almost every single major ideology has some strawman that the general population commonly imagines when they think of the ideology. a major source of cohesion within the ideology comes from a shared feeling of injustice from being misunderstood.
There are some people that I’ve found to be very consistently thoughtful—when we disagree, the crux is often something interesting and often causes me to realize that I overlooked an important consideration. I respect people like this a lot, even if we disagree a lot. I think talking to people like this is a good antidote to digging yourself into a position.
On the other hand, there are some people I’ve talked to where I feel like the conversation always runs in circles so it’s impossible to pin down a crux, or they always retreat to increasingly deranged positions to avoid admitting being wrong, or they seem to constantly pattern match my argument to something vaguely similar instead of understanding my argument. I think arguing against people like this too much is actively harmful for your epistemics, because you’ll start digging yourself into your positions, and you’ll get used to thinking that everyone who disagrees with you is wrong. There are a bunch of people (most notably Eliezer) who seem to me to have gone too far down this path.
On the other side of the aisle, I don’t know exactly how to consistently become more thoughtful, but I think one good starting point is getting good at deeply understanding people’s viewpoints.
The people who understand the proper interpretation of the ideology can feel intellectually superior to those who don’t. Also, people who misunderstand something are by definition wrong… and therefore the people who understand the ideology correctly must—quite logically—be right!
(An equivocation between “be right about what is the correct interpretation of the ideology” and “be right about whether the ideology correctly describes the reality”.)
irritating people when discussing the topic is a great way to get someone to dig into a position really hard (whether or not that position is correct).
That irritation can be performed any way you like. The most common is insinuating that they’re stupid, but making invalid meme arguments and otherwise misunderstanding the position or arguments for the position will serve quite well, too.
I think this follows from the strength and insidious nature of motivated reasoning. It’s often mistaken for confirmation bias, but it’s actually a much more important effect because it drives polarization in public discussion.
I’ve been meaning to write a post about this, but doing it justice would take too much time. I think I need to just write a brief incomplete one.
I don’t think being irritating in general is enough. I think it’s specifically the feeling that everyone who has disagreed with you has been wrong about their disagreement that creates a very powerful sense of feeling like you must be onto something.
Really!? Okay, I’ll have to really present the argument when I write that post.
I do agree with your logic for why opponents misunderstanding the argument would make people sure they’re right, by general association. It’s a separate factor from the irritation, so I think I mis-statedit as a subset (although part of it seems to be; it’s irritating to have people repeatedly mis-characterize your position).
It seems pretty apparent to me when I watch people have discussions/arguments that their irritation/anger makes them dig in on their position. It seems to follow from evolutionary psychology: if you make me angry, my brain reacts like we’re in a fight. I now want to win that fight, so I need to prove you wrong. Believing any of your arguments or understating mine would lead to losing the fight I feel I’m in.
This isn’t usually how motivated reasoning is discussed, so I guess it does really take some careful explanation. It seems intuitive and obvious to me after holding this theory for years, but that could be my own motivated reasoning...
Unfortunately, I think the average person doesn’t understand misunderstanding. I think it can be taken as…
You’re too dumb to understand
You’re being purposely ignorant
You’re making fun of them
I’ll give an example:
—
I was recently in a conversation with a non-rationalist. I organised it because I wanted to talk about negative opinions they had on me. We talked a lot about certain scenarios.
In one scenario, I had seemingly rejected the suggestion that we all go bowling. I had said out loud “I hate bowling”. When what I meant was “I hate bowling, but I’m still very happy to sit in a bowling alley and watch my friends play.”
I think I did a bad job communicating there. It made my friends very angry (extra details about situation left out).
During our conversation, I asked for levels of anger or annoyance at me before and after I had explained what I had meant to say.
I was surprised when one friend didn’t adjust their anger levels at all. I thought I must have done another bad job at explaining.
“So, you started at 80% angry at me. And now that I’ve told you my perspective, you’re still 80% angry?” This surprised me. I would adjust my levels down if someone explained that to me.
I went back and forth trying to get to the bottom of this for ~half an hour. After which I came to realise we were just wired very different. To do this I used your suggested technique.
In the time it took for me to understand this one point, I had deeply annoyed my friend. They were under the impression that I was misunderstanding them on purpose somehow.
I think I would have been less comfortable or fulfilled, but better off. If I had just accepted that they were still very angry. And had moved on.
Instead, being confused and asking questions made my situation worse.
To be clear though. I did get to the truth with this technique. But sometimes winning can’t be about knowing the truth. Which is sad. I don’t like that. But I think it is true.
It is unfortunately impossible for me to know exactly what happened during this interaction. I will say that the specific tone you use matters a huge amount—for example, if you ask to understand why someone is upset about your actions, the exact same words will be much better received if you do it in a tone of contrition and wanting to improve, and it will be received very poorly if you do it in a tone that implies the other person is being unreasonable in being upset. From the very limited information I have, my guess is you probably often say things in a tone that’s not interpreted the way you intended.
I’d say that’s a good guess given the information I provided.
I think I did a good job in this particular circumstance as coming off as confused or curious. That was my aim, and I placed a lot of focus there.
However, I haven’t listened back to the audio recordings of the conversation. It’s likely my previous comment is heavily bias.
a great way to get someone to dig into a position really hard (whether or not that position is correct) is to consistently misunderstand that position
almost every single major ideology has some strawman that the general population commonly imagines when they think of the ideology. a major source of cohesion within the ideology comes from a shared feeling of injustice from being misunderstood.
There are some people that I’ve found to be very consistently thoughtful—when we disagree, the crux is often something interesting and often causes me to realize that I overlooked an important consideration. I respect people like this a lot, even if we disagree a lot. I think talking to people like this is a good antidote to digging yourself into a position.
On the other hand, there are some people I’ve talked to where I feel like the conversation always runs in circles so it’s impossible to pin down a crux, or they always retreat to increasingly deranged positions to avoid admitting being wrong, or they seem to constantly pattern match my argument to something vaguely similar instead of understanding my argument. I think arguing against people like this too much is actively harmful for your epistemics, because you’ll start digging yourself into your positions, and you’ll get used to thinking that everyone who disagrees with you is wrong. There are a bunch of people (most notably Eliezer) who seem to me to have gone too far down this path.
On the other side of the aisle, I don’t know exactly how to consistently become more thoughtful, but I think one good starting point is getting good at deeply understanding people’s viewpoints.
The people who understand the proper interpretation of the ideology can feel intellectually superior to those who don’t. Also, people who misunderstand something are by definition wrong… and therefore the people who understand the ideology correctly must—quite logically—be right!
(An equivocation between “be right about what is the correct interpretation of the ideology” and “be right about whether the ideology correctly describes the reality”.)
I think this is a subset of:
irritating people when discussing the topic is a great way to get someone to dig into a position really hard (whether or not that position is correct).
That irritation can be performed any way you like. The most common is insinuating that they’re stupid, but making invalid meme arguments and otherwise misunderstanding the position or arguments for the position will serve quite well, too.
I think this follows from the strength and insidious nature of motivated reasoning. It’s often mistaken for confirmation bias, but it’s actually a much more important effect because it drives polarization in public discussion.
I’ve been meaning to write a post about this, but doing it justice would take too much time. I think I need to just write a brief incomplete one.
I don’t think being irritating in general is enough. I think it’s specifically the feeling that everyone who has disagreed with you has been wrong about their disagreement that creates a very powerful sense of feeling like you must be onto something.
Really!? Okay, I’ll have to really present the argument when I write that post.
I do agree with your logic for why opponents misunderstanding the argument would make people sure they’re right, by general association. It’s a separate factor from the irritation, so I think I mis-statedit as a subset (although part of it seems to be; it’s irritating to have people repeatedly mis-characterize your position).
It seems pretty apparent to me when I watch people have discussions/arguments that their irritation/anger makes them dig in on their position. It seems to follow from evolutionary psychology: if you make me angry, my brain reacts like we’re in a fight. I now want to win that fight, so I need to prove you wrong. Believing any of your arguments or understating mine would lead to losing the fight I feel I’m in.
This isn’t usually how motivated reasoning is discussed, so I guess it does really take some careful explanation. It seems intuitive and obvious to me after holding this theory for years, but that could be my own motivated reasoning...
Unfortunately, I think the average person doesn’t understand misunderstanding. I think it can be taken as…
You’re too dumb to understand
You’re being purposely ignorant
You’re making fun of them I’ll give an example:
— I was recently in a conversation with a non-rationalist. I organised it because I wanted to talk about negative opinions they had on me. We talked a lot about certain scenarios.
In one scenario, I had seemingly rejected the suggestion that we all go bowling. I had said out loud “I hate bowling”. When what I meant was “I hate bowling, but I’m still very happy to sit in a bowling alley and watch my friends play.”
I think I did a bad job communicating there. It made my friends very angry (extra details about situation left out).
During our conversation, I asked for levels of anger or annoyance at me before and after I had explained what I had meant to say. I was surprised when one friend didn’t adjust their anger levels at all. I thought I must have done another bad job at explaining.
“So, you started at 80% angry at me. And now that I’ve told you my perspective, you’re still 80% angry?” This surprised me. I would adjust my levels down if someone explained that to me.
I went back and forth trying to get to the bottom of this for ~half an hour. After which I came to realise we were just wired very different. To do this I used your suggested technique. In the time it took for me to understand this one point, I had deeply annoyed my friend. They were under the impression that I was misunderstanding them on purpose somehow. I think I would have been less comfortable or fulfilled, but better off. If I had just accepted that they were still very angry. And had moved on. Instead, being confused and asking questions made my situation worse.
To be clear though. I did get to the truth with this technique. But sometimes winning can’t be about knowing the truth. Which is sad. I don’t like that. But I think it is true.
It is unfortunately impossible for me to know exactly what happened during this interaction. I will say that the specific tone you use matters a huge amount—for example, if you ask to understand why someone is upset about your actions, the exact same words will be much better received if you do it in a tone of contrition and wanting to improve, and it will be received very poorly if you do it in a tone that implies the other person is being unreasonable in being upset. From the very limited information I have, my guess is you probably often say things in a tone that’s not interpreted the way you intended.
I’d say that’s a good guess given the information I provided.
I think I did a good job in this particular circumstance as coming off as confused or curious. That was my aim, and I placed a lot of focus there. However, I haven’t listened back to the audio recordings of the conversation. It’s likely my previous comment is heavily bias.