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Adversarial Collaboration

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Re: Adversarial Collaboration

#171

Post by bombcar »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #101

> The power of reasons is an illusion. The belief will not change when the reasons are defeated. The causality is reversed. People believe the reasons because they believe in the conclusion. This is one of my pet peeves with even casual conversation. Someone goes "I don't like X, because Y." You point out Y is false, and the response is "Well, I still don't like X". It used to annoy me because wanted to help people n…

Because it's predictable you can use that. You just have to use a different form of communication than the "scientific one".

Don't ask why do you not like X because that will get false reasons. Instead, ask how X affects them, how it makes them feel, etc.

But this is more difficult and basically boils down to "become their friend and know them as a person".

Re: Adversarial Collaboration

#172

Post by bombcar »

ramraj07 wrote: post #49
ARandomerDude wrote: post #2

> 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?…

You changed your mind yourself. Not because someone pleaded you to.

Isn't a big point of the whole discussion that you may change your mind because you changed the group you associate with?

Re: Adversarial Collaboration

#173

Post by bombcar »

gampleman wrote: post #111

At least in religion I think the idea that reasons follow belief rather than precede it is quite acknowledged. I think that's part of what in Christianity it meant when it says that faith is a gift of God. In my own conversion I felt it very intensely - my belief came over me in a sudden, external (or miraculous) way. I then spent 6 months learning everything there was to learn about my new found faith to placate my…

In my entire life I've only met one person who was actually convinced by the religious arguments; everyone else dug into them after a similar event. And many people can go wildly too far and try to ascribe everything to it.

To take the love example, the "tricks of the trade" you see bandied about sometimes do NOT work to "make someone love you" but they can help if you have people who have already decided they love each other.

Re: Adversarial Collaboration

#174

Post by bombcar »

agumonkey wrote: post #162
bombcar wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will find this again and again in the business world, and you can use it to your advantage. If you're arguing for a course of action, answer the objections well and then drop it . Often the person arguing against you ( especially if they're "the boss") will come back a few days later and present it as basically their idea. People get emotionally tied to what they came up with, and it can take a few nights to disc…

People are so strange. They don't see the waste and friction due to these reflexes :) But about the 'drop' aspect, I think there's a reflex for other to argue someone to infinity if it become a belief confrontation, a kind of domination to impose their view. But if the other party drops the fight, it kills that aspect and the other person can accept the idea for its core value.

That's exactly it; we like to pretend we're some advanced computational AI operating on pure rationality, but we're actually a bag of meat with an inferiority complex. And much of the "unreasonable rules" of society are built around exactly that, and if we abandon those we often have to relearn them again and again.

Recognizing they exist can allow "the boss" to cut the issue short with a "I need to think about this" and de-escalate that way.

Re: Adversarial Collaboration

#175

Post by deadpannini »

bombcar wrote: post #160
deadpannini wrote: post #151

> To a good first approximation, people simply don't change their minds about anything that matters. I love the model of adversarial collaboration, and I don't dispute the extremely strong influence of social bonds on knowledge formation, but Kahneman is just wrong about this. I know he's wrong because I change my mind relatively frequently, about things of at least some consequence. For a recent example, I was fairl…

That's a recent example of something that you came to quickly (obviously, covid didn't exist before) and so you were relatively easily able to get back out of it. As an approximation, it works insanely well. And as more and more things becomes "proxies for political decisions" we'll see it ramp up even more.

This turns into "no true Scotsman" pretty quickly.

I was a (relative) loudmouth about my position for over a year, since we didn't have access to home tests in the US until 2022. It was a very heated topic, since I often proposed testing as a preferred alternative to ineffective mask mandates that were popular where I live, and when my wish finally came true, I had to admit I had been wrong.

If changing one's mind about something of that magnitude doesn't count, the principle is badly overstated.

Re: Adversarial Collaboration

#176

Post by naet »

deadpannini wrote: post #151

> To a good first approximation, people simply don't change their minds about anything that matters. I love the model of adversarial collaboration, and I don't dispute the extremely strong influence of social bonds on knowledge formation, but Kahneman is just wrong about this. I know he's wrong because I change my mind relatively frequently, about things of at least some consequence. For a recent example, I was fairl…

You didn't change your mind, you made a specific prediction (testing will drive US covid cases to zero) and then maintained that position, and weren't shy about sharing it, until it was demonstrated to be wrong. Weren't you stubborn about your prediction, ignoring what other people had to say about it until you were irrefutably proven wrong?

Re: Adversarial Collaboration

#177

Post by dang »

dredmorbius wrote: post #170
dang wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Edit: I interpreted your comment as asking why we'd allow this post to stay on HN's front page. The answer to that is below. If that wasn't your point, please ignore.) On HN, we generally go by article quality, not site quality: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... , and generally try to avoid guilt by association. These points both follow from the principle of intellectual curiosity that…

Bad call, dang. In this case, I was unaware of the Edge Foundation's Epstein links. The information is salient and useful. Edge itself certainly doesn't make the information evident. C.f., a site search for "Epstein" which ... conspicuously omits any prominent results for a disclosure or apology: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=site%3Aedge.org+epstein&ia=... >

I interpreted the GP comment as asking why we allow posts from edge.org on HN. My comment is limited to answering that question. I've edited it to make this clearer.

Re: Adversarial Collaboration

#178

Post by deadpannini »

naet wrote: post #176
deadpannini wrote: post #151

> To a good first approximation, people simply don't change their minds about anything that matters. I love the model of adversarial collaboration, and I don't dispute the extremely strong influence of social bonds on knowledge formation, but Kahneman is just wrong about this. I know he's wrong because I change my mind relatively frequently, about things of at least some consequence. For a recent example, I was fairl…

You didn't change your mind, you made a specific prediction (testing will drive US covid cases to zero) and then maintained that position, and weren't shy about sharing it, until it was demonstrated to be wrong. Weren't you stubborn about your prediction, ignoring what other people had to say about it until you were irrefutably proven wrong?

I don't understand what you're suggesting - that changing your mind only counts if there's no evidence?

Even now, I can think of ways to argue that testing could still drive COVID nearly to zero in the US, most of which revolve around the idea that we're not really testing or we're not doing it right. But I think I was wrong, partly because of things other people said earlier during the pandemic, including parallel arguments about why "masks work" were wrong, which I saw right away, though I didn't draw the obvious conclusions related to the effectiveness of testing.

I think Kahneman's position requires creative gerrymandering about what counts as an important belief, and about what counts as persuasion.

Re: Adversarial Collaboration

#179

Post by P5fRxh5kUvp2th »

deadpannini wrote: post #175
bombcar wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a recent example of something that you came to quickly (obviously, covid didn't exist before) and so you were relatively easily able to get back out of it. As an approximation, it works insanely well. And as more and more things becomes "proxies for political decisions" we'll see it ramp up even more.

This turns into "no true Scotsman" pretty quickly. I was a (relative) loudmouth about my position for over a year, since we didn't have access to home tests in the US until 2022. It was a very heated topic, since I often proposed testing as a preferred alternative to ineffective mask mandates that were popular where I live, and when my wish finally came true, I had to admit I had been wrong. If changing one's mind ab…

Yet another case of someone being overly confident in an opinion that had no basis in fact.

Imagine if you had looked up to realize the flu hasn't gone to near zero with testing, so why in the world would you think something as unknown as covid would?

Of course that didn't stop many like you from attacking those who tried to call for caution. So while it's "nice" that you eventually changed your mind, consider being more open-minded at the start.

Re: Adversarial Collaboration

#180

Post by P5fRxh5kUvp2th »

vanderZwan wrote: post #145
Digory wrote: post #58

Kahneman hedges just a bit in his talk: " To a good first approximation, people simply don't change their minds about anything that matters." Trying to explain the small number of people who do change their minds, David McRaney has an interesting book out called How Minds Change.[0] And I imagine there are people who change minds, even outside his model. People who change their minds when it doesn't seem to help them…

Assuming a good-faith discussion, I tend to ask people "can you tell me why it is important to you that X is true?" (or false, or whatever) these days. Of course I should also be open about why a particular view is important to me in those situations. It seems to be the most effective way maintaining a productive conversation when disagreeing on things, regardless of whether we'll agree in the end.

I would immediately end a discussion if I were asked that question.

If you want to dismiss me by trying to imply my opinion is driven by a want of something other than accuracy with reality, I can find other people to spend my time with.

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