[HN Gopher] Arguing from compassion (2021)
___________________________________________________________________
Arguing from compassion (2021)
Author : rendall
Score : 159 points
Date : 2022-07-25 10:41 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (centerforinquiry.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (centerforinquiry.org)
| dloss wrote:
| Related: Titanium man: "Taking the core of one's argument and
| rearticulating it at a higher level of nuance, sophistication,
| abstraction, and complexity. The argument is buttressed with more
| perspectives, contexts, and variables"
| https://greenteaji108.medium.com/from-the-steelman-to-the-ti...
| teddyh wrote:
| Of course one should be compassionate and understanding of
| others, except towards those who are violent, or advocates for
| violence, or hate, or those who expressly support those who do,
| or indirectly, or by inaction allow them to exist.
|
| ...say the people advocating for ostracism and demonization of
| their opponents. I agree with this article; there is entirely too
| much of that kind of behavior going on, and not enough of its
| opposite.
| chasd00 wrote:
| > or by inaction allow them to exist.
|
| So basically anyone who is not as passionate about some random
| issue as you are. This is a problem, you can't even ask to talk
| about something else without becoming the enemy.
| rendall wrote:
| I think it's meant sarcastically.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| The give away is the second paragraph.
| aspaviento wrote:
| Is it really necessary all this verbosity to convey ideas? I feel
| like all this sugarcoat is just to excesively protect people's
| feelings, a tendency that is spreading everywhere lately.
| k__ wrote:
| It makes sense to me.
|
| Often, I see people arguing straw or steel with either their
| limited view of the oponents position or with the basic
| asumption that their oponent is an idiot or malicious.
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| A phrase I have to issue here on occasion is, "they didn't
| misunderstand you, they just disagree."
| k__ wrote:
| One does not exclude the other.
| [deleted]
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| how much value can you place on a disagreement based on a
| misunderstanding, though? i don't think that's the
| relevant case.
| erezyehuda wrote:
| I think a big part of this topic discussion is that
| there's a LOT of value in those- that many disagreements
| are simply down to having a different understanding about
| context and facts, and that giving the other person the
| benefit of the doubt can help people navigate those. It
| actually seems like one of the most relevant cases to me.
| rendall wrote:
| Sometimes, when discussing controversial or polarizing ideas,
| you do need extra signaling to convey that you're taking them
| seriously. It would be nice to live in a world wherein this
| could be taken for granted, and someday perhaps we will. Alas,
| not in these times.
| oldcigarette wrote:
| Economics, sociology and psychology all tend to say very little
| with very many words to the extent that the message gets lost
| and people don't even know what they are discussing.
|
| You see it to a lesser extent in software and math too though -
| just look at any mathematical article on wikipedia. The
| "dynamic programming" article is a good one for this.
|
| I'm not sure this is a new problem.
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| I don't know much about sociology and psychology, but I can
| say that I'm surprised by this characterization of economics.
| I'm sure you know what you're talking about, but it's my
| impression that economics is a subject with a lot of depth,
| and also tries to communicate its ideas to laypeople with
| concise approximations like "P=MC"
| ramraj07 wrote:
| I agree your premise in a limited context: non fiction books.
|
| Non fiction books often pad out very little info into an
| entire tome simply because that's one of the few ways you can
| make money from your idea.
|
| But this doesn't apply just to economics. The most egregious
| of this are books about programming languages and
| architecture if you ask me.
|
| In philosophy and elsewhere, a good author might write a lot
| but still be concise. That's just because they have a lot to
| say. Or they need more examples.
|
| This article wasn't even that verbose. I don't see how what
| he said related to star man though, but that's a different
| topic.
| scratcheee wrote:
| To just convey ideas? Of course it's not necessary. To convince
| someone to change their world view? This is nowhere near
| _enough_, just a small start.
|
| They were not talking about couching every fact or snippet
| taught in physics class getting couched in all this extra
| "sugarcoating". They were talking about the kind of
| conversations that almost never go well at all - they're trying
| to improve the odds of an interaction convincing someone to
| change their polarized viewpoint from 0.01% to 0.03%.
|
| For that use-case, obviously there's value in exploring
| different techniques, given the typical technique (scream at
| them and then block them) doesn't work well at all at actually
| changing their mind.
| aspaviento wrote:
| No matter how soft and gentle your touch is, when you are
| trying to change someone else's values, if they are not up to
| accept other point of views, it will go bad. All this
| sugarcoat could be interpreted as you trying to patronize
| them, seeing them as intelectually inferior or who knows what
| other negative connotation they can infer.
| vintermann wrote:
| Verbosity?
|
| By the lingo, I assume the author is at least tangentially
| associated with the online rationalism thing, Slate Star Codex
| and Yudkowsky and effective altruism and all that.
|
| By their standards, this is a damn haiku.
| ParetoOptimal wrote:
| > feel like all this sugarcoat is just to excesively protect
| people's feelings, a tendency that is spreading everywhere
| lately.
|
| The most rational thing someone can do is accept the reality
| that acknowledging feelings and emotion are a pre-requisite to
| problem solving.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > Anyone who has spent time arguing on social media has heard of
| the straw man fallacy.
|
| I think the main issue is the folly of arguing on social media.
| It is a setup for dehumanizing and vilifying the other.
|
| I think most arguments on social media are about snark and
| signaling to your own tribe how smart you are more than actually
| trying to understand the truth or convince people holding a
| different view.
|
| Conversations among friends over a beer are much more likely to
| enlightening and possibly persuasive.
| teddyh wrote:
| The lines between real life and social media are blurring. You
| hear more and more commonly about people cutting all ties with
| old friends or even family members about relatively simple
| things. It's a more accepted thing to do now - complete
| ostracism of those who we disagree with - instead of trying to
| find common ground.
| Kye wrote:
| It often turns out the person who got cut off was a giant
| asshole who 100% deserved it. You might not have sufficient
| visibility into the experience of the person who cut someone
| off to judge their actions fairly.
|
| You see this a lot in people whose kids have cut off contact.
| From their perspective, the cutting off was sudden and
| shocking. From their kid's perspective, it was the last-ditch
| effort to reclaim autonomy and preserve sanity after a
| lifetime of abuse and endless attempts to set boundaries and
| seek change. An outside observer is missing key details.
| teddyh wrote:
| I believe that the percieved threshold of "giant asshole
| who 100% deserved it" is lowering.
| Kye wrote:
| Whether the social stability that came with people
| putting up with or excusing more abuse and general
| toxicity was worth more than the dynamism that comes from
| more people feeling free to build supportive circles is
| something society is likely to wrestle with over the
| coming decades.
|
| Anecdotally, _every_ person I know who 's cut off people
| who were harmful to them has found more fulfillment even
| if things are harder for them. Like chosen family, chosen
| struggle seems to be easier to live with than a struggle
| that thrives on disempowerment.
|
| The threshold was high because people didn't believe they
| had a choice before.
| teddyh wrote:
| Of course, you could be right. However, an alternative
| explanation is:
|
| 1. The threshold of what constitutes "abuse and general
| toxicity" has lowered significantly, giving people social
| tacit permission to ostracize others for lesser and
| lesser perceived offenses.
|
| 2. People always think that discarding something is good,
| and that they are better off without it, _immediately
| after having discarded it_. People naturally _want_ to be
| able to blame all their problems on a single source, and
| after they have gotten rid of it, they quite obviously
| believe their lives to be better in every way. Of course,
| the worse the thing they discarded was, the more correct
| they are in their belief, but if they are _entirely_
| correct can not be known until much later.
| Kye wrote:
| 1 is fine if the threshold was too high. People are
| ultimately free to associate with whoever consents to
| that association without justifying it to outside
| observers, or to the confused newly disassociated.
|
| 2 might be the case, but people can certainly have a
| sense that something is wrong. It could turn out they
| made the wrong call in trying to resolve that feeling,
| but my ancedata tells me this is vanishingly rare.
|
| I get the feeling my anecdata samples a larger portion of
| the people who pruned their connections to make room for
| growth, while your anecdata samples a larger portion of
| people who were cut off. I've already heard quite a bit
| from the latter and don't find their defenses compelling,
| so I'm still not convinced this is a serious problem.
| teddyh wrote:
| > _People are ultimately free to associate with whoever
| consents to that association without justifying it to
| outside observers, or to the confused newly
| disassociated._
|
| Nobody contests that. But freedom was never the issue.
| The issue was a possible problem with people more and
| more readily abandoning dialogue for ostracism (with
| accompanying demonization, etc. as justification) as a
| normal thing to do on disagreement.
|
| > _I get the feeling my anecdata samples a larger portion
| of the people who pruned their connections to make room
| for growth, while your anecdata samples a larger portion
| of people who were cut off._
|
| Both our sample sizes are very small, so we probably
| can't draw any definitive conclusions either way. I was
| highlighting that ostracism seemed to me to become more
| common, and if this is true, it would point to either a
| rise in the existence of terrible irredeemable people, or
| a socially lowered threshold for abandoning conversation
| for demonization. _Per the reasons described in the
| article_ , I tend to believe in the latter, not the
| former.
| Kye wrote:
| >> _" Both our sample sizes are very small, so we
| probably can't draw any definitive conclusions either
| way. I was highlighting that ostracism seemed to me to
| become more common, and if this is true, it would point
| to either a rise in the existence of terrible
| irredeemable people, or a socially lowered threshold for
| abandoning conversation for demonization."_
|
| Third option: those people were always there, but more
| people are realizing they can set and enforce boundaries.
| You no longer have to just ignore the relative who
| sexually harasses children, or the relative who's sliding
| deeper into conspiracy theories and fringe rhetoric that
| leads to material harm to them and people they care
| about.
|
| Ignoring a problem doesn't make it go away. If you can't
| convince people around you to support _doing something_ ,
| parting ways is increasingly a socially acceptable
| option. Most people can't summon up a #MeToo to deal with
| their problems, and negative peace[0] has been the order
| of business for so long most people don't even realize
| it, so cutting people off is often the only option other
| than status quo.
|
| It seems like your concern is that this movement is
| lopsided in favor of people giving up on solving these
| problems rather than sticking with someone who is
| reachable. That hasn't been my observation, and like I
| said upthread, I haven't found the evidence in favor of
| this view persuasive. Most excommunications I witness (or
| have participated in) followed a long, sometimes
| lifetime, campaign of patience and persistence. Often a
| mental health crisis brought on by not forcing the
| boundaries precedes the no contact situation.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_and_conflict_stud
| ies#Con...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Perhaps dependencies are being reduced. "Cutting off" is
| harder when you depend, or might need to depend on
| someone, assuming they have something of use for you.
| teddyh wrote:
| But did something happen to make people vastly less
| dependent in, say, the last five years?
| rendall wrote:
| > _the main issue is the folly of arguing on social media_
|
| This approach could be used in meatspace, too. And, like it or
| not, our lives are increasingly being spent online.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I think an underlying mega conflict in online communication is
| sharing more than we want to share, or at least it has been one
| plaguing me over the years.
|
| I don't think social media communication has to be
| dehumanizing, I think it comes into how much do I share about
| how I'm actually feeling and my actual identity on the internet
| where hundreds if not thousands or millions of people might see
| it? And yet it can be soooo easy to share on the internet, from
| our phone or computer, just talking/typing into the screen, at
| almost any time and any place?
|
| So then I do think it can come into "how do I pretend to be
| cool and superhuman...so that people don't know too much about
| me?"
|
| In a conversation with a friend over a beer, one might open up
| about why they hate inflation because they think they might
| lose their job and they're afraid if they lose their job, their
| wive and kids might leave them. I bet that's the real
| underlying reason for that person, yet on the internet, that
| same person might say that evil bankers are trying to destroy
| us with inflation because who admits to being afraid they're
| going to lose their life on the internet, with their name
| attached?
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| > most arguments on social media are...
|
| ... detached from any real trust system.
|
| "Social media" is not _social_. As a business, it is the
| monetisation of strife.
|
| As an exchange of ideas, social media is (as you say) mostly
| people flinging words at one another.
|
| To be "social", participants in _social media_ would need to
| manifest commitment to real solutions and people would be
| accountable for their words and deeds. This is how human
| society works. There are social consequences in _real_ social
| exchange. It is a trust system.
|
| I propose that the reason why we hear of people's long-time
| friendships and family ties collapsing is because those social
| ties have simply become weak. The pretext for the rupture
| doesn't much matter.
|
| > To star-man is to not only engage with the most charitable
| version of your opponent's argument, but also with the most
| charitable version of your opponent, by acknowledging their
| good intentions and your shared desires despite your
| disagreements.
|
| This is an excellent approach. But it depends on the trust
| system of real society.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| It's also the case that that social trust and those social
| ties have been weakened, intentionally over the last four or
| five decades, to produce a "post-political" system of
| governance.
|
| Margaret Thatcher famously said, "There's no such thing as
| society. There are individual men and women, and there are
| families." It wasn't true when she said it, but thanks to her
| and the other architects of neoliberalism, it is true now.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| "There is no such thing as society. There are the
| plutocrats, and a large human economic sacrifice zone for
| the plutocrats to exploit."
|
| It's a grim, reductionist view of _society_ as a construct
| for wealth, and general happiness only if the latter does
| not impede the acculumation of the former.
| fleddr wrote:
| I would go along with the general idea that human beings in
| general are good, it's a conclusion one easily picks up when
| having traveled. Most of us want peace, health and reasonable
| wealth.
|
| Anyway, social media is an entirely different story. It simply
| isn't designed to have reasonable conversations at length. It's
| fast, superficial, cult-like, where division is richly rewarded
| and reason is not. There's no debate tactic you can come up with
| that changes this as this presumes good faith.
|
| Social media in itself is bad at this but combined with the
| backdrop of a polarized political landscape, you have a perfect
| storm making almost any discussion impossible, star-man or not.
| Telemakhos wrote:
| I fail to see how praising the opponent differs from an ad
| hominem fallacy except in tone: addressing the interlocutor
| instead of the issue still fails to address the issue.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > I fail to see how praising the opponent differs from an ad
| hominem fallacy except in tone: addressing the interlocutor
| instead of the issue still fails to address the issue.
|
| The ad hominem fallacy is meant to _end_ discussion by
| attacking the interlocutor. This approach is meant to
| _facilitate_ discussion by fostering a positive relationship
| with the interlocutor; the positive relationship is a means,
| not the end.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > addressing the interlocutor instead of the issue still fails
| to address the issue.
|
| Logically, you are correct. Realistically, with a lot of
| people, failing to address the interlocutor will result in a
| failure to address the issue.
|
| The "Let's keep personalities and egos out of this" methodology
| works in a rather narrow domain.
| gregwebs wrote:
| Summary: Focus first on figuring out the common goal that you are
| both trying to achieve. From there you can try to discuss the
| differences in approaches to that goal that you have come up with
| and steel man the other side.
|
| This seems like a great approach to gain a better understanding
| of the big picture context, avoid arguing, and have a productive
| discussion.
|
| What is missing from this essay for me is the acknowledgement
| that people often do want different things because they do have
| different values. I think this approach though would make it
| easier to recognize differences in values and separate out values
| from facts.
| rendall wrote:
| I don't think this is a good summary. My understanding of the
| idea is to steel-man the opponent's argument and then also add
| a codicil that describes what compassionate values they have
| that lead them to that point of view.
| gregwebs wrote:
| Yes, I agree your summary is more accurate of what is written
| in the article. I think the emphasis of mine is an
| improvement on what is suggested here. Shifting from arguing
| towards conversation produces better outcomes in my
| experience.
| safety1st wrote:
| I'm really impressed by this idea. I've never heard of the idea
| of "star-manning" an argument before, I presume the author
| invented it, it's good food for thought.
|
| There's another interesting term in here - "ideological capture"
| - seems like this refers to the state where a person or
| organization is supporting policy based on ideology or group
| identity rather than what policy would yield the best outcomes
| for all of the people involved.
|
| I don't think star-manning is a replacement for steel-manning.
| More like there are situations where no matter how well you
| steel-man someone's argument, they're not going to listen,
| because you don't like each other (or each other's views). Maybe
| the place where this idea is most applicable is when someone else
| is in an adversarial mode, it's really the person themselves that
| you need to "star-man" to establish that common ground is
| possible and get them into a cooperative mode.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| I still think steelmanning is the right path to addressing
| conflict.
|
| Even in very tense settings, it's hard for people to be
| disagreeable about you accurately relaying their view -- maybe
| even better than they did themselves. That makes people feel
| listened to and understood, which are powerful motivators in
| human psychology.
|
| I won't pretend I always do this, but I've certainly had the
| best success inquiring about their position until I can
| steelman it and only then addressing why I disagree.
|
| As Chris Voss would say, you don't want them to say "you're
| right", you want them to say "that's right".
| csours wrote:
| A post I made elsewhere, which seems pertinent here:
|
| Politics and Hermit Crabs
|
| Hermit Crabs wear a shell for protection. If they get separated
| from their shell, they get frantic and often die if they can't
| find a replacement. They don't like it when people mess with
| their shell.
|
| Imagine coming up with a brilliant, powerful political argument.
| You can smash the shell right off your opponent. Will they thank
| you for it? There is a real human psychological need behind
| people's beliefs. There is lived experience behind these beliefs.
|
| It can feel like a real attack when that lived experience is
| invalidated. People retract into their shell, or attack right
| back. If their shell is actually busted, they probably won't
| stick around and find out what else you plan on doing to them;
| they'll run off and they may find an even worse shell.
|
| So what then? Just accept that they will wear a terrible shell
| forever? I think that you have to accept their current situation.
| You don't have to accept it forever, but you have to see them
| where they are now. You can't change their shell, and you
| shouldn't expect them to change to a shell that matches yours any
| time soon, but if you don't drive them away, then maybe they can
| accept that your shell is valid, and find value in your point of
| view.
|
| And to be clear, you don't have to do this for everyone, and you
| sure don't have to do it on social media. You may not be able to
| accept anyone's terrible shell right now. That's fine. But
| remember that we all picked up our shells from our environment;
| we carry our history around with us.
| immigrantheart wrote:
| I am loving this, gonna steal it.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Unfortunatly, like NVC, arguing from compassion is really hard to
| fake.
|
| You may force yourself to practice it, and you will improve. But
| as soon as you get heat up in the moment, it will all go away.
|
| What really helps you to progress is to work on yourself
| (whatever is your favorite tool, therapy, meditation, etc).
|
| Because it will improve the compassion you feel (for others, but
| more importantly, for yourself: a lot of the debate is going on
| inside), and giving a compassionate shape to your words will then
| be more natural, fluid, and therefore, will be less likely to
| melt away in a real life debate.
|
| But trying to sound compassionate when you are angry doesn't work
| very well. And it requires a huge amount of energy to maintain
| (ask any politician :)).
|
| This is one of those areas where "fake it until you make it"
| shows its limits.
|
| However, it does improve the quality of your exchanges a lot on
| the long run, and for me, it's really worth it.
|
| I'm not saying don't try to fake it, but rather, understand where
| the ceiling is.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > Unfortunatly, like NVC, arguing from compassion is really
| hard to fake.
|
| Agreed.
|
| > What really helps you to progress is to work on yourself
| (whatever is your favorite tool, therapy, meditation, etc).
|
| This, however, is very consistent with NVC. Not just with NVC
| but with most communications books - especially those involving
| difficult issues. These books focus more on figuring out what's
| inside of you than in the actual verbal communication. If
| you're upset/angry, the goal is to understand what is causing
| you to be angry and how you got there - why would you get angry
| and someone else wouldn't?
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Indeed it's a better way to put it than my comment: it's not
| as important to note than faking it is hard, rather that
| really understanding it is something that goes deeper than an
| exchange of words.
|
| However, I would say that it's ok to start with just the
| words. There is a first step to everything.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I'd argue that often what's inside of us (at least in side of
| me) is a lot of verbal communication. Maybe you mean the
| verbal communication we do with others, yet I just wanted to
| say I think the language we use with ourselves is often the
| language we use with others. I've found that yes, working on
| how I talk to myself has helped how I talk to others. For
| example, I'm not an idiot when I make a mistake, I'm angry at
| a specific behavior I did.
|
| So I try to pay attention to how I speak to myself and how I
| speak to others, trying to learn from both. E.g., I just said
| "gosh, how stupid are you" to someone (or thought it), wait,
| how often do I say that to myself?
| JadeNB wrote:
| > But trying to sound compassionate when you are angry doesn't
| work very well. And it requires a huge amount of energy to
| maintain (ask any politician :)).
|
| But that's a good and self-reinforcing thing! If you are
| spending all your energy on compassion, then you are _not_
| spending your energy on talking angrily, and so are
| inadvertently lulled into listening, or at least not over-
| talking. If one can 't be genuinely compassionate yet, then at
| least falling into a neutral non-attacking position is a good
| thing.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| I wish.
|
| Nowever it's not uncommon to build frustration that way.
| Let's disregard the fact it's a highway to unhappiness. One
| day, one may not have enough energy to keep this frustration
| at bay, then anger will flow.
|
| Anger is a funny thing, it can lend you temporarilly a lot of
| energy (that you pay back with interest later). So even if
| you didn't have any for compassion, suddenly, you might find
| you have a lot for destruction.
|
| Now don't get me wrong, I think trying and failing at
| compassion is a worthy action, even when resulting with
| destruction.
|
| In fact, some meditation technics are mostly that: you try to
| be compassionate, or in the moment, or just observing. You
| fail. You try again. For years.
| [deleted]
| NoGravitas wrote:
| I want to believe. And in interpersonal interactions, with
| regular people, in meatspace, it's probably good advice.
|
| But in a larger context, we live in a post-truth world, a
| hyperreality. Sartre noted the use of bad faith to create a false
| reality as early as 1944:
|
| > "Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the
| absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are
| frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves,
| for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words
| responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have
| the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by
| giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of
| their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since
| they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and
| disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly
| fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for
| argument is past."
|
| Since the late 1970s or so, it's gotten worse, as hyper-reality
| has become a mainstream tool of governance worldwide [1] [2].
| People don't just disagree about the interpretation of facts and
| ideas about what should be done about them, but about the facts
| themselves. And this disagreement about facts is fostered by
| powerful interests, some cooperating, some competing, for profit
| and political reasons, the latter of which is mainly about making
| coordinated and effective opposition movements impossible in
| multiple ways.
|
| Lana Wachowski, via the character Morpheus: "The Matrix is a
| system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside,
| you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers,
| carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save.
| But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and
| that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these
| people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so
| inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will
| fight to protect it.
|
| I'd like to think that starmanning would be a tool for making
| people ready to be unplugged. But the truth is, people _will_
| fight to protect the system, especially when they 've been
| convinced that they benefit from it.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.academia.edu/33103253/Hyper_Normalisation_contex...
|
| [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thLgkQBFTPw
| js8 wrote:
| I think Michael Brooks put it more nicely than Morpheus:
|
| Be kind to people, but ruthless to systems.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Quite hard to do with people that self-identify as parts of a
| system.
|
| (IFAIK, that's the GP's point.)
|
| Somehow the world is full of those people. Attack the system
| and you are attacking them.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| Rest in power, Michael Brooks.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > But in a larger context, we live in a post-truth world, a
| hyperreality. Sartre noted the use of bad faith to create a
| false reality as early as 1944:
|
| I'm not sure how the current world is any more post-truth than
| the one 30 or 60 years ago.
| chernevik wrote:
| > To star-man is to not only engage with the most charitable
| version of your opponent's argument, but also with the most
| charitable version of your opponent, by acknowledging their good
| intentions and your shared desires despite your disagreements.
|
| This is all to the good, but it is unfortunate that we need to
| reinvent this wheel. Thinkers like Plato and JS Mill have made
| exactly the same point, and other good points besides.
|
| We have a rich literature in how to think and how to argue, and
| we would do well to pay more attention to it.
| ParetoOptimal wrote:
| > No doubt some cynics will bristle at the seeming naivete of
| calling for civility towards monsters. I understand their
| skepticism. Many of our beliefs feel more like identities, and to
| disagree with those is to negate our very existence. The thought
| of extending charity to those looking to erase us seems
| masochistic, even suicidal. But this perception of existential
| threat is an illusion. Yes, there are monsters in the world, but
| they're so few in number that you're unlikely to actually
| encounter one.
|
| I'm definitely not a cynic, but this really understates the power
| of the threat that bad ideas can have to peoples existence. That
| threat is higher based on your specific intersectionality.
|
| My socio-economic position personally lets "this perception of
| existential threat is an illusion" ring true the vast majority of
| the time. When I was below the poverty line however, the ideas of
| someone in a position of power about poor people threatened my
| ability to better my existence.
|
| I quite like the idea of "optimism isn't naieve, it's the refusal
| to accept the present as the future". I believe this is a healthy
| way of seeing things as long as one doesn't bury their head in
| the sand about current realities that can be much more depressing
| than the bright future you can envision.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| > If you're still unconvinced--if you're reflexively rejecting
| this notion outright, you have to ask yourself: Why? Why wouldn't
| you want to acknowledge your interlocutor's humanity, your mutual
| quest for safety, security, and satisfaction? How would
| compassion for your opponent affect your pursuits? I worry about
| the answers to those questions, and so should you.
|
| I think because I want to recognize _my_ humanity first, before I
| recognize the other person 's humanity.
|
| I think this is the fundamental missing piece in the argument: to
| recognize our own humanity. I think we take it for a given and
| yet how many of us are afraid to show our humanity to others? How
| we feel? What we're thinking? _Especially_ in conflict. We don 't
| say how we're shouting at them because we love them and are
| afraid they will leave us. We don't say we are against abortions
| because we tried all our lives to have a child biologically and
| were unable to and thus feel jealous of those who can but choose
| to abort--or conversely, for allowing women to choose because we
| grew up in a family where our parents resented us for being born
| and ruining their lives.
|
| I really like the idea of humanizing the other person, I think
| what is more helpful to me feeling well and to resolving conflict
| in my life is to make sure that I first humanize myself and show
| that humanity to others.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I think this is especially worth considering and practicing in
| this particular forum. It often feels like one of the signals
| of an authoritative, respectable comment on HN is how
| effectively the commenter distances themselves from their own
| humanity.
|
| We easily and consistently dismiss any argument that shows
| emotion, are in fact proud of doing so. It creates a dynamic
| where we're trying to outdo each other's inhumanity, flex how
| cold and logical we can be in pursuit of a goal or argument.
| But without the humanity beneath, without the emotion to
| motivate us, there is no point to anything, no reason to prefer
| any outcome to any other.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I'm sitting here in awe and deep gratitude (oh emotion).
| Thank you for saying this.
|
| I remember reading a book about transformational leadership
| by Bob Quinn, a professor at the University of Michigan, and
| talking about how many people in academia pressured him to
| not use the first person perspective in his book and how he
| proceeded to use it anyway.
|
| I love the community here and worry so often that if I type
| something, it will be perceived as too emotional, too
| flowery, too subjective, etc, so even I, a person who has
| dedicated the last 10 years of his professional life to
| communicating emotion, balks to express how I'm feeling here.
|
| edit: oh, and I studied electrical engineering at a very good
| school for a few years and did well at it, and maybe I feel
| the need to say that because I think sometimes people think
| emotions are soft and fluffy and think people who believe in
| emotions may not come from the "hard sciences" (understanding
| the near infinite combinations of emotional interactions
| seems to be a pretty hard science to me).
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| For the folks here who are active on Twitter, the author is
| definitely worth a follow, especially if you're trying to build a
| reprieve from the normal vitriolic Twitter experience.
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/StrangelEdweird
|
| He also has half a dozen articles for NewsWeek that readers may
| find interesting: https://www.newsweek.com/authors/angel-eduardo
| possible_option wrote:
| Steelmanning / starmanning are viable ONLY IF the other part is
| really arguing in good faith.
|
| Assuming good faith is not always effective: it's completely
| vulnerable to various forms of trolling including
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
|
| "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of
| magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it."
|
| Trolls love making people waste their time refuting bullshit.
|
| Choose wisely who to argue with.
| closedloop129 wrote:
| >Sealioning (also sea-lioning and sea lioning) is a type of
| trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with
| relentless requests for evidence, often tangential or
| previously addressed, while maintaining a pretense of civility
| and sincerity
|
| The audience are the other readers, not the other commenter.
| It's enough to convince them. If valid arguments are not enough
| for them then that's their problem.
| koheripbal wrote:
| The vast majority of conversations about politics have negative
| value.
| fritztastic wrote:
| I think, from anecdotal personal experience, that a lot of people
| harbor deep seated emotions of anger, fear, and hostility. This
| makes it really difficult to communicate with them, as
| defensiveness and distrust are often a part of their reaction-
| and they sometimes lash out with personal attacks, whicb can
| beentally exhausting and discouraging.
|
| Even with close family members, it is difficult for me to be able
| to explain my ideas without encountering a barrier in their
| reaction where they refuse to consider what I have to say.
|
| I think, and this is just my theory, that a lot of people have
| traumas (sometimes ones they themselves don't realize relate to
| their associations with the subject being discussed) that make it
| hard to communicate and they may not know how to approach
| considering their view might be wrong, or even not wrong but just
| not the only valid way to look at an issue.
|
| It's extraordinarily difficult to approach certain topics without
| also encouraging people to confront their biases and encourage
| them to question things they regard as absolutes- as I mentioned,
| even with close family members, it's very hard to communicate and
| have discussions.
|
| It's not an easy thing for them to do, granted, and there is also
| very little incentive for someone to introspect on why they feel
| the way they do about something, even less for them to
| acknowledge there are alternate ways of approaching topics- even
| hypothetically.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I think I hear you, in that often sometimes these conversations
| bring up very deep foundational conflicts?
|
| What I've seen is that sometimes the simplest of arguments,
| when both sides continue opening up, can reveal some
| existential conflicts within us. I think one of the main
| conflicts we fight is actually opening up too much and showing
| too much of our humanity (or our perceived inhumanity).
|
| So yeah, some of these conflicts might go deeper than we want
| and nudge/force us to confront things we've been trying to
| avoid. It's something I fear in resolving conflict with people,
| I like to keep going and sometimes people will say to me
| "that's enough!" and cut it off, and I think it may relate to
| them pushing up against those biases/conflicts as you've
| mentioned.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| This is how I've operated for most of my adult life. It is
| generally not received well. It seems to be taken as weakness. It
| just happened yesterday, on this very forum.
|
| I do it anyway, because I'm clean-shaven, and need to look at
| myself, every morning.
|
| I've never thought it needed a name, although the Bowie reference
| is nice.
| fritztastic wrote:
| It can be incredibly draining. I think it's important to also
| have boundaries and know how to "pick your battles". Some
| people are unwilling or unable to open themselves up by being
| sincere, having a genuine discussion can leave people feeling
| vulnerable and there's a level of trust and willingness to take
| a risk necessary to truly have a deep discussion about certain
| topics.
|
| Sometimes it's just not possible. Some people have impenetrable
| barriers they will defend with no regard for how they do so and
| the way it affects others.
|
| That being said I like to think of it like I'm reaching out to
| someone, and often they don't reach back, in a majority of
| cases they don't want that contact. Those times when someone
| does, though, brings me great hope.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Absolutely. In yesterday's thread, for example, the other
| party had a specific agenda, and wouldn't budge, so I let
| them have it. I did give them a couple of chances,
| nevertheless.
|
| It is annoying, though, when folks cast a willingness to
| recognize all sides of an argument as being "biased," because
| it does not agree with their side.
|
| I also don't like being called a liar, which is what they
| did, I assume, because they were unable to comprehend being
| able to recognize all sides of an issue (I was raised amongst
| diplomats, so I got that kind of thinking since I was a wee
| sprog).
| jimkleiber wrote:
| > I do it anyway, because I'm clean-shaven, and need to look at
| myself, every morning.
|
| I really appreciate this point. I do this not necessarily to
| win the argument or change how the other person is
| thinking/feeling, I do it mostly because I feel better when I
| do it. Believing someone is out to get me can cause me a lot of
| fear. Believing they don't care about me can cause me a lot of
| loneliness. Believing they're trying their best and are swamped
| with suffering? I actually feel relieved and maybe even
| grateful that they may have tried so hard to help me.
|
| Will I ever know their deepest intentions? Probably not, but I
| sure feel a lot better when I believe they have good intentions
| for me.
|
| Glad to see you comment on here, you're one of the few names I
| recognize on HN and appreciate what you said and what you often
| say, thank you.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That's really nice!
|
| Thanks so much!
|
| I'm a "reformed troll," so I make an effort to be positive. I
| feel that I owe some amends.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| :-) (goodness, I notice there are almost no emojis or even
| emoticons on HN, I wonder how that impacts the humanity of
| discussion here)
|
| Haha, we all have our reasons, I'm just glad you're doing
| what you're doing.
| [deleted]
| notacoward wrote:
| Another possibility: instead of _assuming_ anything, ask
| questions to clarify where the speaker /writer is coming from. In
| my experience, people who are arguing in good faith will be glad
| to go along (as long as you're truly _questioning_ and not
| badgering or cross-examining). People who are arguing in bad
| faith will resist, evade, try to turn things around etc. The
| difference is usually apparent as soon as you ask the first
| question.
| headsoup wrote:
| I don't understand how this adds anything different really than
| assuming the opponent is the worst.
|
| I would expect the advice to be 'make no assumptions about the
| character of the person arguing and instead try to argue purely
| the content presented.'
|
| Star-man seems like some inverse ad-hominem.
| smeej wrote:
| Many (most?) people identify with their ideas. They consider
| their ideas to be parts of, or manifestations of, themselves.
|
| This is why, if you attack an idea, the person defending it
| feels threatened. They go into a fight-or-flight mode, which
| almost completely deactivates their ability to evaluate your
| arguments rationally.
|
| Star-manning makes clear from the start that you recognize,
| appreciate, and share their intentions. You aren't opposed to
| the things they care about the most. You're actually an ally.
| They don't need to fight you or run from you.
|
| From this vantage point, you can discuss _strategies_ for
| accomplishing the goals you both share, and there is a much
| higher likelihood they will be open to hearing the reasons you
| think your strategy will be more effective than they would if
| their hindbrain activated at the beginning of the conversation.
| exodust wrote:
| From the article: "More often, you will run into ordinary
| people under the influence of bad ideas--ideas that lead them
| to think and act in misguided, even monstrous ways."
|
| So a presumptuous negativity lurks behind starman? The tone
| is like "we can cure those people infected with bad ideas,
| with healing power of compassion".
| rendall wrote:
| I took that as more a way to reach those readers who
| already think this way. Kind of "If you are trying to reach
| someone who is under the influence of ideas you think are
| bad, try empathizing with the values that led them to these
| ideas."
| headsoup wrote:
| Can't this only really work if your 'opponent' agrees to also
| do the same up front?
|
| Imagine believing a troll arguing with you has fully honest
| and positive intentions (or you can convince them to be so)
| while they savage you. That's some weird self-torture.
|
| Or, if your opponent isn't interest in the strategies, you're
| back to square one.
|
| Training yourself to ignore the individual behind the
| comments and focus on the content sounds more useful in my
| opinion over time, as it allows you to debate under broader
| circumstances, without any social contract. I might be
| completely wrong, but I also imagine it would lead to better
| recognition of circular logic, ad-hominem and other useless
| argumentation rhetoric because you're actively working to
| remove the emotional triggers that blind you.
| smeej wrote:
| I think the point is that your "opponent" might agree to
| this if you express openness to it from the start by
| showing them you understand and share their deepest
| motives, but they will almost certainly be closed to you if
| they perceive themselves (rightly or wrongly) to be under
| attack.
|
| It's always up to you to assess whether there's any hope
| for a productive conversation with someone. It's also up to
| you to define "productive." If there is no hope, by
| whatever definition you select, it's probably a better use
| of your time to set a boundary and disengage.
|
| This strategy seems to be geared toward maximizing the
| chance that your "opponent" will be able and willing to
| hear your points, but there's only so much any strategy can
| do if someone is determined to see you as an enemy from the
| start.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Franklin Covey said it succinctly in 1989, "seek first to
| understand, then to be understood". He called it The Habit of
| Empathic Communication.
| georgia_peach wrote:
| On the one hand, he's right. On the other hand, I feel gaslit by
| the fact that, superficially speaking, someone has built a brand
| & an income around a BS token like " _starmanning_ ". I mean,
| we've all cast pearls before swine from time to time, but how
| many of you have managed to make a career out of it?
| amalcon wrote:
| I see a few folks in these comments essentially saying "If only
| everyone else would do this!" This rather misses the point. You
| don't empathize with your opposition for their sake; you do it
| for your own sake. You do it because you might learn something.
| You do it because it helps to build relationships, like (say) the
| famous friendship between the late justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg
| and Antonin Scalia. You even do it because your argument will be
| more effective. But the bottom line is that you do it because
| it's better for your own mental health if you try to think of the
| people around you as good.
| pjscott wrote:
| You're right that this has unilateral benefits, but it's even
| better if something like this becomes encoded in social norms.
| For example, there are online communities where it's simply
| expected that you'll assume good faith and basic decency from
| the people you're arguing with. To do otherwise would be a
| serious faux pas. There are also online communities where
| everything immediately devolves into flamewars in which
| everyone is shouting and no-one is listening, and _that_ is
| considered normal and inevitable. And then of course there 's a
| whole spectrum in-between. I can tell you from experience: the
| places with nicer discourse norms are more pleasant and the
| discussions tend to be _much_ more interesting and productive.
| (Compare HN with, say, most of Twitter.)
| roenxi wrote:
| This is a really good idea for people who are thoughtful and
| genuinely want to learn the truth. There problems with it in
| practice.
|
| Some people have made their political ideology the foundation
| that they build their ego on. Any disagreement is intolerable.
| Others are not thoughtful enough to understand that there can be
| genuine disagreement in the world of both thought and action
| which needs to be tolerated.
|
| These people will ruin any concept of starmanning that catches
| hold by using it as a passive-aggressive cudgel ("I'm sure you
| are a good person and therefore you will immediately cease your
| opposition and accept my arguments!", "I'm sure you want to be a
| good person and therefore can't really believe these things you
| are saying, which are only for bad people!", "Why are you
| resisting when I'm starmanning you, you must be Hitler 2.0").
|
| But without labelling it, I do endorse the technique. Almost
| everyone wants the world to get better.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > But without labelling it, I do endorse the technique. Almost
| everyone wants the world to get better.
|
| It is interesting to see how labeling a technique like this and
| assigning it a sense of moral superiority seems to invite the
| exact abuse you describe.
|
| I've noticed this with the recent popularity of "steelmanning";
| Many of the explicitly-labeled steelman arguments I've read
| lately are actually just strawman arguments, but the author
| tries to preempt criticism by labeling it a steelman and
| pretending it is the most robust counter argument that could
| exist. Often these false steelman arguments arise when the
| author doesn't understand the topic as well as they think they
| do but they believe that "steelmanning" automatically makes
| them an expert on the counter arguments.
| roenxi wrote:
| If it isn't labelled explicitly, by and large the cudgel
| people can't tell when it is happening, can't mimic it &
| don't know how to attack. The reason they cudgel is because
| they can't use empathy - if they could they would, it is a
| more powerful tool. Plus the cudgel hurts both parties.
|
| It sounds stupid, but I believe it. The flow of a lot of
| arguments make sense if you assume neither side understands
| practical empathy (not a comment on objectives, just they
| can't hold 2x perspectives in mind at once so a lot of the
| conversation is invisible to them).
| anamax wrote:
| Many people confuse expressive with empathy.
| t-3 wrote:
| I've become convinced that (most?) people only possess
| "visual empathy" - that is, they can only empathize with
| what they can see. I think it explains why arguments on the
| internet often seem to have manipulative strawmanning
| sociopaths on both sides.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| I remember seeing somewhere that societal empathy didn't
| strongly exist as a cultural trait until people started
| reading stories where they put themselves in other
| people's shoes. I guess communal storytelling wasn't
| enough to change a persons mindset. It was in the context
| of historical greeks were all sociopaths and narcissists
| and quite different from the average person today.
| pydry wrote:
| >Many of the explicitly-labeled steelman arguments I've read
| lately are actually just strawman arguments, but the author
| tries to preempt criticism by labeling it a steelman and
| pretending it is the most robust counter argument that could
| exist.
|
| Just means that they have limited imagination, no?
|
| I'd hesitate to label anything as steelmanning even if I
| believed that was what I was doing.
|
| Somebody else coming up with a slightly better argument than
| my labeled steelman would undermine my entire point.
|
| That said, successfully presenting an opponents steelman
| argument as well or better than they would and then
| countering it is very effective.
| TimPC wrote:
| I've always found steelmanning to be stupid. If you want to
| discuss something with me you should actually discuss my
| argument not the argument you replace it with that you
| think is better and I think is worse.
| haswell wrote:
| But haven't you now just asked the other person to
| steelman for you instead? While being unwilling to do so
| yourself?
|
| The purpose of dialogue is to explore differences in
| thinking and possibly emerge with a new shared
| understanding.
|
| To me, steelmanning is offering the other person the
| courtesy of the same thing you just insisted they
| "should" do if they want to have a discussion with you.
| mmcdermott wrote:
| I think a lot of this conversation is getting tied up in
| knots around some new terminology.
|
| For years, a big part of my process for evaluating a new
| idea was to ask questions and mentally argue for and
| against various propositions. This might force me to read
| or think a bit more, but that process almost inherently
| tries to find the strongest (by whatever values
| constitute 'strong' to me) version of a point of view.
|
| Is it foolproof? No, I find new arguments and facts.
|
| But I do generally find it easier to see where other
| people are coming from in a discussion because I can
| usually reference back to my own interior dialogue to see
| where the idea at least could have come from (whether it
| did or not).
|
| Is that steelmanning? I have no earthly idea, but it
| works for me.
| pydry wrote:
| I see it more as a way of pre-empting predictable retorts
| in a constrained time and space. If your retort is not
| obvious then fine, we discuss your argument.
|
| However, if I say A and I know 90% of people counter A
| with B then I'll say A and counter with steelmanned B and
| then counter that all at once so we can quickly jump to
| C.
|
| C would either be a less predictable counter or no
| counter at all.
| TimPC wrote:
| If you actually address B when I either say B or was
| inclined to say B then sure. But I've seen way too much
| of "that argument is weak, the better argument is X which
| fails because Y" meanwhile Y fails to refute the original
| argument making it quite unclear that X is actually a
| better argument.
| pydry wrote:
| >If you actually address B when I either say B or was
| inclined to say B then sure
|
| Thats kind of the whole point of steelmanning.
| TimPC wrote:
| It's not though. At least according to every description
| of steelmanning I read you're supposed to replace an
| argument you encounter with the best possible argument.
| But the best possible argument might be different enough
| that arguments which address it don't address the
| original argument. Which is my whole problem with the
| practice. If you only make minor improvements to what I
| say that makes the arguments responding to my claims
| identical to the arguments responding to the new claim
| then I have no problems. But people in practice steelman
| arguments in ways that change the responses too them. At
| some point, if you aren't actually addressing my claims
| we aren't actually having a conversation.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| I think the main disconnect here is the replcaing the
| argument point. You are supposed to take the best
| _version of the argument presented_ , not _replace it
| with the best possible argument_. Of course anyone doing
| the latter is going to often be too far off course to
| move the conversation along.
|
| To me steelmanning is more of a better version of
| restating the others point in order to verify you
| understand their point. The best steelmanning is often
| proceeded by that. (do I understand the other parties
| meaning, and what is the strongest version of that
| meaning.)
|
| Most often though I just find that steelmanning is just
| ignoring fallacies in otherwise decent efforts at
| conversational debate. In order to not devolve into back
| and forth "thats a fallacy!".
| pydry wrote:
| >But the best possible argument might be different enough
| that arguments which address it don't address the
| original argument.
|
| They might, yes. The point is to try not that you will
| necessarily always succeed.
|
| This is why I said above that trying to do it but not
| labeling it is the best approach coz hey, maybe your
| steelman game sucks.
| Mezzie wrote:
| > But the best possible argument might be different
| enough that arguments which address it don't address the
| original argument.
|
| In which case the responsibility is on the steelmanner to
| demonstrate conclusively _why_ the best possible argument
| differs from the original argument by discussing what
| makes the original argument weak. You can 't just address
| it with 'it's weak.'
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Just means that they have limited imagination, no?
|
| Limited enough to not imagine the possibility there's
| something they don't know.
|
| Explicitly labeled steelman is just "argument from
| arrogance", and that's one reason people often react badly
| to it. Some times the arrogant person does know better than
| everybody else, but statistically those two are negatively
| correlated.
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| panarky wrote:
| Steelmanning is when your interlocutor agrees with your
| description of their argument.
| I_complete_me wrote:
| What a beautifully concise definition.
| cyraxjoe wrote:
| >Some people have made their political ideology the foundation
| that they build their ego on[...]
|
| This remind me about the idea of "holy wars" in "The denial of
| death" of Ernest Becker.
|
| "Since the main task of human life is to become heroic and
| transcend death, every culture must provide its members with an
| intricate symbolic system that is covertly religious. This
| means that ideological conflicts between cultures are
| essentially battles between immortality projects, holy wars."
|
| Also something along the lines of preferring to annihilate the
| other before they risk to be symbolically annihilated, like if
| we prefer the physical death before than the death of the
| symbolic. For both the other (when is an ideological opponent)
| and ourselves. We may be physically death, but symbolically
| immortal.
| cupofpython wrote:
| I have inadvertently been "starman"-ing people my entire life.
| I usually refer to it as "benefit of the doubt". I have not
| encountered any problems with it in practice other than that
| sometimes I end up talking in circles when the other person
| doesnt really have a strong central point to their argument (or
| it is just not clicking for me no matter how hard I try to
| understand)
|
| I think if such practices became mainstream, then people would
| begin to realize the difficulties involved in having a coherent
| conversation about a point of disagreement. The passive-
| aggressive cudgels you mention would fall flat because it is
| instantly noticeable as not fitting the necessary patterns for
| coherent conversation.
|
| No one needs to accept or reject the other. the point of an
| argument is to educate each other, answer questions, and allow
| each other to fit both opinions into their own world view (ex.
| what are the limits / specifics to your belief?). Maybe someone
| changes their mind during that conversation, maybe they dont.
| maybe someone needs to let the new information ferment in their
| minds and life for a bit before it clicks. that is part of
| giving someone benefit of the doubt
|
| maybe you are talking to someone who is venting, or in the
| middle of a mental episode (i mean that literally, not
| derogatorily), or was unfortunately born a narcissistic
| manipulator and cant help themselves. It doesnt matter, they
| cannot "win" the conversation - no one can - and the more
| people that realize this truth about conversations in general,
| the better the world will become
| laserlight wrote:
| > I have not encountered any problems with it in practice
| other than that sometimes I end up talking in circles
|
| This is why I stopped giving people benefit of the doubt.
| With every uncharitable action of theirs, I tried to
| understand their perspective, explain mine, and discover a
| ground truth. Yet, they are not interested in finding the
| truth. They are interested in doing what they believe is to
| be true, regardless of whether it is true or not. They are
| not interested in getting educated. They have already decided
| that they are educated and I am wrong, just because we have
| different ideas. My strategy of giving benefit of the doubt
| in such a case turns out to be nothing but a waste of time.
|
| Therefore, I've changed my strategy. If they don't respond
| well to my giving benefit of the doubt, I'll confront them
| directly. If they insist, then they'll become an out-group to
| me. Starmanning no more.
| cupofpython wrote:
| I understand that frustration, but there are layers to
| benefit of the doubt. Sometimes giving BotD involves
| changing the conversation topic because an understanding is
| not going to be reached on the current one. the best way to
| think about it is that the other person exists over a
| period of time, and maybe right now with you they are not
| their best self - for whatever reason.
|
| I dont enjoy casting people into out-groups, but I
| understand its appeal and necessity for some people.
| However, I dont give BotD for the other persons benefit. I
| do it for my own peace of mind and because I find it yields
| better conversations overall. Sometimes conversations go
| nowhere, or people deliberately try to manipulate. Those
| conversations yield nothing, but that's okay. No one owes
| me anything, afterall. there's always the future.
|
| I find the best way to keep people open to changing their
| minds about something either now or in the future is to
| make them feel like they are free to support whatever they
| want. Then I act as a source of information and act as a
| safe zone for thought-exploration.
|
| People do not enjoy feeling hunted. and that goes for
| educated people hunting uneducated people in order to teach
| them something or else be out-casted. I think a response of
| "fuck you, go ahead and outcast me" to that would be pretty
| normal.
|
| I would much prefer in-grouping people with proper
| differentiation. "so and so is a great cook!" instead of
| "so and so doesnt understand climate change and couldnt
| hold a rational conversation with me about it that one time
| so I dont associate with them anymore and if they die then
| good riddance". People want to be validated. Sometimes
| finding something to validate someone on rather than attack
| them on the points of disagreement can help reshape their
| identity. they might never agree with you, but maybe you
| can move them towards ignoring the topic entirely within
| their lives in favor of other things that are better
| aligned with the good of society.
| laserlight wrote:
| I agree with most of these points. I don't want to give
| the impression that I want people to agree with me and
| that I will turn against them if they don't. I value and
| embrace differences. It's my goal to actively seek what
| I'm wrong about, so that I improve.
|
| The types I'm talking about are the ones who are not
| willing to cooperate. I act as a team player, yet they
| have their own agenda against the team's. What's worse is
| they act as if they are willing to cooperate, to benefit
| from BotD. I don't know whether they do so consciously to
| manipulate people or because of their insecurities. It
| doesn't matter. If they are not willing to cooperate
| after being treated with the best of intentions, then
| those good intentions are better invested to where they
| are valued.
| synu wrote:
| Unfortunately this is true, even with non-political topics.
| Some people will treat sincere questions trying to understand
| their point of view as attacks and keep escalating/trying to
| make it personal.
|
| In the end there isn't a lot you can do about it, except learn
| when to cut bait and move on. I agree with you that it's still
| worth trying.
| throwaway0asd wrote:
| Just walk away. Unless you are in politics or sales you
| aren't forced to convince stupid people of anything. _Don't
| cast pearls before swine._
| kgwxd wrote:
| When swine have the ability to vote, everyone is in
| politics regardless if they want to be or not. Just
| ignoring them has major consequences.
| JasserInicide wrote:
| Nah, fuck this "everything is politics" attitude.
| Politics is everywhere because you make it everywhere.
| It's a big part of the reason why discourse is as fucked
| up as it is. Every discussion/encounter has to be
| won/lost based on your ideology.
| ParetoOptimal wrote:
| Viewing everything as win-loss is bad, but politics does
| inform or creep into the majority of things.
|
| Especially if you aren't part of the majority.
| synu wrote:
| The only reason I don't walk away instantly is that very
| occasionally someone does engage in good faith and it's an
| opportunity for me and maybe them to learn something, and
| that makes the rest (for the most part) worthwhile.
| haswell wrote:
| The collective consciousness of a society only changes
| through open dialogue. Leaving it up to the politicians is
| a good way for such dialogue to be inherently political.
|
| There are plenty of issues of basic human decency that can
| only be changed by talking to the people around you.
| Stopping entirely can only entrench people in their beliefs
| and validates the narrative that there are "sides", and
| that the other side doesn't listen.
|
| Referring to an entire group of people as swine is case in
| point.
|
| Politicians have their place, but so too the common
| conversation on the street.
| mst wrote:
| The other thing I've found is that in those cases, the
| toxicity of their reaction will (at least slightly) move the
| opinions of at least some people watching the conversation.
|
| So I tend to cut bait and move on at the point where it
| starts to upset me rather than the point at which the
| conversation itself is obviously futile.
|
| However my tolerance before I start to actually be upset is
| relatively high - most people would be significantly better
| served by bailing out earlier and I've seen too many people
| burning out of having such conversations entirely because of
| not doing that and I miss their perspective so would prefer
| they set boundaries that work for them.
|
| (in case you can't tell, I _like_ being covering fire and it
| very definitely earns me more friends I am glad to have than
| enemies I would have preferred not to have)
| koheripbal wrote:
| This is why companies need a HR hiring process that filters
| out candidates who haven't yet developed the level of
| maturity needed to listen to contrary perspectives without
| taking such conversations emotionally.
|
| Such unfiltered workplaces inevitably become toxic.
| synu wrote:
| How would you evaluate this in a fair, consistent way?
| JadeNB wrote:
| > This is why companies need a HR hiring process that
| filters out candidates who haven't yet developed the level
| of maturity needed to listen to contrary perspectives
| without taking such conversations emotionally.
|
| The problem is that listening is a lot less flashy and
| glamorous than violent self-promotion. As long as the
| people who are in positions of power have got there by
| violent self-promotion, they will, from intentional or
| unintentional self-interest, bias the hiring process
| towards people like them.
| JasserInicide wrote:
| I understand what you're saying, but it's ironic
| considering that espousing anything but leftist viewpoints
| in most tech companies today will instantly brand you as a
| hostile.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Those (most) companies do not filter out immature people
| who are incapable of hearing contrary opinions.
|
| It's a very common problem, particularly in tech, which
| has a very young employee base.
| Elinvynia wrote:
| What viewpoints are you trying to share that aren't
| acceptable in most tech companies?
| rajin444 wrote:
| Hiring candidates on race/sex and not ability is racist
| and harmful to building a better society.
| [deleted]
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| Much like steelmanning, I fear that starmanning ends up serving
| as an excuse to ignore the actual thought of your opponents, and
| to make up some version that feels more comfortable.
| rendall wrote:
| That's the opposite of steelmanning. Steelmanning is engaging
| with the actual thought of your opponents. Strawmanning is
| ignoring the actual thought of your opponents in favor of an
| easy-to-counter or ridiculous idea.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I think it's helpful to think in terms of merely trying to
| _explain_ my point of view and _share my knowledge._ I 'm usually
| looking for _conversation_ , not argument.
|
| Then I don't need to worry so much about winning or making
| points. It's easier to be kind, compassionate, etc when engaging
| from that space.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| Yes! I want to share what's happening with me and receive
| what's happening with them. When I read this article, I think I
| took away that it was mostly about hearing what's happening
| with others, and I think it's missing that piece of us sharing
| what's happening with us first.
| jl6 wrote:
| I think this is something you get almost for free when talking to
| someone you know in a real-world face-to-face conversation. You
| get full-bandwidth communication with a real human, and it's
| impossible to ignore their humanity. When you step back from
| having a conversation with a person you know, to having an
| argument with a person you don't know, the humanity diminishes -
| they become just a character on the other side of the room. When
| you step back from reality altogether, and argue with people
| online, the humanity is absent entirely (and indeed, the thing
| you are interacting with might not be human).
|
| I conclude that a healthy debate can only take place in the real
| world and a prerequisite is getting to know the person first.
| igorkraw wrote:
| > Yes, Nazis and white supremacists represent a particularly
| deranged set of ideas, but with compassion it is possible to
| tease the humanity out of even them. If Daryl Davis can convert
| Klansmen, surely you can find common ground with someone on the
| other end of the political spectrum. > ...The key (...) is the
| recognition that (...) most of us are not as opposed to one
| another as we think. Our discourse is rife with belligerence and
| bile, and our platforms are designed to stoke polarization.
|
| Spoken like someone who hasn't dealt with Nazis and other
| authoritarian and/or moralistic political radicals before, as
| well as a false equivalency.
|
| The problem with Nazis, white supremacist and tankies is not that
| they are personally evil, or that we find their ideas morally
| abhorrent.
|
| The problem is that their ideologies _require_ an enemy, an
| underclass etc., and that the way they want to achieve good
| things by eradicating a scapegoat with violence. This means that
| while you can agree, agree to disagree or compromise on whether
| we should spend amount X,Y or inbetween on $socialprogram, but
| you can 't really do this with the classes of beliefs which are
| expansionary and authoritarian. You can't do violence to a
| specific scapegoat group of people "only a little bit" and have
| them be okay with it.
|
| And the reason why people come up with these beliefs are not the
| same reasoning process that other beliefs are adopted. You cannot
| logic someone out of a position they didn't logic themselves
| into.
|
| --
|
| Now, all of this is not to demean the _idea_ behind this post. It
| is true that the only way to deradicalize people is to find the
| irrational core behind their ideas and try to address that. I 've
| had hour long discussions with "patriots" making BS arguments
| about the inherent sociocultural predisposition of black people
| towards crime, consistently trying to dig at why they _really_
| believed what they did - in the end, they had a traumatic
| experience getting mugged. After arriving at this, it was able to
| empathize, connect with them, and start shaking the beliefs.
|
| But importantly, this was _after_ I had interrupted them
| spreading "race realist" propaganda to a younger colleague of
| ours. The order of operations when dealing with people holding
| harmful beliefs (which are almost universally authoritarian,
| moralistic or of the "fuck you, I got mine" banal egoism) is to
|
| 1. stop them from doing harm/do harm reduction
|
| 2. try to connect with them as humans and try to deal with the
| trauma that almost always underlies their beliefs
|
| Trying to compromise with people who are unwilling to compromise
| is how you get the slide into fundamentalist christianity (to
| quote the republican senator Kinzinger "the christian taliban"
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/30/kinzinger-bo... )
| that the US has been experiencing throughout the last decades. If
| you try to rationally and civilly deal with people not interested
| in being rational and civil but only about pushing _their_ view
| of the world onto you, it won 't work. In order to get that
| treatment, the beliefs need to be of a kind which is itself
| tolerant to others. Secular societies leaving the choice of
| abortion to women fulfills this condition: no-one is stopping
| hardcore christians from not aborting. But a society which forces
| women to come to term but does _not_ also force everyone to
| donate blood and organs to those in need and does not provide a
| UBI cannot use the "life must be preserved" argument - it is
| simply imposing one extremely specific behavioural rule onto one
| specific subgroup of the population.
|
| I know it is a radical take, but there are actual _differences_
| between beliefs. Acting as if there isn 't does not bridge gaps,
| it simply pulls us towards extremes.
| Clubber wrote:
| >The problem is that their ideologies require an enemy, an
| underclass etc
|
| In my experience, this seems central to almost all ideologies.
| A common enemy, often greatly embellished or grossly
| misrepresented, has been used to bolster tribal cohesion since
| before humanity. I'm trying to think of an ideology that
| doesn't use this, but I'm coming up blank.
| igorkraw wrote:
| Humanism, non-tankie leftism and the more tolerant/loving
| religions all have "we are all brothers" ideologies.
| Internationalism is a key feature of leftist ideology, hate
| the sin love the sinner etc.
|
| Ans even then, you can't simply throw things into a pot.
| Singling out billionaires and aristocrats as the enemies for
| their wealth and power is a different thing than singling out
| homosexuals or women. If we started to deprive billionaires
| of political speech you could very simply and comfortably
| give up a few hundred million of wealth to regain it. So
| discrimination against the rich and powerful (which is very
| easy to opt out of) is different than discriminating against
| poor people (which from experience is much harder to opt out
| from).
|
| The problem starts when the discrimination starts being
| essentialist and stigmatising. If we have people for having a
| rich father even if they themselves are estranged and poor,
| it's no better than racism etc
| Sporktacular wrote:
| "If you doubt this, ask around. I wager you'll be hard-pressed to
| find someone who wouldn't want a safer, fairer, more just world
| for everyone if they could get it."
|
| I'll take that wager. I've met a lot of people whose concern for
| others drops off sharply beyond their own family and friends.
| Then there is the deep tribal impulse that is satisfied only at
| the exclusion of others, almost as a principle. Suggesting they
| employ the starman in their discussion won't make a difference
| because it's not a rhetorical problem, it's just how their
| priorities reflect on how they act in their daily lives.
|
| The issue is in assuming the most charitable version of an
| opponent when we have their actions to guide us instead. For
| example, right now there are lots of Russians who think it's fine
| to invade, kill and steal, not for safety, fairness or justice
| for everyone. They just want better for their tribe. And we
| should respond as such based on their actions.
|
| And if you assume they want safety, fairness and justice for
| everyone, their responses will vary from 'sure, why not' to 'of
| course, that's exactly why we're liberating, cleansing and
| reappropriating'.
|
| Many of us are just selfish bastards, and that's a character
| flaw.
| panarky wrote:
| _> right now there are lots of Russians who think it 's fine to
| invade, kill and steal, ..._
|
| It's not even that the Russians who think this are especially
| evil people, or irrational people, or people who are unlike us
| in any fundamental way.
|
| The reason they think this way, and that you do not, is because
| they believe different myths than you do.
|
| Let's say your worldview is defined by Ivan Ilyin [0]. You
| don't consider other people or ethics at all. The only thing
| that matters in the world is God. And God is displeased that
| the perfect Russia that He created has been spoiled.
|
| The only way to heal the world and make God happy is to restore
| a certain kind of utopian Russia. That pure and perfect Russia
| is united in territory and belief, so it can't tolerate any
| division or fragmentation within itself.
|
| Agents of the devil in the West are deviously dismantling and
| disintegrating that pure and perfect Russia, piece by piece.
| Westerners are carving off pieces of territory like Ukraine,
| and dividing Russian people with seditious Western ideas like
| democracy and gender fluidity and a free press.
|
| So it's a supernatural struggle between good and evil. An
| existential battle like that means there's no room for this
| messy business of parliaments and voting, or compromising with
| different perspectives.
|
| We need one strong leader, a true and pure leader, to inherit
| the mantle of past great leaders like Stalin and Peter the
| Great. He will be God's instrument to make the hard decisions
| and lead the nation in glorious struggle. This divinely
| inspired leader will create unity in the world by restoring and
| reuniting Russia itself.
|
| ----
|
| Where do you even begin to have a conversation when you don't
| share the most basic of beliefs or values? There is no common
| ground in wanting a safer, fairer, more just world. We have our
| own foundational myths that we rarely acknowledge or
| interrogate, and our myths don't intersect with Russia's myths
| at all.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Ilyin
| Sporktacular wrote:
| "Where do you even begin to have a conversation when you
| don't share the most basic of beliefs or values?"
|
| We can share it with the tens of thousands of educated
| Russian opposing the 'special operation', with the thousands
| of Russians in jail for protesting. Even with the silent
| millions who doubt all the bullshit they hear but perhaps
| aren't going to die on a hill over it. They all grew up with
| the same foundational myths as the irredentists, they just
| chose to look further.
|
| It's a mistake to essentialise a country as diverse as Russia
| but we can agree that it's also a mistake to assume almost
| everyone wants the best for everyone else.
| kmacdough wrote:
| Reading this article, it seems entirely about taking initiative
| changing your own approach, without an explicit expectation.
| Asking someone else to star-man is expecting them to change for
| you, without showing any compassion or respect for their
| humanity or opinion. It presents a clear assumption that their
| approach to life is wrong, and so they should adopt yours.
| You're creating a setting where they cannot agree with you
| without also accepting inferiority and invalidating their
| entire life perspective. You leave no room for incremental
| growth or self reflection.
| drewcoo wrote:
| I think the article is fluffy, pointless BS, but . . .
|
| Just like steel manning, star manning is supposed to be an
| approach you can take to show respect, not something people
| force you to submit to.
| Aunche wrote:
| That's true, but at the same time, calling a Russian soldier a
| selfish bastard isn't going to stop him from invading Ukraine.
| Presumably, your goal is to motivate somewhat neutral people to
| support Ukraine or condemn Russia. In that case, the only thing
| you can do is to refute rationalizations used to justify the
| invasion.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| My point isn't to build support for either side (it was just
| an example), nor is it to accuse Russian soldiers of
| selfishness. It's to say that we can't just assume his (or
| anyone's) motivation is not selfish, or that there must be a
| middle ground we will surely find through improvement to our
| rhetorical approach.
| sonjat wrote:
| I think you are being overly negative. Being more concerned
| with problems we are most familiar with is natural and not at
| all a "character flaw". Caring more about people we personally
| know than strangers isn't any kind of moral failure. The world
| is full of suffering and problems, and it is simply impossible
| to give the same level of concern to all. So we focus on our
| inner circles. It isn't a "deep tribal impulse..satisfied only
| at the exclusion of others". It is simply that the world is
| very big with very big problems and no one, not even the
| kindest, most caring individual among us, can give equal weight
| to all problems and all suffering.
| bravura wrote:
| Yeah. Hurt people hurt people.
|
| Many people have a spirit of benevolence, but many other people
| have endured trauma and deeply believe that the next generation
| must be hazed too.
| switchbak wrote:
| Yes, that probably explains the majority of violence that
| occurs in the world.
|
| There also exist a set of people that are born with wiring
| that if not specifically counteracted can have them act in
| violent and antisocial ways, without trauma needing to have
| occurred.
| WesleyJohnson wrote:
| In a grossly, over-simplified nutshell, aren't people saying
| this of Clarence Thomas?
| NoZZz wrote:
| Yet in that hazing there is blowback. I think society needs
| therapy.
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| > a kind of platinum rule to improve upon the golden one
|
| When I read this, I scoffed a little bit. A better idea than
| one proposed two thousand years ago? Say it isn't so! Why
| haven't we thought of this before?
|
| I think you hooked rightly on the Ukraine and Russia conflict.
| Sometimes, there is not a "best version" of someone.
|
| The author seems to reject that outright, saying we need to
| recognize our opponents humanity in order to effectively argue,
| with the premise that there's something good in there to tease
| out.
|
| On what basis can the author say that there's something good
| inside? Their "humanity"? That reasoning is rather circular...
| kubanczyk wrote:
| Side remark maybe, but I prefer "benevolence" over "humanity"
| in this context.
|
| The former is (1) less etymologically confusing (ekhem...)
| and (2) applicable to other species.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| > When I read this, I scoffed a little bit.
|
| I did as well, and then paused because I've said to myself
| that I've come up with something like this before (facepalm
| emoji).
|
| > On what basis can the author say that there's something
| good inside? Their "humanity"?
|
| I can't speak for him, however when I do this, it's not about
| knowing for sure there's something good inside someone, it's
| choosing to believe that there is. I don't know if I will
| ever know someone's deepest intentions, and I have seen that
| when I believe they have bad intentions towards me, I can
| feel sad, angry, afraid, lonely, and more. However, when I
| believe they have good intentions towards me, I can feel
| grateful, safe, free, hopeful, etc. Given that I may never
| know how they're feeling, I therefore think I can choose what
| to believe, and by choosing to believe they have good
| intentions, I feel better.
|
| Secondly, if I believe they have bad intentions, I often
| treat them poorly--ignore them, distrust them, attack them,
| etc. If I believe they have good intentions, I often treat
| them kindly--appreciate them, help them, show them how much I
| care, etc. So if I choose to believe they have good
| intentions, they may also be more likely to believe that I
| have good intentions for them based on my actions.
|
| This logic may fall apart if one believes that we can know
| for certain another's deepest intentions, I just currently
| believe we cannot.
| roody15 wrote:
| " For example, right now there are lots of Russians who think
| it's fine to invade, kill and steal, not for safety, fairness
| or justice for everyone. They just want better for their
| tribe."
|
| I think is a way oversimplification of geopolitical situation
| in Ukraine and Russian motives.
|
| Just my two cents
| mcguire wrote:
| I believe they were specifically referring to the behavior of
| Russian soldiers who were reportedly sending valuable objects
| from Ukraine back to their relatives as well as executing
| civilians.
| leaflets2 wrote:
| > a way oversimplification
|
| Indeed, not all but some of the attackers instead want to
| kill the men and rape the women in Ukraine -- rather than
| caring that much about their own tribe.
|
| Some double digit percentage of the male population whether
| you are, starts doing that, if they have the chance.
|
| It's reproduction, evolution, been going on for hundreds of
| thousands of years
|
| "Star man"
| Sporktacular wrote:
| Sure, but I'm not trying to capture the geopolitical
| situation there. It's only an example. Some people do think
| this way (for example displaying the Z as a tribal symbol)
| and that's enough reason to not just assume charitability or
| altruism on another's part.
|
| IMO it's an oversimplification to do otherwise.
| causi wrote:
| Not by as much as you might think when your standards have
| been informed by more conventional models of state-led evil.
| Vranyo is a cultural disease whose impact cannot be
| overstated. I'll leave it to a Russian to explain:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1pOahq4TCk
| deelly wrote:
| Oversimplification from which point of view? Russians,
| Ukrainians, or some outside observer?
| malwrar wrote:
| I think OP means Russia's actions are much better
| understood by their national interest and history, rather
| than by the individual barbarity of their troops. Russia
| should not be in Ukraine and should not be firing missiles
| into population centers, but they are. Their reasons for
| doing so appear more complicated than mere evil.
|
| To be explicit, if you count conflicts from Napoleon on up
| to WWII, from Russia's perspective they have fought defense
| wars on the north european plains once every ~33 years.
| Their greatest existential threat is a united europe, who
| frequently meddle in its affairs and approach further by
| way of NATO expansion despite in some cases explicitly
| promising otherwise. Ukraine, a previous warsaw pact
| country, is a prospective NATO member who not only
| represents a convenient corridor into Russia but also
| controls a large stretch of coast (Russia wants this) and
| has massive plains for food production and tank conveyance.
|
| Under this interpretation, Russia seeks to resist expansion
| of a european alliance composed of several former enemies
| and retain access to key strategic locations outside its
| borders. Russia's motives are much more tangible under this
| perspective, and who knows maybe there's a solution we're
| not seeing from that perspective than one that places
| outsized emphasis on individual atrocities. It's a war,
| after all, and doesn't appear to be stopping despite the
| upset faces of spectators.
| xdennis wrote:
| > To be explicit, if you count conflicts from Napoleon on
| up to WWII, from Russia's perspective they have fought
| defense wars on the north european plains once every ~33
| years.
|
| Between Napoleon and the present day Russia has only been
| invaded twice. By countries trying to liberate themselves
| in WW1 from the Russian Empire, and by Germany and others
| in WW2 (also partially a liberation, e.g. Romania tried
| to liberate the territories which Russia annexed at the
| start of the war).
|
| > Their greatest existential threat is a united europe,
| who frequently meddle in its affairs.
|
| Russia has constantly tried to annex everybody (even
| Putin jokes about this) and you cry about "meddling".
| Nobody would be meddling in Russian affairs if Russia was
| broken up like Austria (the previous Jail of Nations).
| drewcoo wrote:
| People always conveniently forget that time the US
| invaded the USSR.
|
| https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/yes-it-
| true-1918-amer...
|
| And wasn't that Romanian land given to the USSR by
| Germany in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact? So the Nazis were
| "liberating" land they had already agreed to give to
| someone else.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_
| Pac...
|
| These are two minor points. They both, though, serve to
| show that you're lacking a grounding in the very history
| you're trying to swat aside.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| You make a reasoned argument why Russia might want to
| invade Ukraine while ignoring Russia's actual actions.
| Russia keeps changing it's stated 'reasons', with
| Russian's themselves saying the silent part you ignore
| out loud. They say Ukraine is not a real country,
| Ukrainians are not a separate people from Russians, and
| that because Ukraine tried to go it's own way it must be
| folded back into mother Russia and along with Belarus
| create a new slavic union. Ukrainian is being removed
| from the schools in Russian conquered land. Ukrainian
| books are being removed. Russia has human trafficked 2
| million people from Ukraine to Russia at this point. None
| of that is to protect Russia from NATO. Why do you cover
| Russia's visible actions with a pretty pretense? Russia
| has said it is fine with Finland joining NATO, greatly
| expanding NATO on Russia's border. Your argument makes no
| sense outside the theoretical paragraphs in which you
| write it.
| malwrar wrote:
| > Why do you cover Russia's visible actions with a pretty
| pretense?
|
| Some of Russia's individual politicians and news outlets
| no doubt have genuine nationalistic motivations
| surrounding Ukraine, but it is not clear to me that these
| are the predominant motives for spending Russian lives
| and risking Russian security by engaging their forces in
| an armed conflict. The rhetoric and actions you cite is
| probably believed and condoned by an increasingly nonzero
| percentage of the population, but I'm personally not
| convinced these are much more than pretexts useful to the
| state in providing political cover to what is ultimately
| a sovereign chess move (prevent Ukraine from joining
| NATO, demotivate it and others from future attempts).
| Russia benefited massively by their previous USSR-era
| relationship with the surrounding baltic states, and
| Putin, a former USSR man, has said [1] that the breakup
| of the warsaw pact was one of Russia's greatest
| geopolitical tragedies. I believe his greatest defensive
| focus is on re-establishing a buffer zone between it and
| western powers, and likely it's longer term goals include
| acquisition of warm water ports and influence over the
| oil trade.
|
| This does, of course, not justify any of Russia's actions
| on a moral basis. I expect many Russian officials will be
| tried and convicted of war crimes. It merely provides a
| basis by which european leaders/armchair presidents (me)
| can ground Russia's actions and plot countermoves.
|
| > Russia has said it is fine with Finland joining NATO,
| greatly expanding NATO on Russia's border.
|
| Not even a year ago Russia implied a military consequence
| if Finland was to join NATO [2]. A few months after this
| statement was given Russia invaded Ukraine, though this
| ironically emboldened Finlanders into being majority in
| favor of joining NATO.
|
| [1]: https://www.amazon.com/Revenge-Geography-Coming-
| Conflicts-Ag... (can't find a source for the exact quote,
| but cited in chapter 2).
|
| [2]: https://www.wionews.com/world/russia-warns-nato-
| against-incl...
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Your response in no way explains why you choose only NATO
| expansion as a cause (and thus pushing the blame on the
| west) but ignore Russia's many comments that they are
| protecting ethnic Russian speakers (which does not make
| NATO the ones ultimately responsible for forcing Russia
| to take action) and denazifying the country. Why is that?
| Are we not to take Putin at his word but instead your tea
| reading skills? Why does your simplification take all
| responsibility for a war waged without a specific NATO
| triggering action by a non-NATO leader and place it on
| NATO?
|
| Sounds like pushing a narrative of western/NATO blame for
| a war Putin chose on his terms/his time, without any
| specific NATO trigger event forcing Putin's hand at this
| time.
|
| Those individual politicians and state media are
| mouthpieces for authoritarian Putin, but you respond as
| if Russian politicians have their own agency and Russian
| media are CNN and not so controlled that they face
| imprisonment if they call the current war a war.
|
| BTW Russia no longer keeps up the pretense that what
| occured in the eastern occupied territories was
| spontaneous, but admits in obituaries online that
| soldiers killed in the current conflict are being
| 'honored' for their service in the '2014 Ukraine'
| operation and '2014 Maiden' operation. What prompted that
| Russian sponsored uprising? Ukraine coming closer to the
| EU, then at the last minute having their corrupt
| politicians trying to switch to a Russian economic block,
| nothing to with NATO. Also, autonomy for Russian
| speakers.
|
| So 2014 actual Russian military involvement in taking
| control of 10% of Ukraine? Not in response to NATO but to
| Russia losing their Ukrainian puppet leader.
|
| Verbally stated current reasons, only partially related
| to NATO. Just as much stemming from a desire to continue
| the 2014 actual conflict (in the guise of
| protecting/freeing ethnic Russian lands) which was not
| related to NATO.
|
| You also ignore Russian aggression in Transistria (A war,
| that Russia supported, that Russia sent troops to
| maintain post conflict) where again NATO was not raised
| as the issue, but ethnic Russians = Russian interest.
|
| Russia calls Ukraine Little Russia. Russia says Ukraine
| is not a real country, does not have a real culture.
| Russia says anywhere Russians live is Russia. But your
| response is 'NATO' because your reading of the tea leaves
| indicates it.
|
| Your argument is nothing but whitewashing an
| authoritarian rulers decision to go to war.
|
| If you enjoy Putin quotes here's a good one...
|
| "Don't believe those who try to frighten you with Russia
| and who scream that other regions will follow after
| Crimea," said Putin on Tuesday, going some way to
| allaying those fears. "We do not want a partition of
| Ukraine. We do not need this." The Guardian March 18
| 2014. Notice this was after the 2008 NATO application
| from Ukraine. Putin does not say 'Unless Ukraine
| continues down a path towards NATO alignment'.
| atmosx wrote:
| > Sounds like pushing a narrative of western/NATO blame
| for a war Putin chose on his terms/his time, without any
| specific NATO trigger event forcing Putin's hand at this
| time.
|
| Henry A. Kissinger is pushing the same narrative. Would
| you call HAK poorly informed on the matter?
| mcguire wrote:
| I would say that Henry Kissinger and John Mearsheimer
| have strong biases in favor of "Great Power" theory,
| which at its basis denies smaller, weaker countries in
| the "area of influence" of a great power any kind of
| autonomy. Mearsheimer has spent much of his career
| developing and extolling great power politics and, well,
| Henry Kissinger is Henry Kissinger
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangular_diplomacy).
|
| One notes that Russia is a great power only because of
| its nuclear arsenal; that is, in fact, what separates the
| great powers from weak countries that have any
| independence only at the pleasure of the nearest great
| power. That should concern you if you are fan of nuclear
| non-proliferation, by the way.
| atmosx wrote:
| > I would say that Henry Kissinger and John Mearsheimer
| have strong biases in favor [...]
|
| I would take Kissinger's view on the topic seriously,
| same way I'd take Knuth's opinion on typesetting
| seriously - to make analogy. The fact that I might agree
| or not should not cloud my judgement or yours.
|
| Calling Kissinger biased is smokescreen: everybody is
| biased.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| ROTMetro was making a moral statement about Russian
| aggression. Henry Kissinger can be as omniscient as God
| himself and that still wouldn't be a counter to a moral
| claim.
|
| Never underestimate Kissinger's inability to consider
| what Mearsheimer calls 'the moral dimension'. That's more
| than a bias. That he holds an ammoral, great-power world
| view to back up his psychopathically immoral actions over
| the years should surprise no one - millions of needless
| deaths can arguably be laid at his feet.
|
| Maybe keep those limitations in mind if you intend to
| defer to him on Ukraine/Russia.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| You starmanning an entire invasion force makes my point
| perfectly.
| [deleted]
| stevenally wrote:
| The problem being that until the invasion NATO was
| falling apart because Western Europeans didn't see Russia
| as a threat. Even Ukraine didn't believe Russia would
| invade. So... Putin has made the Russian position worse.
| He will have a very heavily armed Ukraine on his western
| flank, with or without NATO backing. Behind them he will
| have a newly rearmed Germany.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| > firing missiles into population centers, but they are.
| Their reasons for doing so appear more complicated than
| mere evil.
|
| From what I heard, they do this because their whole way
| of fighting was designed around land wars with neighbors
| which is where huge quantities of artillary and "dumb"
| rockets are cheap enough to transport by land but have to
| flatten large areas to be effective. In contrast, the US
| fights mostly overseas so they want more mobile weapons
| which also means more efficiently targetted. And now we
| have a convenient "moral" idea that precision weapons are
| good and broad-desctruction weapons are "bad". That moral
| just happens to favor the west, today. It wasn't like
| that back in WWI and WWII so back then, westeners didn't
| care about such morality - they wouldn't be able to place
| themselves on top.
|
| Whenever people start making moral judgements based on
| ideas like war crimes, human rights, or terrorism, I feel
| they're blinded by the fact that these concepts
| conveniently favor western countries and their
| capabilities so it suits us to think they're what makes a
| country "good".
| Sporktacular wrote:
| "Their greatest existential threat is a united europe,
| who frequently meddle in its affairs and approach further
| by way of NATO expansion despite in some cases explicitly
| promising otherwise."
|
| This is a lie. 'not one inch eastward' never referred to
| NATO expansion to other countries. At least according to
| the man who received it, Gorbachev.
|
| If interference in a neighbours affairs and then
| threatening the very existence of that neighbour are
| undesirable then I'm sure you'll agree there is no more
| apt example of the silliness of starmanning some Russians
| who support its present expansionist actions.
|
| You can seek all the interpretations your want. The
| example wa to illustrate my point that there's no
| rhetorical solution to find between an imperialist
| wanting some land and the sovereign nation holding it.
| Not between the adversarial geopolitical leaders and not
| between victims' families and war criminals.
| googlryas wrote:
| I watched a security video recently of 3 random people in a
| convenience store. The store clerk has some kind of medical
| issue, passes out and falls down.
|
| The 3 random people decide that now they can rob the store with
| impunity, take a bunch of stuff, and then leave the clerk on
| the floor. Eventually someone else came in and helped the
| clerk, but it wasn't like those 3 people were part of some
| psychopath convention. They just independently decided that
| getting about $20 worth of free stuff was a better option than
| calling 911 or checking on the man.
| 5040 wrote:
| >I've met a lot of people whose concern for others drops off
| sharply beyond their own family and friends.
|
| This is why Hierocles the Stoic had the right idea when he
| pushed people to move one circle over. This is a far more
| practical goal than striving for a "just world".
|
| _Each one of us is as it were entirely encompassed by many
| circles, some smaller, others larger, the latter enclosing the
| former on the basis of their different and unequal dispositions
| relative to each other. The first and closest circle is the one
| which a person has drawn as though around a centre, his own
| mind. This circle encloses the body and anything taken for the
| sake of the body. For it is virtually the smallest circle, and
| almost touches the centre itself. Next, the second one further
| removed from the centre but enclosing the first circle; this
| contains parents, siblings, wife, and children. The third one
| has in it uncles and aunts, grandparents, nephews, nieces, and
| cousins. The next circle includes the other relatives, and this
| is followed by the circle of local residents, then the circle
| of fellow-tribes-men, next that of fellow-citizens, and then in
| the same way the circle of people from neighbouring towns, and
| the circle of fellow-countrymen. The outermost and largest
| circle, which encompasses all the rest, is that of the whole
| human race._
|
| _Once these have all been surveyed, it is the task of a well
| tempered man, in his proper treatment of each group, to draw
| the circles together somehow towards the centre, and to keep
| zealously transferring those from the enclosing circles into
| the enclosed ones ... It is incumbent on us to respect people
| from the third circle as if they were those from the second,
| and again to respect our other relatives as if they were those
| from the third circle. For although the greater distance in
| blood will remove some affection, we must still try hard to
| assimilate them. The right point will be reached if, through
| our own initiative, we reduce the distance of the relationship
| with each person._
| Sporktacular wrote:
| I think we can try to improve kinship and simultaneously
| strive for a more just world. They probably enhance each
| other.
|
| The problem with nationalism is the effort stops once the
| circle encompasses 'your' people (or in the Ukraine/Russia
| conflict, forces those outside to accept they are on the
| inside).
| mcguire wrote:
| I recently saw some discussion of the various bits of news
| out of Hungary to the effect that political leaders there
| want to go beyond Hungarian nationalism towards Hungarian
| racialism.
| pstuart wrote:
| The GOP is quite enamored with where Hungary is going.
| Case in point: having Viktor Orban speak at CPAC.
| jpdenford wrote:
| > The outermost and largest circle, which encompasses all the
| rest, is that of the whole human race.
|
| Interesting, I think there are at least a couple more outer
| rings which encompass non-human animals too. In western
| culture we've decided a smaller ring goes around pets (dogs,
| cats), and then maybe farm animals then sea creatures.
| Hopefully we can "draw these circles together" too.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| "you'll be hard-pressed to find someone who wouldn't want a
| safer, fairer, more just world for everyone if they could get
| it"
|
| As an optimist and humanist, a shocking revelation for me was
| hearing of the "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" in South
| Africa. (I think via a talk by Chomsky or Zizek)
|
| Many atrocities were committed by both sides during the
| Apartheid era. Enough said.
|
| Years later the Government of National Unity wanted to heal the
| country, to bury festering resentments and feuds. Perpetrators
| and victims were brought together under supervision to talk
| openly and work toward forgiveness. It's a great idea in
| principle. Although the commission is widely considered
| successful, a strange thing occurred, something that we also
| buried at the Nuremberg trials.
|
| A quite small but significant group were not merely
| unrepentant, they used the commission as a platform to attack
| and abuse their victims again. "I'm really glad I tortured your
| children, let me tell you about how they screamed", and so on.
|
| Sure, always aim to "star man" in debate, but one must be hard
| enough underneath to expect occasionally to be shot out of the
| sky, not by an uncharitable or entrenched interlocutor but by
| an plain old evil asshole. They exist. They're not
| "psychopaths" or even "trolls", but get a thrill out of acting
| so as to add chaos and pain to the world.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_and_Reconciliation_Commi...
| jimkleiber wrote:
| > "If you doubt this, ask around. I wager you'll be hard-
| pressed to find someone who wouldn't want a safer, fairer, more
| just world for everyone if they could get it."
|
| I wonder if more people actually want others to see our
| humanity than us to see the humanity of others. I would
| strongly bet on that actually.
|
| I think a lot of people whose concern for others drops off
| sharply beyond their own family and friends believe that others
| don't have concern for them. It can become a preemptive
| indifference: they don't care about me, why should I care about
| them.
|
| What I want to work on and help people realize is that I care
| about you, even if I don't know you. And the work I do to get
| there is often me realizing how much people care about me.
| Maybe this is what he's getting at with the starman concept, to
| flip ourselves from thinking others are trying to hurt us and
| reacting to them with hatred or indifference, to believing they
| actually care about us.
|
| And I agree that many people may not want to do this, so I'm
| mostly just trying to do it for myself. I wonder if his
| argument would have come off differently if instead of telling
| people what they should do, he said these are the tools he
| employs and how they work in his life.
| foobiekr wrote:
| I may be unlucky, but I have met a number of people who are not
| just selfish or tribal but actively sadistic. They would do
| something that does not benefit them if it meant discomfort and
| disadvantage for their outgroup. This is a little beyond just
| disinterest or lack of consideration, they actively prefer it.
| These are people who are constrained only by the rule of law,
| such as it is.
|
| One of the companies I worked for seemingly attracted this type
| of personality. Of the people like this I've met (and been
| actually very cautious around), maybe 90% worked at that
| specific company.
| kmacdough wrote:
| I've found this tends to come from life experience suggesting
| this is the only way to survive. It can be incredibly
| difficult to come at this from a place of compassion, but
| I've found that when I do - when I create real value in their
| lives through acts of community and cooperation - I can
| slowly open a door for them to see other ways. It takes time
| and a lot of compassion. But it's totally doable, and it can
| feel real good to see people build compassion from nothing.
| pstuart wrote:
| "The cruelty is the point" is very real. Hurts my heart.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| yeah :-( I see it as "I'm hurting so much, I want you to
| also hurt." or "I want you to know the pain I feel."
|
| I think we underestimate how much other people are
| suffering (mostly because most cultures I know teach us not
| to cry) and feel our own pain, therefore inflicting pain on
| them to try to equalize it. I think an easier (and less
| pain-inducing) way is for us to just get better at sharing
| our suffering.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Even when individuals act with charity and compassion, they act
| according to their beliefs, interests, and needs. As Reinhold
| Niebuhr described in _Moral Man and Immoral Society_ , a group
| of individuals acting according to shared interests, even when
| doing so compassionately, will inevitably come into conflict
| with other groups, socially or militaristically, when those
| interests conflict.
| rendall wrote:
| I invited the author on Twitter to participate here on HN, and he
| said:
|
| > _Haha that's a lot of commentary to field, but if you're in
| there with everyone you can tell them I'm happy to take questions
| or have deeper discussions in a livestream or something like
| that._
|
| https://twitter.com/StrangelEdweird/status/15515497699311697...
|
| > _I also see a few people misunderstanding /misinterpreting
| #starmanning as being a replacement for steel-manning. It's meant
| as an addendum. Steel-manning is about the argument; star-manning
| is about the arguer._
|
| > _And there are no exceptions to it. Everyone can be star-
| manned._
|
| https://twitter.com/StrangelEdweird/status/15515500388574494...
| immigrantheart wrote:
| Doesn't this require understanding from both sides? Most online
| discourses are not like this, hence both sides are incentivized
| to just straw man it.
| Aunche wrote:
| >If someone posits, for example, that universal basic income
| (UBI) could ameliorate the loss of jobs due to automation, a
| straw man would be, "So you want people to sit at home all day
| and collect free money?"
|
| I don't see how this is a strawman. UBI literally lets people
| receive free money even if they sit at home all day. At some
| level, a UBI proponent has to "want" this outcome. If you think
| that UBI wouldn't cause people to leave the workforce, that's a
| separate argument.
| WillDaSilva wrote:
| There's a significant difference between "so you want people to
| sit at home all day and collect free money", and "so you want
| the people who sit at home all day to collect free money".
|
| The former is a clear misrepresentation of the views of most
| UBI proponents. The latter is an accurate part of their views,
| albeit a loaded/(mis)leading statement.
| [deleted]
| mynameishere wrote:
| It is technically a strawman because the interlocutor never
| said that--so you are arguing with something that wasn't said.
| If you phrased it, "While I have considered the possible
| advantages of your point, I, by contrast, am against UBI
| because it will obviously incentivize idleness," that would be
| both correct and not a logical fallacy.
|
| The poster is splitting hairs, of course.
| ParetoOptimal wrote:
| Wanting UBI can be purely driven by a desire of a better world
| and belief that people will contribute _more_ to society on
| average given space and resources to think and catch their
| breath.
|
| Just because a minority might "sit at home all day and collect
| free money" doesn't mean the UBI proponent wants it on any
| level.
|
| Projecting this want onto the proponent as part of their
| argument makes it a strawman.
| mikelevins wrote:
| It's a strawman because one doesn't have to want people to sit
| at home all day in order to advocate UBI.
|
| An advocate might disagree (rightly or wrongly) that UBI will
| necessarily lead to people sitting at home all day.
|
| An advocate might agree that some people sitting at home all
| day is a possible undesirable outcome of UBI, but might be
| willing to tolerate that risk in order to achieve some other
| outcome that they consider more important. that doesn't mean
| they want that outcome; just that they are willing to tolerate
| it if it happens, as long as the expected benefits are also
| possible.
|
| An advocate might even agree that some people sitting at home
| all day is a necessary and undesirable consequence, but be
| willing to tolerate it, in order to achieve another desirable
| outcome.
|
| All of these positions are logically possible for a rational
| person to hold, so long as they don't know them to be wrong.
| None of them require that person to desire people to sit at
| home all day.
|
| Therefore we cannot conclude from UBI advocacy that the
| advocate desires people to sit at home all day, which means
| that claiming they must is a strawman.
| Aunche wrote:
| >None of them require that person to desire people to sit at
| home all day.
|
| I think this is a strawman to the anti-UBI camp's question.
|
| "So you want people to sit at home all day and collect free
| money?"
|
| If that was phrased as a assertion, then I'd agree with you
| that it's undeniably a strawman. It may be a disingenuous
| question, but if you're starmaning them it's not difficult
| that understand why someone would ask such a question in good
| faith. The asker thinks that it's a universal assumption that
| giving people free money will cause them to not work, so
| they're genuinely perplexed a proposal to give people free
| money.
| mikelevins wrote:
| Fair enough.
| Arkhaine_kupo wrote:
| > I don't see how this is a strawman.
|
| Because it is an absurd mischaracterisation of the benefits
| people see in UBI and most proposals for it.
|
| > UBI literally lets people receive free money even if they sit
| at home all day.
|
| See this is where nuance starts showing the straw. There is an
| important and significant difference between "you want UBI so
| you can sit at home and do nothing" and "even if you did
| nothing UBI would still cover you." One of the differences is
| intent. If you want UBI because you are lazy, is a very
| different situation from, you wanted UBI for good reasons but
| ended up using it while unemployed.
|
| > At some level, a UBI proponent has to "want" this outcome.
|
| Some proponents of UBI do not want it to cover rent + food +
| bills. So no, some proponents do not want that. Some just want
| to simplify goverment aid into a single payment. Some want the
| residuals of automation to be shared by all. In either case it
| would hardly cover for people to be sitting at home doing
| nothing.
| Aunche wrote:
| >There is an important and significant difference between
| "you want UBI so you can sit at home and do nothing" and
| "even if you did nothing UBI would still cover you."
|
| I would agree if that were what the author's example, but it
| wasn't. The author's statement wasn't a direct attack on the
| UBI proponent.
|
| >Some proponents of UBI do not want it to cover rent + food +
| bills. So no, some proponents do not want that.
|
| If you're proposing UBI as protecting people from automation
| like the author is, it necessarily has to cover all basic
| expenses. By far the most popular UBI proposal in the US
| proposes $12000 a year, which is definitely enough for you to
| find a spare room in Kansas and play videogames all day.
| Arkhaine_kupo wrote:
| > The author's statement wasn't a direct attack on the UBI
| proponent.
|
| I think it was though. It's hard to read "ySo you want
| people to sit at home all day and collect free money" as
| anything but free leeching, lazy, people who don't deserve
| the money (obviously heavily reading between the lines).
|
| While your version "UBI literally lets people receive free
| money even if they sit at home all day." has several
| advatanges, by using passive voice and saying "even" you
| take a huge chunk of UBI receivers and make the "abuse" of
| the system not malicious.
|
| That's kind of the point of the article. Sometimes tone
| alone can bridge the gap between a mean, angry, unfair
| reading of an argument or a positive, best version, good
| intentioned reading. Yours doesn't go as far as being super
| fair on what many UBI people want, but it is certainly more
| charitable than the strawmanned version.
|
| > By far the most popular UBI proposal in the US proposes
|
| Arguing with someone over the benefits of UBI and trying to
| understand where they come from does not requiere knowledge
| of the currently proposed version of it. I want universal
| healthcare but could not give you intricate examples of the
| working of the multi-insurance service in France vs the
| fully public system in England.
|
| The 12k proposal in the US I am sure is based on some
| analysis of cost of living, and tech business growth and
| what not. But it might not be universal. UBI proponents in
| general want to simplify goverment aid, help lessen the
| problems of automation and prepare society for post
| scarcity. These three groups sometimes have very different
| aims, goals and even starting points they just all happen
| to want UBI.
| Aunche wrote:
| >It's hard to read "ySo you want people to sit at home
| all day and collect free money" as anything but free
| leeching, lazy, people who don't deserve the money
| (obviously heavily reading between the lines).
|
| It's hard to read because everyone has their own implicit
| assumptions. The anti-UBI advocate thinks it's an
| universal assumption that giving people free money makes
| them lazy. They're genuinely perplexed by UBI advocates,
| motivating them to ask "So you want people to sit at home
| all day and collect free money?" From your perspective,
| this question must be an implicit accusation of laziness
| even when they may think it's a genuine question.
| trasz wrote:
| >UBI literally lets people receive free money even if they sit
| at home all day.
|
| So it's no different from a business investment then.
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