I would just make the point that nothing wrong with the idea that different people’s cultures and traditions and lifestyles are equally valid; cultural relativity does make sense in it’s own context (there’s nothing inherently better about living in a small middle class suburb with 1.5 kids a dog and two cars). But just make the point that objective reality is not relative; when you’re talking about the universe itself and objective reality, it is something that simply is. There was one great quote, “reality is that which continues to exist even if you stop believing in it”.
That’s really the key here; don’t tell people that they’re wrong for thinking that each culture has it’s own value and that no culture or lifestyle is necessarily any better then any other, but just try to draw a hard line between that and the objective nature of reality and therefore of science.
That’s really the key here; don’t tell people that they’re wrong for thinking that each culture has it’s own value and that no culture or lifestyle is necessarily any better then any other, but just try to draw a hard line between that and the objective nature of reality and therefore of science.
Why should the attempt to draw that line convince anyone who doesn’t care about the scientific project in the first place?
I’m at the moment reading “The Feeling Good Handbook” with is about Cognitive Behavior Therapy. Part of the exercises that the book has is the identification of irrational beliefs that make people unhappy.
The people who are interacting with probably want to be happy. That’s a place where you can meet them. If you can give people a way clear idea that they can become more happy by getting rid of their irrational beliefs, your chances of conversion are much better than if you simply try to enforce a hard line that makes the objective nature of reality special.
Why should the attempt to draw that line convince anyone who doesn’t care about the scientific project in the first place?
I think that most people have an intuitive understanding that there are some things that are objectively true and some things that are objectively false, at least in terms of the physical universe around us. Few people would disagree with a statement like that. If they don’t agree with that right away, give them some concrete examples; is the statement “If I’m standing on Earth and I drop a rock, it generally falls” more or less true then the statement “If I’m standing on Earth and I drop a rock, it generally flies into the sky”.
Most people will concede that the first statement is more true then the second statement, and you can work from there to a general principal.
Basically, you have to understand why people accept certain ideas. In the case of cultural relativism, the reason people accept it is because a lot of cultural and social behaviors and beliefs are in fact very relative, and have more to do with how someone was raised then with any sort of objective reality. If a person fails to understand that, then they’re likely to end up like the characters in the Dr. Seuss book “The Butter Battle Book” who end up fighting a war over the question of which side of the bread you should butter.
Very often when a person has a general heuristic or way of thinking, there was originally a good reason for it; the person just made the mistake of applying that heuristic to situations where it doesn’t work. The way to deal with that isn’t to tell them the heuristic is wrong, because then they’ll think of all the times when it seems right to use it and dismiss you; it’s to try to draw a line to separate situations where the heuristic is useful and situations where it’s not.
If you can give people a way clear idea that they can become more happy by getting rid of their irrational beliefs
Eh. Maybe. I tend to find that people are instinctively paranoid about that line of approach, though, since “you’ll be happier if you believe X” is a line of attack usually taken by religions, cults, and other hostile memes. And, of course, most people don’t think that their beliefs are irrational.
Most people will concede that the first statement is more true then the second statement, and you can work from there to a general principal.
That will only work if the person has no emotional attachments to his current beliefs.
Basically, you have to understand why people accept certain ideas. In the case of cultural relativism, the reason people accept it is because a lot of cultural and social behaviors and beliefs are in fact very relative, and have more to do with how someone was raised then with any sort of objective reality.
No. People might accept cultural relativism because all their friends think that cultural relativism is cool.
I tend to find that people are instinctively paranoid about that line of approach, though, since “you’ll be happier if you believe X” is a line of attack usually taken by religions, cults, and other hostile memes.
It a line of attack being used by religions because it works for certain people. If you want to convince the kind of person who is religious because he believes the promise that being religious leads to a happy life, than you have to play on that level.
And, of course, most people don’t think that their beliefs are irrational.
I think it’s fairly straightforward to find a minor irrational belief of someone else that’s irrational and where changing that belief would make the person more happy. It’s just a matter of being flexible enough to understand where another person is coming from, understanding the challenges they face in life and understanding which beliefs hold the person back.
Convincing a person who believes that they are worth nothing that, this is an irrational belief isn’t that hard. Changing the belief is a bit more difficult but most people have plenty of beliefs that they don’t like to have.
That will only work if the person has no emotional attachments to his current beliefs.
That’s why it’s important to acknowledge that the idea they are using is useful in some situations, just not in others. It’s a way to “leave them a path of retreat”, a way for them to take a step back and not totally “lose” a belief they found useful and effective (and that they have an attachment to), but to realize that it’s just not useful in all situations.
No. People might accept cultural relativism because all their friends think that cultural relativism is cool.
In that one sentence, you are both dramatically overestimating and dramatically underestimating the vast majority of people at the same time.
Overestimating, because most people don’t discuss with their friends the virtues of cultural relativism on a regular basis. And underestimating, because the people that do generally are more thoughtful, philosophical types, who tend to hold their beliefs for actual reason.
Keep in mind that “cultural relativism” isn’t anywhere close to the lowest common denominator here. It’s several steps more rational then the lowest common denominator, which is “my culture (Christian/American/white/English speaking) is the best culture, and anyone who disagrees with it is either an idiot, evil, or both”.
Cultural relativism is a somewhat more rational level reached by people with a certain amount of education and intelligence, or who come from a more cosmopolitan/open minded background. It’s not the most rational level, certainly not if they try to apply it to sciences or if they use mangled versions of it to defend bizzare belief systems, but it’s not the least rational level either; we’re talking about people who are generally already in the top 20% or so. And people who are cultural relativists tend, almost by definition, to be willing to listen to other points of view; they’re more likely to hear you out, if you appeal to them on a rational level and don’t treat them like idiots (which is sounds like you’re doing right now).
If you want to convince the kind of person who is religious because he believes the promise that being religious leads to a happy life, than you have to play on that level.
But we’re not talking about narrow minded conservative religious types; they, almost by definition, hate the idea of cultural relativism (because their culture is the only one that’s right). We’re talking about people who have moved past that.
Anyway, people who are religious are VERY resistant to hearing recognizable religious-style arguments being used for what they deem to be anti-religious purposes. They have a lot of resistance to the meme, because they carry a version of it themselves. It’s a reason that devout Christians don’t, as a rule, become Scientologists; they’re already protected against that type of mematic attack. It’s also why very religious Christians are so likely to call ideas like the singularity or transhumansim a “cult” and thus reject it; if you’re using something that looks to them like a religious argument to “convert” them to a “different religion”, their meme immune system rejects it instantly. (Obviously ideas about transhumanism and the singularity are not actually religions, but that doesn’t matter.)
But we’re not talking about narrow minded conservative religious types; they, almost by definition, hate the idea of cultural relativism (because their culture is the only one that’s right). We’re talking about people who have moved past that.
The thread opened by talking about people who go to a Harry Potter fan club. The person who wrote the thread mentioned in the past that the fan club holds things like astrology lessons.
I would think that the audience is people in the vague New Age spectrum which like pop spirituality and do have some sort of belief in God.
Overestimating, because most people don’t discuss with their friends the virtues of cultural relativism on a regular basis. And underestimating, because the people that do generally are more thoughtful, philosophical types, who tend to hold their beliefs for actual reason.
Being thoughtful just means that you are better at rationalizing your belief. It doesn’t make you escape the trap of holding beliefs for signaling social status. Read a bit Robert Hanson.
And people who are cultural relativists tend, almost by definition, to be willing to listen to other points of view; they’re more likely to hear you out, if you appeal to them on a rational level and don’t treat them like idiots (which is sounds like you’re doing right now).
Do you feel like I’m treating you as an idiot? If so, that’s not intended. Cultural relativists are not the target audience of posts I write on LessWrong.
I would think that the audience is people in the vague New Age spectrum which like pop spirituality and do have some sort of belief in God.
That is probably true.
Being thoughtful just means that you are better at rationalizing your belief. It doesn’t make you escape the trap of holding beliefs for signaling social status.
If a person is thoughtful and feels the need to rationalize their belief, then they are usually someone who can be reached through reason and rational arguments. If nothing else, they’ll probably have to improve their own rationalization, perhaps take a small step back from their previous position or have a little more doubt about it. Most people actually are willing to be convinced of most things, in the right situation, so long as you don’t try to push them too far out of their comfort zone all at once.
The only people who can’t be reached at all by reason are people who claim to be completely motivated by faith and belief.
Edit: Also, there are real and valid reasons that “cultural relativism” has become a system that intellectual types claim to have in order to signal social status. If you don’t understand that, then you’re never going to change the minds of the people who help create those signals in the first place.
Do you feel like I’m treating you as an idiot? If so, that’s not intended. Cultural relativists are not the target audience of posts I write on LessWrong.
No, no; I’m not offended. I just feel like you have an extremely low opinion of the people you’re talking about trying to convince, which is something you should generally try to avoid; if you act like you have contempt for someone, you will never convince them of anything.
I just feel like you have an extremely low opinion of the people you’re talking about trying to convince, which is something you should generally try to avoid; if you act like you have contempt for someone, you will never convince them of anything.
I’m far from contempt when it comes to people who are cultural relativists not being convinced by reason.
There nothing contemptful about recognizing that another person wants to be happy and helping them to be happy.
I don’t let my emotions interfere with my reasoning on that level. I don’t let myself get blinded by compassion. I don’t act based on the belief that people should be rational. I have read enough cognitive psychology to know that they aren’t.
I think this is a classic example where arguments alone don’t do much. You don’t like cultural relativists on some level. You think you would need to feel contempt if you would recognize the finding of cognitive psychology about how people come to hold the beliefs that they do.
If I don’t provide you with a way to not feel contempt while accepting cognitive psychology ideas about how humans come to hold the beliefs that they do, I won’t convince you because you have something to lose on a emotional level.
if you act like you have contempt for someone, you will never convince them of anything.
At the moment I’m not trying to convince them. I’m want to convince you.
It’s less than two weeks ago that a woman with a New Age background asked me whether I teach meditation somewhere. I don’t have any problem with interacting in that environment.
I would just make the point that nothing wrong with the idea that different people’s cultures and traditions and lifestyles are equally valid; cultural relativity does make sense in it’s own context (there’s nothing inherently better about living in a small middle class suburb with 1.5 kids a dog and two cars). But just make the point that objective reality is not relative; when you’re talking about the universe itself and objective reality, it is something that simply is. There was one great quote, “reality is that which continues to exist even if you stop believing in it”.
That’s really the key here; don’t tell people that they’re wrong for thinking that each culture has it’s own value and that no culture or lifestyle is necessarily any better then any other, but just try to draw a hard line between that and the objective nature of reality and therefore of science.
Why should the attempt to draw that line convince anyone who doesn’t care about the scientific project in the first place?
I’m at the moment reading “The Feeling Good Handbook” with is about Cognitive Behavior Therapy. Part of the exercises that the book has is the identification of irrational beliefs that make people unhappy.
The people who are interacting with probably want to be happy. That’s a place where you can meet them. If you can give people a way clear idea that they can become more happy by getting rid of their irrational beliefs, your chances of conversion are much better than if you simply try to enforce a hard line that makes the objective nature of reality special.
I think that most people have an intuitive understanding that there are some things that are objectively true and some things that are objectively false, at least in terms of the physical universe around us. Few people would disagree with a statement like that. If they don’t agree with that right away, give them some concrete examples; is the statement “If I’m standing on Earth and I drop a rock, it generally falls” more or less true then the statement “If I’m standing on Earth and I drop a rock, it generally flies into the sky”.
Most people will concede that the first statement is more true then the second statement, and you can work from there to a general principal.
Basically, you have to understand why people accept certain ideas. In the case of cultural relativism, the reason people accept it is because a lot of cultural and social behaviors and beliefs are in fact very relative, and have more to do with how someone was raised then with any sort of objective reality. If a person fails to understand that, then they’re likely to end up like the characters in the Dr. Seuss book “The Butter Battle Book” who end up fighting a war over the question of which side of the bread you should butter.
Very often when a person has a general heuristic or way of thinking, there was originally a good reason for it; the person just made the mistake of applying that heuristic to situations where it doesn’t work. The way to deal with that isn’t to tell them the heuristic is wrong, because then they’ll think of all the times when it seems right to use it and dismiss you; it’s to try to draw a line to separate situations where the heuristic is useful and situations where it’s not.
Eh. Maybe. I tend to find that people are instinctively paranoid about that line of approach, though, since “you’ll be happier if you believe X” is a line of attack usually taken by religions, cults, and other hostile memes. And, of course, most people don’t think that their beliefs are irrational.
That will only work if the person has no emotional attachments to his current beliefs.
No. People might accept cultural relativism because all their friends think that cultural relativism is cool.
It a line of attack being used by religions because it works for certain people. If you want to convince the kind of person who is religious because he believes the promise that being religious leads to a happy life, than you have to play on that level.
I think it’s fairly straightforward to find a minor irrational belief of someone else that’s irrational and where changing that belief would make the person more happy. It’s just a matter of being flexible enough to understand where another person is coming from, understanding the challenges they face in life and understanding which beliefs hold the person back.
Convincing a person who believes that they are worth nothing that, this is an irrational belief isn’t that hard. Changing the belief is a bit more difficult but most people have plenty of beliefs that they don’t like to have.
That’s why it’s important to acknowledge that the idea they are using is useful in some situations, just not in others. It’s a way to “leave them a path of retreat”, a way for them to take a step back and not totally “lose” a belief they found useful and effective (and that they have an attachment to), but to realize that it’s just not useful in all situations.
In that one sentence, you are both dramatically overestimating and dramatically underestimating the vast majority of people at the same time.
Overestimating, because most people don’t discuss with their friends the virtues of cultural relativism on a regular basis. And underestimating, because the people that do generally are more thoughtful, philosophical types, who tend to hold their beliefs for actual reason.
Keep in mind that “cultural relativism” isn’t anywhere close to the lowest common denominator here. It’s several steps more rational then the lowest common denominator, which is “my culture (Christian/American/white/English speaking) is the best culture, and anyone who disagrees with it is either an idiot, evil, or both”.
Cultural relativism is a somewhat more rational level reached by people with a certain amount of education and intelligence, or who come from a more cosmopolitan/open minded background. It’s not the most rational level, certainly not if they try to apply it to sciences or if they use mangled versions of it to defend bizzare belief systems, but it’s not the least rational level either; we’re talking about people who are generally already in the top 20% or so. And people who are cultural relativists tend, almost by definition, to be willing to listen to other points of view; they’re more likely to hear you out, if you appeal to them on a rational level and don’t treat them like idiots (which is sounds like you’re doing right now).
But we’re not talking about narrow minded conservative religious types; they, almost by definition, hate the idea of cultural relativism (because their culture is the only one that’s right). We’re talking about people who have moved past that.
Anyway, people who are religious are VERY resistant to hearing recognizable religious-style arguments being used for what they deem to be anti-religious purposes. They have a lot of resistance to the meme, because they carry a version of it themselves. It’s a reason that devout Christians don’t, as a rule, become Scientologists; they’re already protected against that type of mematic attack. It’s also why very religious Christians are so likely to call ideas like the singularity or transhumansim a “cult” and thus reject it; if you’re using something that looks to them like a religious argument to “convert” them to a “different religion”, their meme immune system rejects it instantly. (Obviously ideas about transhumanism and the singularity are not actually religions, but that doesn’t matter.)
The thread opened by talking about people who go to a Harry Potter fan club. The person who wrote the thread mentioned in the past that the fan club holds things like astrology lessons.
I would think that the audience is people in the vague New Age spectrum which like pop spirituality and do have some sort of belief in God.
Being thoughtful just means that you are better at rationalizing your belief. It doesn’t make you escape the trap of holding beliefs for signaling social status. Read a bit Robert Hanson.
Do you feel like I’m treating you as an idiot? If so, that’s not intended. Cultural relativists are not the target audience of posts I write on LessWrong.
That is probably true.
If a person is thoughtful and feels the need to rationalize their belief, then they are usually someone who can be reached through reason and rational arguments. If nothing else, they’ll probably have to improve their own rationalization, perhaps take a small step back from their previous position or have a little more doubt about it. Most people actually are willing to be convinced of most things, in the right situation, so long as you don’t try to push them too far out of their comfort zone all at once.
The only people who can’t be reached at all by reason are people who claim to be completely motivated by faith and belief.
Edit: Also, there are real and valid reasons that “cultural relativism” has become a system that intellectual types claim to have in order to signal social status. If you don’t understand that, then you’re never going to change the minds of the people who help create those signals in the first place.
No, no; I’m not offended. I just feel like you have an extremely low opinion of the people you’re talking about trying to convince, which is something you should generally try to avoid; if you act like you have contempt for someone, you will never convince them of anything.
I’m far from contempt when it comes to people who are cultural relativists not being convinced by reason.
There nothing contemptful about recognizing that another person wants to be happy and helping them to be happy.
I don’t let my emotions interfere with my reasoning on that level. I don’t let myself get blinded by compassion. I don’t act based on the belief that people should be rational. I have read enough cognitive psychology to know that they aren’t.
I think this is a classic example where arguments alone don’t do much. You don’t like cultural relativists on some level. You think you would need to feel contempt if you would recognize the finding of cognitive psychology about how people come to hold the beliefs that they do.
If I don’t provide you with a way to not feel contempt while accepting cognitive psychology ideas about how humans come to hold the beliefs that they do, I won’t convince you because you have something to lose on a emotional level.
At the moment I’m not trying to convince them. I’m want to convince you.
It’s less than two weeks ago that a woman with a New Age background asked me whether I teach meditation somewhere. I don’t have any problem with interacting in that environment.