I’m confused at “not wanting to admit stupidity” being the main takeaway. Humility is worthwhile, and you can become more correct by recognizing that you might be wrong. But that doesn’t seem to break the loop, in cases where you’re (probably) right.
I generally ask a few more questions than “do they matter”. I also ask “does it matter if one of us is wrong on this topic”, and “is further argument helping to uncover any cruxes or refine either of our beliefs”. It doesn’t even occur to me that “do they matter” could change over a short time, but my beliefs about the topic’s importance or my beliefs about the utility of the conversation could easily change.
The do’s and don’ts of conversing with people I disagree with is a useful topic, but not the one I was writing about.
I notice that many of my conversations do not go they way they would if I was always operating on best principles. My claim was that far more often than I would like, I’m operating using a process that under reflection appears to be really dumb. The loop that I outlined is an example of such a process. I really think that is just a terrible flowchart to make decisions with. Yet sometimes I happen to be running it. If I can notice that I’m sometimes using that process, I can work to fix it. But often it’s hard to notice that I’m running such a process, because I expected myself to be “to smart to fall for that”.
Ah! I was taking “I’m not that dumb” at the object level of the disagreement, as preventing you from considering that your counterpart may be right. You meant it at the pattern level, where you didn’t want to believe you were stuck in the loop in the first place.
That part makes sense, but I still think the underlying error is not considering that the disagreement may be unimportant without the person being unimportant, or that you might be wrong rather than them.
I’m confused at “not wanting to admit stupidity” being the main takeaway. Humility is worthwhile, and you can become more correct by recognizing that you might be wrong. But that doesn’t seem to break the loop, in cases where you’re (probably) right.
I generally ask a few more questions than “do they matter”. I also ask “does it matter if one of us is wrong on this topic”, and “is further argument helping to uncover any cruxes or refine either of our beliefs”. It doesn’t even occur to me that “do they matter” could change over a short time, but my beliefs about the topic’s importance or my beliefs about the utility of the conversation could easily change.
The do’s and don’ts of conversing with people I disagree with is a useful topic, but not the one I was writing about.
I notice that many of my conversations do not go they way they would if I was always operating on best principles. My claim was that far more often than I would like, I’m operating using a process that under reflection appears to be really dumb. The loop that I outlined is an example of such a process. I really think that is just a terrible flowchart to make decisions with. Yet sometimes I happen to be running it. If I can notice that I’m sometimes using that process, I can work to fix it. But often it’s hard to notice that I’m running such a process, because I expected myself to be “to smart to fall for that”.
Ah! I was taking “I’m not that dumb” at the object level of the disagreement, as preventing you from considering that your counterpart may be right. You meant it at the pattern level, where you didn’t want to believe you were stuck in the loop in the first place.
That part makes sense, but I still think the underlying error is not considering that the disagreement may be unimportant without the person being unimportant, or that you might be wrong rather than them.