People are weird.
Guy gets upset when I suggest that the world needs both those who'll state the truth boldly, and those who seek to change minds with a more "softly, softly" approach. (*)
Said guy complains how much time he's wasted on well-structured rebuttals that don't work.
Yes, that's the point. Logical rebuttals work poorly against illogical beliefs. That's why people use other approaches.
(*) More precisely, the approach to take is situational.
Hm~ I don't know of the exact conversation you've had, and you've summarized your opinion here very briefly, so what I say might be obvious/beside the point/unsurprising.
The non-argument-based methods usually give less (or even no) comparative advantage to true claims over false claims. The more trusted and popular they become in a given group of people, all else being equal that group would usually become worse at agreeing on true statements (and individuals in that group are likely to be worse at distinguishing truth from falsity individually).
Now, one might have different reactions to that. One of them is to never use non-argument-based methods, because if one uses them to argue for true things people trust conclusions provided via those methods more. Another similar one is to object to others doing that.
I don't think these approaches are obviously wrong (i.e. that the assumptions that would lead to them being sensible are self-contradictory or very obviously incompatible with how the world could look like with a different but stable culture). They might be (I'm not good at predicting what people do around forming beliefs) totally impractical, but that in itself is a nontrivial question.
@robryk Where does your opinion around what effective ways to change the minds of people with nonsense views come from?
Bear in mind that the "non-argument-based methods" don't do away with facts, they just use them differently.
I don't really have one; it's one of the things I can't effectively do unless the person cooperates quite a bit (by being at least somewhat curious).
> Bear in mind that the "non-argument-based methods" don't do away with facts, they just use them differently.
Hm~ I'm not sure which methods you mean exactly. For example, claiming that existence of an anecdote proves the general statement that the anecdote would be an example of kinda relies on facts, but nevertheless is extremely bad way to change one's beliefs to more truthful ones.
If you know of methods that don't "teach"/reinforce false implications, are more strongly "truth-aligned" than the anecdote examples above and yet are not argument based, I'd really want to know about them.
@robryk I think there's some interesting stuff here where it's not super-clear where the dividing line is between getting people to believe sensible things and to get their beliefs in a rational way.
My model is something like this:
Most people are not rational beings. The ones who believe conspiracy theories are certainly not. Trying to convince them with rational arguments, knowing they're not rational is, in itself, irrational! Yet "rational" people try this...
@robryk as they are dealing with the world as they want it to be, rather than as it is.
Yet for the world as it is, those with conspiratorial/cultish views have emotional, tribal and largely internally self-consistent views. This is why what I've read from those who do a lot of work on this stuff suggest building empathy, understanding their position and a while bunch of other stuff that wouldn't be necessary with rational beings.
Is using this kind of technique bad?
@robryk My view is no, it's fine.
Empirically, it's way more effective than trying to use pure logic. Would I rather have a person who isn't a rigorous thinker who believes in conspiracies, or who isn't a rigorous thinker and doesn't? I'd certainly go for the latter.
Second, using empathy and listening isn't a rejection of facts. Instead, it's a way to help find the right facts to loosen their views, and get them past their emotional defenses. It's still useful to have truth on your side!
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@robryk And thirdly, if you do want to help someone improve their critical thinking, it's surely going to be a lot easier to do so once you've helped them out of conspiratorial thinking!
From another angle, I'm not sure which techniques you're thinking of that you think should help defend against conspiratorial thinking, but ironically I've found "rationalist" techniques to be very poor for this. Humans aren't rational, but they're extremely good rationalisers.
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@robryk What this means is that I've met "rationalists" with huge mental blind spots who were utterly (irrationally) convinced they didn't have, because they knew themselves to be rational.
As such, I would be extremely wary of getting a conspiracy theorist too deep into theories of reasoning, as they may use them to rationalize their position!
In general, I'd much rather deal someone with a decent handle on Occam's razor and a healthy dose of realistic introspection.
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@robryk To TL;DR it, my personal theory is it's fine to use empathy etc. to deprogram conspiracists. If you want to prevent people going down mental rabbit holes, better to teach them the ways your brain can trick you, than to teach them how to reason and let them delude themselves they are now immune to bad ideas.
Anyway, that's a great big brain-dump thread that I have no idea if it really relates to what you were saying. Does any of that make sense? Not make sense?
End of thread, anyway.
It does make sense and is at least somewhat related. I'll probably say something more detailed in a day or a few, once I've thought about it some more and when it's not late at night :)
