To Whom I May Have Concerned: A standard explanation of my disagreement

[deleted]12 Jun 2011 5:20 UTC
−7 points
16 comments4 min readLW linkArchive

EDIT: I put this here so that it can be easily on the Internet so I can link people to it. When I link it to people, they’ll be here on Less Wrong. The good it does to people who are already here, I don’t really know. I feel that that makes it appropriate for a top-level post here. If you don’t think so, comment, as I’m relatively new here. If three people downvote I’ll remove it and put in somewhere else.

To Whom I May Have Concerned:

I write this to explain myself to someone I have just disagreed and argued with. I always feel I need to say the same things after a disagreement, so I thought I’d automate it by writing it down once, and just providing people with a link.

So we disagreed on something. Chances are, I upset or offended you. To start with, I apologize for that. I never want to upset or offend someone, and only rarely do I have to. So, I probably messed up there. Not only is offending and upsetting people a wrong thing to do, but it’s also incredibly counterproductive. As soon as someone is offended, their mind closes. Arguments become like soldiers, to be fought. Good solutions are missed. Also, as a result of that, you probably like and trust me less, which is unhelpful for my goals. So I probably screwed that up. I’m sorry. I have this arrogant habit of belittling and making fun of people’s beliefs when I’m pretty sure they’re wrong, but can’t quite explain to them why (for instance arguing about theology with people who don’t understand intelligence, or arguing politics with people who don’t know microeconomics). So I’m sorry for that.

Now, I need to explain some of the frequent causes of misunderstanding which I get with people. To start with, I need to clarify what I mean by truth, opinions, and such things. The first one is the difference between a fact and a belief. A belief is what you think is true. A fact is true. I can’t provide an example of the distinction for myself, as Wittgenstein pointed out. But, for instance, saying “I believe that I am male” gives the same information as “I am male.”

Introduction to my views on truth

I believe in philosophical realism. This means that I think two contradictory statements cannot both be true. Iron either floats on water or it doesn’t. I was born in Australia or I wasn’t. So if two people disagree, at least one of them is wrong.

(However, sometimes the disagreement isn’t a real disagreement, just people meaning different things with their words. If that was the problem, I would have told you at the time. So, assume it was a real disagreement.)

Now, there’s this idea in society that some statements are facts, and some are opinions. For example, people think that “Japan’s capital city is Tokyo” is a fact, while “Japan’s justice system is immoral” to be opinions. I don’t believe there is any qualitative difference between these statements. I believe both.

There are some differences. “Japan’s capital city is Tokyo” is a lot more likely to be considered a fact, for a few reasons.

  1. I believe “Japan’s capital city is Tokyo” is a lot more likely to be true.

  2. More people believe it.

  3. Fewer common assumptions must be held for us to agree on it. If we want to talk about morality, we need to decide on a moral system first, then we need to figure out how the Japanese justice system corresponds. This takes a lot longer.

But nonetheless. This is all a matter of scale rather than type. If we were all twenty times smarter, it’s possible we wouldn’t even notice the difference. If we were all five year olds, it’s possible that there would be debate about what Japan’s capital city really was. We might argue over whether perhaps Kyoto was the capital, if we had an old atlas. And so on. But overall, opinions can be just as wrong as factual statements.
English makes this inconvenient. When I say “I believe X” instead of “X is true,” I’m normally trying to communicate something about myself. Saying “I believe that consequentialism is more sensible than deontology” draws attention to the fact claimer, me, rather than the fact. Which is sometimes useful. But it leads to that whole fact/​opinion dichotomy which I greatly dislike.
Reactions vs opinion/​facts
Except, however, in the case of what I prefer to call reactions to things. Some things which I rationally agree are equally bad upset me to different levels, and vice versa. I don’t feel much sympathy towards babies. I care greatly about animals. People thinking badly of themselves makes me extremely upset. So if I enjoyed Three Worlds Collide, but someone else was offended by what it said about babyeating and rape, then I can understand them. We are not disagreeing on a fact, we are simply reporting upon our different reactions to something. Sometimes, we are called upon to make a judgement about something which is our estimation of what an average person’s reaction to something would be. This is no longer a reaction, but an opinion about the reactions of others. It goes back into the realm of statements which can be argued about.
This is a common misunderstanding I have in arguments with people. I’m not saying you’re wrong to have the reaction you have to something. I can’t argue that, cause I’m not in your head. You know more about your feelings than I do, in most cases.
And so when I say that you’re wrong about whether a movie was offensive or not, I’m not arguing that you were offended. I’m saying that the average person wouldn’t be, so the movie itself is not terribly offensive. I can’t control your reaction, and can’t hold it against you. But you can be wrong about the average effect of something.
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion” is pretty much the epitome of this confusion. Everyone is entitled to his own reaction. But, you’re only entitled to your own opinion to the extent that you’re allowed to be wrong about something.
And so, we’ve disagreed.

Now that we’ve clarified that. We disagreed, which means I think you’re wrong. I hold beliefs on a probability basis: There is nothing I believe to be 100% true, but plenty of things which I believe strongly enough to round to 100% to, say, three decimal places. Assuming I respect your intelligence, which is usual, I have just adjusted the probability of me being right downwards. I’ll probably check my thinking, and then adjust my probability further in whichever direction seems correct. For example, when someone I knew tried to convince me that Obama wasn’t born in America, I quickly gave them about a 5% probability of being right. When I got home, I checked the internet and revised it down to about 1%.

On the other end of the spectrum, when arguing that drugs should be legal one time, someone argued that they would have taken drugs as a teenager if they were legal. I had never met someone who asserted that before, which made me less sure about drug legalization.

So, I’m checking my facts. I’ll probably report back to you soon about whether I reckon you’re right or not. It’s very rare that I change someone’s mind on something, so I may or may not bother trying. If you have evidence that I’m wrong, please tell it to me and to one of my friends. If I ignore it, my friend can complain to me.

In conclusion.

We’ve disagreed. I’m not angry. I hope you aren’t. Sorry for any offense I may have caused.

Yours jollily,

Buck

[deleted]12 Jun 2011 5:20 UTC
−7 points
16 comments4 min readLW linkArchive