Increasing day to day conversational rationality
One of the things that rationality has given me is a greater appreciation for the variety of ways one can be wrong. It often seems like people who haven’t given this topic much thought have a model of “being wrong” as one-dimensional quality someone can have with varying levels of intensity. You can be completely wrong, sort of wrong, or 0% wrong, but assigning a value to one’s wrongness is all the nuance this model gives.
Given such a model, there are very few failure points in a system of two people disagreeing about something. One of them is wrong and the other is right. Or maybe they’re both sort of right. Having a one-dimensional model of being wrong makes it harder to see other failure points. What if the question is wrong? What if there isn’t actually a disagreement between you and it’s all a misunderstanding? What if you aren’t actually arguing about what you are arguing about? What if you disagree because the other person’s reasoning process is setting off your alarm bells?
Because of the weirdness of words, not every english sentence can be directly translated into a formal logic proposition. Thus one needs a more nuanced understanding of being wrong in order to have more fruitful conversations and arguments.
Often in conversations, I want to address some of these issues, but I feel very clunky when bringing them in. Sometimes I’m about to bring up an idea that is common in the LW cannon, but then think, “Oh, for this to make sense to them, I’d first have to explain this, and for that to make sense I’d have to explain—” and by then I’ve lost the thread of the conversation and just abort the idea and try to catch up. Sometimes I do bring up the previously mentioned point, but I fail to do it in a way that communicates the essence of my point, or worse, the person I’m arguing with still feels like they’re in fight mode and reflexively begins attacking my point.
It would be incredibly useful to have worked out some “personhood interface” respecting scripts that I could call whenever I noticed a particular problem that was stymying the conversation. It’s hard enough to be rational when you can slowly think things through, and a real time conversation only makes it harder. I have a hunch that there is some decent low hanging fruit in the realm of operationalizing some scripts of the above nature.
Below I’ve worked out the particulars of one script, and have thoughts on other ones that would be useful.
Defending against Inferential Inoculation
“I’m getting the sense that we have fundamentally different perspectives/understandings of X, and that continuing to casually arguing about it is just going to trick us into thinking we understand each other when we don’t. I suggest we either step up our game and really try to explore each others beliefs carefully, or we postpone this discussion to when we have more attention and time to do so.”
Key points
Acknowledge the gap
Acknowledge that this should be approached carefully
Create the possibility of continuing with renewed vigour, or for deferring.
For this script to be truly complete, one would need to have mechanisms in place for continuing conversations with people.
Other scripts that would be useful to have
Having a reset button where you drop whatever the current thread is, take a breath, and both recenter on what your central thesis are.
I often realize halfway through a conversation that I’ve ended up arguing for a position that I don’t care about/support, and it’s very hard to recenter from there in a way that isn’t incredibly jarring to the discussion.
Beginning a tangent to explain a related point, concept, or argument, while making it very clear you are momentarily introducing a tangent and that you are both on the same page about what the current focus is.
Make sure the other person understands you intend to return to the main argument and that this isn’t a diversionary tactic.
Starting a double crux
Pointing out that you think you have different ideas in mind when using the word X, and asking them to explain theirs.
Be sure to do so in a way that doesn’t turn into “How should we define X?” but instead becomes “What are you thinking?”
Letting them now that what they said set off alarms bells somewhere in your head, but you aren’t sure why, and you want to take a moment to think you so don’t give them a made up reason for your disagreement.
“I think I might understand your intent, but the words you said confused me. Could you rephrase that?”
Note that some of these are pretty easy to implement (beginning a tangent argument and then returning), yet you could probably still benefit from giving explicit attention to how to implement them with maximum smoothness.
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Discussion Prompt
Comment with any scripts that you use to smoothly introduce non-typical ideas/conversational dynamics/etc.
What are the most common things you wish you had a well flushed out script for?
Here’s a script elephantiskon and I came up with for clearing up confusion with word meanings (bullet 4 on the list):
“What does [being X/Xing] mean for you? I’m worried that I’m not understanding [you/your position] that well because I have a different understanding of what it means to [X/be X].”
Feel free to adapt based on what sounds natural for you, or post any modifications you think would be helpful.
We may post more such scripts later.
Did you make more scripts?
If it is someone that you are going to have repeated contact with, it is often more valuable to explain the meta concept so that you can use it in the future, than it is to try to win on the object-level issue.
This is why I think one of the more useful scripts to have is the one for communicating, “I think that we should pause this argument and talk about this tangent idea for a bit, really focus on it, discuss it, and then come back to this one and see what changes.”
Even though you still bear the burden of trying to explain, you’ve at least created a space where they are giving you new idea thought, as opposed to being focused on the original issue and mostly ignoring you tangent rationality related idea.
In the last 48 hours i’ve felt the need for more than one of the abilities above. These would be very useful conversational tools.
I think some of these would be harder than others. This one sounds hard: ‘Letting them now that what they said set off alarms bells somewhere in your head, but you aren’t sure why.’ Maybe we could look for both scripts that work between two people who already trust each other, and scripts that work with semi-strangers. Or scripts that do and don’t require both participants to have already read a specific blog post, etc.
Why can’t you say it word-for-word? “What you said set off alarm bells in my head and I’m not sure why”.
I think the script for that one needs two parts for it to work. The first is this-problem-specific and is conveying the belief that “People don’t automatically have access to their motives, and it’s super easy for one to confabulate their motives.” I’ve got a feeling that to really get someone to understand that point would require at least some reading on the topic. Actually, you might need to pair this one with a tangent explaining this idea.
The second ingrediant seems to be a more generic one, and it’s establishing the rule that “Us disagreeing with each other doesn’t mean we have to be on opposite teams.”
That second one is probably the more important part when interacting with a semi-stranger.
Also another potentially useful script to add to the list would be one for introducing an idea that you think has promise but you’re not totally sure you endorse (in the spirit of “brainstorming” but perhaps as a one-off)
I love your systematic approach to this. The skill of doing it with big-inferential-gap strangers seems to lack “natural” improvement gradients, and so it just doesn’t happen without explicit work.
One issue with prepared scripts is that they tend to sound much more cheesy than you expected when thinking them up.
I’ve had the rare kind of conversation where it was clear to both that both cared about listening. Sounding cheesy is no concern in this context—you also sound super genuine because you’re putting in real effort.
I agree some/many of us need a systematic approach, and this is a good one for introverts all ready to memorize things, but I figure you could also set up a “natural” improvement gradient via a series of debates, by going to a good debate club.