Sometimes the best way to overcome bias is through an emotional appeal.
Yes. Another good example is in debating (at least, debating to change someone’s mind, not just to win in the eyes of observers).
For the fast majority of the population of people who disagree with you, you can’t just drop a logic dump on them and expect them to magically change their minds. The only way they will be able to consider your arguments rationally is if you can get around all the biases they currently hold towards you or the topic of your argument. Sweeping the field clean of their biases, or compensating for them, may require various forms of influence, including emotional appeals, Cialdini’s 6 weapons of influence, and various forms of signaling and framing.
The goal of using these forms of influence and rhetoric is not to switch the person you are debating from mindlessly disagreeing with you to mindlessly agreeing with you. The goal is just to get them to consider what you are saying in a less-biased way.
One of the best ways to change the minds of people who disagree with you is to cultivate an intellectual friendship with them, where you demonstrate a willingness to consider their ideas and update your positions, if they in return demonstrate the willingness to do the same for you. Such a relationship rests on both reciprocity and liking. Not only do you make it easier for them to back down and agree with you, but you make it easier for yourself to back down and agree with them.
When you have set up a context for the discussion where one person backing down isn’t framed as admitting defeat, then it’s a lot easier to do. You can back down and state agreement with them as a way to signal open-mindedness and the willingness to compromise, in order to encourage those qualities also in your debate partner. Over time, both people’s positions will shift towards each other, though not necessarily symmetrically.
Even though this sort of discourse is full of influence, bias, and signaling, it actually promotes rational discussion between many people better than trying to act like Spock and expecting people you are debating to do the same.
Thanks for introducing the larger topic. I see you and raise you: I think emotional responses can actually encapsulate information, in something like the way visual perception delivers an overall verdict (e.g., “that’s my Aunt Lydia”) without requiring doing the math on details (like the shape of the nose, eyes, etc.). Without emotion, reason is crippled. Antonio Damasio’s book Descartes’ Error is a good source on the topic.
Perhaps the reason emotional reactions seem so untrustworthy is that significant details of this implicit information can be altered without the alteration being emotionally evident. That is, we can change the logic enough that it no longer applies, but do this subtly enough that the emotional reaction is preserved. Therefore, rationalists feel safest if everything is laid out explicitly, so that their emotions are less likely to give them false positives for “convincing argument”.
If I can indulge my nerdy side, it reminds me of cryptographic hash functions. The idea there is that the slightest change in the source string (“dinosaur” → “dinosaus”) will result in a completely different hash, one that you couldn’t even tell was related to the original. The hash function relating information → emotion fails at this: it isn’t sensitive enough to reflect small but significant changes.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment. I enjoy your posts and comments and think I would enjoy corresponding with you. PM me with your email address if you’re so inclined.
Yes. Another good example is in debating (at least, debating to change someone’s mind, not just to win in the eyes of observers).
For the fast majority of the population of people who disagree with you, you can’t just drop a logic dump on them and expect them to magically change their minds. The only way they will be able to consider your arguments rationally is if you can get around all the biases they currently hold towards you or the topic of your argument. Sweeping the field clean of their biases, or compensating for them, may require various forms of influence, including emotional appeals, Cialdini’s 6 weapons of influence, and various forms of signaling and framing.
The goal of using these forms of influence and rhetoric is not to switch the person you are debating from mindlessly disagreeing with you to mindlessly agreeing with you. The goal is just to get them to consider what you are saying in a less-biased way.
One of the best ways to change the minds of people who disagree with you is to cultivate an intellectual friendship with them, where you demonstrate a willingness to consider their ideas and update your positions, if they in return demonstrate the willingness to do the same for you. Such a relationship rests on both reciprocity and liking. Not only do you make it easier for them to back down and agree with you, but you make it easier for yourself to back down and agree with them.
When you have set up a context for the discussion where one person backing down isn’t framed as admitting defeat, then it’s a lot easier to do. You can back down and state agreement with them as a way to signal open-mindedness and the willingness to compromise, in order to encourage those qualities also in your debate partner. Over time, both people’s positions will shift towards each other, though not necessarily symmetrically.
Even though this sort of discourse is full of influence, bias, and signaling, it actually promotes rational discussion between many people better than trying to act like Spock and expecting people you are debating to do the same.
Thanks for introducing the larger topic. I see you and raise you: I think emotional responses can actually encapsulate information, in something like the way visual perception delivers an overall verdict (e.g., “that’s my Aunt Lydia”) without requiring doing the math on details (like the shape of the nose, eyes, etc.). Without emotion, reason is crippled. Antonio Damasio’s book Descartes’ Error is a good source on the topic.
Perhaps the reason emotional reactions seem so untrustworthy is that significant details of this implicit information can be altered without the alteration being emotionally evident. That is, we can change the logic enough that it no longer applies, but do this subtly enough that the emotional reaction is preserved. Therefore, rationalists feel safest if everything is laid out explicitly, so that their emotions are less likely to give them false positives for “convincing argument”.
If I can indulge my nerdy side, it reminds me of cryptographic hash functions. The idea there is that the slightest change in the source string (“dinosaur” → “dinosaus”) will result in a completely different hash, one that you couldn’t even tell was related to the original. The hash function relating information → emotion fails at this: it isn’t sensitive enough to reflect small but significant changes.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment. I enjoy your posts and comments and think I would enjoy corresponding with you. PM me with your email address if you’re so inclined.