Part of why I like making fun of debate bros is because I used to be one. It’s embarrassing to admit – but here we are. The tension, the adrenalin rush, and the righteous wrath felt invigorating. “Winning” an argument was satisfying. I have worked hard on changing that for the last couple of years. And while I have improved, there is still have a long way to go. So I want to establish a script that can remind me to keep it productive.
There are different approaches to turning disagreements into productive conversations. Double crux, for example, is a method developed by CFAR to foster mutual understanding. Here, I want to delve into something that can be integrated into the double crux, an internal script that helped me to cool off a few times. Its core is the following question – what’s the extent to which I can agree with a statement that I mostly reject?
My first instinct when I hear a statement I even vaguely disagree with is to point out its flaws, question its assumptions and provide counterexamples. That can be useful and should be part of the conversation. However, the way I bring my criticism across can seem aggressive. In the past, it has put even mellow, agreeable people on the defensive. I like to engage with arguments destructively. What am I skipping when I go in with the sledgehammer immediately? Acknowledging the valuable parts of my opponent’s argument.
If you want to disagree productively, you should probably find out to what extent you agree with an idea you don’t fully share. Can you point out with what parts and assumptions you agree? Can you state what you find plausible and focus on that for a dedicated period? In other words, can you work out with what version of the argument you agree?
Why might this be helpful? Firstly, the person you disagree with might feel more understood, which can foster an atmosphere of cooperation. Secondly, your adrenalin and aggression levels might decrease. The person in front of you might suddenly seem less like an alien with whom you share no commonalities (how prevailing is that problem? Is it just a me-thing?). Usually, people (especially people with the same cultural background) differ in the degrees to which they hold things true.
Let’s look at an example. The other day, I listened to a conversation between Dr. Gorden Lobsterson and the Freedom Report Man. Some parts I nodded along to, some I was annoyed by, with some I violently disagreed. Applying the agreement extent script to chunks I disagree with strongly would be playing this game in hard mode. And I haven’t practiced enough for that. So let’s start with easy mode. What was a point with which I only somewhat disagreed? That individuals should adhere to societal norms as much as possible.
Here’s a quote by Peterson elaborating on that point:
There are lots of unwanted babies in the world, so why isn’t the ethical thing when you’re a heterosexual couple just to adopt an unwanted baby? Why bring another baby into the world when there’s a baby that could use a home? And the answer is – that isn’t what people do. Then the question might be – well, why? And you can come up with a biological rationale, but that doesn’t mean that there’s a conceptual answer handy.
Why do you want your own kids? The answer to that is something like – well, that’s what everyone has always done since the beginning of time. […] It’s not a well-articulated answer. This is part of why conservatives are set back on their heels so frequently when they’re questioned by radicals. Because the radicals will do something like – justify marriage! And the conservative thinks – well, we all agreed about that like 50000 years ago. So I actually don’t have a fully fleshed-out explicit rationale and defence for the institution of marriage. I thought that was self-evident.
Weirdos do have a place in society, as far as Peterson is concerned, but everyone should try to be as close as possible to the norm:
[Gay parenting] is uncharted territory. You literally are in uncharted territory. And your attitude is something like – well, I’m already deviating a lot from the norm. So maybe I should not deviate any more than I absolutely have to. I would also say that should apply to everyone. Everyone’s got their idiosyncrasies, and thank God for that. We definitely need creative people – and we even need some creative weirdos because God only knows when they’ll come in handy. But the rule of thumb should still be – to the degree that you’re able to uphold the norms and ideals of the collective society, you have a moral obligation to do that.
I have a confession to make. It cost me an enormous amount of mental resources to not delve right away into expressing my disagreement with Peterson’s statements. I already started to type them out, then noticed what I was doing and deleted them. I made it; I took the first hurdle! Now onto the exercise itself – writing up my reasons for thinking that the argument holds up (and to do only that). Let me provide some explicit rationale for conservatives!
Why should people adhere to social norms?
It’s hard to maximize directly for well-being. A stable society contributes to well-being and satisfaction. Therefore maximizing societal cohesion and stability might be a good proxy that’s easier to control. People adhering to social norms help with that.
Shared social norms are a prerequisite for efficiently organizing a large society. When you have millions and millions of people, it’s vital to have a shared framework to enable coordination. By adhering to social norms, we help those around us efficiently navigate through society.
Big questions like “How should I structure my life?” are really hard to answer. One lifetime is most likely not long enough to figure these out. Traditions are almost the only data points for big, general, essential questions. Societal norms give a solid, time-tested template for things that are hard to work out.
Following social conventions will, on average, deliver okay results. Adhering to social norms is probably clearly sub-optimal for only a minority of people.
Why should you (yes, you specifically) adhere to the norm?
You might overestimate your individuality. Maybe a time-tested approach would work out better for you than most alternatives.
People seem to be bad at predicting what makes them happy/fulfilled. Social norms might be a better proxy in some cases.
Straying from norms and conventions can have a social price. People might be less accepting of your lifestyle, which can lead to feelings of rejection and loneliness.
Figuring out how to live outside of social norms is resource intensive. You will have to figure out things yourself, as good role models will probably be hard to find. Going against the grain will be time-consuming as you go through cycles of trial and error.
Especially in matters that aren’t important to you, it can be effective to offset decisions and adhere to social norms. That will save you resources like time and mental energy. You probably don’t have time to question every relevant societal norm if you want to get things done.
Peterson expresses that you must conform “to the degree that you’re able to”. What does that mean? In my interpretation, that phrase carries a lot of complexities intrinsic to this conversation. Ultimately, you have to figure out what it means to adhere to the norm as much as you can. As an individual, you live in a specific (maybe highly unusual) environment. So your optimal behaviour might differ from the general optimum. Conformity is limited by your ability to conform, leaving room for you to negotiate.
What is the place for weirdos?
Peterson acknowledges that weirdos (which I read as unusually flexible, open-minded and creative people) have their place in society. New techological advancements give us undreamt of opportunities. Sometimes that requires an adaptation of our norms. Weirdos can help with that by being pioneers and early adopters of new behaviours.
Weirdos can help find cultural blindspots. Long existing norms arose in a specific cultural context. If that context gradually changes over time, people might carry on traditions – even though they have lost their advantage or have even become contra productive. Weirdos might help uncover that and enable society to move onto novel, more fruitful norms.
Periodically, unexpected and unprecedented situations occur. Societal norms develop slowly. Some changes might occur explosively quickly (pandemics, new kinds of warfare) and need a rapid societal response. In those situations, weirdos can help develop effective scripts more quickly.
After reading through my points, I feel I might have sneaked in some critique. Is that cheating? Or is it just relevant for the version of the argument with which I’d agree? I guess I’ll figure that one out with more practice.
I think you did a great job here, congratulations!
From my perspective, I only find one significant thing missing (not sure if Peterson actually made that point; I am not going to watch a 1-hour video now, I am just thinking about possible conservative arguments), which is going to sound weird considering the current culture wars, but it’s a kind of “check your privilege” argument:
Not only are social norms important for people in general, but especially for the poor/oppressed ones. To provide a current-year example, if you literally defund the police, people living in ghettoes will probably suffer more as a consequence, than people living in gated communities. More generally, rich/powerful people typically have other ways to protect themselves; the poor/oppressed ones rely more on the protection by social norms.
So, there is a chance that breaking a certain social norm might e.g. be a net benefit for the middle class, but a net harm for the working class. How would you know that, if all educated middle-class people around you say “it seems perfectly okay to me, only an idiot would disagree”, and all opponents just shake their heads but cannot provide the math to defend their arguments?
Thank you! It took me some courage to post here, but I’m glad I did.
I don’t remember Peterson mentioning that. The two quotes I posted are pretty much everything he explicitly stated on that topic. It’s in the spirit of the agreement extent game to generate your own pro-arguments for the opposition’s point, though.
I think you make an intriguing point with the “check your privilege” argument. Another example of social norms that protect poor/oppressed people is the idea that certain things that are off-limits to acquire/take – even if you have the recourses to pull it off. We would probably have many more Jeffrey Epsteins if not for that norm.
As someone much more sympathetic than you to Peterson, the line that most stuck out to me is one that doesn’t even contain an explicit argument:
Uh, you define “weirdo” entirely in positive terms. That’s going to really change the way that the argument reads! It seems to me that you’re stretching yourself to justify Peterson’s talk about weirdos because you’re mentally reading it as “society should grudgingly tolerate open-minded and creative people”, which requires some more severe mental gymnastics to justify.
I think you get closer to the intended reading if you take “weirdo” in mostly negative terms, as “non-cooperators in collective social games” (reading “game” in the expansive, non-pejorative sense). The statement “society should grudgingly tolerate social non-cooperators (because they sometimes discover useful new behaviors)” makes a lot more sense, and the tradeoff becomes clearer. You can further refine the argument if you use the word “cooperate” in place of “conform”. And as a general exhortation it makes sense: you should cooperate as much as possible with the people around you, and only beg off when the cost of cooperation gets too high.
Thanks for your perspective! I had the impression that Peterson used the words creative and weird almost interchangeably in the video. Looking back at it, I think my reading is uncharitable. It’s not unlikely that I have a pro-unconventionality bias, so I associate weird with something positive by default. “Weirdo” may be a stand-in for a social non-cooperator. Given that meaning, the argument does become much more solid!
I think your reading is in fact over-charitable. He is clearly referring to “weird creatives” as people who behave oddly without explicit negative effects, and is trying to argue that oddness has some diffuse, unobservable cost on society; if they are simply (creatively) stealing there would be no need to argue this. I think it’s also important to remember in these discussions that there’s often skin in these games. Trying to find baileys to which bigots can retreat might promote dialogue and openness that results in wandering truth-wards, but may simply spread misinformation. It’s worth flagging that there’s more than 50 years worth of consistent evidence that children from same-sex families do as well as [1, 2, 3], if not better [4], than those from straight families, and his statements based on weird extrapolations from straight couples contribute to their marginalisation. In this specific case, Peterson is explicitly arguing against updating in the face of evidence and arguments (“conservatives do things because it’s how we assume we’ve always done the and we can’t be expected to remember why”), which breaks a lot of otherwise good Bayesian argument advice.
[1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1550428X.2013.869486
[2] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15504280802177615
[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12361102/
[4] https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fsgd0000203
Thanks for the context!
So far, three different interpretations of weirdo have come up. If weirdos are social non-cooperators, then the statement that society should grudgingly tolerate them is at its strongest. The argument becomes weaker if the word refers to highly flexible and open-minded people who might make mistakes because they are traversing unmapped territory. It’s at its weakest if a person who behaves oddly without negative consequences counts as a weirdo.
In this post, I’m assuming that Peterson is making a good faith argument. The agreement extent game is only valuable when you believe the other person is acting honestly. I’m not claiming that Peterson is factually acting in good faith, however (it’s beyond my expertise to judge that).
The approach I outlined wouldn’t work well if the opposition is arguing dishonestly, pining for another goal. Honestly, I don’t know what an optimal strategy might be in that situation. It would presumably involve some degree of politicking. It’s worth digging into this from the perspective of truth-seeking. Good strategies would probably account for different settings (public vs private setting; written vs spoken; face-to-face vs writing). Right now, I have a blind spot when it comes to this. I’m getting hyped to learn more about this, though!
Agree on the first point. On the second point, my comment doesn’t rely on Peterson arguing in bad faith, merely that he is arguing with excessive faith in his priors—Bayesian reasoning doesn’t work if one person has 100% confidence in their initial position, and may be very inefficient if you have extremely strong priors and don’t update well. He may sincerely believe that same-sex families can’t bring up children properly, but if his position is unlikely to change much from the argument, the social effects of how you engage with it (the effects on onlookers who may be insulted by the argument or marginally update towards his viewpoint) may be larger than the benefit of his marginal update.
That’s a very good point! I haven’t considered that excessive faith comes with its own problems. Thanks for pointing that out!
It’s worth digging a bit more for the cruxes, and you’re absolutely right that the conservative side is just plain not great at the intellectual debate behind their intuitions. One that you don’t mention is the acceptance of inequality and the expected ratio of weirdos to normals. Weirdos are valuable, but should be somewhat rare. Further, weirdos have a much wider distribution of success, with many living miserable lives, and a few living great ones. Trying to adjust this is a harmful encouragement for normals to be weird.
That distinction between (support and respect) and (encourage and cause) for non-standard behaviors (which are some mix of choice and nature) is an important difference in framing among those conservatives and progressives with whom I’ve discussed some of these topics.
If the miserable lives are more likely that the great lives, it could mean that being a weirdo is bad on average; and yet we need the weirdoes to discover the potential new better ways of human existence. So it’s a trade-off between (guaranteed) short-term unhappiness, and (hypothetical) long-term happiness.
And, maybe, diminishing returns—if you have too many weirdoes, the paths they explore will often be the same (also because they copy each other), so the short-term unhappiness scales linearly, but the long-term research does not?
...which sounds analogical to the role of mutation in evolution. An improvement is only possible by mutation, but most mutations are harmful, so the organisms try to prevent mutation as much as possible, which could be seen as “hypocritical” if we anthropomorphise the species, given that the only reason they exist is that their ancestors have mutated. And yet.
I can’t fully pass an ITT, especially as conservatives tend to reject Utilitarian-style analysis in the first place. I think the underlying intuition is that it’s OK if the average wierdo suffers, as long as the really valuable ones get the benefit for most of the normals (or the representative normal maybe—it’s hard to pin down whether this is median, mean, some middle percentile, or what).
So, yes—weirdos are harmful on average, but beneficial often enough that we should discourage too many or too weird but not fully eliminate them. Kind of weirdly, this kind of diversity (willingness to accept a range of pleasantness and value of lives) is truly anathema to progressives.
Your point about the normal2weirdo-ratio is excellent! I haven’t considered that yet. I agree that you’re more likely to struggle when you’re an outlier than be a success story.
Additionally, even if an unconventional set of behaviours benefits an individual, it might not be scalable. An example that comes to mind is people foraging for food in dumpsters (are they called freegans?). While that might sustain a few people per city, it’s hardly a population-wide solution. Generally speaking, adhering to the norm should be more scalable.
Understanding what parts of an argument you dislike are actually something you can agree with seems like a valuable thing to keep in mind. The post is well written and easy to understand too. I probably won’t do this any more than I already do though.
What I try to do isn’t so different, just less formal. I usually simply agree or disagree directly on individual points that come up through trying to understand things in general. I do not usually keep in mind what the current score is of agreement or disagreement is, and that seems to help not skew things too much. I do feel no pressure to just ignore the parts I disagree with for a while though.
I think your descriptions of reasons in favor of social norms are very well reasoned. How much does the original sound like your version of the argument? Is this their argument in your words, or your related argument?
Whether or not you should have included your bit on ‘weirdos’ based on your rules, I think it was good analysis on them too.
I’m not personally a conservative (independent, relatively centrist but unusual politics, and I would actually self identify as a weirdo), but I think that one of the biggest problems in my country (America) is that the people trying to change society don’t put in the effort to figure out the reasons why things should stay the same, thus completely destroying any cost-benefit analysis of the policies they propose. Often the policies could be made much better and much more practical with just a little understanding of it. Thus I usually have little choice in what politicians I support.
There are an awful lot of reforms that could make things better, but instead we focus entirely on ones that do not, because the reformers don’t bother to know they’re doing so, and wild changes are more interesting to think about (to me as well). We should reform the whole not knowing the reasons to avoid reforms thing first.
To the extent the reformers actually listen to actual conservatives and understand their reasons, that does help.
I don’t think you need the agreement-extent game then :) This more formal approach is probably helpful for people like me who tend to go on the offensive in face-to-face interactions.
Most of what I wrote is my version of the argument. The two quotes I included are the extent to which Peterson presents his position. The video was on a somewhat different topic, so it’s not surprising that he didn’t explore it too deeply. He probably has a more elaborate explanation of his position somewhere on the web.
I have a similar impression of European politics (though there’s probably less polarization than in the US). I agree that it’s a fatal flaw!