Unfortunately the best way to win a 1v1 argument is to simply refuse to concede any points no matter what. You may not be optimal to win, but you by definition cannot lose. Try arguing with a pet about not serving second dinner. You have the rhetorical advantages of billions of extra neurons, grasp of language, education etc. but you're still never going to convince an animal that you're morally correct.
By discouraging any engagement on the merits (bullying/meta bullying in your model), the discussion stays on a level of blanket refusal that means they simply cannot lose any ground.
Here's how I think about this: Most people interpret political disagreement using an "intentions heuristic"--they try to determine who means well, and then they defer to those people on empirical and policy questions. But once you have run that procedure, it also works in reverse. If somebody disagrees, they must not mean well. And saying "well it isn't actually that they think X, really they think Y, now I'm not saying I agree..." is correlated, if you accept the intentions heuristic, with having bad intentions.
I believe that most people who have a side in the culture wars have not thought out their position. Rather, they've chosen sides in a tribal war ... and usually they have not 'chosen', they grew up in the tribe they're in. They couldn't really argue for their views, which are mainly attitudes and not articulated beliefs, and are not in a position to understand the arguments for the views of the other side.
And ...trying to understand the other side is in tension with demonizing them. But in a war, it's functional to demonize the other side. Suppose American soldiers preparing for the invasion of Normandy were exposed to information aboutt the young Germans they were preparing to kill: told that these young men believed they were fighting for their country, having been subjected to ten years of unchallenged Nazi propaganda, that many of them had parents who had hated the Nazis, that they were forced to become soldiers (ie conscripted). Would that have made the Americans more, or less, effective?
Thus, as Social Justice Warriors advance to the task of destroying racist, capitalist, homo-Islamo-Trans-phobic America, they must not see their enemies as humans, but as demons.
I used to teach philosophy. I had to teach the abortion debate, and many other less emotionally-charged topics. I'd tell the students to allow themselves to be persuaded by the other side's argument, because that's the only way to really, deeply understand it. That's how you feel the emotional pull of an argument as well as the intellectual pull. The students HATED doing that. It's deeply uncomfortable to let yourself be persuaded by "the bad guys", whichever side you might take that to be. People fear that they'll never climb out of the snare of the other guy's argument. They are afraid they'll lose their sense of self. They're afraid that maybe they were wrong about a morally important point. Never underestimate the force of emotional discomfort in intellectual debates.
Pretty relevant I think. We're lucky our rationality is helpful to understand the world, but it's never been its primary use. Rationality is inherently a social weapon, and we don't like giving away bullets in a war.
I totally agree this is part of what's happening. But I wonder if we should think of that emotional discomfort as just sort of "random" or if we are that way because (cultural or genetic) evolution found that it was a good strategy.
I elaborate this point further in a top-level comment. But a feature of the emotional discomfort is a signal of potential future (psychological) pain.
In general it is an adaptive strategy to assimilate to the group norms. If you want to think about it evolutionarily, then ostracism -> death therefore conforming is a valid strategy. It makes sense that there would be a pre-baked alarm bell that warns us using the emotion of fear when it senses that we are deviating from the norms, like a modern car that beeps when it detects an accidental lane change.
An implication of this is that courage is similar to the concept of momentum in gradient descent. We fall into a local minimum of assimilating to a norm. The depth of that local minimum is set by the amount of fear associated with deviation. We need enough "momentum" (courage), in order to "escape" (change our beliefs).
(I'm pretty sure I am being honest with myself here) - I don't mind 'allowing myself to be persuaded by the other sides argument' at all. I kinda prefer it. It's the only way to actually understand where they are coming from, which is needed so I can make the best informed decision regarding what I should think! I'll 'try on' pretty much any belief to get a sense of it. I play Devils advocate with myself too much; maybe that's related
Great post! Perhaps there's a seventh model of "self-preservation of the group" (or is it a mix of the 5th & 6th models?) where, on certain topics that everybody know hinge on faith rather than proof, there's unbounded value in the collective suspension of disbelief. The group IS the belief, so if the belief disappears the group's existence is threatened. Anything that threatens the fiction (on either side) has to be squashed, lest we have to admit that the emperor has no clothes and we're all clueless on the matter. For abortion it goes like this: liberals know the definition of personhood is blurry but if enough people repeat that it happens post birth[1], it lends credibility to their faith-based belief. ([1] or post week X, but it has to coalesce around a fixed Schelling point, otherwise it's open to discussion and no longer faith-based; however it's hard to figure out what X is, which might explain why you're uneasy bringing up a specific X). Conversely, conservatives know their stance of "conception = personhood" cannot be argued with facts, so it has to be based in faith and thus closed to challenge.
Note that it's not so much about refusing to understand the other side, as it is to prevent self-doubt at all cost. Each group is willing to accept the consequences of their belief on policy-making as long as the group perpetuates its existence.
I'd strongly recommend Jonathan Haidt's book "The Righteous Mind" [I'm not endorsing anything else outside of the book]. He discusses this mainly from the tribal perspective. A quote:
“Morality binds and blinds. It binds us into ideological teams that fight each other as though the fate of the world depended on our side winning each battle. It blinds us to the fact that each team is composed of good people who have something important to say.”
I think about morality and motivation. When we make a strong moral statement, it will be a strong motivator, but we don't get to choose the direction of the motivation. It could motivate someone to be act in line with our morality, or it could motivate someone to act against our group.
I recently had an experience where I tried to explain that pro-lifers see abortion as "murder," and that it's a fair point to a certain degree.
My conversation partner was unreceptive to my analysis.
When I asked them why, they said that extending empathy and understanding to the opposite side hurts. This is similar to Ellen's explanation, but rather than being "afraid of being wrong," my partner came from a place of pain.
Many members of historically oppressed classes (like women) are unable to dissect the logical argument from reality. Understanding your oppressor forces you to internalize reasons to oppress yourself. This can lead to self-loathing and assimilation.
Dynomight, this might also be a partial explanation for why this phenomenon is hyper-specific to CW issues. There is more pain / trauma built up that can make understanding the opposition akin to self-harm.
I have seen some youtube videos by "regressive: feminists claiming that all of our current problems at universities and with many social issues derive from institutions being run by women, yet all of their safety mechanisms were designed to deal with male failings (violence, hazing, sexual harassment,...), not female ones. Many institutions are turning into a fascist nannying organism that will not tolerate anything that might harm anyone, anywhere. They are like Japanese mothers attacking germs that may threaten the baby. The results are terrifying, but make sense to the childless single women running universities who often come to treat students like babies instead of the adults that they are (banning Greek life is particularly horrific, and probably the driver of suicides).
I have no idea if this is correct, but definitely I feel like many of these intense issues tend to have crazy women on both sides screaming.
Here is another example. Regarding Russia/Ukraine there is a negatively connoted word in Germany. A “Putinversteher” is somebody who tries to understand the actions and strategy of Vladimir Putin.
To be labeled a "Putinversteher" is equivalent to losing all credibility in a discussion. It is tantamount to being accused of siding with Putin or being a victim of his propaganda.
Anyone who wants to treat cancer must understand how cancer cells work. No one would go to a doctor who does not at least try, regardless of the approach, to understand cancer before taking any healing measures.
Germans refusing to have empathy. Who would have ever imagined it? I would have thought after all they went through with the SS and the Stasi they would have learned to welcome critical thinking. Then again, they have Muslim anti-Semites promoting the Holocaust in the streets, so the country is clearly not the deeply admired society the FDR was when I was a child.
Unfortunately the best way to win a 1v1 argument is to simply refuse to concede any points no matter what. You may not be optimal to win, but you by definition cannot lose. Try arguing with a pet about not serving second dinner. You have the rhetorical advantages of billions of extra neurons, grasp of language, education etc. but you're still never going to convince an animal that you're morally correct.
By discouraging any engagement on the merits (bullying/meta bullying in your model), the discussion stays on a level of blanket refusal that means they simply cannot lose any ground.
Here's how I think about this: Most people interpret political disagreement using an "intentions heuristic"--they try to determine who means well, and then they defer to those people on empirical and policy questions. But once you have run that procedure, it also works in reverse. If somebody disagrees, they must not mean well. And saying "well it isn't actually that they think X, really they think Y, now I'm not saying I agree..." is correlated, if you accept the intentions heuristic, with having bad intentions.
I believe that most people who have a side in the culture wars have not thought out their position. Rather, they've chosen sides in a tribal war ... and usually they have not 'chosen', they grew up in the tribe they're in. They couldn't really argue for their views, which are mainly attitudes and not articulated beliefs, and are not in a position to understand the arguments for the views of the other side.
And ...trying to understand the other side is in tension with demonizing them. But in a war, it's functional to demonize the other side. Suppose American soldiers preparing for the invasion of Normandy were exposed to information aboutt the young Germans they were preparing to kill: told that these young men believed they were fighting for their country, having been subjected to ten years of unchallenged Nazi propaganda, that many of them had parents who had hated the Nazis, that they were forced to become soldiers (ie conscripted). Would that have made the Americans more, or less, effective?
Thus, as Social Justice Warriors advance to the task of destroying racist, capitalist, homo-Islamo-Trans-phobic America, they must not see their enemies as humans, but as demons.
I used to teach philosophy. I had to teach the abortion debate, and many other less emotionally-charged topics. I'd tell the students to allow themselves to be persuaded by the other side's argument, because that's the only way to really, deeply understand it. That's how you feel the emotional pull of an argument as well as the intellectual pull. The students HATED doing that. It's deeply uncomfortable to let yourself be persuaded by "the bad guys", whichever side you might take that to be. People fear that they'll never climb out of the snare of the other guy's argument. They are afraid they'll lose their sense of self. They're afraid that maybe they were wrong about a morally important point. Never underestimate the force of emotional discomfort in intellectual debates.
Pretty relevant I think. We're lucky our rationality is helpful to understand the world, but it's never been its primary use. Rationality is inherently a social weapon, and we don't like giving away bullets in a war.
I totally agree this is part of what's happening. But I wonder if we should think of that emotional discomfort as just sort of "random" or if we are that way because (cultural or genetic) evolution found that it was a good strategy.
I elaborate this point further in a top-level comment. But a feature of the emotional discomfort is a signal of potential future (psychological) pain.
In general it is an adaptive strategy to assimilate to the group norms. If you want to think about it evolutionarily, then ostracism -> death therefore conforming is a valid strategy. It makes sense that there would be a pre-baked alarm bell that warns us using the emotion of fear when it senses that we are deviating from the norms, like a modern car that beeps when it detects an accidental lane change.
An implication of this is that courage is similar to the concept of momentum in gradient descent. We fall into a local minimum of assimilating to a norm. The depth of that local minimum is set by the amount of fear associated with deviation. We need enough "momentum" (courage), in order to "escape" (change our beliefs).
(I'm pretty sure I am being honest with myself here) - I don't mind 'allowing myself to be persuaded by the other sides argument' at all. I kinda prefer it. It's the only way to actually understand where they are coming from, which is needed so I can make the best informed decision regarding what I should think! I'll 'try on' pretty much any belief to get a sense of it. I play Devils advocate with myself too much; maybe that's related
Great post! Perhaps there's a seventh model of "self-preservation of the group" (or is it a mix of the 5th & 6th models?) where, on certain topics that everybody know hinge on faith rather than proof, there's unbounded value in the collective suspension of disbelief. The group IS the belief, so if the belief disappears the group's existence is threatened. Anything that threatens the fiction (on either side) has to be squashed, lest we have to admit that the emperor has no clothes and we're all clueless on the matter. For abortion it goes like this: liberals know the definition of personhood is blurry but if enough people repeat that it happens post birth[1], it lends credibility to their faith-based belief. ([1] or post week X, but it has to coalesce around a fixed Schelling point, otherwise it's open to discussion and no longer faith-based; however it's hard to figure out what X is, which might explain why you're uneasy bringing up a specific X). Conversely, conservatives know their stance of "conception = personhood" cannot be argued with facts, so it has to be based in faith and thus closed to challenge.
Note that it's not so much about refusing to understand the other side, as it is to prevent self-doubt at all cost. Each group is willing to accept the consequences of their belief on policy-making as long as the group perpetuates its existence.
Well that was a fun read.
I'd strongly recommend Jonathan Haidt's book "The Righteous Mind" [I'm not endorsing anything else outside of the book]. He discusses this mainly from the tribal perspective. A quote:
“Morality binds and blinds. It binds us into ideological teams that fight each other as though the fate of the world depended on our side winning each battle. It blinds us to the fact that each team is composed of good people who have something important to say.”
I think about morality and motivation. When we make a strong moral statement, it will be a strong motivator, but we don't get to choose the direction of the motivation. It could motivate someone to be act in line with our morality, or it could motivate someone to act against our group.
I recently had an experience where I tried to explain that pro-lifers see abortion as "murder," and that it's a fair point to a certain degree.
My conversation partner was unreceptive to my analysis.
When I asked them why, they said that extending empathy and understanding to the opposite side hurts. This is similar to Ellen's explanation, but rather than being "afraid of being wrong," my partner came from a place of pain.
Many members of historically oppressed classes (like women) are unable to dissect the logical argument from reality. Understanding your oppressor forces you to internalize reasons to oppress yourself. This can lead to self-loathing and assimilation.
Dynomight, this might also be a partial explanation for why this phenomenon is hyper-specific to CW issues. There is more pain / trauma built up that can make understanding the opposition akin to self-harm.
I have seen some youtube videos by "regressive: feminists claiming that all of our current problems at universities and with many social issues derive from institutions being run by women, yet all of their safety mechanisms were designed to deal with male failings (violence, hazing, sexual harassment,...), not female ones. Many institutions are turning into a fascist nannying organism that will not tolerate anything that might harm anyone, anywhere. They are like Japanese mothers attacking germs that may threaten the baby. The results are terrifying, but make sense to the childless single women running universities who often come to treat students like babies instead of the adults that they are (banning Greek life is particularly horrific, and probably the driver of suicides).
I have no idea if this is correct, but definitely I feel like many of these intense issues tend to have crazy women on both sides screaming.
Great thoughts and observations!
Here is another example. Regarding Russia/Ukraine there is a negatively connoted word in Germany. A “Putinversteher” is somebody who tries to understand the actions and strategy of Vladimir Putin.
To be labeled a "Putinversteher" is equivalent to losing all credibility in a discussion. It is tantamount to being accused of siding with Putin or being a victim of his propaganda.
Anyone who wants to treat cancer must understand how cancer cells work. No one would go to a doctor who does not at least try, regardless of the approach, to understand cancer before taking any healing measures.
Germans refusing to have empathy. Who would have ever imagined it? I would have thought after all they went through with the SS and the Stasi they would have learned to welcome critical thinking. Then again, they have Muslim anti-Semites promoting the Holocaust in the streets, so the country is clearly not the deeply admired society the FDR was when I was a child.