21–30 of 127 posts
I'm going to dream about what that world would look like tonight.
The "Other side" is scared, not dumb. Molly Ivins used to point this out. For the white lower middle class, life has been a slow downhill slide since the mid-1970s. Those are the people who support Trump and the Tea Party. Unfortunately, exploiting that fear is politically effective. This is a problem with a long history. There are records of it back as far as Cicero. It's not their fault that they don't know what to…
I like that he mentions the Ideological Turing Test, though not by name ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_Turing_Test ) "As any debate club veteran knows, if you can’t make your opponent’s point for them, you don’t truly grasp the issue."
That's bullshit though. On many issues, one or both sides don't have any argument beyond "me not like". But that's enough, if you can find enough people that feel the same way.
"If you’re interested in being on the right side of disputes, you will refute your opponents' arguments. But if you're interested in producing truth, you will fix your opponents' arguments for them. To win, you must fight not only the creature you encounter; you [also] must fight the most horrible thing that can be constructed from its corpse."[1]
If the other side's argument boils down to "me not like", then you have your job made even easier for you. Seeing the stronger arguments for their position and how (and where exactly) it still falls apart can be enlightening to your conversation partner.
Conversely, if you can't fathom why a reasonable person could hold the opinion your partner holds, it means you don't understand the issue itself at all. Most people are not dumb, their beliefs always form some structure that's plausible for them. It usually doesn't take much work to build yourself a model of someone else's beliefs, if you're willing to do so.
The only requirement, obviously, is that the other person at least tries to be honest. I think most people are, but sometimes you need to first work around their (and yours) ego issues.
The man had only come to the church twice, and we were talking, and he was quoting the bible in support of his view that homosexuality is a sin. I listened and was engaging him in conversation. Multiple people came up to me and tried to "help me escape" the conversation because they had no interest in engaging with someone who didn't agree with them.
I read this article and I couldn't help but see lines like this, "To be sure, there are hateful, racist, people not worthy of the small amount of electricity it takes just one of your synapses to fire." Really? It just seems like the same old play at being accepting and open minded, but not really. I would also say that this IS a political correctness issue. This isn't really a problem for the political right because they don't mind being offended, and they don't feel the need to pretend to be open minded (at least in the US).
This seems very much in the vain of when Jon Stewart had the "Rally to Restore Sanity." It claimed to be about being open minded, but it was really just about presenting the notion that "we" (see people on the political left) value being open minded.
What if the other side is actually rejecting factual reality, though? Are they still "not dumb"? What if facts have no hold on them whatsoever? Can we even have a productive conversation? See: vaccine deniers/vaccine scheduling skeptics, climate change deniers, evolution deniers, etc.
I can't speak for the other two, but I'm guessing you're not thinking of Steve McIntyre. Eg, go here and have a productive conversation:
http://climateaudit.org/2016/01/05/update-of-model-observati...
You seem to be describing what is commonly known as a "conversation". I find it hilarious that western society has gradually devolved itself to such an extent with fear-fear mongering, hate-hate speech, and an absurd amount of righteous indignation that people are literally terrified to have opinions outside the groupthink; and you not only have to invent a game to feel human again, but that game is apparently novel…
Yes but what if the other side doesn't extend you the same courtesy? What if the other side sees your thoughtfulness as weakness, your careful consideration as waffling and flip-flopping and leaps onto the opportunity to push even more extreme views, becomes even more absurdly divisive? On the whole in terms of writing, social media, op eds, etc I feel intellectuals (left and right) have taken this advice too much an…
But I feel as though at some point in journalism school, it's drilled into students never to say "this thing is, and I stand behind it."
Instead, we get either the global negative ("People who are not me say this thing is") or an artificial alternative ("Some say this thing is, others hold this [uncredible but nevertheless presented] view").
Scientists issue retractions all the time - that's how the process works. Media should be comfortable with the same when it's interfacing on science questions.
This article has it exactly wrong. Most people on the other side ARE stupid. Most people on your side are stupid also.
Having grown up in West Virginia and now living Silicon Valley, I see extremes from both sides. And they both _really_ think the other side is dumb. And that the president (Obama or Bush) is purposely trying to destroy the country. It is like two people in a marriage that has gone bad. Is there any way to fix it? My two cents is that a place to start is to try to make a single news source that both sides can read, to…
The "single news source" came up heavily in pg's recent writing on inequality et al. The cogent point he made, I think, was that the important part is not whether the source is authoritative or accurate but that it's universally experienced.
And I don't think we'll get that back. I think the best we can hope for is benevolent mix algorithms in Facebook, Google, etc that incorporate reliably sourced articles by people with different viewpoints than our own.
You seem to be describing what is commonly known as a "conversation". I find it hilarious that western society has gradually devolved itself to such an extent with fear-fear mongering, hate-hate speech, and an absurd amount of righteous indignation that people are literally terrified to have opinions outside the groupthink; and you not only have to invent a game to feel human again, but that game is apparently novel…
This seems to me to be even more true online, although we like to think that information technology has the opposite effect.