The specifics of that are rather beyond the scope of this post (and my understanding.) My point in the second part is that attacking fallacies is a facile and ineffective approach to persuasion because it fails to take into account the other person’s state of mind. Fallacies are surface-level manifestations of deeper beliefs, and if you’re really trying to convince someone, you have to address the underlying issue, not just the transparent one. It follows that you need to have an accurate model of their mental processes—that you need to understand not only what they’re arguing but why they’re arguing it.
Knocking down fallacies is easy and often fun, but it’s ultimately just a sport—effective counterargument requires a more empathetic approach.
Yeah, I guess it is hard. And I agree that empathy is neccessary. Maybe we should hold a “deconvert a christian” competition. Everyone goes out and finds christians, tries to deconvert them in a reproducible way, and then submits some evidence that they succeeded.
I’ve heard that the easiest way to do this is to be very attractive, and then pick a member of the opposite sex and then … well you get the idea. We’d have to ban that.
Even deconverting a global warming skeptic or a creationist would be something of an achievement.
Well, I did once deconvert an ID proponent, though I strongly suspect I was just the final straw between his humps.
But I did it by establishing a social relationship first and then trading on social capital, not by appealing solely to his rationality, which might be the sort of thing you meant to ban despite your exclusively heterosexual wording.
seems like enough qualifiers to avoid being called ‘exclusively heterosexual wording’.
Mm? That’s interesting.
Just to be clear:
I’ve heard that the easiest way to do this is to be very attractive, and then pick a member of the opposite sex and then … well you get the idea. We’d have to ban that.
You understand that to be proposing banning picking members of the same sex as well? Neat… I don’t think I’ve ever run into that convention before.
I’m not trying to get up on a queer-inclusivity soapbox or anything: you’re perfectly free to use “member of the opposite sex” to refer to a person who might find one sexually attractive if you wish.
But yeah, I often interpret “member of the opposite sex” to refer instead to a member of the opposite sex.
Oh, there’s no doubt it’s heterosexual. He is informally quoting someone; “I’ve heard”. I don’t think it’s fair to accuse him of being ‘exclusively heterosexual’ in his wording. I mean, true on point of fact, but the phrase connotes negatively, it implies the author is deliberate in his use of heterosexual wording. I think he put enough qualifiers in front of the sentence to not deserve that implication.
As for the idea: I got “be attractive, find someone who is attracted to you, get involved in an intense physical relationship, then make the relationship conditional on them deconverting”.
It’s clear from the very fact of this conversation that I came off, at least to some of my audience, as more accusatory than I’d meant to be, and I apologize for that.
I’ll try to be more aware of my connotations in the future.
Everyone goes out and finds christians, tries to deconvert them in a reproducible way, and then submits some evidence that they succeeded.
That might not be sufficient. The amount of effort to change a believe is often proportional to the strength of the belief after the change.
You do not want someone to react to your statements with ‘yes, you are right, whatever you say honey’.
Also it is not particularly rational to have more people following beliefs that are currently in fashion.
Communist countries had high numbers of atheists, but for what prize.
Just focusing on the logical issue, and not a strategy for persuasion:
Just because your discussant has a fallacious argument, it doesn’t follow that they are wrong. There might be another non-fallacious argument that proves their point.
An analogy: say you find an error in someone’s proof of a math theorem. It’s possible that an alternate argument can be constructed that avoids that error.
The specifics of that are rather beyond the scope of this post (and my understanding.) My point in the second part is that attacking fallacies is a facile and ineffective approach to persuasion because it fails to take into account the other person’s state of mind. Fallacies are surface-level manifestations of deeper beliefs, and if you’re really trying to convince someone, you have to address the underlying issue, not just the transparent one. It follows that you need to have an accurate model of their mental processes—that you need to understand not only what they’re arguing but why they’re arguing it.
Knocking down fallacies is easy and often fun, but it’s ultimately just a sport—effective counterargument requires a more empathetic approach.
Yeah, I guess it is hard. And I agree that empathy is neccessary. Maybe we should hold a “deconvert a christian” competition. Everyone goes out and finds christians, tries to deconvert them in a reproducible way, and then submits some evidence that they succeeded.
I’ve heard that the easiest way to do this is to be very attractive, and then pick a member of the opposite sex and then … well you get the idea. We’d have to ban that.
Even deconverting a global warming skeptic or a creationist would be something of an achievement.
Well, I did once deconvert an ID proponent, though I strongly suspect I was just the final straw between his humps.
But I did it by establishing a social relationship first and then trading on social capital, not by appealing solely to his rationality, which might be the sort of thing you meant to ban despite your exclusively heterosexual wording.
Eh,
seems like enough qualifiers to avoid being called ‘exclusively heterosexual wording’.
Sounds suspiciously like exactly the kind of behaviour being banned ;)
Mm? That’s interesting.
Just to be clear:
You understand that to be proposing banning picking members of the same sex as well? Neat… I don’t think I’ve ever run into that convention before.
I’m not trying to get up on a queer-inclusivity soapbox or anything: you’re perfectly free to use “member of the opposite sex” to refer to a person who might find one sexually attractive if you wish.
But yeah, I often interpret “member of the opposite sex” to refer instead to a member of the opposite sex.
Oh, there’s no doubt it’s heterosexual. He is informally quoting someone; “I’ve heard”. I don’t think it’s fair to accuse him of being ‘exclusively heterosexual’ in his wording. I mean, true on point of fact, but the phrase connotes negatively, it implies the author is deliberate in his use of heterosexual wording. I think he put enough qualifiers in front of the sentence to not deserve that implication.
As for the idea: I got “be attractive, find someone who is attracted to you, get involved in an intense physical relationship, then make the relationship conditional on them deconverting”.
It’s clear from the very fact of this conversation that I came off, at least to some of my audience, as more accusatory than I’d meant to be, and I apologize for that.
I’ll try to be more aware of my connotations in the future.
That might not be sufficient. The amount of effort to change a believe is often proportional to the strength of the belief after the change.
You do not want someone to react to your statements with ‘yes, you are right, whatever you say honey’.
Also it is not particularly rational to have more people following beliefs that are currently in fashion. Communist countries had high numbers of atheists, but for what prize.
Just focusing on the logical issue, and not a strategy for persuasion:
Just because your discussant has a fallacious argument, it doesn’t follow that they are wrong. There might be another non-fallacious argument that proves their point.
An analogy: say you find an error in someone’s proof of a math theorem. It’s possible that an alternate argument can be constructed that avoids that error.