Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

qz.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 307 posts

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

#271

Post by tomjen3 »

xupybd wrote: post #58
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…

Another example is the abortion debate, every one is quick to show the evils of the other side of the debate. But often they simply disagree on when human life starts and fail to ever identify that as the issue. Because of this most discussions on this topic become far more vitriolic than productive.

Even then the argument can actually be solved by the "famous violinist" argument (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/hallq/2012/02/the-under-rated-f...) and by pointing out that humans are not forced to donate a kidney, even though doing so has a great chance of saving the life of the recepient, and a live-donation results in a much higher quality of life for the receiver. In this case we value the body integrity of the first person more than the life of the second - even though both are undeniably human.

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

#272

Post by antisthenes »

ojosilva wrote: post #199

This is very shallow. Negotiation theory is not helpful when you're plainly or partially wrong, or just in a very weak position to defend. Here's a classic negotiation example that I just can't crack: Her: I've told you, please don't leave your socks on the floor. Him: (mirroring) Leave my socks on the floor? Her: Yes. Please throw them in the laundry bin right after you take them off. Him: (open-ended question) How…

So who's more wrong here? I don't quite follow the argument.

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

#273

Post by jandrese »

emodendroket wrote: post #194
cristianpascu wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too agree wholeheartedly. It took me many years (35yo now) to learn this, the very hard way, on internet and specially in life. A MD in Philosophy helped a lot, or it's been actually essential for my life path. Interesting, given that I'm a 'creationist idiot' (I won't go into details), I never actually debate this with anyone that doesn't have the theological (and hermeneutical skills) necessary to understand WHY…

I'm curious what your position is. Young-Earth creationism plus evolution? Or something different? I can't quite discern it from your post.

It's probably best not to go any further down this discussion tree in this thread. This issue has a tendency to dominate the discussion whenever it appears, derailing the original conversation entirely.

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

#274

Post by jandrese »

antihero wrote: post #222
jahnu wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the essence of Pascal's Wager. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager

Isn't using Pascal's wager to support faith kind of broken due to the idea that for any possibility that there's a God who rewards you with a happy life for belief in them, there's an equal possibility that there's an evil God, who punishes you for belief in them?

Pascal's wager also supposes that faith is "free". It doesn't factor in the cost like having to dismiss all modern notions of Biology in certain cases. You have to weigh the chance of eternal damnation against the possibility of wasting your only life (no afterlife) laboring under false pretenses.

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

#275

Post by Natanael_L »

flukus wrote: post #128
LoSboccacc wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

eh doesn't 4chan work that way?

I was thinking something more like Reddit with the curation voting provides, threaded comments, etc.

So, reddit with more throwaway accounts

Using automoderator and/or other moderation bots in your own sub, you could automatically only accept contributions from young accounts that haven't posted in other subreddits

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

#276

Post by Natanael_L »

antisthenes wrote: post #272
ojosilva wrote: post #199

This is very shallow. Negotiation theory is not helpful when you're plainly or partially wrong, or just in a very weak position to defend. Here's a classic negotiation example that I just can't crack: Her: I've told you, please don't leave your socks on the floor. Him: (mirroring) Leave my socks on the floor? Her: Yes. Please throw them in the laundry bin right after you take them off. Him: (open-ended question) How…

So who's more wrong here? I don't quite follow the argument.

The argument is that some negotiations have no winning outcome

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

#277

Post by astine »

dagw wrote: post #166
gambiting wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 th…

is this US-specific line of thinking? Indirectly. Creationism is really only a thing within certain subsets of baptist and evangelical branches of Christianity, and these branches haven't take a large hold in Europe, whereas in the US they've flourished. Catholics have never really gone for it, even in the US, as far as I'm aware.

I was raised Catholic. There is a subset who have definitely gone for creationism. They know that they are not obliged by the Church to believe in the literal story of genesis, but they still prefer it for various reasons.

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

#278

Post by alanwatts »

Nursie wrote: post #249
Karunamon wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, that information is not forthcoming, and those hypotheses effectively infinite. "Guilty secret" is an uncharitable reading of the parent post, I'd say more out of the realm of scientific inquiry and more the philosophical. It's like asking "what was there before time existed?" - the scientific answer is null because that's a nonsense question - "before" implies the existence of a "time" to count it. And yet,…

It rather depends. There are branches of physics (m-branes, multi-universe, some offshoots of string theory) that could possibly have answers to this, should they figure out ways to test and measure such things. They are somewhere in the realm of philosophy or mathematical conjecture until that point though. And potentially that pushes the question back further - so where did all that come from? I took issue with the…

>sounded like there was a huge cop-out at the centrw of everything that people were trying to ignore.

Yes, like that of the post which I was directing my response towards:

>As a lifelong believer in science...

Science is fundamentally hypothetical, not something to be sure of.

Believe: to accept (something) as true; feel sure the truth of.

"Believing in science" or "believing in creationism" are both opposed to your statement (which I agree with), because they do not leave room for doubt:

>we don't know yet, and we don't know if we ever will

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

#279

Post by Natanael_L »

tomjen3 wrote: post #271
xupybd wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another example is the abortion debate, every one is quick to show the evils of the other side of the debate. But often they simply disagree on when human life starts and fail to ever identify that as the issue. Because of this most discussions on this topic become far more vitriolic than productive.

Even then the argument can actually be solved by the "famous violinist" argument ( http://www.patheos.com/blogs/hallq/2012/02/the-under-rated-f... ) and by pointing out that humans are not forced to donate a kidney, even though doing so has a great chance of saving the life of the recepient, and a live-donation results in a much higher quality of life for the receiver. In this case we value the body integrity of the…

OTOH in the case of abortion you have the difference that you take direct action against the fetus in favor of the mother, instead of just being passive and "letting nature take its course". In terms of ethics that's a huge difference.

In fact I'd argue that an uncontradictory absolutist position for body integrity is impossible in the case of abortion (assuming the fetus is considered human!), since the only absolute resolution technically isn't abortion, but rather premature birth and artificially keeping the fetus alive.

Of course the disagreement between camps remains on when a fetus becomes human...

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

#280

Post by crististm »

Nursie wrote: post #245
Karunamon wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(oops!) I don't think a true null hypothesis exists as long as humans are involved in concocting them, the person could want, consciously or subconsciously, any output from any experiment. Maybe one outcome leads to more research that's a major paint to secure funding for and one is much easier? Maybe the outfit funding the study clearly wants one particular result? Which goes right back to what I'm saying: humans ar…

The fundamental difference is that a hypothesis is not (or should not be, different argument) accepted as fact by the scientific establishment before it is tested and shown true or false with empirical evidence. As such it doesn't matter where it comes from so long as it is tested before acceptance . Which is why I struggle to understand the bootstrapping problem that the other poster talks about. --edit-- To put it…

Hypothesis origin does not matter.

But not all things can be tested - think about dual slit experiment. You can't reproduce the experiment in the sense that you'll know which slit will be taken.

Post reply on HN