I’ve seen something like this myself, but I agree with Tordmor about what it is.
In my engineering degree, we had to take some “liberal studies” courses to complement the technical stuff. In one of these we had an irrationalist as a teacher. She would state crazy beliefs like that homeopathy was just as legitimate as “western” medicine, different cultures have different truths, and that science doesn’t work in some cultures. Naturally, I challenged some of these ideas, but the response was to just shut down criticism and dodge questions “who’s science?”, “yes that may be your view, but we are talking about this guy”, and so on. I didn’t want to just irritate everyone and disrupt the class indefinitely, so the teacher could just ignore criticism until it went away.
At this point we were all strong technical thinkers, so it was very frustrating for everyone, tho everyone else was much more shy about calling out teachers than I. We eventually decided on a model of what was going on: we were being presented with incoherent “facts” that we were forced to memorize and were not allowed to criticize. It was practically a recipe for brainwashing. What it felt like was undermining the precision of thought that we had trained as engineers. It felt like my brain would turn to mush by being forced to integrate these incorrect bits of knowledge.
I don’t think that terrible feeling was the result of a clash of memes from opposing belief systems. Engineering is not a belief system; it is a precise art that requires precise thought. It felt like being forced to use your nicely sharpened tools on a task that would destroy them.
So I think that when you notice that feeling, you should stand up for the sanctity of your mind. Even listening to that stuff puts gunk in your gears. You should have called the guy out (politely) for depriving people of the ability to help each other reach a better understanding of things.
Communication must be two-way to be useful. If you disallow criticism, so that only agreement is allowed, the communication ceases to be interactive. You lose the ability to discuss an idea before accepting or rejecting it.
So I think that when you notice that feeling, you should stand up for the sanctity of your mind.
This is only useful to the extent that you already trust your mind to generate accurate beliefs. It’s possible or even likely that relativists get the same “ick” reaction when scientists start talking about universal laws.
I wonder. An analogy: a relatively uncompartmentalized mind encountering such (potentially instrumentally useful) wrong beliefs suffers from epistemic contagion like water encountering Ice-nine. A honeycombed, extremely inconsistent mind encountering universal laws suffers like a ship with extensive compartment breaches.
So I think that when you notice that feeling, you should stand up for the sanctity of your mind. Even listening to that stuff puts gunk in your gears. You should have called the guy out (politely) for depriving people of the ability to help each other reach a better understanding of things.
I expect that he would have responded that if people are afraid their contributions will be criticized, they’ll be less likely to share them, depriving the group of their potentially valuable contributions and risking creating a hostile environment. And he’d have a point, since fear of criticism is normal, and anything which makes people less comfortable with putting themselves forward is likely to filter people out.
If you’re not discriminating with respects to beliefs or viewpoints, then you’ll see yourself as standing to lose much more by discouraging sharing than discouraging criticism. If you’re too undiscriminating, you risk believing stupid things, while if you’re too discriminating, you risk filtering out potentially valuable input (which is why we rarely tell newcomers here straight out to “read the sequences” these days; asking that much is too strong a filter.)
In order to convince him that he ought to be allowing criticism of ideas in the discussion, you’d probably have to convince him that he’s not intellectually discriminating enough. It’s not a simple, one sided proposition, it carries a lot of inferential distance.
Also, if I care more about, say, building a social network that I can leverage at some later time to accomplish some goal than I do about maximizing the percentage of true beliefs expressed in my presence, I might in fact stand to lose more by encouraging criticism.
This is a point too often lost, but I’d go even further.
You might care more about building your social network than maximizing the number of your own true beliefs. Instrumental rationality involves a trade off with epistemic rationality and other goods.
I don’t think any appeal to the actual relativist prof would have been effective. You’re talking about persuading someone who not only is much higher-status, and in front of a crowd of witnesses who are liable to jump to your defense if sufficiently provoked, but whose livelihood depends on publicly maintaining the belief system in question. The long-term solution, if it’s even possible, would involve appealing to whoever decided to include such classes in the requirements for an engineering degree.
It felt like being forced to use your nicely sharpened tools on a task that would destroy them.
I like this metaphor! For example, if you are not allowed to criticize, you sometimes cannot say your true rejection, because it would include a criticism of something someone already said.
Perhaps it depends on definition of “criticism”. Whoever says their opinion first, has an advantage. If someone has aleady said “X”, what exactly is allowed or disallowed to say? Can I just say, calmly, “non-X”? Sometimes this is resolved by politely saying “I believe non-X” (pretending that all beliefs are equal, and no evidence exists). Then, is it allowed to say things like “I believe non-X, because evidence points towards non-X”? Are we allowed to use evidence, when the evidence is detrimental to other people’s stated opinions?
Communication must be two-way to be useful. If you disallow criticism, so that only agreement is allowed, the communication ceases to be interactive. You lose the ability to discuss an idea before accepting or rejecting it.
I agree. “Criticizing or shutting out other people’s views is forbidden” may make sense at Thanksgiving dinner, but it’s a very odd rule for a discussion group. Swimmer963, do you think there was any benefit to this rule? Because my reaction to this situation would be either to criticize the rule or privately roll my eyes and resolve to not come back.
She would state crazy beliefs like that homeopathy was just as legitimate as “western” medicine
Gah! That’s so annoying. I’d probably just blurt out: “Homoeopathy is Western medicine, its just not very good you nincompoop.”
What it felt like was undermining the precision of thought that we had trained as engineers. It felt like my brain would turn to mush by being forced to integrate these incorrect bits of knowledge.
I also know exactly how you feel I took some “liberal studies” courses too in my second year. I had the exact same feeling.
Unfortunately there are cultures where interpersonal relationships are more personalized than in others: where people (generally) understand any criticism as targeting the self (that mysterious whole) and not the idea/point.
Work meetings are one way rhetoric in such parts, famously boring and result in as much creativity as the authority has. Usually less civilized places posses a weaker level of abstraction. (When everything is urgent, nothing is hypothetical.)
So it isn’t only a question of sub-optimal methods chosen by various individuals—be they politicians—to make a friendlier world, but of big groups, entire mentality groups, for which the very term “dialogue” has other boundaries. So the play-safe, good-for-all economical solution is to forbid criticism or to use extreme relativism for everything. The “holistic” conversation.
We all do it sometimes, out of interest or ignorance.
I’ve seen something like this myself, but I agree with Tordmor about what it is.
In my engineering degree, we had to take some “liberal studies” courses to complement the technical stuff. In one of these we had an irrationalist as a teacher. She would state crazy beliefs like that homeopathy was just as legitimate as “western” medicine, different cultures have different truths, and that science doesn’t work in some cultures. Naturally, I challenged some of these ideas, but the response was to just shut down criticism and dodge questions “who’s science?”, “yes that may be your view, but we are talking about this guy”, and so on. I didn’t want to just irritate everyone and disrupt the class indefinitely, so the teacher could just ignore criticism until it went away.
At this point we were all strong technical thinkers, so it was very frustrating for everyone, tho everyone else was much more shy about calling out teachers than I. We eventually decided on a model of what was going on: we were being presented with incoherent “facts” that we were forced to memorize and were not allowed to criticize. It was practically a recipe for brainwashing. What it felt like was undermining the precision of thought that we had trained as engineers. It felt like my brain would turn to mush by being forced to integrate these incorrect bits of knowledge.
I don’t think that terrible feeling was the result of a clash of memes from opposing belief systems. Engineering is not a belief system; it is a precise art that requires precise thought. It felt like being forced to use your nicely sharpened tools on a task that would destroy them.
So I think that when you notice that feeling, you should stand up for the sanctity of your mind. Even listening to that stuff puts gunk in your gears. You should have called the guy out (politely) for depriving people of the ability to help each other reach a better understanding of things.
Communication must be two-way to be useful. If you disallow criticism, so that only agreement is allowed, the communication ceases to be interactive. You lose the ability to discuss an idea before accepting or rejecting it.
This is only useful to the extent that you already trust your mind to generate accurate beliefs. It’s possible or even likely that relativists get the same “ick” reaction when scientists start talking about universal laws.
It’s potentially useful even if I don’t, if I trust my mind to recognize a good-faith effort at explanation.
I wonder. An analogy: a relatively uncompartmentalized mind encountering such (potentially instrumentally useful) wrong beliefs suffers from epistemic contagion like water encountering Ice-nine. A honeycombed, extremely inconsistent mind encountering universal laws suffers like a ship with extensive compartment breaches.
Downvoted for confusing “postmodernists” and “relativists” and spreading a common missconception.
Could you explain the two of them to me?
Fixed, thanks.
I expect that he would have responded that if people are afraid their contributions will be criticized, they’ll be less likely to share them, depriving the group of their potentially valuable contributions and risking creating a hostile environment. And he’d have a point, since fear of criticism is normal, and anything which makes people less comfortable with putting themselves forward is likely to filter people out.
If you’re not discriminating with respects to beliefs or viewpoints, then you’ll see yourself as standing to lose much more by discouraging sharing than discouraging criticism. If you’re too undiscriminating, you risk believing stupid things, while if you’re too discriminating, you risk filtering out potentially valuable input (which is why we rarely tell newcomers here straight out to “read the sequences” these days; asking that much is too strong a filter.)
In order to convince him that he ought to be allowing criticism of ideas in the discussion, you’d probably have to convince him that he’s not intellectually discriminating enough. It’s not a simple, one sided proposition, it carries a lot of inferential distance.
Also, if I care more about, say, building a social network that I can leverage at some later time to accomplish some goal than I do about maximizing the percentage of true beliefs expressed in my presence, I might in fact stand to lose more by encouraging criticism.
This is a point too often lost, but I’d go even further.
You might care more about building your social network than maximizing the number of your own true beliefs. Instrumental rationality involves a trade off with epistemic rationality and other goods.
I don’t think any appeal to the actual relativist prof would have been effective. You’re talking about persuading someone who not only is much higher-status, and in front of a crowd of witnesses who are liable to jump to your defense if sufficiently provoked, but whose livelihood depends on publicly maintaining the belief system in question. The long-term solution, if it’s even possible, would involve appealing to whoever decided to include such classes in the requirements for an engineering degree.
And if people think that their opposing contributions will be taken as criticism, they’ll be less likely to share them, as demonstrated by the OP.
I like this metaphor! For example, if you are not allowed to criticize, you sometimes cannot say your true rejection, because it would include a criticism of something someone already said.
Perhaps it depends on definition of “criticism”. Whoever says their opinion first, has an advantage. If someone has aleady said “X”, what exactly is allowed or disallowed to say? Can I just say, calmly, “non-X”? Sometimes this is resolved by politely saying “I believe non-X” (pretending that all beliefs are equal, and no evidence exists). Then, is it allowed to say things like “I believe non-X, because evidence points towards non-X”? Are we allowed to use evidence, when the evidence is detrimental to other people’s stated opinions?
In environments like that, I generally go with “Y”. If Y implies not-X, so much the better.
I agree. “Criticizing or shutting out other people’s views is forbidden” may make sense at Thanksgiving dinner, but it’s a very odd rule for a discussion group. Swimmer963, do you think there was any benefit to this rule? Because my reaction to this situation would be either to criticize the rule or privately roll my eyes and resolve to not come back.
Gah! That’s so annoying. I’d probably just blurt out: “Homoeopathy is Western medicine, its just not very good you nincompoop.”
I also know exactly how you feel I took some “liberal studies” courses too in my second year. I had the exact same feeling.
Unfortunately there are cultures where interpersonal relationships are more personalized than in others: where people (generally) understand any criticism as targeting the self (that mysterious whole) and not the idea/point.
Work meetings are one way rhetoric in such parts, famously boring and result in as much creativity as the authority has. Usually less civilized places posses a weaker level of abstraction. (When everything is urgent, nothing is hypothetical.)
So it isn’t only a question of sub-optimal methods chosen by various individuals—be they politicians—to make a friendlier world, but of big groups, entire mentality groups, for which the very term “dialogue” has other boundaries. So the play-safe, good-for-all economical solution is to forbid criticism or to use extreme relativism for everything. The “holistic” conversation.
We all do it sometimes, out of interest or ignorance.
Here’s an interesting take on that