I have read through some of Eliezer’s posts, but his tactics to come up with though-provoking counter-questions seem to rely heavily on superior intellect and knowledge. And I am also not in for memorizing question/counter-question pairs.
Speaking as someone who gets in internet arguments with religious people for (slightly frustrating) recreation, I know some really simple tactics you can use. Find out the answers to this question:
What does the person you’re talking with believe, and what is the evidence for it?
Maintain proper standards of evidence. The existence of trees is not evidence for the Bible’s veracity, no matter how many people seem to think so. If someone got a flu shot in the middle of flu season and got flu symptoms the next day, this is more likely to be a coincidence than to be caused by the vaccine. If you understand how evidence works—and you certainly seem to—then this is a remarkably general method for rebutting a lot of silly claims.
This is the equivalent of keeping your eye on the ball. It’s a basic technique, and utterly essential.
[Backup strategy: Replace whatever beliefs the person you’re talking to holds with another set, and see if their arguments still work equally well. If the answer is yes, then Bayes says that those arguments fail. For example, “Look at all the people who have felt Jesus in their hearts” can be applied just as strongly to support most other religions just by substituting something else for “Jesus”. Or, most arguments against gay marriage work equally well against interracial marriage.
Backup backup strategy: quickly follow a rebuttal with an attack on the faulty foundations of your interlocutor’s worldview. Be polite, but put them on the defensive. If you can’t shake them with rationality, you can at least rattle them.]
What does the person you’re talking with believe, and what is the evidence for it?
Maintain proper standards of evidence.
Well, that’s tough enough for me to do—but how do you challenge others in such a way that they will understand what “What’s the evidence?” actually means?
For many people it is a fact that doctors cure patients with homeopathy, and it is based on evidence as they use some books with collected symptom/ingredient pairs, and that they are updating those by using their experience with patients.
The fact that they believe in god proves that everybody believes in a god (I actually encountered this very argument; it was puzzling to me, as a teenager I thought they just did not count me as a full person, now I expect that they indeed were).
Your backup strategies also seem to be more related to improve the side of the rational agent, not to get the other discussion partners thinking.
Well, rhetoric is not a major topic on LW, and there are of course other places for such things. However, sometimes it feels just like missing the correct example—I remember for instance a professor in philosophical logic, who presented embarrassing simple examples, where nearly the whole classroom failed. After that shock, students who have been fearful of logic and seen it only as a necessary evil for the philosophy degree, became at least interested in it (though still feared it).
I probably asked a too unspecific question, as coming up with a curiosity-generating example seems tightly bound to environment, person and topic.
P.S.: I do not think that putting people on the defensive side of an argument makes them more easily re-check their world-views. More likely is that the discourse will be abandoned, or the existing views will be re-rationalized in ever more detail.
Well, that’s tough enough for me to do—but how do you challenge others in such a way that they will understand what “What’s the evidence?” actually means?
Ah, then it sounds like your real problem is that you’re not yet skilled enough at explaining what evidence means, in an easy-to-grasp sort of way. In the case of your homeopathy example, I would say that the thing that matters is: what percentage of patients given homeopathic remedies get better? Is is better than the percentage who get better without homeopathic remedies, all other things being equal? (Pause to hash this out; it’s important to get the other guy agreeing that this is the most direct measure of whether or not homeopathy works.) Then you can point at the many studies showing that, when we actually tried this experiment out, there wasn’t any difference between the people who were treated with homeopathy and the people who weren’t.
The fact that they believe in god proves that everybody believes in a god (I actually encountered this very argument; it was puzzling to me, as a teenager I thought they just did not count me as a full person, now I expect that they indeed were).
Oh man, I ran into that when I was a teenager, too. To this day I have no idea how to respond to that; it’s like running into somebody who thinks that Mexicans are all p-zombies, except more socially acceptable. I don’t know that there’s really anything you can possibly say to someone who’s that nuts, except maybe try talking about what it’s like to not believe in god, and try to inject some outside context into their world.
Your backup strategies also seem to be more related to improve the side of the rational agent, not to get the other discussion partners thinking.
I admit, most of my debating tactics are aimed at lurkers watching the debate, not the other participant. That’s usually the most effective way to do it online, but in one-on-one discussions, I agree with you that such tactics could be counterproductive. Even then, though, you may be able to get people to retreat from some of their sillier positions, or plant a seed of doubt. It has happened in the past.
Anyway, I still think that applying the other guy’s logic to argue for something else is a good way of getting them thinking. I remember asking a bunch of people “why are you [religion X] and not [religion y]? Other than by accident of birth.” and getting quite a few of them to really pause and ponder.
Ah, then it sounds like your real problem is that you’re not yet skilled enough at explaining what evidence means, in an easy-to-grasp sort of way.
I admit that I do have problems with clearly articulating a position; I see this as an indication of insufficient understanding. Well, that’s the reason I ended up here at all...
In the case of your homeopathy example, I would say that the thing that matters is: what percentage of patients given homeopathic remedies get better?
Just to pound this example: It has been pointed out to me that clinical tests are not “the homeopathic way”. I have not yet discovered what the homeopathic way is, I just remained puzzled after reading that Hahnemann probably did not think so.
Sometimes I think going through the ideas in simple truth and map and territory may explain the reason why clinical tests are evidence. However, when your discourse partner has some philosophy weapons at his disposal, the following epistemology-war quickly grows over my head.
I may try to get more facts (studies, etc.) in my head, and also to form an approachable explanation for why this view on reality is justified, more than others. If all else fails, this will at least help to improve my own understanding. Thx for your comments.
Speaking as someone who gets in internet arguments with religious people for (slightly frustrating) recreation, I know some really simple tactics you can use. Find out the answers to this question:
What does the person you’re talking with believe, and what is the evidence for it?
Maintain proper standards of evidence. The existence of trees is not evidence for the Bible’s veracity, no matter how many people seem to think so. If someone got a flu shot in the middle of flu season and got flu symptoms the next day, this is more likely to be a coincidence than to be caused by the vaccine. If you understand how evidence works—and you certainly seem to—then this is a remarkably general method for rebutting a lot of silly claims.
This is the equivalent of keeping your eye on the ball. It’s a basic technique, and utterly essential.
[Backup strategy: Replace whatever beliefs the person you’re talking to holds with another set, and see if their arguments still work equally well. If the answer is yes, then Bayes says that those arguments fail. For example, “Look at all the people who have felt Jesus in their hearts” can be applied just as strongly to support most other religions just by substituting something else for “Jesus”. Or, most arguments against gay marriage work equally well against interracial marriage.
Backup backup strategy: quickly follow a rebuttal with an attack on the faulty foundations of your interlocutor’s worldview. Be polite, but put them on the defensive. If you can’t shake them with rationality, you can at least rattle them.]
Well, that’s tough enough for me to do—but how do you challenge others in such a way that they will understand what “What’s the evidence?” actually means?
For many people it is a fact that doctors cure patients with homeopathy, and it is based on evidence as they use some books with collected symptom/ingredient pairs, and that they are updating those by using their experience with patients.
The fact that they believe in god proves that everybody believes in a god (I actually encountered this very argument; it was puzzling to me, as a teenager I thought they just did not count me as a full person, now I expect that they indeed were).
Your backup strategies also seem to be more related to improve the side of the rational agent, not to get the other discussion partners thinking.
Well, rhetoric is not a major topic on LW, and there are of course other places for such things. However, sometimes it feels just like missing the correct example—I remember for instance a professor in philosophical logic, who presented embarrassing simple examples, where nearly the whole classroom failed. After that shock, students who have been fearful of logic and seen it only as a necessary evil for the philosophy degree, became at least interested in it (though still feared it).
I probably asked a too unspecific question, as coming up with a curiosity-generating example seems tightly bound to environment, person and topic.
P.S.: I do not think that putting people on the defensive side of an argument makes them more easily re-check their world-views. More likely is that the discourse will be abandoned, or the existing views will be re-rationalized in ever more detail.
Ah, then it sounds like your real problem is that you’re not yet skilled enough at explaining what evidence means, in an easy-to-grasp sort of way. In the case of your homeopathy example, I would say that the thing that matters is: what percentage of patients given homeopathic remedies get better? Is is better than the percentage who get better without homeopathic remedies, all other things being equal? (Pause to hash this out; it’s important to get the other guy agreeing that this is the most direct measure of whether or not homeopathy works.) Then you can point at the many studies showing that, when we actually tried this experiment out, there wasn’t any difference between the people who were treated with homeopathy and the people who weren’t.
Oh man, I ran into that when I was a teenager, too. To this day I have no idea how to respond to that; it’s like running into somebody who thinks that Mexicans are all p-zombies, except more socially acceptable. I don’t know that there’s really anything you can possibly say to someone who’s that nuts, except maybe try talking about what it’s like to not believe in god, and try to inject some outside context into their world.
I admit, most of my debating tactics are aimed at lurkers watching the debate, not the other participant. That’s usually the most effective way to do it online, but in one-on-one discussions, I agree with you that such tactics could be counterproductive. Even then, though, you may be able to get people to retreat from some of their sillier positions, or plant a seed of doubt. It has happened in the past.
Anyway, I still think that applying the other guy’s logic to argue for something else is a good way of getting them thinking. I remember asking a bunch of people “why are you [religion X] and not [religion y]? Other than by accident of birth.” and getting quite a few of them to really pause and ponder.
I admit that I do have problems with clearly articulating a position; I see this as an indication of insufficient understanding. Well, that’s the reason I ended up here at all...
Just to pound this example: It has been pointed out to me that clinical tests are not “the homeopathic way”. I have not yet discovered what the homeopathic way is, I just remained puzzled after reading that Hahnemann probably did not think so.
Sometimes I think going through the ideas in simple truth and map and territory may explain the reason why clinical tests are evidence. However, when your discourse partner has some philosophy weapons at his disposal, the following epistemology-war quickly grows over my head.
I may try to get more facts (studies, etc.) in my head, and also to form an approachable explanation for why this view on reality is justified, more than others. If all else fails, this will at least help to improve my own understanding. Thx for your comments.