To deal with the huge difficulty of things like learning, changing minds, making progress, it’s important to do things like respect every mistake and try to fix them all, not dismiss some as too small and gloss them over. Starting small is the best approach; only gradual progress works; trying to address the big issues straight away does not work.
You do not take into account time constraints. I have not been keeping count, but discussions with you alone have probably eaten up about 2 hours of my time, quite a lot considering the number of other tasks I am under pressure to perform.
Your approach may work, but in terms of progress made per second, it is innefficient. Consider how long it takes for every mistake:
1) First you have to notice the mistake
2) Then you have to take the time to write about it
3) Then the other person has to take the time to read it
4) Then they have to take the time to explain it to you / own up to it
5) Then they have to pay extra attention while they type, for fear they will make a similar mistake and you will waste their time again
6) Then, everybody else reading the comments will have to read through that discussion, and we really don’t care about such a tiny mistake, really, not at all!.
Is it worth it for the tiny gains?
I think a better approach is to go straight for the central claim. If you and they continue to disagree, consider the possibility that you are biased, and question why their point might seem wrong to you, what could be causing you not to see their point, do you have a line of retreat? (You trust that he will be doing the same, don’t make accusations until you are sure of yourself). If that doesn’t work, you start tabooing words, an amazingly high proportion of the time the disagreement just vanishes. If that doesn’t work you either continue to look for reasons why you might be wrong,, and continue explaining your position more clearly and trying to understand theirs.
You do not nitpick.
It wastes everybody’s time.
New? Do you really think that’s a new idea? Popper talked about it long ago.
If Popper talked about it then why don’t you do it!
If Popper talked about it then why don’t you do it!
The more you’re having a hard time communicating and cooperating with people, the less you should skip steps. So, I will consider the best version in my mind to see if it’s a challenge to my views. But as far as trying to make progress in the discussions, I’ll try to do something simpler and easier (or, sometimes, challenging to filter people).
You do not take into account time constraints.
Rushing doesn’t solve problems better. If people haven’t got time to learn, so be it. But there’s no magic short cuts.
Your approach may work, but in terms of progress made per second, it is innefficient.
I disagree. So many conversations have basically 0 progress. Some is better than none. You have to do what actually works.
Is it worth it for the tiny gains?
Yes. That’s exactly where human progress comes from.
I think a better approach is to go straight for the central claim.
But there’s so much disagreement in background assumptions to sort out, that this often fails. If you want to do this, publish it. Get 100,000 readers. Then some will like it. In a one on one conversation with someone rather different than you, the odds are not good that you will be able to agree about the central claim while still disagreeing about a ton of other relevant stuff.
Sometimes you can do stuff like find some shared premises and then make arguments that rely only on those which reach conclusions about the central claim. But that kind of super hard when you think so differently that there’s miscommunication every other sentence.
People so badly underestimate the difficulty of communicating in general, and how much it usually relies on shared background/cultural assumptions, and how much misunderstanding there really is when talking to people rather different than yourself, and how much effort it takes to get past those misunderstandings.
BTW I would like to point out that this is one of the ways that Popperians are much more into rigor and detail than Bayesians, apparently. I got a bunch of complaints about how Popperians aren’t rigorous enough. But we think these kinds of details really matter a lot! We aren’t unrigorous, we just have different conceptions of what kind of rigor is important.
If you and they continue to disagree, consider the possibility that you are biased, and question why their point might seem wrong to you, what could be causing you not to see their point, do you have a line of retreat?
Yes I do that. And like 3 levels more advanced, too. Shrug.
If that doesn’t work, you start tabooing words, an amazingly high proportion of the time the disagreement just vanishes.
You’re used to talking with people who share a lot of core ideas with you. But I’m not such a person. Tabooing words will not make our disagreements vanish because I have a fundamentally different worldview than you, in various respects. It’s not a merely verbal disagreement.
5) Then they have to pay extra attention while they type, for fear they will make a similar mistake and you will waste their time again
Fear is not the right attitude. And nor is “extra attention”. One has to integrate his knowledge into his mind so that he can use it without it taking up extra attention. Usually new skills take extra attention at first but as you get better with them the attention burden goes way down.
You do not take into account time constraints. I have not been keeping count, but discussions with you alone have probably eaten up about 2 hours of my time, quite a lot considering the number of other tasks I am under pressure to perform.
Your approach may work, but in terms of progress made per second, it is innefficient. Consider how long it takes for every mistake:
1) First you have to notice the mistake
2) Then you have to take the time to write about it
3) Then the other person has to take the time to read it
4) Then they have to take the time to explain it to you / own up to it
5) Then they have to pay extra attention while they type, for fear they will make a similar mistake and you will waste their time again
6) Then, everybody else reading the comments will have to read through that discussion, and we really don’t care about such a tiny mistake, really, not at all!.
Is it worth it for the tiny gains?
I think a better approach is to go straight for the central claim. If you and they continue to disagree, consider the possibility that you are biased, and question why their point might seem wrong to you, what could be causing you not to see their point, do you have a line of retreat? (You trust that he will be doing the same, don’t make accusations until you are sure of yourself). If that doesn’t work, you start tabooing words, an amazingly high proportion of the time the disagreement just vanishes. If that doesn’t work you either continue to look for reasons why you might be wrong,, and continue explaining your position more clearly and trying to understand theirs.
You do not nitpick.
It wastes everybody’s time.
If Popper talked about it then why don’t you do it!
The more you’re having a hard time communicating and cooperating with people, the less you should skip steps. So, I will consider the best version in my mind to see if it’s a challenge to my views. But as far as trying to make progress in the discussions, I’ll try to do something simpler and easier (or, sometimes, challenging to filter people).
Rushing doesn’t solve problems better. If people haven’t got time to learn, so be it. But there’s no magic short cuts.
I disagree. So many conversations have basically 0 progress. Some is better than none. You have to do what actually works.
Yes. That’s exactly where human progress comes from.
But there’s so much disagreement in background assumptions to sort out, that this often fails. If you want to do this, publish it. Get 100,000 readers. Then some will like it. In a one on one conversation with someone rather different than you, the odds are not good that you will be able to agree about the central claim while still disagreeing about a ton of other relevant stuff.
Sometimes you can do stuff like find some shared premises and then make arguments that rely only on those which reach conclusions about the central claim. But that kind of super hard when you think so differently that there’s miscommunication every other sentence.
People so badly underestimate the difficulty of communicating in general, and how much it usually relies on shared background/cultural assumptions, and how much misunderstanding there really is when talking to people rather different than yourself, and how much effort it takes to get past those misunderstandings.
BTW I would like to point out that this is one of the ways that Popperians are much more into rigor and detail than Bayesians, apparently. I got a bunch of complaints about how Popperians aren’t rigorous enough. But we think these kinds of details really matter a lot! We aren’t unrigorous, we just have different conceptions of what kind of rigor is important.
Yes I do that. And like 3 levels more advanced, too. Shrug.
You’re used to talking with people who share a lot of core ideas with you. But I’m not such a person. Tabooing words will not make our disagreements vanish because I have a fundamentally different worldview than you, in various respects. It’s not a merely verbal disagreement.
Fear is not the right attitude. And nor is “extra attention”. One has to integrate his knowledge into his mind so that he can use it without it taking up extra attention. Usually new skills take extra attention at first but as you get better with them the attention burden goes way down.