I’ve thought about those options. I mean, the real difficulty here is that a word with the precise connotations doesn’t exist!
For me personally, “discussion” doesn’t really capture the “productively coming to a consensus on a disagreement” aspect that I’m going for. It invokes an image of people gathering to talk, without necessarily having a disagreement to explore, or any goal of persuading each other of anything. I discuss things all the time with family and friends, but most of the time, the way this shakes out doesn’t have much in common with what I long for in a culture of persuasion.
“Changing your mind,” or “open-mindedness,” seems to puts the burden on the person listening to the argument to be open. Although in theory, perhaps “open-mindedness” could mean equally that progressives should be open-minded to conservatism, as well as the other way around, I think that the connotation is kind of one-sided. It’s a phrase that, for better or worse, seems already to have a fairly specific connotation in our culture.
The reason I like “persuasion” is that, like “argument,” it gets at the idea that we are trying to come to a consensus. But it implies that we are gaining adherents to an idea because they find an idea compelling. It also doesn’t have a connotation of belonging to any particular faction or perspective.
However, if you really think that one of these other terms is better, or have another idea, I would love to hear about it!
That’s also a good word! I think that we do need a variety of words. For me, truthseeking has a connotation that is mainly about an individual search for truth, especially an objective truth. It makes me think about solitary reading and research.
What I wanted to highlight was a social and activist aspect, one that’s about acknowledging subjective values differences, and the inseparability of what can and should be done from the social support that an idea has.
Here, we write a fair bit about why it’s so hard to change institutions and get out of bad equilibria. That’s a culture of truthseeking, and its a good thing.
A culture of persuasion is about spending our energy thinking about how to set an agenda and steer a conversation to escape those equilibria. It’s applied, it’s social, and it’s open-ended. It’s about not trying to pin things down too much, and instead about trying to provoke a rich conversation that is fact based and reasonable, but also is human and makes room for an organic working out process.
“Culture of persuasion” is meant as a complement to what I see as the culture of truthseeking we have here.
Personally, the reason I find “persuasion” somewhat off-putting is that I don’t want to be persuaded unless I end up with a more accurate or beneficial perspective than before. That said, if two open-minded people are not sure whose perspective is better, I think that there is a place for a non-combative discussion in which arguments are weighed against each other. I’m not sure what word describes that situation better than “discussion,” though.
I agree. There really isn’t a perfect term, unfortunately. It seems to pack together these ideas:
Rightness: “having a good idea worth spreading”
Activism: “trying to persuade”
Compellingness: “trying to be effective in persuasion”
Open-mindedness: “being receptive to persuasion”
Susceptibility: “being easier to persuade”
I think there are two contradictory models of what needs to be done in our society.
One model has it that we have too much persuasion and too much social learning. Most people need to learn how to think for themselves, as individuals, from the ground up. A “culture of persuasion” would be actively destructive. Too few people know how to reason at all. If they got better at persuading others, the effect on net would be to collectively worsen our capacity for reason.
My model has it that we have too little persuasion and social learning. Instead, what we have is a lot of mutually-imposed isolation, which chills individual thought, breeding a sense of futility and close-minded resentment. A “culture of persuasion” would be positive, because it would imply that people are earnestly trying to figure out what would be mutually convincing, rather than what would get other people to give in or shut up. Indeed, too few people know how to reason at all. But if they got better at persuading others, the net effect would be to collectively improve our capacity to reason because they’d have to be making efforts to understand other people, and to make themselves understood.
My guess is that differences of opinion about word choice are just a symptom of this more important difference in how people model the state of our social world and what would be good for it.
I agree, it does have that connotation, and it also has the implication of a peaceful conversation. A “culture of dialog” doesn’t sound bad. I guess that for me, “dialog” just doesn’t get my attention. I think that for an open-ended, evocative phrase to work, it has to be sort of vivid. Maybe that’s why I like “persuasion.”
I’ve thought about those options. I mean, the real difficulty here is that a word with the precise connotations doesn’t exist!
For me personally, “discussion” doesn’t really capture the “productively coming to a consensus on a disagreement” aspect that I’m going for. It invokes an image of people gathering to talk, without necessarily having a disagreement to explore, or any goal of persuading each other of anything. I discuss things all the time with family and friends, but most of the time, the way this shakes out doesn’t have much in common with what I long for in a culture of persuasion.
“Changing your mind,” or “open-mindedness,” seems to puts the burden on the person listening to the argument to be open. Although in theory, perhaps “open-mindedness” could mean equally that progressives should be open-minded to conservatism, as well as the other way around, I think that the connotation is kind of one-sided. It’s a phrase that, for better or worse, seems already to have a fairly specific connotation in our culture.
The reason I like “persuasion” is that, like “argument,” it gets at the idea that we are trying to come to a consensus. But it implies that we are gaining adherents to an idea because they find an idea compelling. It also doesn’t have a connotation of belonging to any particular faction or perspective.
However, if you really think that one of these other terms is better, or have another idea, I would love to hear about it!
I mean, I think I just use the word ‘truthseeking’ to mean the thing you seem to mean
That’s also a good word! I think that we do need a variety of words. For me, truthseeking has a connotation that is mainly about an individual search for truth, especially an objective truth. It makes me think about solitary reading and research.
What I wanted to highlight was a social and activist aspect, one that’s about acknowledging subjective values differences, and the inseparability of what can and should be done from the social support that an idea has.
Here, we write a fair bit about why it’s so hard to change institutions and get out of bad equilibria. That’s a culture of truthseeking, and its a good thing.
A culture of persuasion is about spending our energy thinking about how to set an agenda and steer a conversation to escape those equilibria. It’s applied, it’s social, and it’s open-ended. It’s about not trying to pin things down too much, and instead about trying to provoke a rich conversation that is fact based and reasonable, but also is human and makes room for an organic working out process.
“Culture of persuasion” is meant as a complement to what I see as the culture of truthseeking we have here.
Personally, the reason I find “persuasion” somewhat off-putting is that I don’t want to be persuaded unless I end up with a more accurate or beneficial perspective than before. That said, if two open-minded people are not sure whose perspective is better, I think that there is a place for a non-combative discussion in which arguments are weighed against each other. I’m not sure what word describes that situation better than “discussion,” though.
I agree. There really isn’t a perfect term, unfortunately. It seems to pack together these ideas:
Rightness: “having a good idea worth spreading”
Activism: “trying to persuade”
Compellingness: “trying to be effective in persuasion”
Open-mindedness: “being receptive to persuasion”
Susceptibility: “being easier to persuade”
I think there are two contradictory models of what needs to be done in our society.
One model has it that we have too much persuasion and too much social learning. Most people need to learn how to think for themselves, as individuals, from the ground up. A “culture of persuasion” would be actively destructive. Too few people know how to reason at all. If they got better at persuading others, the effect on net would be to collectively worsen our capacity for reason.
My model has it that we have too little persuasion and social learning. Instead, what we have is a lot of mutually-imposed isolation, which chills individual thought, breeding a sense of futility and close-minded resentment. A “culture of persuasion” would be positive, because it would imply that people are earnestly trying to figure out what would be mutually convincing, rather than what would get other people to give in or shut up. Indeed, too few people know how to reason at all. But if they got better at persuading others, the net effect would be to collectively improve our capacity to reason because they’d have to be making efforts to understand other people, and to make themselves understood.
My guess is that differences of opinion about word choice are just a symptom of this more important difference in how people model the state of our social world and what would be good for it.
It seems to me the word “dialog” may be appropriate: to me it has the connotation of reaching out to people you may not normally interact with.
I agree, it does have that connotation, and it also has the implication of a peaceful conversation. A “culture of dialog” doesn’t sound bad. I guess that for me, “dialog” just doesn’t get my attention. I think that for an open-ended, evocative phrase to work, it has to be sort of vivid. Maybe that’s why I like “persuasion.”