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The snippet just before your quote was: > then the more effective position is to (emphasis added) I agree with you that people have the right to be upset, to

by ohazi 6y ago

The snippet just before your quote was: > then the more effective position is to (emphasis added) I agree with you that people have the right to be upset, to moralize, etc. My insinuation was that it isn't effective as public policy, which is the extra step that moralizing conservatives seem eager to take. I'm fine if they want to sit in the corner and whine, but if they're going to use this whining to enact policies that don't work, and that haven't worked despite decades of trying, then I'm going to push back, and yes, I'm going to be a little insulting, especially seeing as they have no problem berating the people that they don't approve of. People who insist on maintaining a delusion despite evidence that it doesn't work, and despite examples of other policies in other places that produce better results annoy me. Why should I have to pay for the externalities of their stupid opinions when I'm not the one the one having them? (See, it sounds just as ridiculous from the other side)

haberman 6y ago
How much evidence is there that insulting others is an effective way to get them to change their opinions and support the policies you favor? If the basis of your annoyance is ineffectiveness, then I would expect you to feel a lot of annoyance at people who insult others and call them stupid as a strategy for changing their behavior.
- jfengel 6y ago
  Turning that question around: do you have any evidence that it's not effective? Do you have evidence of another argumentation style that's more effective? I'm hard pressed to design a good, reproducible experiment on the question one way or the other.
  - haberman 6y ago
    I won't pretend to be familiar with the academic literature, but here is one paper I found: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0022103167900017 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/002210... > The field situation consisted of a park-bench discussion of a topical social issue, arranged by a public-opinion interviewer. Prepared experimental variations were introduced by one of the discussion partners, a confederate of the interviewer. In the critical variation, the confederate insulted the subject during discussion. In other variations, he tried to persuade but did not insult, or else simply gave certain arguments without intent to persuade. Attitude-change results supported the hypothesis of negative change in the insult condition. Eleanor Gordon-Smith spent two years interviewing people who changed their minds, and suggests this: > The strategy is this: Ask where people’s beliefs come from as well as what they actually believe. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-the-difficult-secret-to-getting-people-to-change-their-minds-2019-10-22 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-the-difficult-secr...
    - jfengel 6y ago
      Nifty that somebody at least tried! The paper has been cited only about 40 times in the half-century since it was written, but I found one recent interesting citation: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327127198_The_Montagu_Principle_Incivility_Decreases_Politicians'_Public_Approval_Even_With_Their_Political_Base https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327127198_The_Monta... Uncivil remarks uniquely diminished the speaker’s reputation, and had little impact on the reputation of the targets of the attack, the perceived winner of the verbal exchange, the reputation of the speaker’s party, or the sense that the country is moving in the right direction. Incivility made the speaker seem less warm and did less to affect perceptions of dominance or honesty. This warmth deficit explained the reputational costs of incivility. That's from 2018 and specifically takes recent American politics into account. I'm skeptical of the study for a variety of reasons, mostly coming down to the issue of what people tell researchers vs what they actually do. But it's good to know that somebody is at least trying.
- ohazi 6y ago
  You raise a good point... essentially the same point I made earlier -- insulting people is as bad a strategy for changing behavior as yelling at them. If I were trying to get moralizing conservatives to agree with me, then not insulting them would indeed be the first part of an effective strategy. However, I'm not trying to change minds, because that is also fruitless. For the same reason that trying to convince ordinary people that their promiscuous lifestyles are bad won't actually change their behavior, trying to convince moralizing conservatives that their entire worldview is wrong isn't going to change their perspective. This kind of person is not trying to achieve an effective outcome through policy, they're trying to use policy as a weapon against people they don't like. Debating the effectiveness of various policy options won't move that particular needle, so why bother?
umvi 6y ago
> I'm fine if they want to sit in the corner and whine, but if they're going to use this whining to enact policies that don't work despite decades of trying, then I'm going to push back, and yes, I'm going to be a little insulting This is a little problematic for me. You are basically saying people have a right to whine, but not a right to try to remedy the situation causing their whining. Say you live in a fictional country X. Country X has a problem called "Raw Water Fever" where people get these massive chronic migraines because they take untreated stream water and squirt it up their butts with a baster (this is called "basting" - and gives a nice euphoric effect due to some yet-undetermined combination of native bacteria in the water reacting with gut bacteria). Previous efforts to get people in country X to use treated water fail because they complain the treated water doesn't produce any euphoria. The country also tried outright banning basting, and that was also ineffective. So, the government decides that the right solution to this problem is to reach into your wallet to subsidize free per-use testing kits for the whole country. These testing kits would be able to tell you whether the water you are about to squirt up your butt has the Raw Water Fever bacteria present. If you protest, the government says that while are allowed to whine about them reaching into your wallet, that's about all you are allowed to do because they already attempted previously to ban basting and it was ineffective. Are you cool with this, or would it leave a bad taste in your mouth? Now, say that basting is not country X's only source of problems, it has lots of other problems stemming from behaviors you don't partake in. The government wants to reach into your wallet for each of those problems too. How are you feeling at this point? Are you glad to give up your hard earned money to help citizens of country X continue their favorite behaviors safely? Or does it leave a bad taste in your mouth and make you want to move to a different country where the citizens' behaviors align more with your own?
- vict7 6y ago
  Sex is something hardwired into people. Basting in this example? Not so much. Like just replace the word basting with the word sex in your example. "The government tried outright banning sex"--sounds pretty ludicrous! Has any government even tried such a thing in all of history? Personally, I welcome the prospect of my tax dollars being used to help people rather than kill and maim them. The amount each individual has to contribute for such a thing is likely incredibly low as well.

by ohazi 6y ago

haberman 6y ago

How much evidence is there that insulting others is an effective way to get them to change their opinions and support the policies you favor? If the basis of your annoyance is ineffectiveness, then I would expect you to feel a lot of annoyance at people who insult others and call them stupid as a strategy for changing their behavior.

jfengel 6y ago
Turning that question around: do you have any evidence that it's not effective? Do you have evidence of another argumentation style that's more effective? I'm hard pressed to design a good, reproducible experiment on the question one way or the other.
- haberman 6y ago
  I won't pretend to be familiar with the academic literature, but here is one paper I found: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0022103167900017 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/002210... > The field situation consisted of a park-bench discussion of a topical social issue, arranged by a public-opinion interviewer. Prepared experimental variations were introduced by one of the discussion partners, a confederate of the interviewer. In the critical variation, the confederate insulted the subject during discussion. In other variations, he tried to persuade but did not insult, or else simply gave certain arguments without intent to persuade. Attitude-change results supported the hypothesis of negative change in the insult condition. Eleanor Gordon-Smith spent two years interviewing people who changed their minds, and suggests this: > The strategy is this: Ask where people’s beliefs come from as well as what they actually believe. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-the-difficult-secret-to-getting-people-to-change-their-minds-2019-10-22 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-the-difficult-secr...
  - jfengel 6y ago
    Nifty that somebody at least tried! The paper has been cited only about 40 times in the half-century since it was written, but I found one recent interesting citation: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327127198_The_Montagu_Principle_Incivility_Decreases_Politicians'_Public_Approval_Even_With_Their_Political_Base https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327127198_The_Monta... Uncivil remarks uniquely diminished the speaker’s reputation, and had little impact on the reputation of the targets of the attack, the perceived winner of the verbal exchange, the reputation of the speaker’s party, or the sense that the country is moving in the right direction. Incivility made the speaker seem less warm and did less to affect perceptions of dominance or honesty. This warmth deficit explained the reputational costs of incivility. That's from 2018 and specifically takes recent American politics into account. I'm skeptical of the study for a variety of reasons, mostly coming down to the issue of what people tell researchers vs what they actually do. But it's good to know that somebody is at least trying.
ohazi 6y ago
You raise a good point... essentially the same point I made earlier -- insulting people is as bad a strategy for changing behavior as yelling at them. If I were trying to get moralizing conservatives to agree with me, then not insulting them would indeed be the first part of an effective strategy. However, I'm not trying to change minds, because that is also fruitless. For the same reason that trying to convince ordinary people that their promiscuous lifestyles are bad won't actually change their behavior, trying to convince moralizing conservatives that their entire worldview is wrong isn't going to change their perspective. This kind of person is not trying to achieve an effective outcome through policy, they're trying to use policy as a weapon against people they don't like. Debating the effectiveness of various policy options won't move that particular needle, so why bother?

umvi 6y ago

> I'm fine if they want to sit in the corner and whine, but if they're going to use this whining to enact policies that don't work despite decades of trying, then I'm going to push back, and yes, I'm going to be a little insulting This is a little problematic for me. You are basically saying people have a right to whine, but not a right to try to remedy the situation causing their whining. Say you live in a fictional country X. Country X has a problem called "Raw Water Fever" where people get these massive chronic migraines because they take untreated stream water and squirt it up their butts with a baster (this is called "basting" - and gives a nice euphoric effect due to some yet-undetermined combination of native bacteria in the water reacting with gut bacteria). Previous efforts to get people in country X to use treated water fail because they complain the treated water doesn't produce any euphoria. The country also tried outright banning basting, and that was also ineffective. So, the government decides that the right solution to this problem is to reach into your wallet to subsidize free per-use testing kits for the whole country. These testing kits would be able to tell you whether the water you are about to squirt up your butt has the Raw Water Fever bacteria present. If you protest, the government says that while are allowed to whine about them reaching into your wallet, that's about all you are allowed to do because they already attempted previously to ban basting and it was ineffective. Are you cool with this, or would it leave a bad taste in your mouth? Now, say that basting is not country X's only source of problems, it has lots of other problems stemming from behaviors you don't partake in. The government wants to reach into your wallet for each of those problems too. How are you feeling at this point? Are you glad to give up your hard earned money to help citizens of country X continue their favorite behaviors safely? Or does it leave a bad taste in your mouth and make you want to move to a different country where the citizens' behaviors align more with your own?

vict7 6y ago
Sex is something hardwired into people. Basting in this example? Not so much. Like just replace the word basting with the word sex in your example. "The government tried outright banning sex"--sounds pretty ludicrous! Has any government even tried such a thing in all of history? Personally, I welcome the prospect of my tax dollars being used to help people rather than kill and maim them. The amount each individual has to contribute for such a thing is likely incredibly low as well.