I think that’s right, but in my list I’m trying to factor out non-strawmanning as “alternative-minding”, and civility under “goodwill”.
I think there are anti-strawmanning benefits to being friendly, but I’m wary of trying to cash out everything that’s a good idea as “oh yeah, this is good because it helps individuals see the truth better”, when that’s not actually true for every good idea.
In this case, I think there are two things worth keeping distinct: the goal of understanding others’ views in a discussion, and the goal of making discussion happen at all. Civility helps keep social environments fun and chill enough that people stick around, are interested in engaging, and don’t go into the conversation feeling triggered or defensive. That’s worth protecting, IMO, even if there’s no risk that yelling at people (or whatever) will directly cause you to straw-man them.
so i thought about you comment and i understand why we think about that in different ways.
in my model of the world, there is important concept—Goodwill. there are arrows that point toward it, things that create goodwill—niceness, same side politically, personal relationship, all sort of things. there are also things that destroy goodwill, or even move it to the negative numbers.
there are arrows that come out of this Goodwill node in my casual graph. things like System1 understand what actually said, tend to react nicely to things, able to pass ITT. some things you can get other ways—people can be polite to people they hate, especially on the internet. but there are things that i saw only as result of Goodwill. and System1 correct interpretation is one of them/ maybe it’s possible—but i never saw it. and the politeness you get without Goodwill, is shallow. people’s System1 notice that in body language, and even in writing.
now, you can dial back on needless insulting and condescension. those are adversarial moves that can be chose consciously or avoided, even with effort. but from my point of view, when there is so little Goodwill left, the chance for good discussion already lost. it can only be bad and very bad. avoiding very bad is important! but my aim in such situations is to leave the discussion when the goodwill come close to zero, and have mental alarm screaming at me if i ever in the negative numbers of feel like the other person have negative numbers of Goodwill toward me.
so, basically, in my model of the world, there is ONE node, Goodwill. in the world, there is no different things. you write: “even if there’s no risk that yelling at people (or whatever) will directly cause you to straw-man them.”. but in my model, such situation is impossible! yelling at people WILL cause you to strawman them.
in my model of the world, this fact is not public knowledge, and my model regarding that is important part of what i want to communicate when I’m talking about Goodwill.
thanks for the conversion! it’s the clearest way i ever described my concept of Goodwill, and it was useful for my to formulate that in words.
I think that’s right, but in my list I’m trying to factor out non-strawmanning as “alternative-minding”, and civility under “goodwill”.
I think there are anti-strawmanning benefits to being friendly, but I’m wary of trying to cash out everything that’s a good idea as “oh yeah, this is good because it helps individuals see the truth better”, when that’s not actually true for every good idea.
In this case, I think there are two things worth keeping distinct: the goal of understanding others’ views in a discussion, and the goal of making discussion happen at all. Civility helps keep social environments fun and chill enough that people stick around, are interested in engaging, and don’t go into the conversation feeling triggered or defensive. That’s worth protecting, IMO, even if there’s no risk that yelling at people (or whatever) will directly cause you to straw-man them.
so i thought about you comment and i understand why we think about that in different ways.
in my model of the world, there is important concept—Goodwill. there are arrows that point toward it, things that create goodwill—niceness, same side politically, personal relationship, all sort of things. there are also things that destroy goodwill, or even move it to the negative numbers.
there are arrows that come out of this Goodwill node in my casual graph. things like System1 understand what actually said, tend to react nicely to things, able to pass ITT. some things you can get other ways—people can be polite to people they hate, especially on the internet. but there are things that i saw only as result of Goodwill. and System1 correct interpretation is one of them/ maybe it’s possible—but i never saw it. and the politeness you get without Goodwill, is shallow. people’s System1 notice that in body language, and even in writing.
now, you can dial back on needless insulting and condescension. those are adversarial moves that can be chose consciously or avoided, even with effort. but from my point of view, when there is so little Goodwill left, the chance for good discussion already lost. it can only be bad and very bad. avoiding very bad is important! but my aim in such situations is to leave the discussion when the goodwill come close to zero, and have mental alarm screaming at me if i ever in the negative numbers of feel like the other person have negative numbers of Goodwill toward me.
so, basically, in my model of the world, there is ONE node, Goodwill. in the world, there is no different things. you write: “even if there’s no risk that yelling at people (or whatever) will directly cause you to straw-man them.”. but in my model, such situation is impossible! yelling at people WILL cause you to strawman them.
in my model of the world, this fact is not public knowledge, and my model regarding that is important part of what i want to communicate when I’m talking about Goodwill.
thanks for the conversion! it’s the clearest way i ever described my concept of Goodwill, and it was useful for my to formulate that in words.