The question is what exactly you are trying to do? For example, if you want to further a cause, like, in EA, raising funds for a highly effective charity, say to the Deworm the World Initiative, you may not need to get along with people with different opinions. You can do what pretty much every succesful cause did
1) Form an institution with people who agree with you, such as form a Society For Funding DtWI, and make sure to exclude everybody who disagrees with you. Forming an institution makes it more or less automatic, people who disagree with DtWI will not join SFFDtWI and it focuses efforts.
2) Just advertise it to everybody else using convicing marketing language, emotional appeal, “cute puppies”, I don’t mean outright lie, I just mean pretty much be like the politician who advertises videos of him petting a dog and not his ideas about how to cut the budget.
This tends to work for the following reason. You have two groups of people, the arguers, the intellectuals, who are a kind of elite, and the followers, the masses, who just do whatever emotionally appeals to them. You DON’T have to win argument with the opposing intellectuals just to get to your goal. You can just advertise to the masses and simply ignore the intellectuals who argue with you.
If you go to look at a local church, what are they doing, arguing with Dawkins or just preaching whatever their local audience wants to hear? Would they raise more tithes if they would argue with Dawkins? Would it help them any way? By far their best strategy is to ignore what a group of intellectuals argue about them, and preach whatever their local non-intellectual audience likes to hear.
The point here is to not confuse two entirely unrelated goals 1) getting some social goals reached, like funds directed to your favorite charity 2) gaining social status points amongst intellectuals by winning arguments.
Is this ugly and borderline Machiavellian? Yes. Would I hate you if you did this? Yes. But what do you want more, me liking you, or a thousand non-intellectual sheeple contributing to your favorite charity? What gets you closer to your real goal?
Arguing is pretty much nothing more than a ritualized game amonst intellectuals. Your lose status in your peer group if you don’t, if you just advertise, if you just send out cute-puppy emotional messages. But from the viewpoint of total utility, does that really matter?
But an essential step is to form your own institution. A thing is a thing only with defined barriers, although not impermeable ones. As long as you are just, for example, a loosely defined EA crowd, arguments are endless. Once you decided to form a Society For Whatever Cause I Support, and recruited members, you stop having at least the main arguments inside. And you can ignore the arguments outside and just send out marketing messages. If you don’t do this step, if you don’t decide to enough is enough, now everybody who agrees with me please stand up and we form our own institution, you get nowhere.
The question is what exactly you are trying to do? For example, if you want to further a cause, like, in EA, raising funds for a highly effective charity, say to the Deworm the World Initiative, you may not need to get along with people with different opinions. You can do what pretty much every succesful cause did
1) Form an institution with people who agree with you, such as form a Society For Funding DtWI, and make sure to exclude everybody who disagrees with you. Forming an institution makes it more or less automatic, people who disagree with DtWI will not join SFFDtWI and it focuses efforts.
2) Just advertise it to everybody else using convicing marketing language, emotional appeal, “cute puppies”, I don’t mean outright lie, I just mean pretty much be like the politician who advertises videos of him petting a dog and not his ideas about how to cut the budget.
This tends to work for the following reason. You have two groups of people, the arguers, the intellectuals, who are a kind of elite, and the followers, the masses, who just do whatever emotionally appeals to them. You DON’T have to win argument with the opposing intellectuals just to get to your goal. You can just advertise to the masses and simply ignore the intellectuals who argue with you.
If you go to look at a local church, what are they doing, arguing with Dawkins or just preaching whatever their local audience wants to hear? Would they raise more tithes if they would argue with Dawkins? Would it help them any way? By far their best strategy is to ignore what a group of intellectuals argue about them, and preach whatever their local non-intellectual audience likes to hear.
The point here is to not confuse two entirely unrelated goals 1) getting some social goals reached, like funds directed to your favorite charity 2) gaining social status points amongst intellectuals by winning arguments.
Is this ugly and borderline Machiavellian? Yes. Would I hate you if you did this? Yes. But what do you want more, me liking you, or a thousand non-intellectual sheeple contributing to your favorite charity? What gets you closer to your real goal?
Arguing is pretty much nothing more than a ritualized game amonst intellectuals. Your lose status in your peer group if you don’t, if you just advertise, if you just send out cute-puppy emotional messages. But from the viewpoint of total utility, does that really matter?
But an essential step is to form your own institution. A thing is a thing only with defined barriers, although not impermeable ones. As long as you are just, for example, a loosely defined EA crowd, arguments are endless. Once you decided to form a Society For Whatever Cause I Support, and recruited members, you stop having at least the main arguments inside. And you can ignore the arguments outside and just send out marketing messages. If you don’t do this step, if you don’t decide to enough is enough, now everybody who agrees with me please stand up and we form our own institution, you get nowhere.