I know anecdotes are not a statistically significant form of argument, but perhaps they do convey emotional ramifications. With that in mind, I’d like to share a rather extreme anecdote explaining one aspect of what is wrong with political discourse where the people making the arguments are attacked, rather than the arguments themselves.
Years ago, I knew this girl—lets call her Alice. We were very good friends, but that changed. I don’t know why for certain—I cannot read minds—but I think it started when I disagreed with one of her feminist opinions. I didn’t say anything particularly offensive, I didn’t say all feminists are 300 pound whales (which is not true) nor did I say that women should not be allowed to vote. She said that in the US, the only legal way for a woman to defend herself against rape was by sticking her fingers up her assailants nose, with the implication that the US legal system does not care whether women get raped. I disagreed, saying that there are reasons why Americans have so many guns, and the biggest one is self defence. I said that lethal force is allowed to defend against much lesser crimes such as trespass, at least in some states, and that I couldn’t imagine that any US state would have such strong restrictions on self-defence.
There were a few similar cases where I disagreed with her arguments for clear logical reasons, never attacking her or anyone else. And I think this flipped a switch in her brain, from friend to enemy, because from then on whenever I opened my mouth she would ridicule me.
We still hung out, but only because we were in the same circle of friends. One day, I said “You know this new drug you guys are doing? I’ve looked it up, and wikipedia says its more addictive than heroin.” Alice looked at me as if I was something she’d stepped in. “Don’t be ridiculous” she sneered. I shrugged and wandered off.
I didn’t hear from them for a few months, for various reasons, not least that I wanted some distance from her and from drugs. The next time I heard from them, it was a phone call explaining that Alice’s boyfriend—a really nice guy who I had known for years—had fatally overdosed on the drug I had tried to warn them about, and that one of my other friends was probably going to prison for supply or even manslaughter.
In situations such as this, it is some comfort to know that at least I tried to help. I did what I could, but if people ridicule me I cannot force them to take me seriously. In my head it was the saddest ‘I told you so’ ever, although I obviously did not mention this to anyone else.
It would be an exaggeration to say that if Alice hadn’t shouted me down then this guy would still be alive. I’m not great at convincing people of things at the best of times, and I think other friends of mine had tried to warn about the dangers too. But I think the probability (that if Alice hadn’t shouted me down then this guy would still be alive) is nontrivial.
Perhaps I should have shouted Alice down, told her to stop being a &^%$%$$. But I’ve always tried to follow the advice that the best way to deal with conflict is to calmly walk away, if possible.
Maybe its crass to make a political point of this, but if there is a point, then point I am trying to make is that when people criticise social justice warfare it might not be because we hate ‘justice’ or because we are evil cis white men (tm), but its the warfare we object to, because a group of people at war with themselves over ideology is so much weaker in every way. Is it so much to ask that arguments are debated, rather then by ridiculing, censoring, silencing the people who make the arguments?
So I’d like to say that regardless of whether you are a progressive or conservative, communist or an-cap or neoreactionary, I will engage with your arguments rather than trying to attack you, and even if I disagree with your politics I will take non-political arguments seriously. I hope you do so too.
But I think the probability (that if Alice hadn’t shouted me down then this guy would still be alive) is nontrivial.
I urge you to consider why you think this is true. You say that many other people warned this couple about the risks and all were blown off. If they had listened to your (or anyone’s advice), there is a non-trivial chance of a different outcome. But was there a non-trivial chance you would persuade them differently?
(I’m also skeptical that your political disagreement had any effect on your persuasiveness regarding the danger of these drugs.)
I said I think other friends brought it up, but I’m not certain. What I meant is that while the chance of my talking them out of it, or at least talking them into some kinda moderation, is low, when the stakes are high even low probabilities are non-trivial in terms of expected value.
Why are you skeptical that political disagreements can break friendships? It can be worse—sometimes people get beaten up for supporting the wrong party.
Why are you skeptical that political disagreements can break friendships?
Of course political disagreement can break friendships. But I’m urging you to consider that maybe you weren’t friends, so that the likelihood that you could effect outcomes was negligible to the point that Pascal’s Mugging considerations mean that your feelings of moral responsibility do not benefit you and might instead be some sort of Just-World distorted thinking.
Whether it’s true in that case or not, it frequently happens that someone will start to act like they disagree with you about everything, because they happen to disagree about a few issues. And that definitely can cause them to do things that they otherwise wouldn’t do, just because you suggest that doing them is a bad idea.
Alternatively, the causal arrow goes in the other direction. People don’t give your practical opinions much weight, but you don’t realize the gulf until you have a flare up about ideological disagreement.
I agree that ideological disagree can lead to lower weight to opinions, but if the gulf is as large as OP described, then I suspect the blow up was a symptom, not a cause.
I know at least a few people who have >90% chance of agreeing with basically anything I say, if they happen to be in a good mood, and almost the same chance of disagreeing, if they happen to be in a bad mood.
This sounds like the type of attitude I hope to encounter every time I navigate to a lesswrong page. Yes it’s a basic version, but you felt you should post it, so maybe it’s not obviously instantiated.
You say also “I’ve always tried to follow the advice that… if possible.” Is it really that you’re trying to do this, or is it just what you seem to do? Maybe you just do it, and when you think about it you can also come up with some reasons why it might be a good thing.
Well, I was heavily socialised to walk away from conflict, but I think it was more than that. It seemed like the rational thing to do, getting into arguments being the emotional and atavistic thing. In retrospect, this seems like straw vulcanism.
To be fair talking a group of drug addicts out of taking a specific drug isn’t easy. If you don’t have strong social skills and therefore the expectancy of success is low, it’s not that necessarily bad to avoid a fight.
But I’ve always tried to follow the advice that the best way to deal with conflict is to calmly walk away, if possible.
Wow that is quite possibly the worst advice I have ever heard, without exaggeration. Walking away is a ‘solution’ that will literally never solve the problem. Now there are times when the best strategic move is to not engage, but that is a statement of priorities and/or timing. But never, not once do you solve a problem by ignoring it. Walking away is not a solution. I hope at least that lesson was learned from this tragic accident :(
Walking away from problems in traffic (like when you have a near miss because someone else made a steering mistake) is usually a lot better than getting into a heated argument about what an this other person is for not noticing you even although you had your lights on and everything. Walking away works if you’re not likely to interact with the other person in the future. Walking away also works if you’re not likely to interact in the context of X with the other person in the future.
As always, there is a middle path where sometimes walking away is good and some times it isn’t, but “that will literally never solve the problem” is only correct if you see “the problem” as “the grievance that has just occurred”.
Well, sometimes things have gone wrong from my not walking away from drunk angry people, and instead arguing back, escalting the situation to the point at which I have needed to use physical violence to defend myself.
But in this case, yes I should not have walked away, as there was too much to lose by walking away.
Basically I agree with Pimgd—walk away only if you don’t need to interact with that person again, and there is nothing at stake, or if you certainly can’t win the conflict.
Since Alice isn’t reading this, there’s no point giving her advice. Instead, you should look for lessons to modify your own behavior. How about: don’t talk about politics.
I wasn’t considering giving her advice. We haven’t really spoken in years. Don’t talk about politics is excellent advice, at least from a purely selfish perspective.
I know anecdotes are not a statistically significant form of argument, but perhaps they do convey emotional ramifications. With that in mind, I’d like to share a rather extreme anecdote explaining one aspect of what is wrong with political discourse where the people making the arguments are attacked, rather than the arguments themselves.
Years ago, I knew this girl—lets call her Alice. We were very good friends, but that changed. I don’t know why for certain—I cannot read minds—but I think it started when I disagreed with one of her feminist opinions. I didn’t say anything particularly offensive, I didn’t say all feminists are 300 pound whales (which is not true) nor did I say that women should not be allowed to vote. She said that in the US, the only legal way for a woman to defend herself against rape was by sticking her fingers up her assailants nose, with the implication that the US legal system does not care whether women get raped. I disagreed, saying that there are reasons why Americans have so many guns, and the biggest one is self defence. I said that lethal force is allowed to defend against much lesser crimes such as trespass, at least in some states, and that I couldn’t imagine that any US state would have such strong restrictions on self-defence.
There were a few similar cases where I disagreed with her arguments for clear logical reasons, never attacking her or anyone else. And I think this flipped a switch in her brain, from friend to enemy, because from then on whenever I opened my mouth she would ridicule me.
We still hung out, but only because we were in the same circle of friends. One day, I said “You know this new drug you guys are doing? I’ve looked it up, and wikipedia says its more addictive than heroin.” Alice looked at me as if I was something she’d stepped in. “Don’t be ridiculous” she sneered. I shrugged and wandered off.
I didn’t hear from them for a few months, for various reasons, not least that I wanted some distance from her and from drugs. The next time I heard from them, it was a phone call explaining that Alice’s boyfriend—a really nice guy who I had known for years—had fatally overdosed on the drug I had tried to warn them about, and that one of my other friends was probably going to prison for supply or even manslaughter.
In situations such as this, it is some comfort to know that at least I tried to help. I did what I could, but if people ridicule me I cannot force them to take me seriously. In my head it was the saddest ‘I told you so’ ever, although I obviously did not mention this to anyone else.
It would be an exaggeration to say that if Alice hadn’t shouted me down then this guy would still be alive. I’m not great at convincing people of things at the best of times, and I think other friends of mine had tried to warn about the dangers too. But I think the probability (that if Alice hadn’t shouted me down then this guy would still be alive) is nontrivial.
Perhaps I should have shouted Alice down, told her to stop being a &^%$%$$. But I’ve always tried to follow the advice that the best way to deal with conflict is to calmly walk away, if possible.
Maybe its crass to make a political point of this, but if there is a point, then point I am trying to make is that when people criticise social justice warfare it might not be because we hate ‘justice’ or because we are evil cis white men (tm), but its the warfare we object to, because a group of people at war with themselves over ideology is so much weaker in every way. Is it so much to ask that arguments are debated, rather then by ridiculing, censoring, silencing the people who make the arguments?
So I’d like to say that regardless of whether you are a progressive or conservative, communist or an-cap or neoreactionary, I will engage with your arguments rather than trying to attack you, and even if I disagree with your politics I will take non-political arguments seriously. I hope you do so too.
I urge you to consider why you think this is true. You say that many other people warned this couple about the risks and all were blown off. If they had listened to your (or anyone’s advice), there is a non-trivial chance of a different outcome. But was there a non-trivial chance you would persuade them differently?
(I’m also skeptical that your political disagreement had any effect on your persuasiveness regarding the danger of these drugs.)
I said I think other friends brought it up, but I’m not certain. What I meant is that while the chance of my talking them out of it, or at least talking them into some kinda moderation, is low, when the stakes are high even low probabilities are non-trivial in terms of expected value.
Why are you skeptical that political disagreements can break friendships? It can be worse—sometimes people get beaten up for supporting the wrong party.
Of course political disagreement can break friendships. But I’m urging you to consider that maybe you weren’t friends, so that the likelihood that you could effect outcomes was negligible to the point that Pascal’s Mugging considerations mean that your feelings of moral responsibility do not benefit you and might instead be some sort of Just-World distorted thinking.
Whether it’s true in that case or not, it frequently happens that someone will start to act like they disagree with you about everything, because they happen to disagree about a few issues. And that definitely can cause them to do things that they otherwise wouldn’t do, just because you suggest that doing them is a bad idea.
Alternatively, the causal arrow goes in the other direction. People don’t give your practical opinions much weight, but you don’t realize the gulf until you have a flare up about ideological disagreement.
I agree that ideological disagree can lead to lower weight to opinions, but if the gulf is as large as OP described, then I suspect the blow up was a symptom, not a cause.
I know at least a few people who have >90% chance of agreeing with basically anything I say, if they happen to be in a good mood, and almost the same chance of disagreeing, if they happen to be in a bad mood.
Do they actually mean anything by their (dis)agreement, or it’s just content-free social noises indicating “good, good” or “bad, bad”?
This sounds like the type of attitude I hope to encounter every time I navigate to a lesswrong page. Yes it’s a basic version, but you felt you should post it, so maybe it’s not obviously instantiated.
You say also “I’ve always tried to follow the advice that… if possible.” Is it really that you’re trying to do this, or is it just what you seem to do? Maybe you just do it, and when you think about it you can also come up with some reasons why it might be a good thing.
Well, I was heavily socialised to walk away from conflict, but I think it was more than that. It seemed like the rational thing to do, getting into arguments being the emotional and atavistic thing. In retrospect, this seems like straw vulcanism.
To be fair talking a group of drug addicts out of taking a specific drug isn’t easy. If you don’t have strong social skills and therefore the expectancy of success is low, it’s not that necessarily bad to avoid a fight.
Wow that is quite possibly the worst advice I have ever heard, without exaggeration. Walking away is a ‘solution’ that will literally never solve the problem. Now there are times when the best strategic move is to not engage, but that is a statement of priorities and/or timing. But never, not once do you solve a problem by ignoring it. Walking away is not a solution. I hope at least that lesson was learned from this tragic accident :(
Some problems are not for you to solve. Don’t just do something, stand there.
Walking away from problems in traffic (like when you have a near miss because someone else made a steering mistake) is usually a lot better than getting into a heated argument about what an this other person is for not noticing you even although you had your lights on and everything. Walking away works if you’re not likely to interact with the other person in the future. Walking away also works if you’re not likely to interact in the context of X with the other person in the future.
As always, there is a middle path where sometimes walking away is good and some times it isn’t, but “that will literally never solve the problem” is only correct if you see “the problem” as “the grievance that has just occurred”.
Well, sometimes things have gone wrong from my not walking away from drunk angry people, and instead arguing back, escalting the situation to the point at which I have needed to use physical violence to defend myself.
But in this case, yes I should not have walked away, as there was too much to lose by walking away.
Basically I agree with Pimgd—walk away only if you don’t need to interact with that person again, and there is nothing at stake, or if you certainly can’t win the conflict.
Since Alice isn’t reading this, there’s no point giving her advice. Instead, you should look for lessons to modify your own behavior. How about: don’t talk about politics.
I wasn’t considering giving her advice. We haven’t really spoken in years. Don’t talk about politics is excellent advice, at least from a purely selfish perspective.