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Bulverism
- ISL 6y agoOne of the highest utility-density pieces of advice I've ever gotten: "Assume positive intent. Ask lots of questions."
- zepto 6y agoWorks well with most people, but not with the >1% who actually don’t have positive intent.
- ISL 6y agoThat becomes real clear once you've asked enough questions.
- zepto 6y agoTo you, presumably, but not necessarily to others.
- crooked-v 6y ago...and then you'll have to ask all the same questions with the next person in that group, or maybe even the next time the same person talks, because an intentional part of the tactics involved is to waste the time of people who assume positive intent.
- ISL 6y agoHow is it clear that people are intentionally wasting the time of those who assume positive intent?
- zepto 6y agoIntentions are never ‘clear’, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t a factor.
- amanaplanacanal 6y agoI think the existence of trolling is the prima fascia case for this. Unless you believe that trolling doesn’t exist.
- ISL 6y agoTrue -- my default is to assume that people are not trolls unless they are repeatedly inflammatory and unwilling to engage in meaningful discussion of any kind.
- clessg 6y agoI see that primarily in heated internet conversations that touch on identity and ego, such as politics and religion (programming language/technology religion included!). On such topics, there very often is bad faith, perhaps more often than not (feels like it!). In such cases, trying to pinpoint the intentions of every participant in every single interaction is exhausting and typically pointless. The solution is to avoid those topics like the plague in the first place, if you have a choice, unless it's with people you trust. In most other cases, you can (and should) productively assume good faith. Usually.
- Uehreka 6y agoYeah, but then the problem is that politics, the topic that invites a ton bad faith tactics, also has tons of real life repercussions. And if you just try to ignore it because of the bad faith stuff, then the people with the bad faith arguments are more likely to get their way. So it sucks to engage, but there’s not any other great choice.
- clessg 6y agoGood point! It's tough: what's good for the individual may not be best for society at large. Thanks to those who do endure and engage in a positive way with the genuine intent to make a difference. It's surely not easy in the environment we have today.
- runarberg 6y agoClimate denialism comes to mind here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLqXkYrdmjY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLqXkYrdmjY
- ithkuil 6y agoI like how your framed it, giving the lower bound only
- jadell 6y agoThis doesn't protect someone (or a whole society) from bad actors who know how to exploit the assumption of positive intent. This might work for arguing with Aunt Tillie at Thanksgiving dinner, but it's a loophole actively exploited by people in power whose motives run counter to what's good, in general, for society as a whole. See: tobacco executives, climate change deniers, those who profit off anti-vaxx sentiment, televangelists, etc.
- ISL 6y agoEngaging people and meeting them where they are, with honest discussion, can sometimes turn an ardent detractor of something positive into an ardent supporter of something positive. Can't win if you don't try. :).
- jadell 6y ago"Ardent detractors" aren't the people I'm talking about. I'm talking about bad faith actors who understand exactly what is harmful about their position and are choosing that position anyway, because their incentives are aligned with maintaining the harmful situation. These aren't people you can engage in good faith with precisely because they will use your assumption of good faith against you.
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoWow, so much of our political discourse makes sense now...
- readthenotes1 6y agoYou only say that because you are desperate to believe there's more to politics than a villainous will to power
- zepto 6y agoExcellent example!
- hertzrat 6y agoThe main thing is that people do this because it works fairly well. Nobody ever says how to counter them. Arguably, not even professional persuaders like politicians haven’t figured it out, because the most common response during elections or debates is to just counter attack with similar tactics
- ma2rten 6y agoI think the best response depends on whether you can want to persuade the person you are talking to or bystanders. Either you could call out the tactic or you could use something like non-violent communication.
- hertzrat 6y agoI think most of the time this sort of tactic is used with an audience in mind, so presumably we would want to convince the audience. Does calling out “that’s just a bulverism fallacy!” really work?
- ma2rten 6y agoObliviously you wouldn't want to use those words exact unless the audience is a bunch of philosophy mayors. But for example here [1] is a video of Chris Christie effectively calling out a somewhat similar technique from Marco Rubio. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkdpzRDxTXU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkdpzRDxTXU
- aaron-santos 6y agoYou could try it out and see if it works. My gut says that it's good logic, but poor rhetoric. Maybe something like 'My opponent sees conspiracies everywhere. Let them prove my motives rather than assume them'?
- ahelwer 6y agoAt this point I basically view preoccupation with fallacies, presenting arguments in formal format (premise, premise, conclusion), etc. as a proxy for immaturity. That isn't how people are persuaded, that isn't how people ever were persuaded, and that isn't how people ever will be persuaded. It also isn't how people have ever been able to access any sort of truth. Western philosophy has been incredibly effective at tearing apart everything that exists, but utterly ineffective in building anything back up from the ashes. It's only after you've tried, many times over, in futility, to build a coherent & effective belief system from first principles that you'll realize this approach is a dead end. All we have are beliefs, and our brains retroactively make up stories about why we think they are true. In this framework it is actually very useful to illustrate how your ideological opponent came to their beliefs. Then people can determine whether they find that story relatable.
- mulmen 6y agoPerhaps the value in philosophy is destruction. As you say our brains already build up beliefs, why do we need a formal system for that? What we don't do naturally is re-evaluate those beliefs in the presence of new information.
- smitty1e 6y agoPopper was onto something with putting everything under criticism. And yet, as every piece of computer hardware needs an OS to be more than a brick, one yearns for an explanation of what "is" as badly as "what is not".
- smitty1e 6y agoMaybe a more conversational approach where - trust is established, - a relationship built, and - questions are asked in a sincere effort to trigger reflection could produce better results. Takes more patience and effort than we typically invest these days.
- XorNot 6y agoHow do you really propose to establish trust though? Based on what? Trust requires the initial establishment of some reason to believe the other person, and we're mid discussing why we don't.
- gedy 6y ago"Some arguments are valid and some conclusions true, regardless of the identity and motives of the one who argues them." Yes I know, "both sides", but this has been the biggest challenge I've had speaking with progressive friends. Unless I agree that someone's beliefs/opinions/arguments are totally invalid because who they are or who they voted for, I'm also part of the problem..
- bsder 6y ago> Unless I agree that someone's beliefs/opinions/arguments are totally invalid because who they are or who they voted for, I'm also part of the problem.. Look, we've got a bunch of people attacking the foundations of our democracy. If you voted with them, yeah, you've got a pretty steep climb to convince me that you're not part of the problem. "Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."--Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
- ithkuil 6y agoSomebody can be part of the problem and also be right about something. Call it "accidentally right" if you need to deprive them from the merit of being right. But let's not turn facts and logic into collateral damage of a fight that happens at a different level.
- bsder 6y agoA stopped watch is correct twice a day--yet everybody would still throw it out.
- ithkuil 6y agoSure. But you won't say that it's not 8:30am when it's 8:30am just because a broken watch happens to say so. Humans care about reputation. Our trust in people is based a lot on past performance and what other people though about that past performance. Thus, we also find it dangerous to let people get away with being perceived as having competence on something where they don't have it, because they may in future capitalize on that and spread their wrong ideas and be believed because you conceded that they had competence in the past. However it cuts both ways. If you want to expose somebody's incompetence you surely don't want to behave in ways that are clearly dishonest and bending facts just to strip the other person of being accidentally right once or twice a day. That shortcut won't pay off. I've seen so many discourse between otherwise honest people derailed by this practice that is now so entrenched. Call out fallacies by all means. Give credit when credit is due and move on to attack arguments that are worth attacking.
- dukeofdoom 6y agoWatching Rudy Giuliani's common sense right now, making a case for why Trump won. Despite his chances of actually winning now are something like less than 1% on betting markets. No court case has gotten to the stage that allowed significant evidence to be presented (They've rejected for standing or other reasons). The media has all but inaugurated Biden. And it looks like the Republican party will turn against Trump too now. Trump is really a populist politician that somehow won the Republican party nomination. But he doesn't have backing in the institutions of government, especially the courts. Allowed most of his closest political allies to be prosecuted, and removed or taken out or he fired them. And his support in republican party is also shaky. They would love to get rid of him. Joseph Stalin said some version of "It's not the people who vote that count, it's the people who count the votes." Its interesting listen Rudy to make his points and argue his case, how the votes should be counted. He's a skilled orator. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAzCECx8XeE&t=547s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAzCECx8XeE&t=547s
- etamponi 6y agoPieces like this make me want to find the original books and read them, I wonder how many more insights I could find there. C.S. Lewis seems to resonate particularly well with me and with how I reason (same holds for Chesterton). I think Lewis is right in blaming Bulverism. So I asked myself: can I identify a way in which Bulverism originates? How can I avoid it and how can I suggest other people to avoid it? Sorry for the excursus, but I hope someone will find it useful :D It's very interesting, to me at least, to notice that getting "completely" rid of bulverism seems very difficult - perhaps impossible? Perhaps because it's part of how humans start the process of knowledge. Let me explain... Reasoning can go, a priori, in several different directions. Which one to pick? From a practical point of view, you pick the one that stimulates you the most: and this way, someone becomes a mathematician, someone else an engineer, someone else a poet, a doctor, and so on. This movement has both some bulverism and some anti-bulverism: you hear someone speak, and a-priori, you feel like he's right (is there a name for this fallacy too?). And I think that starting the process of knowledge with some pre-conception is unavoidable and also what makes diversity possible. So when does a safe practice become a threat? I think it's when we lose faith in the positiveness of reality, that is: in the possibility of knowing what's true and that this knowledge is what really makes us more humans. Bulverism is saying that I value more what I think than what's true, or that I value more to blame you than to affirm the truth. It's interesting to see in how many way reasoning can go wrong once you exclude that reasoning has its natural end in the knowledge of what's true.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- GistNoesis 6y agoThe funny thing is that this article is attacking Bulverism by describing it as a fallacy, thereby proving that Bulverism is a useful mode of thinking. I quite enjoy the Bulverism mindset. It's close to the bug seeker or pen-tester mindset. If the code seems complex you have to assume there is a mistake somewhere. You put yourself in the shoes of the one who write the code and try to imagine where some complex interactions could be badly anticipated. To exploit, you have to understand what went wrong. Seeking the truth probably can't be done in absolute. It's probably a better idea to hold a variety of beliefs and Bayes updating them with the information you gather, but at the same time keeping in mind that other people may have received different information.
- timwaagh 6y agoWhere you went wrong is by wanting a way to quickly and easily disqualify your opponents objections, so you took out this concept of bulverism instead of looking at whether there may be some thruth to it.
- dragonwriter 6y agoThe description there gets into assumed motive which is really irrelevant to the fallacy. The fallacy isn't in the assumption of error, but rather in attacking a characterization of the process by which the opponent arrived at their argument rather than the argument itself. That one might infer from someone engaging in that fallacy that they have also assumed the opponent wrong and sought an explanation is, well, a reasonable conclusion but to highlight that as the fundamental issue is, ironically, making the same mistake that is at issue with Bulverism: focussing on the process by which one gets to the argument rather than the flaws in the argument.
- tpoacher 6y agoIf you can get your hands on it, I highly recommend an old book by (Robert?) Thouless called: "Straight and crooked thinking", which identifies the form of several common disingenuous argumentation techniques, brings out the fallacy or dishonest rhetorical device employed, and suggestions on how to counter them (or at least spot them more easily).
- ochronus 6y agoI think the original problem with all of this is that we see arguments as fights that we need to win. This is wrong. We should argue to understand each other better and to come up with better ideas than we separately could. I've written a longer piece on how fallacies affect how we argue: https://ochronus.online/how-to-stop-winning-arguments/ https://ochronus.online/how-to-stop-winning-arguments/