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

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

#131

Post by gambiting »

vintermann wrote: post #102
alsetmusic wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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). T…

"I think creationist's thinking is something like this: 1. If evolution is true, then God is not."

Serious question - is this US-specific line of thinking? Because I was raised in Poland, which is ultra-religious and if you aren't a catholic you will be ostracized from your community, and yet evolution was NEVER questioned in my education, and I went to private catholic schools. It's widely accepted by everyone, I think even the pope supports it. Obviously, it's accepted in the line of "evolution is real, but God probably helped a bit along the way", but still, I don't know anyone crazy enough to say evolution is not real. And yet the assumption I always hear on HN and reddit is that if you are religious you don't believe in evolution - how come?

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

#132

Post by 72deluxe »

Artoemius wrote: post #70
alsetmusic wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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…

If we replace "creationists" with "Apple users" in the first sentence, is this still acceptable comment here on HN?

Personally I think the God Delusion by Dawkins is as far from my perspective as could be possible, so I would not recommend it as a book for people to understand "religious people" (as if you could pigeon hole people like that!). Blanket stereotyping forgets about individuals.

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

#133

Post by jondubois »

I think it's not something you can fake. You have to genuinely understand and value the other persons's opinion.

Also, for this to work in the long term, you have to allow yourself to lose the argument from time to time.

Sometimes you have to fold on purpose (even if you think your idea is better). Of course you have to do so strategically - You have to fold arguments when the consequence isn't very important - That gives you the ammunition to be very firm in your stance when the decision is important.

You don't want to be perceived like a 'cunning mule'.

I had a boss who used this trick of agreeing first and then disagreeing but they did it for EVERY argument - After spending a few months with this person, you notice the pattern. If someone wins every argument, it becomes noticeable and the trick doesn't work anymore - The workplace environment becomes tense.

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

#134

Post by mayank10j »

vintermann wrote: post #102
alsetmusic wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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). T…

The point of article is if you start any discussion with outright declaring someone wrong, there is no chance of you changing their thoughts. So you are right we have to start by conceding some points. Like in any negotiation you win by little bit of give and take.

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

#135

Post by lordnacho »

A related question that I've been grappling with is how do you tell someone that they don't understand something, and that they really need to work a lot harder to do so? That an attitude change is required in order to get to where the actual experts are.

- Extra points if you can do this without sounding patronising.

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

#136

Post by crististm »

Artoemius wrote: post #70
alsetmusic wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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…

There is a particular video of Feynman about scientific method where he describes the dual slit experiment. He notes that the "scientific method" should have been able to reproduce exactly where the electrons will go, in different experiments. The experiments are not reproducible in that sense, but only "statistically" which is a completely different thing. Feynman beliefs are irrelevant.

There is also the argument that if you yourself do not accept evidence that creationists do, that does not mean that evidence is not there.

You might also want to read/see Hamming about science and how mathematics is not exactly free from presuppositions.

And there is also the Goldbach conjecture where you find that a system generates facts about itself that can be demonstrated only by going outside the system - ad infinitum.

I did not read the paper you mentioned but God does not exactly work like people regularly assume, that is "you pray and God will do you good".

The idiot argument is convenient but weak. It just gives a quick way to dismiss counter arguments

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

#137

Post by combatentropy »

Scarblac wrote: post #107
NhanH wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No, but what if you shook a bucket of marbles and out came the Statue of David?

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

#138

Post by coldtea »

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…

>I have come into many conversations with intelligent people who somehow place faith in front of evidence.

Which can be a very intelligent and rational thing to do. It all depends on the end goal ("discover how the world actually works" vs "calm your soul through belief in a higher power", etc.).

People can do very stupid things (dangerous to them, to the detriment of their health, social relations, etc) in pursuit of evidence. And very smart things based on faith.

Again, it depends on the end goal.

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

#139

Post by 98Windows »

GarvielLoken wrote: post #99

What did I just read? Some unheard of psychologist distorted and dumbified a perfectly understandable passage from the famous Pascal. And because he, as a psychologist, did that; the statement is now considered truth and valid "for realz". Am I getting this right? Scientist are really our times high priests.

I think it resonates because we've all seen both methods in action, and the proposed one (at least for me) has always lead to a better outcome.

The psychologist has also most likely seen even more examples in all the literature he has read and so can add a bit more weight to the argument.

What would convince you of the hypothesis? A quantitative study?

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

#140

Post by coldtea »

bonoboTP wrote: post #115
vintermann wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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). T…

It's one of the usual arguments for ignoring the "simulation argument". I think there's a bigger problem with the religious version that you presented. Namely, for any religion/concept of God, you can imagine another one that wants you to do opposite things. How do you know which God's existence to assume? You're back to trying to find evidence for one God against another God. In practice, this would probably also pr…

>Namely, for any religion/concept of God, you can imagine another one that wants you to do opposite things. How do you know which God's existence to assume?

In some religions, the relation with God is a tangible and personal one. God "speaks to you" so to speak.

So you just "know" -- you're not starting from evaluating random entities against each other as if they're all equal.

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