3 ms·

Yep. I had this conversation with my daughter the other day. She was like "But ... they just think the same thing about what you're saying". I was like "Totally

by dools 5y ago

Yep. I had this conversation with my daughter the other day. She was like "But ... they just think the same thing about what you're saying". I was like "Totally, the only difference is that I'm right, and they're wrong". She was like "how do you know?". That lead to a much longer session of reviewing types of biases and fallacies, the scientific method and various other critical thinking tools I've developed over the years, but whoever is on the "other side" is having the same conversation with their kids, and showing them tools and resources they've developed over the years to decide what information to trust and, to the kid, it's just as convincing!! This was one of the videos we looked at, I think it's totally on point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvk2PQNcg8w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvk2PQNcg8w

jimkleiber 5y ago
Lol exactly. This is why I try to remind myself to pay attention to how I and others may be feeling underneath, and have even dedicated my professional life to it, because I have honed very strong rationalizing skills. I find often the people who disagree with me the strongest can also go toe-to-toe with me in finding stories and evidence that confirms our beliefs and if I remember (and have the courage), I try to go deeper to talk about how I'm feeling afraid of this, this, and this, angry about this and this, ashamed of this, and so on, and try to imagine how they might be feeling across those contexts, and more often than not, realize we're both two humans trying our best. But goodness I can avoid going there sometimes, and if I do get there, it can be after a long long discussion with someone, and sometimes one or both of us gives up before we get to that point.
- prox 5y ago
  What I find rampant these days is the rather extreme way of thinking “If you are not with me, you are against me.” And I think social media amplifies this, not only by algorithms, but also because text doesn’t provide good context (intonation, stance, emotional transference) , I mean we literally read other people’s thought in our own head, also those whose thoughts we are not congruent with. HNs rules are great in this sense, to continuously seek out curious conversations instead of the rather solipsist tendency to soapbox. Now with politics and politicians this a much harder pill to swallow, because their literal job these days is to stand on a soapbox, and we as the public have gotten rather used to it, and voting in those who do the soapbox act the best. This is also because in general it’s hard to choose politicians beyond the local who we can relate to, and be invested in beyond retoric.
  - nradov 5y ago
    “The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally – not a 20 percent traitor.” — Ronald Reagan
  - jimkleiber 5y ago
    I agree that much of the design of social media can contribute to this. As much as I love this: > HNs rules are great in this sense, to continuously seek out curious conversations instead of the rather solipsist tendency to soapbox. I also just thought how HN may contribute to this through design. I'm replying to your post right now and I can only see your post on my screen. While I can click "parent" in the menu to see the chain of replies or "context" to see your post in the context of all the replies, I'm not able to see both a reply box and the context before your post on the same page. So, it requires me to either keep in working memory what the parent said, and what the grandparent said and great grandparent, or maybe to have a multitabbed approach. Conversely, something like Discourse allows me to scroll up and down to see the previous posts while maintaining a compose window open. Maybe this isn't the place for such a comment, I guess I just felt frustrated in another thread and worried I'd give a reply that either repeated what someone said before or didn't encapsulate the conversation. I think these little details really matter in communication and how we often overlook them or discount them.
    - prox 5y ago
      I agree, what seem like small design decisions can have great impact. I wonder if studies are being done on this. Something like About Face on interaction design, but then specifically on effective communication and discourse.
      - jimkleiber 5y ago
        Ah, I imagine there are, as I remember back in 2006 or so at college, people started studying impacts of chats and such, however, I'm not specifically familiar with any research on it. If you come across it, I'd love to hear of it! Or if you do research and want some ideas / wanna partner on something, I'm also open to that. I don't have professional research background yet have worked on emotions and communications for almost 10 years now, and studied intercultural communication in college after switching from electrical engineering, so I'm quite fascinated by the intersection of computer-mediated communication and how it impacts us emotionally. edit: Also, I'm not sure what you meant by "About Face," will you explain it more? edit2: I think you meant this: https://www.invisionapp.com/inside-design/about-face-essentials-interaction-design/ https://www.invisionapp.com/inside-design/about-face-essenti...
hutzlibu 5y ago
"but whoever is on the "other side" is having the same conversation with their kids, and showing them tools and resources they've developed over the years to decide what information to trust and, to the kid, it's just as convincing!!" I wish. And sometimes they do. But there are lots and lots of people who have various religious/ideological dogmas. They do not show their kid the scientific method - they preach their truth to them. Because they feel they are right.
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  It has helped me to realize that most of politics is preference, and preference rarely need be informed by the scientific method, especially when most of our daily choices are preference based. E.g. who do I love, what should I wear/watch/eat, where should I spend my money, etc. Our culture has now taught a few generations that people get to decide their own truth, and they conflate preference for truth, and now we are witnessing what this means…
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    "E.g. who do I love, what should I wear/watch/eat, where should I spend my money, etc." Ok, my feelings of love are not guided by a scientific method (except analyzing and reflect on what I feel). But by deciding what to wear, eat, watch etc. I do apply the scientific method. Meaning I test out systematically, what works best for me. And I try to teach this to my children.
    - mensetmanusman 5y ago
      The scientific method applied to preferences is probably not the scientific method (in regards to control experiments (unless you have clones and access to the multi verse:)))
      - hutzlibu 5y ago
        The very basic idea of the scientific method as I learned it, is: testing ideas by experiment. If it looks cold outside, but not too cold - I have the idea that a medium warm jacket of mine is enough. And then outside I see if it was adequate or not and next time under similar conditions I change accordingly, or go back to the house that instant. Sounds like common sense and it is. But not everyone is doing it. I seriously got shocked by people telling me, they walk in shoes hurting them, but they did so because of style. This sounds like insanity to me, even though I know in their specific setting it makes some sense - as style is important in their circles. But that just means those circles are far from science and rationality, if it leads to people wearing clothes not adequate for the weather and being cold and uncomfortable.
dtech 5y ago
This is basically a less-polished exposition of GGP Grey's excellent video [1], which he also mentions in the talk [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc
- teddyh 5y ago
  See also The Toxoplasma Of Rage: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage... and You're not going to believe what I'm about to tell you: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe

by dools 5y ago

jimkleiber 5y ago

Lol exactly. This is why I try to remind myself to pay attention to how I and others may be feeling underneath, and have even dedicated my professional life to it, because I have honed very strong rationalizing skills. I find often the people who disagree with me the strongest can also go toe-to-toe with me in finding stories and evidence that confirms our beliefs and if I remember (and have the courage), I try to go deeper to talk about how I'm feeling afraid of this, this, and this, angry about this and this, ashamed of this, and so on, and try to imagine how they might be feeling across those contexts, and more often than not, realize we're both two humans trying our best. But goodness I can avoid going there sometimes, and if I do get there, it can be after a long long discussion with someone, and sometimes one or both of us gives up before we get to that point.

prox 5y ago
What I find rampant these days is the rather extreme way of thinking “If you are not with me, you are against me.” And I think social media amplifies this, not only by algorithms, but also because text doesn’t provide good context (intonation, stance, emotional transference) , I mean we literally read other people’s thought in our own head, also those whose thoughts we are not congruent with. HNs rules are great in this sense, to continuously seek out curious conversations instead of the rather solipsist tendency to soapbox. Now with politics and politicians this a much harder pill to swallow, because their literal job these days is to stand on a soapbox, and we as the public have gotten rather used to it, and voting in those who do the soapbox act the best. This is also because in general it’s hard to choose politicians beyond the local who we can relate to, and be invested in beyond retoric.
- nradov 5y ago
  “The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally – not a 20 percent traitor.” — Ronald Reagan
- jimkleiber 5y ago
  I agree that much of the design of social media can contribute to this. As much as I love this: > HNs rules are great in this sense, to continuously seek out curious conversations instead of the rather solipsist tendency to soapbox. I also just thought how HN may contribute to this through design. I'm replying to your post right now and I can only see your post on my screen. While I can click "parent" in the menu to see the chain of replies or "context" to see your post in the context of all the replies, I'm not able to see both a reply box and the context before your post on the same page. So, it requires me to either keep in working memory what the parent said, and what the grandparent said and great grandparent, or maybe to have a multitabbed approach. Conversely, something like Discourse allows me to scroll up and down to see the previous posts while maintaining a compose window open. Maybe this isn't the place for such a comment, I guess I just felt frustrated in another thread and worried I'd give a reply that either repeated what someone said before or didn't encapsulate the conversation. I think these little details really matter in communication and how we often overlook them or discount them.
  - prox 5y ago
    I agree, what seem like small design decisions can have great impact. I wonder if studies are being done on this. Something like About Face on interaction design, but then specifically on effective communication and discourse.
    - jimkleiber 5y ago
      Ah, I imagine there are, as I remember back in 2006 or so at college, people started studying impacts of chats and such, however, I'm not specifically familiar with any research on it. If you come across it, I'd love to hear of it! Or if you do research and want some ideas / wanna partner on something, I'm also open to that. I don't have professional research background yet have worked on emotions and communications for almost 10 years now, and studied intercultural communication in college after switching from electrical engineering, so I'm quite fascinated by the intersection of computer-mediated communication and how it impacts us emotionally. edit: Also, I'm not sure what you meant by "About Face," will you explain it more? edit2: I think you meant this: https://www.invisionapp.com/inside-design/about-face-essentials-interaction-design/ https://www.invisionapp.com/inside-design/about-face-essenti...

hutzlibu 5y ago

"but whoever is on the "other side" is having the same conversation with their kids, and showing them tools and resources they've developed over the years to decide what information to trust and, to the kid, it's just as convincing!!" I wish. And sometimes they do. But there are lots and lots of people who have various religious/ideological dogmas. They do not show their kid the scientific method - they preach their truth to them. Because they feel they are right.

mensetmanusman 5y ago
It has helped me to realize that most of politics is preference, and preference rarely need be informed by the scientific method, especially when most of our daily choices are preference based. E.g. who do I love, what should I wear/watch/eat, where should I spend my money, etc. Our culture has now taught a few generations that people get to decide their own truth, and they conflate preference for truth, and now we are witnessing what this means…
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  "E.g. who do I love, what should I wear/watch/eat, where should I spend my money, etc." Ok, my feelings of love are not guided by a scientific method (except analyzing and reflect on what I feel). But by deciding what to wear, eat, watch etc. I do apply the scientific method. Meaning I test out systematically, what works best for me. And I try to teach this to my children.
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    The scientific method applied to preferences is probably not the scientific method (in regards to control experiments (unless you have clones and access to the multi verse:)))
    - hutzlibu 5y ago
      The very basic idea of the scientific method as I learned it, is: testing ideas by experiment. If it looks cold outside, but not too cold - I have the idea that a medium warm jacket of mine is enough. And then outside I see if it was adequate or not and next time under similar conditions I change accordingly, or go back to the house that instant. Sounds like common sense and it is. But not everyone is doing it. I seriously got shocked by people telling me, they walk in shoes hurting them, but they did so because of style. This sounds like insanity to me, even though I know in their specific setting it makes some sense - as style is important in their circles. But that just means those circles are far from science and rationality, if it leads to people wearing clothes not adequate for the weather and being cold and uncomfortable.

dtech 5y ago

This is basically a less-polished exposition of GGP Grey's excellent video [1], which he also mentions in the talk [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc

teddyh 5y ago
See also The Toxoplasma Of Rage: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage... and You're not going to believe what I'm about to tell you: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe