These are outtakes from a draft revision for Nurture Culture which seemed worth putting somewhere:
A healthy epistemic Nurture Culture works to make it possible to safely have productive disagreement by showing that disagreement is safe. There are better and worse ways to do this. Among them:
Adopting a “softened tone” which holds the viewpoints as object and at some distance: “That seems mistaken to me, I noticed I’m confused” as opposed to “I can’t see how anyone could possibly think that”.
Expending effort to understand: “Okay, let me summarize what you’re saying and see if I got right . . .”
Attempting to be helpful in the discussion: “I’m not sure what you’re saying, is this is it <some description or model>?”
Mentioning what you think is good and correct: “I found this post overall very helpful, but paragraph Z seems gravely mistaken to me because <reasons>.” This counters perceived reputational harms and can put people at ease.
Things which are not very Nurturing:
“What?? How could anyone think that”
A comment that only says “I think this post is really wrong.”
You’re not accounting for X, Y, Z. <insert multiple paragraphs explaining issues at length>
Items in the first list start to move the dial on the dimensions of collaborativeness and are likely to be helpful in many discussions, even relatively Combative ones; however, they have the important additional Nurturing effect of signaling hard that a conversation has the goal of mutual understanding and reaching truth-together– a goal whose salience shifts the significance of attacking ideas to purely practical rather than political.
While this second list can include extremely valuable epistemic contributions, they can heighten the perception of reputational and other harms [1] and thereby i) make conversations unpleasant (counterfactually causing them not to happen), and ii) raise the stakes of a discussion, making participants less likely to update.
Nurture Culture concludes that it’s worth paying the costs of more complicated and often indirect speech in order to make truth-seeking discussion a more positive experience for all.
[1] So much of our wellbeing and success depends on how others view us. It reasonable for people be very sensitive to how others perceive them.
Appendix 3: How to Nurture
These are outtakes from a draft revision for Nurture Culture which seemed worth putting somewhere:
A healthy epistemic Nurture Culture works to make it possible to safely have productive disagreement by showing that disagreement is safe. There are better and worse ways to do this. Among them:
Adopting a “softened tone” which holds the viewpoints as object and at some distance: “That seems mistaken to me, I noticed I’m confused” as opposed to “I can’t see how anyone could possibly think that”.
Expending effort to understand: “Okay, let me summarize what you’re saying and see if I got right . . .”
Attempting to be helpful in the discussion: “I’m not sure what you’re saying, is this is it <some description or model>?”
Mentioning what you think is good and correct: “I found this post overall very helpful, but paragraph Z seems gravely mistaken to me because <reasons>.” This counters perceived reputational harms and can put people at ease.
Things which are not very Nurturing:
“What?? How could anyone think that”
A comment that only says “I think this post is really wrong.”
You’re not accounting for X, Y, Z. <insert multiple paragraphs explaining issues at length>
Items in the first list start to move the dial on the dimensions of collaborativeness and are likely to be helpful in many discussions, even relatively Combative ones; however, they have the important additional Nurturing effect of signaling hard that a conversation has the goal of mutual understanding and reaching truth-together– a goal whose salience shifts the significance of attacking ideas to purely practical rather than political.
While this second list can include extremely valuable epistemic contributions, they can heighten the perception of reputational and other harms [1] and thereby i) make conversations unpleasant (counterfactually causing them not to happen), and ii) raise the stakes of a discussion, making participants less likely to update.
Nurture Culture concludes that it’s worth paying the costs of more complicated and often indirect speech in order to make truth-seeking discussion a more positive experience for all.
[1] So much of our wellbeing and success depends on how others view us. It reasonable for people be very sensitive to how others perceive them.