While true most of the time this doesn’t always seem to apply. Every now and then I find myself in a discussion with my close friends defending some viewpoint which doesn’t quite make as much sense as I would have liked it to make, and the times I noticed this in time and tried to figure out why I was taking those viewpoints I noticed that they were the natural viewpoints for my role at that moment, which would explain a lot.
In other words: switching roles can be hard, sometimes while ‘playing a role’ the conscious mind need not be involved too much. This is, of course, precisely the reason to adapt roles.
Yes. On thing that happens a lot for me is that I fall into the role of Defense Counsel—the role, not the profession, i.e. defending those absent or otherwise unable to defend themselves. Say somebody attacks a person or viewpoint. It’s quite quite likely that I will fall into the role of the defender of that person or viewpoint—even though I don’t agree with that viewpoint at all!
You might want to work on using role that “notices when argues for a side instead of evaluating for which side to argue”. From rationality habits this might be one relatively simple to implement.
Of course I have to work on it as well
I now notice when I do argue for the absent side and make this clear. Before I just assumed that other people would take arguments as elucidations of facts as I do—and then it doesn’t matter who takes whose ‘side’.
While true most of the time this doesn’t always seem to apply. Every now and then I find myself in a discussion with my close friends defending some viewpoint which doesn’t quite make as much sense as I would have liked it to make, and the times I noticed this in time and tried to figure out why I was taking those viewpoints I noticed that they were the natural viewpoints for my role at that moment, which would explain a lot.
In other words: switching roles can be hard, sometimes while ‘playing a role’ the conscious mind need not be involved too much. This is, of course, precisely the reason to adapt roles.
Yes. On thing that happens a lot for me is that I fall into the role of Defense Counsel—the role, not the profession, i.e. defending those absent or otherwise unable to defend themselves. Say somebody attacks a person or viewpoint. It’s quite quite likely that I will fall into the role of the defender of that person or viewpoint—even though I don’t agree with that viewpoint at all!
You might want to work on using role that “notices when argues for a side instead of evaluating for which side to argue”. From rationality habits this might be one relatively simple to implement. Of course I have to work on it as well
I now notice when I do argue for the absent side and make this clear. Before I just assumed that other people would take arguments as elucidations of facts as I do—and then it doesn’t matter who takes whose ‘side’.