of respectful interviewing and dialogue that he is advocating. Let me add that I have found the active listening skill of just saying back to the other person what they said is very useful here. I have run workshops where people did this and it is remarkable what a difference it makes. I also like Marshall Rosenberg's book Nonviolent Communication. I think part of the problem is that people don't realize there is a more productive way of going about things, and in addition there certainly are many parties today that profit from having people screaming at each other.

JoBrad 11y ago
I frequent two sites that do something like this. I found them from this article (which was also very helpful for me): http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/read-intelligent-content-2016-35-sites/ http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/read-intelligent-content-2016-3... The Conversation https://theconversation.com/ https://theconversation.com/ Aeon http://aeon.co/magazine/ http://aeon.co/magazine/
humanrebar 11y ago
The EconTalk podcasts are great examples of this, though with an economics flavor.

gpsx 11y ago

Having grown up in West Virginia and now living Silicon Valley, I see extremes from both sides. And they both _really_ think the other side is dumb. And that the president (Obama or Bush) is purposely trying to destroy the country. It is like two people in a marriage that has gone bad. Is there any way to fix it? My two cents is that a place to start is to try to make a single news source that both sides can read, to help us try to get on the same page. The news source would have to not generate viewers by inciting them to anger. Maybe some thing like a newspaper but with peer reviewed articles by people from both sides?

ethbro 11y ago
That's a culture shift (I've got family who worked DNR in WV). The "single news source" came up heavily in pg's recent writing on inequality et al. The cogent point he made, I think, was that the important part is not whether the source is authoritative or accurate but that it's universally experienced. And I don't think we'll get that back. I think the best we can hope for is benevolent mix algorithms in Facebook, Google, etc that incorporate reliably sourced articles by people with different viewpoints than our own.
- DrScump 11y ago
  "the important part is not whether the source is authoritative or accurate but that it's universally experienced." This is very well said. In Silicon Valley, for example, there has been only one major newspaper publisher for over 60 years.
caf 11y ago
My experience is that such a news source would quickly be denounced as irretrievably biased by both sides.
- gpsx 11y ago
  I think you are right. But maybe it can be made such that some segment of both sides of the population could buy into what it says. After all, contrary to the popular saying, there are not just two types of people.

andrewclunn 11y ago

I recall one time talking with a guy in the back of a church after the service was over (back when I attended church). The sermon had been about acceptance and had specifically touched on gay acceptance. The man had only come to the church twice, and we were talking, and he was quoting the bible in support of his view that homosexuality is a sin. I listened and was engaging him in conversation. Multiple people came up to me and tried to "help me escape" the conversation because they had no interest in engaging with someone who didn't agree with them. I read this article and I couldn't help but see lines like this, "To be sure, there are hateful, racist, people not worthy of the small amount of electricity it takes just one of your synapses to fire." Really? It just seems like the same old play at being accepting and open minded, but not really. I would also say that this IS a political correctness issue. This isn't really a problem for the political right because they don't mind being offended, and they don't feel the need to pretend to be open minded (at least in the US). This seems very much in the vain of when Jon Stewart had the "Rally to Restore Sanity." It claimed to be about being open minded, but it was really just about presenting the notion that "we" (see people on the political left) value being open minded.

TeMPOraL 11y ago

Another observation about the "Other side" (that is, really, about all of us) to add to excellent points made by others here. Most disagreements happen around things that have no direct impact on day-to-day life. People can hold widely different opinions about politics because... it's politics. Most of it is bullshit, and rest doesn't affect your daily life anyway, at least not immediately or directly. Take two people who are in fierce disagreement about the balance between government intervention and market freedom - take them, and go see how they manage their personal checkbooks or how they maintain their homes and cars. Suddenly, you'll see agreement, similar solutions, and both people being generally smart. People are pragmatic. We tend to invest in knowing the actual truth proportionally to how the issue is actually important to us. Hence most disagreements are about things that actually cost us nothing when we get them wrong.

enraged_camel 11y ago
>>People can hold widely different opinions about politics because... it's politics. Most of it is bullshit, and rest doesn't affect your daily life anyway, at least not immediately or directly. I completely disagree. Most political issues have a direct impact on people. Affordable Care Act is requiring millions of people to buy health insurance. Defunding Planned Parenthood would cut aid from millions of young women. Gun control laws have a direct impact on our nation's safety from internal threats. Legalized gay marriage is allowing tons of gay couples to finally get married and enjoy many of the benefits (especially financial) of the institution. I can go on. The only debates that don't have a direct and immediate impact on people are the abstract ones, such as the example you gave about government intervention vs. market freedom. But even those debates happen within the the context of concrete issues, proposed laws or ongoing lawsuits.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Ask yourself - how many of those issues affect you directly? And by directly I mean something you'll suddenly have to account for in your daily life and spending patterns. Personally, their equivalents in my country don't affect me at all. I'm young and relatively healthy, my employer pays for my health insurance. Yes, accidents can happen, but it's an abstract possibility. Gun control - when have you last seen people shooting each other on the streets in real life? It's another topic that's just abstract for most people. Gay marriage is something that naturally affects only LGBT people. The opposition argues against same-sex marriages mostly from a moral standpoint, which is again something abstract. Say, on the other hand, that we'd have confirmed reports about zombies (or evil commie nazi aliens) showing up in various places in the US. I'm pretty sure the gun control debate would be resolved unanimously in a single hearing. That of course doesn't account for all policy disagreements. But the most I've seen so far always involve at least one side with no immediate, tangible stake in the issue. -- EDIT: Replying to the three (so far) responses. Thanks for sharing your perspectives. I guess I might be underestimating the direct importance of some of those issues to people, as well as the amount of disagreements that are about conflicting interests. I will reevaluate my opinions on this topic.

bitwize 11y ago

If this were in reference to France or Germany or the UK or Australia or New Zealand, it'd be very on point. In reference to the USA, where just around half the population believe that God literally created the universe in six literal days, no, I'm sorry, the "other side" really is willfully, dangerously stupid.

nikdaheratik 11y ago

As a former card carrying Debate Club member, I suppose this article may be helpful for people who aren't used to having these arguments. But I don't believe it is very helpful for most interactions on anything really controversial right now. Most people making arguments for "the other side" haven't actually had to defend them against real criticism. They also are usually not the originators of their position, they're forwarding the ideas from someone else, so they don't necessarily even understand what it is they are articulating. Trying to engage with someone who doesn't know how to argue and doesn't actually grasp their ideas is about as productive as trying to argue with a 4-chan meme. I've long ago decided to just put my 2-cents in a single time, if I feel they're saying something really stupid, then move on.

nadagast 11y ago
This attitude ignores the other 90+% of people who read your replies: people who aren't actually engaging, just reading and considering. I think the meme of 'debate online is pointless' is wrong because the vast majority of people who read anything you write publicly will be able to read from a position where they could have their mind changed, maybe. Write for those people.
- tamana 11y ago
  This is explained in Thank You For Smoking, and illustrated every day on C-SPAN
  - nadagast 11y ago
    Interesting, I didn't know that--is it worth watching?
rtpg 11y ago
Isn't this kind of the reasoning the article is talking about? I mean, I assume you think your positions are reasonably thought out. Perhaps other people also think their positions are reasonably thought out? My takeaway from this article is to give people this benefit of the doubt. Sometimes this means acknowledging that _I_ am the one who is parroting something I heard from someone I agree with generally. On a practical level, Onion articles aren't going to stop people from Trump/Cruz/Le Pen/Farage(well nobody votes for Farage anyways ;)). Though sometimes there's good fun in circlejerking, if you're legitimately worried about the other side's positioning, not taking them seriously from the outset you won't be able to do much convincing/persuading.

Nursie 11y ago

I don't share links on social media, and I've basically blocked all news sources and link-factories so I don't see when others do either. It took some time, but my facebook is now more or less back to inane chatter and cat/baby/both pictures. Everyone else is free to get on with signalling their hearts out, I don't want to know.

golemotron 11y ago

This is a good analysis but it misses something. People on the "other side" in most social media conversations are either "red tribe" if you are "blue tribe" or "blue tribe" if you are "red tribe." Scott Anderson gets into that filter-bubble issue: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything...

memracom 11y ago

Ever think that on most issues, say 985 times out of 100, the other side is roughly 50% of those that are not undecided. If you look at the issue overall, and allow for shades of gray between the positions, then most people are in rough agreement around some central position. I think that if you can construct a survey on the issue that correctly breaks out several shades of gray in the position, then the results will plot out on a normal curve. Only when the normal curve is heavily weighted to one side or the other, i.e. there is a larger group on one side of the median, do you have a winnable issue. It's too bad that media just spends so much time groveling in the mud with everyone else, when they could actually be doing such surveys and illuminating the issue. Take gun control for instance. How many of you have any idea what shape of curve would result from such a survey? And if you compared it to the results 25 years ago, how would it differ? If you had a series of such surveys over time, then what trends would they show? Without this info, there is no point in debating. I don't doubt that somebody has done such surveys and does have this info. And those people do influence politicians. But that just reinforces an elite separate from the masses, and is fundamentally anti-democratic.

DrScump 11y ago
...say 985 times out of 100... 985 times out of 100, people in general will mistrust the data. ;)

sandworm101 11y ago

>> I implore you to seek out your opposite. When you hear someone cite “facts” that don’t support your viewpoint don’t think “that can’t be true!” Instead consider, “Hm, maybe that person is right? I should look into this.” Nooop. When the crazy uncle starts going on about how the lizard people at the US have formed a world government for the express purpose of using solar panels to take guns away from seniors ... no. There are ideas that are not worth my time to explore or disprove. So long as the crazy people stick to their crazy shacks, I am not going to engage. Of course those crazies seem to be breeding uncontrollably. It may be time to reverse my position and actually start researching the vril.

ocdtrekkie 11y ago
Well, we all generally agree that there aren't 'lizard people' in the US (we do agree that, right? ...right?), but increasingly less crazy ideas are now being regarded as similarly crazy.
- sandworm101 11y ago
  Like the US president is a secret muslim from kenya in office to take away the guns in furtherance of the global warming hoax? I see aspects of that narrative on TV almost every day. It's a daily reality for millions and millions of americans.
  - ocdtrekkie 11y ago
    None of those concepts are as crazy as lizard people, are they?
    - sandworm101 11y ago
      Well they are both rather unlikely, but at least the lizard thing is testable. Poke the guy with a stick and see. Question answered. The other theories cannot be so easily disproved.

overgard 11y ago

I usually think of this sort of thing in terms of cached thoughts: http://lesswrong.com/lw/k5/cached_thoughts/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/k5/cached_thoughts/ Once you get over the smug thought of "ha! all those people and their cached thoughts!", you have to stop to think, which of your own principles have you actually really thought about? I don't think it's so much about considering "The Other Side", instead it's about having clarity by knowing why you believe what you believe. Generally speaking, if it's "us vs them", you're being played anyway. Some tribe has a vested interest in playing you against another tribe.

orionblastar 11y ago

Actually it is quite confusing for me as I am a moderate and liberals see me as a conservative and conservatives see me as a liberal and I get blasted by both sides for being dumb because I don't have 100% of their views. I am for social programs so conservatives think me a liberal. I am for freedom of religion and gun rights so liberals think me conservative. However there can be like 30 different political viewpoints besides liberal and conservative. It is not a black and white issue but shades of grey and colors as well. The political charts they use are misleading and based on questions they ask I am either on the left or the right and never the same place. I'm for basic income because people lose their jobs when websites automate stuff and AI programs and robots take over jobs. People need something to live on in order to get an education to qualify for a better job. You see new jobs are created but require a different skill set than the jobs that are eliminated. People used to learn how a typewriter worked and would have a room of 100 people typing letters and memos all day until the Word Processor and Laser Printer came into play and put them out of work. My own father had worked for AT&T with 1ESS Switches they had tried to convert to computers using Unix and he lost his job when AT&T was broken up, nobody else used the 1ESS they used IBM AS/400 systems instead or the PC and he wasn't trained in it. He struggled with finding jobs to make ends meet. Working as a janitor or working on factory machines for a pasta company. We went from being middle class to poor or lower middle class. Anyway I never consider the other person I debate with on the other side of the screen is stupid or dumb. I figure they were educated in a different way than I was, grew up different, have a different view on life than I do. The problem is citing sources to back up your claims, the Internet has websites that will support almost any claim. For even website I cite the other person can cite a website that says the opposite. Even more they can say the other website supports a contrary view to theirs so it must be biased, and thus discarded. In college I had an Astronomy class, and the Professor argued with the book, and countered every theory with his own personal theory. The universe is not expanding, he would claim, Hubble is wrong about red shifts. Instead of a Big Bang, he claimed the universe always existed, etc. It as hard for me to learn from such a person. I was lucky to get a C from his class because I had to take notes on his personal theories to get test answers correct and not use the book to study. At times I get voted down here because I write a comment that people disagree with. Then sometimes it gets voted back up by people who agree with me.