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"The first step is to remind our students and colleagues that those who hold views contrary to one’s own are rarely evil or stupid, and may know or understand t

"The first step is to remind our students and colleagues that those who hold views contrary to one’s own are rarely evil or stupid, and may know or understand things that we do not." In a single word: empathize This is a growing problem in far places more than just universities. It's amplified by the filter bubbles in which most of us participate, whether we realize it or not, thanks to social media and targeted advertising.

yummyfajitas 10y ago
That's not empathy at all. It's reason.
- yarou 10y ago
  "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." Skepticism doesn't entail blocking out viewpoints you disagree with. You automatically lose an argument if you refuse to engage with your detractor.
  - Dylan16807 10y ago
    > You automatically lose an argument if you refuse to engage with your detractor. Nah. If someone who believes the Earth is flat is willing to spend 12 hours a day arguing on forums, your best move is to refuse to engage. You will never convince them, and they will always outlast you and feel victorious.
    - M_Grey 10y ago
      Oh god ^this. There is a particularly broken specimen of human on a skeptical website who's username reflects his obsession, "Sfseaserpent". He believes that there is a sea serpent, essentially a biblical dragon, living in the San Francisco bay. There is no amount of debating or reasoning which can move him one iota, and the most you can achieve is to cause him to stop acknowledging your existence for a time. I have had experience elsewhere with someone who trolls various forums in an effort to spread the "good word" about Jehova. Sometimes, "The only winning move is not to play." It's not always the case, and sure, that line can be used as an excuse by people in bad faith to avoid an argument; it's still the prudent course sometimes.
      - thinkmassive 10y ago
        This sounds like the textbook definition of trolling. If you honestly believe the sea serpent guy I think you're probably the one being taken for a ride. You're right with the Wargames quote in any case though.
        M_Grey 10y ago
        I've never engaged with him personally, but having seen him over literally many years, I doubt that he's anything other than a sincere maniac. He's not good at getting a rise out of people... he always ends up being the one to lose his temper and flame OUT. Same with the Jehovah's Witness. Trolls are there, all over the place, but there are "True Believers" too, and they're even more immovable and pointless.
    - cookiecaper 10y ago
      I think it was meant more in the general sense, not the absolute. Naturally you have to ascertain the good faith and sanity of your potential counterpart, but in general, there's a difference between attempting to have a discussion and being unable to find common ground in a reasonable time frame and flat out refusing to engage with someone whose beliefs you've illegitimately labeled taboo. The issue is not that people make a serious and earnest effort to understand the opposing side, but tire before they're able to understand the other POV. The issue is rather that they apply one or more of a handful of ethereal, unfalsifiable labels to their opponent, and then believe that gives them license to dismiss the opponent's POV out of hand without addressing or processing it. When such people hear something challenging to their favored notions, instead of saying "Wow, I'll need to think about that", they say "You're a [bigot|racist|%phobe|redneck|yuppie|commie|socialist|...].", mutter additional insults under their breath, tell you not to try to show your disgusting ignorant face around here anymore or else, and pat themselves on the back for their righteousness while they walk away.
      - Dylan16807 10y ago
        Sure, you should try to pause and understand someone's opinion. But equally important is not doing that ad infinitum. Some people are just wrong. Rejecting someone's arguments entirely should be done very sparingly, but sometimes it's a valid option. Also most of those labels are falsifiable.
  - chetanahuja 10y ago
    "You automatically lose an argument if you refuse to engage with your detractor." You just described the battle cry of the eternal troll. Your freedom of speech does not equal me being forced to listen to you.
- rukuu001 10y ago
  Empathy is a tool for the effective communication of reason.
  - whoopdedo 10y ago
    More to the point, communication is necessary for empathy, and thus reason. If you don't tell me what you think and engage me in dialog, there's no way for me to come to an understanding of your manner of thinking and thus synthesize a compromise between our opposing viewpoints. Instead, what I encounter more often is if I don't immediately agree with someone they say, "we have to agree to disagree." Which is no agreement at all. It's shutting down communication and preventing me from understanding why we disagree. I learn nothing from people who say that to me and find it frustrating.
- yongjik 10y ago
  The word "reason" (or its friend, "logic") is misused so many times that it has become basically a marketing term. The most outrageous instigators branded themselves with "reason", from Nazi to Marxists to 9/11 hoaxers to alt-right. Have you ever heard someone arguing "Reason is on their side"?
babesh 10y ago
That is not a universal truth. It can often be true. In the real world there is also hate speech, lying, cheating, and bullying and it is far from rare. You need to figure out which one it is.
- babesh 10y ago
  Reminds me that supposedly debate in Greece originated in trying to convince others of your side rather than as a means of understanding the other side. If you go to high school debate you see this played out. Neither side arrives at the truth and many viewpoints favoring neither side get left out.
  - alexryan 10y ago
    Agreed. The tendency to cling to views and debate rather than pursue truth is extremely unfortunate. Sam Harris gave a talk on this subject that I found quite interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOL3kUHjp2Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOL3kUHjp2Y
- vkou 10y ago
  Not to mention sealioning.
- dandersh 10y ago
  And in order to be able to do so you have to exposed to all of the above...as well as legitimate viewpoints that can be conflated with all of the above.
dandersh 10y ago
Before you can empathize you have to be sincerely curious, "What is it that they're seeing that I don't?". Unfortunately the lack of intellectual curiosity, the disinterest in thinking critically, is something that has infected universities from the outside and universities have been powerless to stop it. Personally my favorite memory of college was talking politics with a professor who was opposite of me on the traditional political spectrum on almost everything. We enjoyed talking to each other, we argued quite a bit, but I learned a lot. The most important thing I learned was that despite all of our differences we agreed on more than I would have possibly imagined.
- thinkmassive 10y ago
  I enjoy a friendly political debate, but only in very small groups. Beyond 2-4 people and it's difficult for everyone present to participate enough to feel they're genuinely being heard. A one-on-one conversation with a college professor sounds excellent. On the other hand, I'm having difficulty thinking of any particular area where it would be beneficial to have an entire institution limiting itself to a single belief.

yummyfajitas 10y ago

That's not empathy at all. It's reason.

yarou 10y ago
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." Skepticism doesn't entail blocking out viewpoints you disagree with. You automatically lose an argument if you refuse to engage with your detractor.
- Dylan16807 10y ago
  > You automatically lose an argument if you refuse to engage with your detractor. Nah. If someone who believes the Earth is flat is willing to spend 12 hours a day arguing on forums, your best move is to refuse to engage. You will never convince them, and they will always outlast you and feel victorious.
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    Oh god ^this. There is a particularly broken specimen of human on a skeptical website who's username reflects his obsession, "Sfseaserpent". He believes that there is a sea serpent, essentially a biblical dragon, living in the San Francisco bay. There is no amount of debating or reasoning which can move him one iota, and the most you can achieve is to cause him to stop acknowledging your existence for a time. I have had experience elsewhere with someone who trolls various forums in an effort to spread the "good word" about Jehova. Sometimes, "The only winning move is not to play." It's not always the case, and sure, that line can be used as an excuse by people in bad faith to avoid an argument; it's still the prudent course sometimes.
    - thinkmassive 10y ago
      This sounds like the textbook definition of trolling. If you honestly believe the sea serpent guy I think you're probably the one being taken for a ride. You're right with the Wargames quote in any case though.
      - M_Grey 10y ago
        I've never engaged with him personally, but having seen him over literally many years, I doubt that he's anything other than a sincere maniac. He's not good at getting a rise out of people... he always ends up being the one to lose his temper and flame OUT. Same with the Jehovah's Witness. Trolls are there, all over the place, but there are "True Believers" too, and they're even more immovable and pointless.
  - cookiecaper 10y ago
    I think it was meant more in the general sense, not the absolute. Naturally you have to ascertain the good faith and sanity of your potential counterpart, but in general, there's a difference between attempting to have a discussion and being unable to find common ground in a reasonable time frame and flat out refusing to engage with someone whose beliefs you've illegitimately labeled taboo. The issue is not that people make a serious and earnest effort to understand the opposing side, but tire before they're able to understand the other POV. The issue is rather that they apply one or more of a handful of ethereal, unfalsifiable labels to their opponent, and then believe that gives them license to dismiss the opponent's POV out of hand without addressing or processing it. When such people hear something challenging to their favored notions, instead of saying "Wow, I'll need to think about that", they say "You're a [bigot|racist|%phobe|redneck|yuppie|commie|socialist|...].", mutter additional insults under their breath, tell you not to try to show your disgusting ignorant face around here anymore or else, and pat themselves on the back for their righteousness while they walk away.
    - Dylan16807 10y ago
      Sure, you should try to pause and understand someone's opinion. But equally important is not doing that ad infinitum. Some people are just wrong. Rejecting someone's arguments entirely should be done very sparingly, but sometimes it's a valid option. Also most of those labels are falsifiable.
- chetanahuja 10y ago
  "You automatically lose an argument if you refuse to engage with your detractor." You just described the battle cry of the eternal troll. Your freedom of speech does not equal me being forced to listen to you.
rukuu001 10y ago
Empathy is a tool for the effective communication of reason.
- whoopdedo 10y ago
  More to the point, communication is necessary for empathy, and thus reason. If you don't tell me what you think and engage me in dialog, there's no way for me to come to an understanding of your manner of thinking and thus synthesize a compromise between our opposing viewpoints. Instead, what I encounter more often is if I don't immediately agree with someone they say, "we have to agree to disagree." Which is no agreement at all. It's shutting down communication and preventing me from understanding why we disagree. I learn nothing from people who say that to me and find it frustrating.
yongjik 10y ago
The word "reason" (or its friend, "logic") is misused so many times that it has become basically a marketing term. The most outrageous instigators branded themselves with "reason", from Nazi to Marxists to 9/11 hoaxers to alt-right. Have you ever heard someone arguing "Reason is on their side"?

babesh 10y ago

That is not a universal truth. It can often be true. In the real world there is also hate speech, lying, cheating, and bullying and it is far from rare. You need to figure out which one it is.

babesh 10y ago
Reminds me that supposedly debate in Greece originated in trying to convince others of your side rather than as a means of understanding the other side. If you go to high school debate you see this played out. Neither side arrives at the truth and many viewpoints favoring neither side get left out.
- alexryan 10y ago
  Agreed. The tendency to cling to views and debate rather than pursue truth is extremely unfortunate. Sam Harris gave a talk on this subject that I found quite interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOL3kUHjp2Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOL3kUHjp2Y
vkou 10y ago
Not to mention sealioning.
dandersh 10y ago
And in order to be able to do so you have to exposed to all of the above...as well as legitimate viewpoints that can be conflated with all of the above.

dandersh 10y ago

Before you can empathize you have to be sincerely curious, "What is it that they're seeing that I don't?". Unfortunately the lack of intellectual curiosity, the disinterest in thinking critically, is something that has infected universities from the outside and universities have been powerless to stop it. Personally my favorite memory of college was talking politics with a professor who was opposite of me on the traditional political spectrum on almost everything. We enjoyed talking to each other, we argued quite a bit, but I learned a lot. The most important thing I learned was that despite all of our differences we agreed on more than I would have possibly imagined.

thinkmassive 10y ago
I enjoy a friendly political debate, but only in very small groups. Beyond 2-4 people and it's difficult for everyone present to participate enough to feel they're genuinely being heard. A one-on-one conversation with a college professor sounds excellent. On the other hand, I'm having difficulty thinking of any particular area where it would be beneficial to have an entire institution limiting itself to a single belief.