5 ms·

Not gonna put words into someone else's mouth, but here it is from my perspective: We come to the opinions we have based on the experiences we have, and everybo

Not gonna put words into someone else's mouth, but here it is from my perspective: We come to the opinions we have based on the experiences we have, and everybody has different experiences. Equally as true is the opinions that don't form due to the experiences we don't have. One example I have from someone I disagree with. It was a rich kid about to fully take over his father's company via inheritance, who agreed vehemently with trickle down economics. From his perspective, he created jobs (I'd at least agree with that much). The way that he created jobs was by investing resources on new profitable projects that required labor. In his perspective, how could he ever create more jobs by constraining his resources? He couldn't, but that is exactly the point (someone else creates the jobs, not him). He couldn't see the alternative of government enabling new jobs because the entire sum of his life experience portrayed government as a barrier to investment, not as an enabler of opportunity. The simple fact that he never had to rely on the government as an enabler of opportunity blinded him to the possibility that it could use his resources more efficiently than he could. I'd consider his opinion falsifiable, but his perspective valid. I would never in a million years be able to tell him his perspective was wrong.

kybernetikos 10y ago
For 'valid' to mean anything interesting there has to be the possibility of something not being valid. If the criteria for 'valid' is merely that 'someone thinks it' then it's starting to sound like it's not a useful distinction to make.
- darksaints 10y ago
  The distinction being made isn't valid vs invalid, but rather perspective vs opinion. An incorrect opinion does not invalidate the perspective that helped form it, and the perspective is still worth understanding if you want an actual solution to a problem instead of just the self-righteous satisfaction of being right.
  - kybernetikos 10y ago
    I'm completely in favour of understanding why people think what they do - apart from anything else, it's almost impossible to persuade them of anything different if you don't start from a position of sympathy. In order to give you the opportunity of gaining a position of sympathy with me; one of the reasons I was asking about 'validity' is that it sounds formal and logical, but it doesn't seem to be being used in a formal and logical sense. I think you're using it to say that we shouldn't dismiss perspectives, even those that have a high correlation with incorrect opinions (even though I'd struggle to define 'perspective' except as a bundle of opinions). While the intention seems admirable enough, I still find myself wishing for a bit more precision over what exactly is being said: obviously experiences aren't invalidated by the person experiencing them having false opinions, but the opinions formed from those experiences can absolutely be false, and occasionally even in the strict formal, logical sense invalid. If we're not talking about experiences (since the argument is almost never about what the other party experienced, but rather about what it means), and we're not talking about opinions, then I'm not sure what we're talking about at all. Maybe I should just take this as a shorthand for describing a useful attitude to take rather than a description of something in the world, i.e. saying 'it's worth understanding why people think what they think, even if it's wrong, rather than dismissing it out of hand', and then I could agree with it.
    - Waterluvian 10y ago
      Thanks for the comments. Yes, this deserves more explanation. I mean "valid" essentially as a truism. It's a valid perspective because people are able to hold that perspective. What makes it important to point out, in my opinion, is that it doesn't matter how irrational or ugly or wrong that perspective is, it can't simply be dismissed because it is such. That makes us incapable of fostering an environment in which all parties can grow their perspectives. My wife's pregnant and she often has incredibly irrational fears. She will even point out that she has no logical underpinning for feeling a certain way. But she does feel that way. Her perspective, no matter what doctors tell her, is that there's so many things that may go wrong. And that's valid. Instead of, "well, if you know it makes no sense to feel that way, then stop feeling that way, right?" we work to understand what might be causing it and use what levers and knobs in life we have to eliminate those fears. If we dismiss certain perspectives as being an invalid state for one to be in, we close doors on addressing it. I'm not really much of a writer or persuasive voice, so I hope you're able to pick up what I'm trying to convey. Heck, maybe I'm just using words wrongly. I've been known to cromulate that from time to time.

kybernetikos 10y ago

For 'valid' to mean anything interesting there has to be the possibility of something not being valid. If the criteria for 'valid' is merely that 'someone thinks it' then it's starting to sound like it's not a useful distinction to make.

darksaints 10y ago
The distinction being made isn't valid vs invalid, but rather perspective vs opinion. An incorrect opinion does not invalidate the perspective that helped form it, and the perspective is still worth understanding if you want an actual solution to a problem instead of just the self-righteous satisfaction of being right.
- kybernetikos 10y ago
  I'm completely in favour of understanding why people think what they do - apart from anything else, it's almost impossible to persuade them of anything different if you don't start from a position of sympathy. In order to give you the opportunity of gaining a position of sympathy with me; one of the reasons I was asking about 'validity' is that it sounds formal and logical, but it doesn't seem to be being used in a formal and logical sense. I think you're using it to say that we shouldn't dismiss perspectives, even those that have a high correlation with incorrect opinions (even though I'd struggle to define 'perspective' except as a bundle of opinions). While the intention seems admirable enough, I still find myself wishing for a bit more precision over what exactly is being said: obviously experiences aren't invalidated by the person experiencing them having false opinions, but the opinions formed from those experiences can absolutely be false, and occasionally even in the strict formal, logical sense invalid. If we're not talking about experiences (since the argument is almost never about what the other party experienced, but rather about what it means), and we're not talking about opinions, then I'm not sure what we're talking about at all. Maybe I should just take this as a shorthand for describing a useful attitude to take rather than a description of something in the world, i.e. saying 'it's worth understanding why people think what they think, even if it's wrong, rather than dismissing it out of hand', and then I could agree with it.
  - Waterluvian 10y ago
    Thanks for the comments. Yes, this deserves more explanation. I mean "valid" essentially as a truism. It's a valid perspective because people are able to hold that perspective. What makes it important to point out, in my opinion, is that it doesn't matter how irrational or ugly or wrong that perspective is, it can't simply be dismissed because it is such. That makes us incapable of fostering an environment in which all parties can grow their perspectives. My wife's pregnant and she often has incredibly irrational fears. She will even point out that she has no logical underpinning for feeling a certain way. But she does feel that way. Her perspective, no matter what doctors tell her, is that there's so many things that may go wrong. And that's valid. Instead of, "well, if you know it makes no sense to feel that way, then stop feeling that way, right?" we work to understand what might be causing it and use what levers and knobs in life we have to eliminate those fears. If we dismiss certain perspectives as being an invalid state for one to be in, we close doors on addressing it. I'm not really much of a writer or persuasive voice, so I hope you're able to pick up what I'm trying to convey. Heck, maybe I'm just using words wrongly. I've been known to cromulate that from time to time.