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It's amazing people can't see it. Even when you see it, you still have to pay close attention not to fall into the trap. If you are arguing against a certain p

It's amazing people can't see it. Even when you see it, you still have to pay close attention not to fall into the trap. If you are arguing against a certain position, people tend to regard you as holding the opposite position and brandish you as 'on of them'. When you identify somewhat more with 'them', it is easy to forget you were holding middle ground and let yourself be pushed into that corner, causing you to actually take up a more extremist position than you were defending in the first place. Even after discovering the power this effect, it took me years to be constantly aware of it and resist it.

DanielBMarkham 17y ago
The problem is worse than that: I've become convinced that everybody does this to one degree or another. In other words, we're all in the trap. It's not like you have the ability to somehow "snap yourself out of it" or something. When cornered, most of us just rationalize. [Insert long discussion on the limits of predicate logic when applied to anything involving human language here] There are those in denial, sure. But based on my observations of myself and hundreds of others and dozens of groups (and a bit of reading about sales and social dynamics) it's just part of human nature. This is why good teams are so much stronger than the sum of their parts: since each person has a different cognitive blind spot, team members can look out for each other.
- CWuestefeld 17y ago
  Insert long discussion on the limits of predicate logic when applied to anything involving human language here This seems to be embedded in English, at least. If I say "I don't like chocolate", that's universally interpreted as "I dislike chocolate". But I only meant what I said: I do not possess an active enjoyment of chocolate. The listener just assumes "if yer not with us, yer agin us". It seems that taking sides is baked pretty deeply into our thought process.
  - jerf 17y ago
    In English, I would submit that "I don't like X" really does mean "I dislike X"; the usage is pervasive and nearly without exception. If you mean "I have no active enjoyment or dislike", you need to go more for a word like "ambivalent". I'm not convinced this is an English problem, or even a human problem, though. The problem is the low resolution being used; no matter how fine your stated opinion, if it is being viewed through a low resolution sensing device, it'll get aliased to one of the things the sensing device can actually perceive. (This is also the correct definition of "bias", though that would take a bit longer to describe.) It takes cognitive energy to increase resolution, so a lot of times we'll use "love/hate" as the only two options pretty casually, because it's easy and we don't have an infinite supply of cognitive energy. (A number of terms in that paragraph are sort of ill-defined but it would take a lot of time to really nail them down.)
    - CWuestefeld 17y ago
      I don't think your explanation is correct. There's only a small subset of English verbs that exhibit this behavior. For counter examples: if I were to say "I don't drive fast", you would likely not interpret that as "I drive slowly"; if I say "I'm not rich", you wouldn't hear "I'm poor". Yet in all these classes, we must be using some resolution. So your explanation only begs the question of "why, then, do some kinds of statements get treated to higher resolution than others?".

DanielBMarkham 17y ago

The problem is worse than that: I've become convinced that everybody does this to one degree or another. In other words, we're all in the trap. It's not like you have the ability to somehow "snap yourself out of it" or something. When cornered, most of us just rationalize. [Insert long discussion on the limits of predicate logic when applied to anything involving human language here] There are those in denial, sure. But based on my observations of myself and hundreds of others and dozens of groups (and a bit of reading about sales and social dynamics) it's just part of human nature. This is why good teams are so much stronger than the sum of their parts: since each person has a different cognitive blind spot, team members can look out for each other.

CWuestefeld 17y ago
Insert long discussion on the limits of predicate logic when applied to anything involving human language here This seems to be embedded in English, at least. If I say "I don't like chocolate", that's universally interpreted as "I dislike chocolate". But I only meant what I said: I do not possess an active enjoyment of chocolate. The listener just assumes "if yer not with us, yer agin us". It seems that taking sides is baked pretty deeply into our thought process.
- jerf 17y ago
  In English, I would submit that "I don't like X" really does mean "I dislike X"; the usage is pervasive and nearly without exception. If you mean "I have no active enjoyment or dislike", you need to go more for a word like "ambivalent". I'm not convinced this is an English problem, or even a human problem, though. The problem is the low resolution being used; no matter how fine your stated opinion, if it is being viewed through a low resolution sensing device, it'll get aliased to one of the things the sensing device can actually perceive. (This is also the correct definition of "bias", though that would take a bit longer to describe.) It takes cognitive energy to increase resolution, so a lot of times we'll use "love/hate" as the only two options pretty casually, because it's easy and we don't have an infinite supply of cognitive energy. (A number of terms in that paragraph are sort of ill-defined but it would take a lot of time to really nail them down.)
  - CWuestefeld 17y ago
    I don't think your explanation is correct. There's only a small subset of English verbs that exhibit this behavior. For counter examples: if I were to say "I don't drive fast", you would likely not interpret that as "I drive slowly"; if I say "I'm not rich", you wouldn't hear "I'm poor". Yet in all these classes, we must be using some resolution. So your explanation only begs the question of "why, then, do some kinds of statements get treated to higher resolution than others?".