If you haven’t read The Undoing Project, you should.
Adversarial Collaboration
21–30 of 224 posts
Re: Adversarial Collaboration
#22There's a simple trick that allows professionals in a given field to change their minds about something fundamental in their field - basically, it's the Feynman approach, where he trained himself to accept the data and analysis even if he didn't like the result, from an aesthetic viewpoint or whatever. A key strategy here is to have something else to put your ego and emotions into, such as a very subjective area like art, music, literature, etc.
Politics and religion might be trickier, as people tend to have external forcing factors (family and work opinions) that respond negatively to a fundamental change of some sort or other, up to being sent to prison for a decade for apostasy (see Saudi Arabia). In such situations, even if people do change their minds, they may not broadcast that change to anyone over fear of retaliation at family gatherings or in workplace environments. Even in cases where a particular member of a political party or religious group is shown to be criminally corrupt, many people will still embrace the politics or religion, on the basis that the individual in question is an outlier, not a representative sample - even after dozens of such examples are exposed. (Practically, this is why I've made it a rule to avoid political or religious discussions at work or at family gatherings, there's just not much value to be found there).
Re: Adversarial Collaboration
#23One of the most disappointing things that I have learned is that most people hold opinions in order to be part of some group. If someone is a member of a group, it is almost not worth listening to their arguments, especially arguments in support of views held strongly by that group. They are arguing in order to maintain their group membership, not to find the truth. It appears this is true of academic and scientific…
Yes. And if someone knows books or discussions about this topic I want the names. Its such a strong force in social structures. Stating your truth is rarely possible, you better sing along and talk down in smaller sub groups later.
Read anything Charlie Munger writes on the topic. He said something to the effect of “A year in which you fail to kill at least one of your cherished ideas is probably a failed year.”
Anyway, he has a lot to say on the subject and on incentives and human psychology broadly.
Re: Adversarial Collaboration
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think it was meant as an absolutist assertion.
Then it shouldn't have been titled as so.
The actual title is "Adversarial Collaboration: An EDGE Lecture by Daniel Kahneman". "People don't change their minds" is just the tagline, and he doesn't even actually say it in the lecture. The focus is much more on adversarial collaboration and why he thinks it is a positive thing for science.
...does that change your mind? ;)
Re: Adversarial Collaboration
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think it was meant as an absolutist assertion.
Then it shouldn't have been titled as so.
This is called a “rhetorical device” and you’d struggle to find a lengthy article that does not employ rhetorical devices. It’s a big part of how communication works.
Re: Adversarial Collaboration
#26> Let's start from the main domains where we know people don't change their minds—politics or religion. > In politics and in religion, the main driver is social. We believe what the people we love and trust believe. Except I've changed my mind on both, despite enormous pressure by people I love not to. Also this article seems to be self-defeating: if we don't change our minds, why attempt to convince us of that fact?…
I’m in the same boat as you, having changed my mind on many big, cherished ideas. Obviously, people change their minds.
Having some familiarity with Kahneman, my guess is he means this is a general, but not absolute rule. Sort of like “You can’t convince someone of a wrong if their paycheck depends on them seeing it as a right.” It’s a helpful general, but not absolute rule.
Re: Adversarial Collaboration
#27One of the most disappointing things that I have learned is that most people hold opinions in order to be part of some group. If someone is a member of a group, it is almost not worth listening to their arguments, especially arguments in support of views held strongly by that group. They are arguing in order to maintain their group membership, not to find the truth. It appears this is true of academic and scientific…
Yes. And if someone knows books or discussions about this topic I want the names. Its such a strong force in social structures. Stating your truth is rarely possible, you better sing along and talk down in smaller sub groups later.
This is a large chunk of "The Elephant in the Brain", though it's present as an example of the wider thesis. The overall topic of the book is that people basically always lie about their motivations, including to themselves. I highly recommend reading it.
Re: Adversarial Collaboration
#28One of the most disappointing things that I have learned is that most people hold opinions in order to be part of some group. If someone is a member of a group, it is almost not worth listening to their arguments, especially arguments in support of views held strongly by that group. They are arguing in order to maintain their group membership, not to find the truth. It appears this is true of academic and scientific…
Yes. And if someone knows books or discussions about this topic I want the names. Its such a strong force in social structures. Stating your truth is rarely possible, you better sing along and talk down in smaller sub groups later.
https://youtu.be/QWkWeZOQZI8
Jordan Peterson’s zebra story
Re: Adversarial Collaboration
#29This whole article reads like a cope for the fallout caused by Thinking Fast and Slow. I purposely keep my copy faced forward on the bookshelf as a reminder of the dangers of reading too much into anything published in the past 15 years.
I'm curious what you mean by fallout, are you referring to the replication crisis?
Re: Adversarial Collaboration
#30One of the most disappointing things that I have learned is that most people hold opinions in order to be part of some group. If someone is a member of a group, it is almost not worth listening to their arguments, especially arguments in support of views held strongly by that group. They are arguing in order to maintain their group membership, not to find the truth. It appears this is true of academic and scientific…
Yes. And if someone knows books or discussions about this topic I want the names. Its such a strong force in social structures. Stating your truth is rarely possible, you better sing along and talk down in smaller sub groups later.
Not really books but did some undergrad research on the topic.
http://stephendavies.org/writings/mitterederEtAl.pdf
We referred to it as "issue alignment" but its gone by other things, IIRC. Basically, in theory, one could end up supporting positions that would make 0 sense outside the context of "well, I support "X" cause "team green" supports "X."
I've seen it happen often online, a lot less IRL.