I think my partner and I both experience some level of discomfort at knowing that our worldviews are in significant conflict, even though this conflict seems to coexist with a high degree of respect for how the accomplishments of the other. It is unfortunate that we basically have to avoid certain topics of conversation that we both find important and that our emotional reaction to things often differs.
So the program of understanding each other doesn’t make progress. I agree with Alicorn, it’s essential to establish a mode of communication where you can steadily work on disagreements, with the goal of ultimately resolving them in full. The arguments shouldn’t turn into color politics, polarizing and alienating.
A bit of advice, based on my experience, for a long-term conversion strategy:
Work on understanding your own position better, make sure you know why you believe what you believe before trying to convince another person to change one’s mind. Maybe you are wrong.
Make the mode of interaction and your goals clear when you are arguing, distinguish analysis from social interaction.
Educate the person about fundamentals, thus steadily crafting tools for making deeper arguments in specific discussions.
Prefer shifting the discussion towards education about more general mistake that (might have) contributed to a specific mistake or confusion. In long term, it’s more important than resolving a specific problem, and it’s easier on the other person’s feelings, as you are educating on an abstract theme, rather than attacking a conviction.
Don’t argue the objects of emotional attachment, ever (unless the person is ready for that, at which point you are probably done with bootstrapping). Instead, work on finding an angle of approach (as suggested above, maybe something more fundamental) that allows you to make progress without directly confronting the issue.
Not everyone is going to change, some people are too dim or too shallow or persistently not interested.
Thank you, this sounds like very good advice for how to lead someone down the path.
But given that she is reluctant to go down the path, do I want to lead her down it? She already believes that I can defend my views better than she can her’s. She probably even believes that my views are closer to the truth.
My guess is that she is reluctant to discuss and evaluate the fundamental facts of existence and our values, precisely because she cherishes certain aspects of her current worldview that she correctly believes she is likely to lose. I think its plausible that she’ll end up less happy, and maybe less productive, after hearing about the preference utilitarianism and the opportunity cost of spending $80 to have flowers delivered to a friend (note: I’d never try to stop her from doing it, I’d just like to explain why I’m not going to) or after explaining why the idea that people have souls is incoherent (note: I would never say something that strongly. As you suggest I’d want to build up to it slowly, by asking questions and letting the conclusions fall out of the discussion.)
Religious people report being happier. By many measures they also do more “good works.” I wouldn’t be surprised if the same were true of deontologists vs. consequentialists.
Do I really have reason to believe she’ll benefit from serious detailed discussion of our respective worldviews?
She already believes that I can defend my views better than she can her’s. She probably even believes that my views are closer to the truth.
I’d be curious to know what sort of power dynamic you have. My spouse believes I am more rational and intelligent than s/he is—but s/he’s still the one who makes the decisions. I advise—my spouse decides. We both like it that way and we’ve had a successful and happy relationship for more than a decade. Now that I think about it, this is reminiscent of Eliezer’s “Three Worlds Collide”. You want to keep the rationalist cultists around—but you don’t want them in charge :p
In “Three Worlds Collide”, the rational one does have the power to override if necessary, which I think is very important. If you cant agree, you’re doing it wrong- but it still happens occasionally. You’ll get better results if you defer to the person that is more rational under those circumstances.
In general, it seems like the right policy is to let whomever has harder to communicate data decide. This way, the decision maker is as informed as possible.
Actually, in 3WC the Confessor is supposed to be strictly charged with sedating people who depart the bounds of sanity. He goes outside this bound, which is completely against all the rules, and afterward he can no longer be called a Confessor.
I don’t know about the rest of the audience, but I’d really appreciate a worldbuilding writeup, or maybe even just a glossary, explaining the cultural/technological backdrop of 3WC in more detail than the story provides.
I was referring to the part where the president went crazy and her confessor sedated her “and recommend to the government that they carry out the evacuation without asking further questions of your ship”.
If that doesn’t count as the “power to override if necessary”, then I’m missing a distinction somewhere.
Well, part of the point there was that their President would have been universally recognized by her own society as crazy, at that point, just as if she’d said she was hearing voices from her teapot. In contrast to say our own society where this would be considered perfectly normal madness in a politician. The reason her Confessor then needs to advise the government is that her Confessor was the only one to listen to an extremely classified conversation; in other words she has private info which she must summarize/convey somehow to the government.
It’s impossible to make someone reason if they don’t wish to. It’s impossible to force someone to acknowledge the truth if they don’t want to acknowledge it.
You don’t need to lead her down any path, even if she were willing to follow. She probably already knows what the rational approach is and doesn’t choose to implement it.
In the event that she doesn’t, teach her the method of rationality—not just the result—if she comes to you for help. Don’t, otherwise.
If she’s comfortable with letting you be reasonable, and you’re comfortable with letting her have her magical thinking, I’d say everything is fine.
Part of what motivates this post is that research on happiness suggests that people have a hard time predicting how happy they will be in various possible futures. Gilbert has suggested that introspection is so poor that we better off just asking people in that situation how they feel.
In my case, it was worth it. There may be a stubborn reluctance to “give in” or other lower level things that get in the way of believing the truth, but if at the top level she would really rather believe the truth, you’re probably fine. If you can’t get her to say in full honesty “I would rather believe the truth than made up ‘feel good’ stories”, you’re probably hosed.
My girlfriend started out as a creationist christian and is now pretty much atheist. Overall, she is much more reasonable and can make the right decision on the types of things she previously did not. She seems to be about as happy as before, and when she’s not she can recognize the cause so it’s not nearly as damaging. I’d call that a success so far.
In general, I have a pretty strict policy of calling each other on any BS. I attempt to get the point across in a nice way, but will persist until she understands even if it does make her upset in the short term. The one exception was when I found out that she believed in creationism. That was too big of a bite, so we left it as “agree to disagree”, though I made it obvious that I did not respect her belief. I never made an attempt to deconvert her, but it did happen on its own.
There’s probably a better way to do it that can make the same progress without ever upsetting the person, but in my experience it ended up being worth it to push through anyway.
So the program of understanding each other doesn’t make progress. I agree with Alicorn, it’s essential to establish a mode of communication where you can steadily work on disagreements, with the goal of ultimately resolving them in full. The arguments shouldn’t turn into color politics, polarizing and alienating.
A bit of advice, based on my experience, for a long-term conversion strategy:
Work on understanding your own position better, make sure you know why you believe what you believe before trying to convince another person to change one’s mind. Maybe you are wrong.
Make the mode of interaction and your goals clear when you are arguing, distinguish analysis from social interaction.
Educate the person about fundamentals, thus steadily crafting tools for making deeper arguments in specific discussions.
Prefer shifting the discussion towards education about more general mistake that (might have) contributed to a specific mistake or confusion. In long term, it’s more important than resolving a specific problem, and it’s easier on the other person’s feelings, as you are educating on an abstract theme, rather than attacking a conviction.
Don’t argue the objects of emotional attachment, ever (unless the person is ready for that, at which point you are probably done with bootstrapping). Instead, work on finding an angle of approach (as suggested above, maybe something more fundamental) that allows you to make progress without directly confronting the issue.
Not everyone is going to change, some people are too dim or too shallow or persistently not interested.
Thank you, this sounds like very good advice for how to lead someone down the path.
But given that she is reluctant to go down the path, do I want to lead her down it? She already believes that I can defend my views better than she can her’s. She probably even believes that my views are closer to the truth.
My guess is that she is reluctant to discuss and evaluate the fundamental facts of existence and our values, precisely because she cherishes certain aspects of her current worldview that she correctly believes she is likely to lose. I think its plausible that she’ll end up less happy, and maybe less productive, after hearing about the preference utilitarianism and the opportunity cost of spending $80 to have flowers delivered to a friend (note: I’d never try to stop her from doing it, I’d just like to explain why I’m not going to) or after explaining why the idea that people have souls is incoherent (note: I would never say something that strongly. As you suggest I’d want to build up to it slowly, by asking questions and letting the conclusions fall out of the discussion.)
Religious people report being happier. By many measures they also do more “good works.” I wouldn’t be surprised if the same were true of deontologists vs. consequentialists.
Do I really have reason to believe she’ll benefit from serious detailed discussion of our respective worldviews?
I’d be curious to know what sort of power dynamic you have. My spouse believes I am more rational and intelligent than s/he is—but s/he’s still the one who makes the decisions. I advise—my spouse decides. We both like it that way and we’ve had a successful and happy relationship for more than a decade. Now that I think about it, this is reminiscent of Eliezer’s “Three Worlds Collide”. You want to keep the rationalist cultists around—but you don’t want them in charge :p
In “Three Worlds Collide”, the rational one does have the power to override if necessary, which I think is very important. If you cant agree, you’re doing it wrong- but it still happens occasionally. You’ll get better results if you defer to the person that is more rational under those circumstances.
In general, it seems like the right policy is to let whomever has harder to communicate data decide. This way, the decision maker is as informed as possible.
Actually, in 3WC the Confessor is supposed to be strictly charged with sedating people who depart the bounds of sanity. He goes outside this bound, which is completely against all the rules, and afterward he can no longer be called a Confessor.
I don’t know about the rest of the audience, but I’d really appreciate a worldbuilding writeup, or maybe even just a glossary, explaining the cultural/technological backdrop of 3WC in more detail than the story provides.
There are some worlds for which I have devised huge cultural, technological, and historical backdrops but this is not one of them.
I was referring to the part where the president went crazy and her confessor sedated her “and recommend to the government that they carry out the evacuation without asking further questions of your ship”.
If that doesn’t count as the “power to override if necessary”, then I’m missing a distinction somewhere.
Well, part of the point there was that their President would have been universally recognized by her own society as crazy, at that point, just as if she’d said she was hearing voices from her teapot. In contrast to say our own society where this would be considered perfectly normal madness in a politician. The reason her Confessor then needs to advise the government is that her Confessor was the only one to listen to an extremely classified conversation; in other words she has private info which she must summarize/convey somehow to the government.
Thank you very much for this data point.
It’s impossible to make someone reason if they don’t wish to. It’s impossible to force someone to acknowledge the truth if they don’t want to acknowledge it.
You don’t need to lead her down any path, even if she were willing to follow. She probably already knows what the rational approach is and doesn’t choose to implement it.
In the event that she doesn’t, teach her the method of rationality—not just the result—if she comes to you for help. Don’t, otherwise.
If she’s comfortable with letting you be reasonable, and you’re comfortable with letting her have her magical thinking, I’d say everything is fine.
Part of what motivates this post is that research on happiness suggests that people have a hard time predicting how happy they will be in various possible futures. Gilbert has suggested that introspection is so poor that we better off just asking people in that situation how they feel.
In my case, it was worth it. There may be a stubborn reluctance to “give in” or other lower level things that get in the way of believing the truth, but if at the top level she would really rather believe the truth, you’re probably fine. If you can’t get her to say in full honesty “I would rather believe the truth than made up ‘feel good’ stories”, you’re probably hosed.
My girlfriend started out as a creationist christian and is now pretty much atheist. Overall, she is much more reasonable and can make the right decision on the types of things she previously did not. She seems to be about as happy as before, and when she’s not she can recognize the cause so it’s not nearly as damaging. I’d call that a success so far.
In general, I have a pretty strict policy of calling each other on any BS. I attempt to get the point across in a nice way, but will persist until she understands even if it does make her upset in the short term. The one exception was when I found out that she believed in creationism. That was too big of a bite, so we left it as “agree to disagree”, though I made it obvious that I did not respect her belief. I never made an attempt to deconvert her, but it did happen on its own.
There’s probably a better way to do it that can make the same progress without ever upsetting the person, but in my experience it ended up being worth it to push through anyway.