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> Though, maybe that was part of his point. As the article states, that was not his point. The point of the experiment was for him to stop saying and to start

• minikites 7y ago
  >even if its not a perspective or argument he himself supports This assume all perspectives/arguments are valid. Should we listen to the arguments put forth by someone who believes the Earth is flat?
  • klank 7y ago
    > This assume all perspectives/arguments are valid Not at all. It only assumes that an understanding of an argument is necessary to engage with it properly.
    • minikites 7y ago
      I disagree, by engaging a bad faith argument in good faith, you are playing their game and are going to lose by definition: “Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
      • burfog 7y ago
        Dismissing your opponents as "bad faith" and "completely unaware of the absurdity" and "frivolous" is a good indication that your own beliefs may be so. You are completely blocking out any consideration of your opponents. This suggests that you fear becoming convinced that they are right. You fear being forced to confront the fact that your own beliefs have not come about by a rational decision-making process.
        • minikites 7y ago
          What rational decision making process results in believing that people with darker skin are sub-human?
          • nostrademons 7y ago
            People don't make decisions rationally. If you want to change peoples' minds, you have to engage with the emotions underneath their rationalizations.
      • ordu 7y ago
        > by engaging a bad faith argument in good faith, you are playing their game and are going to lose by definition What does it mean to lose in a communication? You said "by definition", but what is the definition of losing?
        • HuShifang 7y ago
          I think the question is, does such an argument qualify as communication at all? There are many (sadly often rather abstruse) theorizations of communication in the cultural context out there, often bound up with the question of alterity (Levinas, Todorov, et al), but I think it's fair enough to say that many share the idea that true communication is dialogue aimed at advancing mutual understanding, or at persuading, or at increasing collective knowledge. But, if one participant actually has no interest in any of these ends, such "communication" has (potentially significant) opportunity cost -- there are many genuine communications that might occur but that do not because the good-faith participant is distracted from engaging with other good-faith actors by the bad-faith interrogator. (For example, rather than have serious conversations about how to manage and remedy climate change, scientists are distracted by conversations about whether or not it is a real phenomenon.) Bottom-line, time is a finite resource, as are the psychological energies of experts. Now obviously, deciding when someone engaged in an argument is acting in bad faith is difficult. But the naive position that it's always good to argue it out is not practically sustainable.
      • jerf 7y ago
        I'm having a hard time thinking of a political-type group that I can't stick in there for "anti-Semite" and get a paragraph that a good chunk of people won't agree with. “Never believe that Republicans are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The Republicans have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.” “Never believe that Democrats are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The Democrats have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.” The "politically correct", "anti-abortionists", "pro-lifers", "Hacker News anklebiters"... it all fits just fine. It's just a way of giving yourself an excuse to not engage with opinions cloaked in the veneer of righteousness.
        • HuShifang 7y ago
          I'm an expert in something, and I suspect that you are as well. I don't engage with every argument about my domain of expertise that I encounter, because it would be impractical to do so: I have a finite amount of time and energy, and when I make the contextual determination that the argument is especially ill-informed, or disingenuous, I choose not to engage with it, because I believe that my time and energy is better spent on other ends. I presume you do the same. Is that "just a way of giving yourself an excuse to not engage with opinions cloaked in the veneer of righteousness"? If I had infinite time and patience then yes, I would engage with all opinions. But I do not.
  • KeepFlying 7y ago
    I'm the most cynical interpretation possible: You need to listen to them in order to be able to refute them. So if you want to change their minds you need to listen to understand what their belief is founded on so you know what you need to convince them of. But in a more open way of seeing it: It's important to understand where their beliefs are coming from to understand why they believe what they do. Maybe their belief is based on a fear of government and government influence on their lives. So maybe there is merit in talking about where that fear comes from. The flat Earth portion of their beliefs is not valid. But their reasoning for it might include some interesting points to discuss that can help everyone be able to work together better.
    • SkyBelow 7y ago
      >You need to listen to them in order to be able to refute them. So if you want to change their minds you need to listen to understand what their belief is founded on so you know what you need to convince them of. I agree, but I don't think you will get this just by listening to them. My own cynical interpretation is that people are often driven by more selfish desires which are the reasons they are attracted to certain positions, which they then find more palatable justifications for. The person arguing for free college and paying off existing college debt has many arguments, but the one that actually matters is that they are paying $1,000 a month on a student loan and highly prefer any solution that leaves them with that money back. Even a solution that increases taxes, as long as the taxes aren't more than $1,000, is preferable to their current state. The person arguing for a reduces/removed minimum wage, while having a lot of argument as to the negative impacts of minimum wage, personally thinks that prices will go up if minimum wage goes up and is against it because of the loss of purchasing power. (Consider that this outcome actually happening or not is irrelevant, only the belief it will happen matters when judging why a person takes the stance they want.) When I've argued for lowering the drinking age to 18, people will often assume I'm someone under 21 who wants the ability to legally drink. When I've argued for lowering the voting age below 18, people often assume I have political leanings that will be bolstered by under 18 voters. Both cases are false, but personally I cannot fault the people from assuming such based on how often it appears those assumptions are true.
  • tialaramex 7y ago
    Sure, if you have spare bandwidth it can be useful to understand why they're wrong.
  • ysavir 7y ago
    > This assume all perspectives/arguments are valid. It assumes no such thing. > Should we listen to the arguments put forth by someone who believes the Earth is flat? Listening does not imply joining in belief. Listening is the act of developing an understanding of another's perspective and why they hold to that perspective. The keyword being understanding, not agreeing. What we should learn from John Francis is to always be willing to listen; that if we want to live in a world where people listen to us, we have to be willing to listen to those people as well. If we want a society that uses civil discourse as a means of growing, we are obligated to learn how to listen and understand. We are under no obligation to agree with what we hear, but we do owe it to others to understand where they are coming from, and why they hold the belief they have. And on the fortunate occasions, perhaps to learn from what they have to say.
  • lhorie 7y ago
    You are not required to listen to anything anyone says, but if your goal is to get through to a flat earther/creationist/etc, it helps to understand their mental framework, or you'll just end up wasting time talking past each other. An interesting exercise I did way back in the day for fun was to try to debate some of those topics using only arguments within _their_ mental framework (e.g. if X pro-flat-earth argument is true, then why does the Bible contradictorily says Y). If anything, I ended up getting something out of it, as doing my own research to try to formulate these arguments taught me about topics I wasn't nearly as familiar w/ (e.g. history of religious documents)
    • balabaster 7y ago
      Another way is to learn to debate the merit of their arguments even though you don't believe them. For you can only argue your case when you understand theirs.
  • dang 7y ago
    Not all arguments are valid, but all people are valid. That's the reason for listening.
• nostrademons 7y ago
  Listening is itself a form of communication, and a very powerful one.