a) How to be more rational yourself
b) How to promote rationality in others
Some situations appear to trigger a conflict between these two goals—for example, you might wish to persuade someone they’re wrong. You could either make a reasoned, rational argument as to why they’re wrong, or a more rhetorical, emotional argument that might convince many but doesn’t actually justify your position.
One might be more effective in the short term, but you might think the rational argument preferable as a long term education project, for example.
I don’t really have an answer here, I’m just interested in the conflict and what people think.
There is a third option of making a reasoned, rational meta-argument as to why the methods they were using to develop their position were wrong. I don’t know how reliable it is, however.
I’ve tried very informal related experiments—often in dealing with people it’s necessary to challenge their assumptions about the world.
a) People’s assumptions often seem to be somewhat subconscious, so there’s significant effort to extract the assumptions they’re making.
b) These assumptions seem to be very core to people’s thinking and they’re extremely resistant to being challenged on them.
My guess is that trying to change people’s methods of thinking would be even more difficult than this.
EDIT: The first version of this I post talked more about challenging people’s methods, I thought about this more and realised it was more assumptions, but didn’t correctly edit everything to fit that. Now corrected.
Something I’ve been pondering recently:
This site appears to have two related goals:
a) How to be more rational yourself b) How to promote rationality in others
Some situations appear to trigger a conflict between these two goals—for example, you might wish to persuade someone they’re wrong. You could either make a reasoned, rational argument as to why they’re wrong, or a more rhetorical, emotional argument that might convince many but doesn’t actually justify your position.
One might be more effective in the short term, but you might think the rational argument preferable as a long term education project, for example.
I don’t really have an answer here, I’m just interested in the conflict and what people think.
There is a third option of making a reasoned, rational meta-argument as to why the methods they were using to develop their position were wrong. I don’t know how reliable it is, however.
I’ve tried very informal related experiments—often in dealing with people it’s necessary to challenge their assumptions about the world.
a) People’s assumptions often seem to be somewhat subconscious, so there’s significant effort to extract the assumptions they’re making.
b) These assumptions seem to be very core to people’s thinking and they’re extremely resistant to being challenged on them.
My guess is that trying to change people’s methods of thinking would be even more difficult than this.
EDIT: The first version of this I post talked more about challenging people’s methods, I thought about this more and realised it was more assumptions, but didn’t correctly edit everything to fit that. Now corrected.