This sounds like the objections to human reproductive cloning. If you can do it safely (i.e. negligible increase in risk of birth defects, and so on), then human cloning is essentially just a delayed twin with a different developmental environment. Hardly something to get worked up about. It’s the connotations that get people: there’s this crazy meme that a clone of someone will be an identical copy, and even among people who know better, there are still connotations of “violating nature” or “playing God”. And so people tend to just take it as a given that human reproductive cloning is inherently immoral and should be illegal. Meanwhile, people who are working in denotation-mode with regards to cloning have trouble understanding what all the fuss is about. The issue seems pretty obvious to everyone, just not in the same way.
I’d like to think that your notion of the denotation-connotation gap would help people understand their own views on human cloning and have an actual, fruitful discussion—but it would probably just be interpreted by people in connotation-mode as “You’re stupid.” So, here’s my big question:
How do you explain to someone that their opinion on something is based on inaccurate connotations without having this perceived as an insult?
I like it! In my experience, going Socratic is usually the best way of arguing with people whose beliefs are obviously going to collapse if you poke at them too hard. But I’ve been down that road, and I know what comes next: either they rethink their position (hooray!) or they get frustrated at you for what they see as twisting their words. And the Socratic approach only works in conversations; if you’re writing a persuasive article, you can’t really use it very well.
I really don’t know what to do when that fails. None of the approaches I’ve tried seem very effective.
In conversation, the best way I’ve found to avoid causing frustration by the Socratic method is flattery. Every once in a while say “Ah yes”, or “That’s a valuable way to look at some problems”, “I see where you’re coming from”, etc. And smiling and nodding irregularly when they say something less wrong than other statements. Sometimes, act as if the idea is new to you. Other times, attribute it knowingly to someone ostensibly respectable. It just takes a bit of positive feedback to keep a person to speak his or her mind.
A great way to get an arrogant person to reconsider an idea is to emphasize the priors they have right, have them work out inconsistencies with your simple, crafted questions, and then promote it as their idea, with a little bit of help that you provided.
It’s not just questions instead of statements, it’s a (partial) pretense of humbleness, an appeal to their ego to let you in. That’s where I suspect people usually go wrong.
This sounds like the objections to human reproductive cloning. If you can do it safely (i.e. negligible increase in risk of birth defects, and so on), then human cloning is essentially just a delayed twin with a different developmental environment. Hardly something to get worked up about. It’s the connotations that get people: there’s this crazy meme that a clone of someone will be an identical copy, and even among people who know better, there are still connotations of “violating nature” or “playing God”. And so people tend to just take it as a given that human reproductive cloning is inherently immoral and should be illegal. Meanwhile, people who are working in denotation-mode with regards to cloning have trouble understanding what all the fuss is about. The issue seems pretty obvious to everyone, just not in the same way.
I’d like to think that your notion of the denotation-connotation gap would help people understand their own views on human cloning and have an actual, fruitful discussion—but it would probably just be interpreted by people in connotation-mode as “You’re stupid.” So, here’s my big question:
How do you explain to someone that their opinion on something is based on inaccurate connotations without having this perceived as an insult?
Try the Socratic method? Ask them for their reasons, and find a short path to a logical contradiction.
I like it! In my experience, going Socratic is usually the best way of arguing with people whose beliefs are obviously going to collapse if you poke at them too hard. But I’ve been down that road, and I know what comes next: either they rethink their position (hooray!) or they get frustrated at you for what they see as twisting their words. And the Socratic approach only works in conversations; if you’re writing a persuasive article, you can’t really use it very well.
I really don’t know what to do when that fails. None of the approaches I’ve tried seem very effective.
In conversation, the best way I’ve found to avoid causing frustration by the Socratic method is flattery. Every once in a while say “Ah yes”, or “That’s a valuable way to look at some problems”, “I see where you’re coming from”, etc. And smiling and nodding irregularly when they say something less wrong than other statements. Sometimes, act as if the idea is new to you. Other times, attribute it knowingly to someone ostensibly respectable. It just takes a bit of positive feedback to keep a person to speak his or her mind.
A great way to get an arrogant person to reconsider an idea is to emphasize the priors they have right, have them work out inconsistencies with your simple, crafted questions, and then promote it as their idea, with a little bit of help that you provided.
It’s not just questions instead of statements, it’s a (partial) pretense of humbleness, an appeal to their ego to let you in. That’s where I suspect people usually go wrong.