To tell someone they're wrong, first tell them how they're right • Hacker News Board

Re: To tell someone they're wrong, first tell them how they're right

#101

Post by hcarvalhoalves » Tue, Sep 13, 2016, 7:21 AM UTC

ehnto wrote: post #51

Retra wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've learned plenty (and changed my mind many times) from having people simply tell me that I'm wrong.

I have found programmers to be far more receptive to blunt criticism than my other non-programmer friends. I think it's just a frame of mind to accept that will be wrong a lot and that is fine. It would take a whole lot of cognitive dissonance to get through a decent sized software project and imagine it is all flawless or couldn't be even slightly better in some way.

> I have found programmers to be far more receptive to blunt criticism than my other non-programmer friends.

The work of a programmer is to sit in front of a soulless machine that has no inhibition in telling the programmer made a mistake on his code at regular intervals.

You need to be pain intolerant to be a programmer, while in other roles pain avoidance is the norm.

Re: To tell someone they're wrong, first tell them how they're right

#102

Post by vintermann » Tue, Sep 13, 2016, 7:22 AM UTC

alsetmusic wrote: post #65

rayiner wrote: post #16

Learning how to do this is an essential skill. Most people are not idiots. If they disagree with you, it's probably not because they are being irrational, but because they're starting from a different premise, making different assumptions, or assigning different values to different aspects of the problem. Only when you understand their argument well enough to articulate it in your own words can you effectively presen…

> Only when you understand their argument... I couldn't agree more. As a lifelong believer in science, raised in the Midwest among creationists, I have come into many conversations with intelligent people who somehow place faith in front of evidence. It's demoralizing to realize the frequency that this phenomenon occurs. I've recently scheduled a trip to the Creation Museum to observe the message at its core (half fo…

Imagine that there's a meteor heading towards earth. All evidence suggests that it will hit in three days, and wipe out all multicellular life - it's a big one.

What do you do? How do you live your life your last three days?

One school of thought says, disregard the evidence. Assert, against it all, that the meteor is going to miss. Or if that's hard, decide to trust someone who asserts it (this is usually easier).

This is arguably rational. If you're wrong, it won't matter, and you'll probably feel less awful your last three days.

I think creationist's thinking is something like this:

1. If evolution is true, then God is not. 2 Without a creator's purpose, existence is meaningless. 3. If existence is meaningless, you might as well assume it has a meaning, (because that's no less meaningless than anything else!).

To argue against a creationist, it's probably best - or at least, most efficient - to argue against the first stage in that chain of reasoning. If you want to argue against all theists, you can argue against the second.

If you want to argue against all non-nihilists, I guess you can argue against the third, but that is ... literally pointless either way.

So the third point is a good thing to concede in arguments with creationists (and theists, if you insist).

Re: To tell someone they're wrong, first tell them how they're right

#103

Post by vog » Tue, Sep 13, 2016, 7:28 AM UTC

Was this really confirmed just know in psychology?

At least here in Germany this is ubiquitous. "Start criticism with the positive" is taught everywhere from elementary school to university, from self-help groups to management courses. This is so normal that it is usually not attributed to Pascal, but to common-sense psychology and good social behaviour in general.

I alway thought this was well-established in science for decades - not something we verified just now.

Re: To tell someone they're wrong, first tell them how they're right

#104

Post by AstralStorm » Tue, Sep 13, 2016, 7:29 AM UTC

NhanH wrote: post #93

Artoemius wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, most people are indeed not idiots, but that doesn't apply to creationists. It's one thing to go to a church (there even might be purely social reasons), and it's another thing to discard overwhelming scientific evidence and believe something based on the principle of not needing any evidence at all. I become especially sad when I think of the confused minds of the poor children of these people. On the topic, I…

One of the arguments for evolution involves some very non-trivial calculation on probability of whether it could result in the world we're in right now (not the maths itself, but the sequence of reasoning). It has been a while since I read Dawkin's books, but I don't think the books cover those kind of arguments. I think there are quite a bit of writing on lesswrong on the topic. I've met creationists that believed i…

The probabilities cannot be calculated as we do not have interstellar travel required to inspect worlds that evolve separately from our own. So, that is no argument, just speculation. Same problem as with Drake's equitation and aliens.

A stronger argument is that we have managed to create building blocks of life from basic physics and chemistry. No superpowers required for that.

At least we can see how the stars begin, change and die.

Re: To tell someone they're wrong, first tell them how they're right

#105

Post by marklgr » Tue, Sep 13, 2016, 7:31 AM UTC

johngalt wrote: post #25

rayiner wrote: post #16

Learning how to do this is an essential skill. Most people are not idiots. If they disagree with you, it's probably not because they are being irrational, but because they're starting from a different premise, making different assumptions, or assigning different values to different aspects of the problem. Only when you understand their argument well enough to articulate it in your own words can you effectively presen…

Someone could also disagree with me because they are correct and I am in error. They may have knowledge or perspective that I lack. My first step is to try and find something they know that I don't before crafting persuasive arguments. Maximize for total knowledge not winning arguments.

The problem is that many people arguing think they are doing just that, going for total knowledge and not seeking to win arguments. It just happens that they believe they have better understood the point being discussed, and it is their duty to convince the other party, for the sake of knowledge.

Re: To tell someone they're wrong, first tell them how they're right

#106

Post by Ind007 » Tue, Sep 13, 2016, 7:34 AM UTC

There is a recent article on real life incident practicing the same.

http://urbanconfessional.org/blog/howtodisagree

Re: To tell someone they're wrong, first tell them how they're right

#107

Post by Scarblac » Tue, Sep 13, 2016, 7:34 AM UTC

NhanH wrote: post #93

Artoemius wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, most people are indeed not idiots, but that doesn't apply to creationists. It's one thing to go to a church (there even might be purely social reasons), and it's another thing to discard overwhelming scientific evidence and believe something based on the principle of not needing any evidence at all. I become especially sad when I think of the confused minds of the poor children of these people. On the topic, I…

One of the arguments for evolution involves some very non-trivial calculation on probability of whether it could result in the world we're in right now (not the maths itself, but the sequence of reasoning). It has been a while since I read Dawkin's books, but I don't think the books cover those kind of arguments. I think there are quite a bit of writing on lesswrong on the topic. I've met creationists that believed i…

If you shake a bucket of all kinds of different marbles for five minutes and then record the exact configuration they end up in, you'll find it was extremely unlikely that they'd end up in exactly that configuration.

Is that an argument for the current state of the marbles being created from nothing?

Re: To tell someone they're wrong, first tell them how they're right

#108

Post by robryk » Tue, Sep 13, 2016, 7:34 AM UTC

Xcelerate wrote: post #53

It would be incredibly difficult, but I've always wished we could develop a (formal) axiomatic system of morality, such that with independent axioms that each person takes as true by default, all of that person's positions on the major issues would be immediately derivable from the axioms and would essentially be indisputable. Heated emotional debates that last for hours would instead turn into each party running a s…

This assumes that moral systems that people have are selfconsistent. It's really hard to have a selfconsistent moral system.

Re: To tell someone they're wrong, first tell them how they're right

#109

Post by Scarblac » Tue, Sep 13, 2016, 7:36 AM UTC

civilian wrote: post #76

Artoemius wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, most people are indeed not idiots, but that doesn't apply to creationists. It's one thing to go to a church (there even might be purely social reasons), and it's another thing to discard overwhelming scientific evidence and believe something based on the principle of not needing any evidence at all. I become especially sad when I think of the confused minds of the poor children of these people. On the topic, I…

You're right that creationists are pretty deep into idiot territory. But alsetmusic's fact-finding mission could still be useful! Right now he doesn't even know where to start on how to construct an argument, because he doesn't know what creationists have been told. There are probably many pieces of evidence in the creationist museum that are valid "holes" in science, that we're still looking to fill. He'd be able to…

If a new fossil is found that fills one of those gaps, the museum will then proudly claim there are now TWO gaps there!

Re: To tell someone they're wrong, first tell them how they're right

#110

Post by flukus » Tue, Sep 13, 2016, 7:38 AM UTC

NhanH wrote: post #93

Artoemius wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, most people are indeed not idiots, but that doesn't apply to creationists. It's one thing to go to a church (there even might be purely social reasons), and it's another thing to discard overwhelming scientific evidence and believe something based on the principle of not needing any evidence at all. I become especially sad when I think of the confused minds of the poor children of these people. On the topic, I…

One of the arguments for evolution involves some very non-trivial calculation on probability of whether it could result in the world we're in right now (not the maths itself, but the sequence of reasoning). It has been a while since I read Dawkin's books, but I don't think the books cover those kind of arguments. I think there are quite a bit of writing on lesswrong on the topic. I've met creationists that believed i…

> I've met creationists that believed in micro evolution: microbe can evolve to get certain resistance. But not the macro one, that is natural selection can result in human as we are right now. I was absolutely not able to justify the probability that it can happen.

At that point they aren't arguing against evolution so much as they are cosmology, geology, physics etc. The only difference between micro/macro evolution is the timescales involved and the timescale is what they don't accept.