How does members of the HN crowd try to combat this?
Or is it just another exercise in futility where the actual exercise is just part of the thing that make me biased in the first place?
I’ll go first.
I see a therapist every other week. I hope that gives me an outsiders point of view.
But I think I have identified a way to know where my biases are could be strong. When I get a really uneasy feeling when I start to think about making changes in a certain area. And I don’t know if it’s a rational fear or just a sunk cost fallacy.
What I find really scary is that I have hard time understanding if I am just fooling myself or being rational. Because it’s always my own mind coming up with explanations, so the actual process looks the same to me.
I read a book called “Quit” recently and it gave me a lot to think about regarding biases and quitting different endeavors. Can recommend.
The human mind appears to have evolved in a tribal system, and it appears to be predisposed to tribal thinking. As for myself, I try to think of my tribe as all of humanity. You're all my cousins; some of you are knuckleheads, some of you are dangerous, but you're all my cousins.
I like the book "The Righteous Mind". It took me a month to read; it's emotionally difficult, not intellectually difficult. You can't blame people for their gender or skin tone; you also can't blame them for how they were raised - people pick up deeply held beliefs as children that are very hard to see or address.
> What I find really scary is that I have hard time understanding if I am just fooling myself or being rational. Because it’s always my own mind coming up with explanations, so the actual process looks the same to me.
The mind is a rationalizing system. It makes things you do feel rational. After I left organized religion, I fell in love with rational skepticism. Then I found that most public "skepticism" is just debunking, not gathering evidence for things you should believe in; and that most "rationality" is just post-hoc rationalization of existing beliefs.
Hehe, I like the thought of having and being cousin knucklehead.
I’ll have to check out the book you recommended. Speaking of righteousness, I have noticed in myself that it’s a very addictive feeling. I get off on it. I don’t think that’s a good thing though.
Seconding the book "The Righteous Mind". Was hard to accept the point that landed against “my” usual political side, but his point are valid, and only more applicable since it was published ten (?) years ago.
People on hackernews especially suffer from this because a lot of programmers tie their identity to being smart. Its the worst place to ask for advice against this because the people answering you are likely the most confidently biased people.
The happier and more confident someone is the more biased they tend to be.
The less confident someone is the less biased they tend to be.
Because you use the word "scared" I'm thinking you're not a confident person and therefore you're highly highly unbiased.
As a human, to live a happy life, we are evolved to be more biased then not. It is the cruel irony in life that your quest to seek the unbiased truth leads to less happiness.
I'm too lazy to cite this but there is actual research showing this. People who lie to themselves tend to be happier and more successful and people who are more honest with themselves... Tend to suffer from depression.
If you don't believe a word I say, then great, you're doing well. And you're really smart! Leave me a snappy reply showing how you disagree then go on and live your life.
I would say isn’t it useful to simply acknowledge you can be deeply flawed all the time and your experiences of reality will always be slanted with your subjective opinions on how society works, that everyone else is also doing the same thing, and continue onwards anyways? There’s no way to escape our own imperfections. We have some tools to help us mitigate them, but they will always be there.
That seems fairly defeatist. I’ve gotten better at some things I used to be terrible at, and it took work to do so. And I’m happier for it, while still being plenty imperfect.
I never said to stop working at it. I’m merely pointing out that the knowledge that one is a personally unsolveably flawed human being doesn’t have to cause uneasiness.
Here's my little folk "wisdom" addendum to your great point:
* Try to replace any judginess you feel, with curiosity
(Easier said than done - but a little humility is a great first step towards getting to that curious state of mind)
Curiosity places understanding something ahead of justifying something. It makes self-interrogation easier and less threatening to the ego. It makes engaging with those who hold differing beliefs more about understanding/exploring, and less like doing battle.
That's my theory anyways, but it could be my bias talking.
I try to fully rationalize the opposing viewpoints. To the point that I cannot disdain anyone for taking those viewpoints because I completely understand why they would think that way, and can see my own self from their POV.
It does not at all prevent me from having bias, but it at least, with effort, on a case by case basis, lets me adopt someone else's bias.
After all, there is no unbiased person so what's the point?
How far can you take it? Can you talk about implementing eugenics? Because scientifically it's not a completely invalid idea.
Preventing people with genetic defects and recessive carriers of genetic defects from reproducing whether through execution or restriction does definitively eliminate the defect if such policies were implemented well.
The short period of suffering during the culling has the reward of completely eliminating the targeted genetic diseases.
I find that it is rare to find someone who is able to think rationally about the topic above. A lot of people have to rearrange the logic of potential solutions such that it fits within a moral framework. They cannot disentangle the logic and keep their analysis completely separate from their own ethics.
Executing someone with a genetic defects is logically speaking the most definitive way to stop that genetic defect from spreading. Restriction costs resources and has the potential for failure.
You see what I'm saying? Being completely unbiased is a form of psychopathy. But it does let you see truths others are unable to see. Eugenics targeted at actual known genetic defects in both sufferers and recessive carriers does logically lead to a better outcome then the moral path. If you just let natural selection play out the defect could just stick around causing suffering across many many generations of people.
But this is the extreme example. The extreme example triggers moral reactions which in turn becomes a mirror to your biases.
A more realistic example is: "do I eliminate the jobs of everyone whose livelihood depends on success in the oil industry to stave off the impending catastrophe of global warming?"
Sadly, the devil is in the details of determining whether something is a genetic defect, or an adaptation to an environment just around the corner. Would you get rid of cycle cell anemia even though it gives an advantage towards Malaria? Genetic variability tends to be beneficial in the long run. This can easily be seen with dog breeding, where the hybrid crosses have more vigor than the "true breeds".
In the end, one would be justifying a decision based on a bias.
That's rationalization. There are definitely defects that do not have any trade off. It is bias in itself to think that every genetic trait has a balanced positive and negative.
It's the apple and oranges argument people often use with programming languages. They think every programming language is just a tool in a tool box, good for one thing bad for another. They preclude the possibility that certain programming languages can be good for almost everything or that other ones can be complete crap for just about all applications. There is no logical reasoning that precludes either of the aforementioned languages to exist. It's illogical and it's biased to think everything is fair and balanced.
Logically speaking, executing the people with clearly defective traits is overall beneficial to society. There's no other way to reason around this. You can try but it'd be a biased endeavor as your specifically searching for reasoning to counter mine for the sake of creating the contradiction itself.
Why stop at genetic defects? Just abolish the whole modern medicine: let the sick people die, so only the strongest, most immune survive. Do we really want to live in the world like that?
That's the logical conclusion is it not? A society of the strongest selected by none other then nature herself.
It's our biases that prevent is from acting this way.
It's easy to stray off topic here. My point is that we can never fully disconnect ourselves from our biases. The fact that it's so hard to think about eugenics from a neutral perspective without getting confused proves my point. Even you aren't addressing my original point right?
You got so caught up in the ethics of eugenics that you're trying to rationalize why eugenics is wrong... which isn't even the main point.
A truly unbiased person, who likely doesn't fully exist, would be able to say that eugenics is the most correct solution, but he would say that he wouldn't act out on it because he's an illogical creature with morals.
> A truly unbiased person, who likely doesn't fully exist, would be able to say that eugenics is the most correct solution,
There's a disastrous fallacy in this argument: that you can define a total order on societies (or, if you prefer, the world in a particular state) and objectively claim "this one is better than that one". And even if you could define such an order, it would be based on moral considerations... And of course, you have not even the vaguest hope of objectively measuring this order either.
That's again being too pedantic. No point at all in technological process if that were true. Clearly we take actions in getting better because we predict it will be better based off of common sense metrics.
If I eliminate genetic defects from society, society will be better. If I cure cancer, society will be better. If I cure smallpox, society will be better. Or should I use philosophical pedantism to question the smallpox vaccine?
Again you're using very broad, extremely pedantic logic in attempt to keep your logical scaffold of the world consistent with morality. That is human bias 101. Why are you using this line of thought for small pox and not for eugenics.
It's obvious why. Becuase eugenics has a sacrifice of lesser cost then the cost of inaction. But our morality isn't evolved enough to deal with cost benefit analysis. We go with only zero cost solutions only because our moral instincts are simplistic.
But this is also not the main point. The main point is basically how hard it was for you to separate the analysis from the morality. You couldn't. You had to target eugenics specifically with overly pedantic logic in order to keep your logic consistent with your morals.
Sorry, but I intrinsically dispute your hypothesis that you can approach the world's problems with pure logic. I don't believe that, so I don't need to be "pedantic" - I don't look to (or believe you can) apply pure logic to societal or personal problems.
[If you really think eugenics is "the logical conclusion", and want one of several possible, reasoned arguments against it: consider what the actions required for eugenics do to the structure of society and its values]
You can't approach it with pure logic. You have to factor in your morality. The issue at hand here is bias. Meaning were you aware that your morality was factored into your logic? That your thinking wasn't logical at all but highly highly biased.
>[If you really think eugenics is "the logical conclusion", and want one of several possible, reasoned arguments against it: consider what the actions required for eugenics do to the structure of society and its values]
We do it for the pets and the livestock we raise, no problems there. We have a healthy community of happy dog pets in the US created from eugenics, genocide, castration and neutering. However, Dogs are mostly unaware of the overarching horror of their existence so this is one way to make the "logic" work with human societies. Make them unaware.
Again not the point here. The point is bias. How can you think Eugenics is so wrong, but then be perfectly ok with it when it comes to dogs? Your mind casts blind spots and illusions throughout your decision making framework so you are unaware of how inconsistent and biased it is.
We have no choice but to follow it though. No amount of logic will make you curl in disgust at dog eugenics as it does with human eugenics.
Yeah, I like to remind people we do eugenics all the time. With plants and animals. We don't call it that because we often feel that humans are a different class of life and we need special words to describe things we do to ourselves.
But breeding a dachshund is eugenics. You are selecting for desired traits and not allowing undesirable dogs to breed.
Like, it technically works.
We don't do it because it also means violating people's privacy and autonomy. And that's just wrong. The mechanisms are inhumane.
Here's the thing. The logic for eugenics is actually MORE humane then letting it go. Do you have generations of people suffering from genetic defects or do you do one execution and save thousands from suffering?
We choose the former not because of logic, but because our moral instincts are evolved to be reactionary rather then analytical. We only feel it's wrong, but in actuality it is not consistent.
It's the same biases that cause us to view Thanos as the villain in Avengers. Without getting too pedantic, in a way, he's actually right.
It's not entirely that you have to execute people. It's that you have to restrict the rights of people to have sex with who they want. And you have to force others to give up their genetic material to produce offspring they may not want to.
There's also the issue of the definition of "suffering". Once you control for the traits people mostly agree are detrimental, where do we stop? Do we control for height? Intelligence? Decreased propensity for certain behaviors? Where's the line?
And no, Thanos was not right. Thanos was written by a fucking moron. It took Earth about 50 years to go from 4 billion people to 8 billion. So, in the most generous interpretation of his action, he gave the universe 50 more years. Next, it's kind of implied that it was all life, including animals. You know, livestock. And then you also have the matter of plant life. If that was or was not affected. Regardless, cutting out half of all life also cuts roughly half of your resources as well. It also ignores that at 4 billion people, we were doing a fucking bang up job of thrashing the environment still. And it ignores the fact that there's just a better answer, make more stuff. Or change reality so that far fewer resources are consumed through certain actions. Make energy free. Make it so people don't need to eat. Everything is on the fucking table. The Infinity Stones are essentially limitless. His justification in the films just do not hold up. Both in reasoning and execution. At least in the comic he was doing it to get laid. As base as that is, it's a reason with no issues.
See. Rationalization. Bias. Whether it's right or it's wrong. You spend an inordinate amount of effort trying to twist the logic to fit your definition of morality.
You aren't trying to put together a conclusion from facts. You're trying to put together the facts to fit your conclusion. Don't you find it convenient that everything tends to have a clear moral solution?
In the universe described by the movie, Thanos is right, the heros fought him Despite them knowing he's right. The pedantic details of Thanos being right in reality is not what I'm referring to here, I'm referring to Hollywood Movie logic and how both the audience and the characters went along with it.
>There's also the issue of the definition of "suffering". Once you control for the traits people mostly agree are detrimental, where do we stop? Do we control for height? Intelligence? Decreased propensity for certain behaviors? Where's the line?'
That is off topic. The point is eugenics for diseases with clear detriment to humanity. It's like I asked you "Should I eat a hot dog." and you're like "What about a pizza, what about 2 hot dogs? What about scarfing down your throat all the food in the entire restaurant? Where is the line??"
They aren't pedantic details. They're just how it is. They knew the beat from the comics: that Thanos kills half the universe with a snap of his fingers. They wanted to hit that beat to mirror the comics. But it's poorly thought out. It is bad writing. Because it ignores just so much. From the killing of half the resources to the fact that we double in population a lot faster than the writers realized. Which is funny considering the writers themselves have lived through a doubling of the population.
> That is off topic. The point is eugenics for diseases with clear detriment to humanity.
You want to say I'm twisting logic to fit my definition of morality but then drop this. You're redefining eugenics to imbue it with a meaning it does not have. The words "clear detriment" are themselves very weaselly. What is a "clear detriment"? Is Down Syndrome a clear detriment? How so? Society can support people with Down Syndrome. They can have a decent quality of life. Are they suffering?
Where the line of "clear detriment" is very relevant. Because you may think it stops at getting rid of sickle cell anemia. But someone else may want to get rid of Down Syndrome. And someone else may feel that being under 5'0" is a clear detriment. Some proponents of eugenics thought being Jewish or black were a "clear detriment". So before you go any further, you're going to have to really lock down what you mean by "clear detriment".
And you may say "Obviously not X or Y". But that's just assuming the people making the breeding choices think like you. I don't like making that assumption.
> They aren't pedantic details. They're just how it is. They knew the beat from the comics: that Thanos kills half the universe with a snap of his fingers. They wanted to hit that beat to mirror the comics. But it's poorly thought out. It is bad writing. Because it ignores just so much. From the killing of half the resources to the fact that we double in population a lot faster than the writers realized. Which is funny considering the writers themselves have lived through a doubling of the population.
It's pedantic because it's not the point. The in-universe logic was that the heros didn't even consider Thanos's argument. It was automatically wrong and the audiences go along with it.
>The words "clear detriment" are themselves very weaselly. What is a "clear detriment"? Is Down Syndrome a clear detriment? How so? Society can support people with Down Syndrome. They can have a decent quality of life. Are they suffering?
No but support services to aid them are. Down syndrome would be a candidate for elimination if you truly were unbiased. Completely curing down syndrome from society as we know it has implications for all of society and generations that is by far more beneficial then the sacrifice that would otherwise be used to get there. This is the unbiased conclusion. And yes, what I am saying here is that the logical conclusion involves slaughter.
But of course I wouldn't do this. I'm incapable of this because it's too morally abhorrent. But I am unbiased. Meaning I am aware of the logical conclusion. Other people who are biased cannot separate the logic from the morality. They have to twist the logic to make sense with the morality. Which is what you're doing here.
>Some proponents of eugenics thought being Jewish or black were a "clear detriment". So before you go any further, you're going to have to really lock down what you mean by "clear detriment".
They were wrong. But according to the best of their knowledge at the time they acted logically. Which is my point here.
You're coming to conclusions based off of emotions and biases such as disgust. You're incapable of talking logically about eugenics without bias, you have to cast it off as a sort of horror; which it is, but then again the topic here is bias and you are unable to separate out the bias.
> Down syndrome would be a candidate for elimination if you truly were unbiased.
Why? Why is that the "unbiased" conclusion. You keep claiming this, but don't justify it. Also, you don't have to kill a single person. You do know that, right. You can just let people with Down Syndrome finish living out their lives. The point would be to not have any more kids with Down Syndrome be born. Which would mean not letting people with Down Syndrome procreate, probably through forced sterilization. And also aborting fetuses that test positive for Down Syndrome. Obviously, you'll miss some. Because that's life. But you don't have to kill anyone. I don't know why you have such a murder boner. But eugenics doesn't have to involve the active slaughter of a single person.
The fact that you think it does shows that you really aren't thinking about the problems or solutions.
And you'd note, I actually agreed that eugenics works. It will breed out whatever trait you want bred out. And that the reason we don't do it is because it involves ripping people's autonomy from them. And that is wrong. We should not do to others what we wouldn't allow be done to ourselves. And there's the knock on effect that we cannot agree on the clear detriments.
> They were wrong.
Why? Why is having Down Syndrome a "clear detriment" but not being black? Would you rather be black or white? Why? You could make a pretty good case that society, as a whole, would be better off if we all were one uniform skin color. So that it would be to the benefit of society if we were to breed out certain levels of melanin.
> But according to the best of their knowledge at the time they acted logically.
Racism is hardly logical. It has no basis in logic. It requires the mental gymnastics you so readily accuse others of. This is not a position of disgust, this is a position of rationality. Melanin levels shouldn't determine how you are treated by others. And the solution isn't to breed out melanin, the solution is to remove the power of the people making it harder for those with increased levels of melanin.
>Why? Why is that the "unbiased" conclusion. You keep claiming this, but don't justify it. Also, you don't have to kill a single person. You do know that, right. You can just let people with Down Syndrome finish living out their lives.
The resources needed to support such a person have a negative effect on the parents and society in general. That is why it is unbiased.
You can let them live out their lives sure this is one way to do it. But not as effective as termination right? Monitoring people for their entire lives and controlling their behavior costs a lot of resources and is no guarantee. Slaughtering people who have down syndrome and the people who are recessive carriers guarantees categorically the defect is eliminated.
>And you'd note, I actually agreed that eugenics works. It will breed out whatever trait you want bred out. And that the reason we don't do it is because it involves ripping people's autonomy from them. And that is wrong. We should not do to others what we wouldn't allow be done to ourselves. And there's the knock on effect that we cannot agree on the clear detriments.
Yes agreed. It's "morally wrong" but your sense of morals do not align with the most logical action that benefits society and lives in aggregate.
>Why? Why is having Down Syndrome a "clear detriment" but not being black? Would you rather be black or white? Why? You could make a pretty good case that society, as a whole, would be better off if we all were one uniform skin color. So that it would be to the benefit of society if we were to breed out certain levels of melanin.
The detriment of down syndrome is clear. Resources used to support these people are expensive and they provide no benefit to society.
Your solution for a uniform color logically works. It can work from both directions actually. Slaughter all people with pale skin or slaughter all people with darker skin then everyone will have the same color skin. Logic. Both solutions will obviously have side effects that run deeper than just solving the skin color problem.
>Racism is hardly logical. It has no basis in logic. It requires the mental gymnastics you so readily accuse others of. This is not a position of disgust, this is a position of rationality. Melanin levels shouldn't determine how you are treated by others. And the solution isn't to breed out melanin, the solution is to remove the power of the people making it harder for those with increased levels of melanin.
Racism is actually behavior that is seen world wide across disparate cultures and civilizations meaning that it likely biological in origin. A biological origin indicates that it is a trait created through natural selection indicating that an aspect of racism aided human survival. We don't fully know the implications of that behavior in the modern world but historically there is some hidden logic behind that behavior that allowed the trait to be genetically universal. The complexities here make this specific topic too complex to fully analyze from a purely logical perspective, we simply don't have enough information.
We do know that skin color correlates with certain certain genetic traits. For example black people also tend to have frizzy hair. This does not preclude behavior either. Eliminating people solely based off of the color of their skin inevitably will have other effects because of these correlations.
No, there are (at least) two explanations for Thanos' solution to the problem of resource constraints and overcrowding.
In-universe, I understand (from the youtube videos 'Comics Explained :) ) that Thanos is in love with Mistress Death, so naturally he favours a solution that kills a lot of organisms.
Out-of-universe the writers needed a villain. So they had Thanos do something evil. As the other poster pointed out, it was also a fairly dumb solution, given exponential growth.
Either way, he has a glove with the literal power of the universe and he chooses a comically evil way to fix it. Obviously as it is a comic book.
The important point is that thinking the Thanos 'solution' is somehow rational is based on an arbitrary choice of what is important - life, freedom, nature, order, etc.
Mistress death does not exist in the MCU. That is the universe I'm referring to.
>Out-of-universe the writers needed a villain. So they had Thanos do something evil. As the other poster pointed out, it was also a fairly dumb solution, given exponential growth.
Audiences are more sophisticated nowadays. A generic evil villain wouldn't fly. They made Thanos a villain that was acting, from his perspective, in the universes best interest. But of course audiences nowadays are so sophisticated that even Thanos is still considered generic.
>The important point is that thinking the Thanos 'solution' is somehow rational is based on an arbitrary choice of what is important - life, freedom, nature, order, etc.
I don't think so. Thanos justified his actions with an explanation. The heroes didn't counter his argument. Why? Because the writers were playing off of our moral instincts. The heros don't need to justify shit because the audience automatically writes off genocide as wrong even if it means ultimately saving the universe from civilization eating itself. The writers relied on biases within the audience, which is my point.
The writers wouldn't be able to do this if the audience wasn't biased. A truly unbiased audience member would be like, "WELL wait a minute, thanos sort of has a point, however flawed, why isn't iron man giving a counter argument?"
The audience just accepts Thanos's explanation as evil without thinking and that's that.
As a side note:
It would've been really good if the next phase of the MCU after end game was humanity dealing with a resource constrained universe. Thanos ends up being right and the moral enigma and consequence of the avengers actions makes them question their place in the universe. Was Thanos the villain or the tragic hero?
Audiences are THAT sophisticated nowadays. The multiverse thing is clever but the movie arcs are still good guys vs. bad guys. We need more sophisticated plots that have audiences question classic tropes of good and evil.
The Dark knight was so good in this regard, but strangely no other movie after that was able to copy the way they had joker play with morality.
You complain of others twisting logic, then justify Thanos with "the writers said so".
Also, the only counter argument Iron Man needs is "Why does Thanos get to decide?"
Not to mention, Thanos's response after everyone is snapped back is to remake the entire universe in his image. Like that was possible from the start and he just didn't do it.
We can also argue that Thanos is operating from a place of emotion, not reason. He's responding to the trauma of his own planet. And since his planet fucked it up so hard, he doesn't believe anyone could do any different. Not to mention, we don't even know if his plan would work in the long run. They didn't try it on Titan and it was only 5 years out in Endgame. There's an adjustment period when half of your population disappears.
Did you miss the part where the Joker was wrong in the movie? He expected the boats to blow up, but they didn't. Humans didn't descend to their basest instincts.
A "sophisticated audience" would see Thanos's plan for the bad writing it is. It requires the audience to question no further than the writers' assurances that it would work. With stuff like the ARC reactor, sure, it's magic, handwave away. But population growth is something we do kind of know about. At best, Thanos's plan only delays the catastrophe he claims is coming.
You want a movie to "question classic tropes of good and evil", Black Panther was right there. Killmonger was right. What Wakanda was doing all those years was wrong.
>Did you miss the part where the Joker was wrong in the movie? He expected the boats to blow up, but they didn't. Humans didn't descend to their basest instincts.
Worst part of the movie IMO. The acting during this part seemed so fake. The fact that everyone including the prisoners just went with it didn't seem realistic at all. The ultimate choice should have been left ambiguous and darker here. Perhaps both sides ended up trying to blow each other up but batman stopped it somehow. They had to insert some hollywood idealism here I guess otherwise it woulda been too dark.
>You want a movie to "question classic tropes of good and evil", Black Panther was right there. Killmonger was right. What Wakanda was doing all those years was wrong.
Joker did it better imo. Much more darker and it questioned the classic mythology of batman. Killmonger didn't dig as deep and wakanda/black panther isn't as established so their's no controversial questioning of a classic mythology.
>Not to mention, Thanos's response after everyone is snapped back is to remake the entire universe in his image. Like that was possible from the start and he just didn't do it.
Yeah I wouldn't call it bad writing outright. But they needed the classic good and evil face off at the end to pull off that final climatic battle. They sacrificed consistency and perfect writing with a short cut here to lead into the climax. It's deliberate imo.
> You complain of others twisting logic, then justify Thanos with "the writers said so".
The writers exploited the human capacity to twist logic in their writing. A good movie isn't built upon logical consistency. It's built upon emotional impact. Emotions dull when exposed the the same thing over and over so writers need to constantly come up with creating new patterns for plot twists. But you can see in their writing they exploit human biases. That was the point here.
>We can also argue that Thanos is operating from a place of emotion, not reason. He's responding to the trauma of his own planet. And since his planet fucked it up so hard, he doesn't believe anyone could do any different. Not to mention, we don't even know if his plan would work in the long run. They didn't try it on Titan and it was only 5 years out in Endgame. There's an adjustment period when half of your population disappears.
The writers made him out to be doing (from his perspective) mostly logical choices and deliberately ignoring his emotions. His own death at the beginning of end game and the murder of his daughter are evidence of this.
But of course there is that change in heart at the ending; The shortcut the writers took for the final battle where he just became evil. Avengers isn't a literary masterpiece with internal and external consistency. It first and foremost must hit emotional high points that need to come at the expense of consistency.
Putting oneself in the other’s place is the least one can do. But in politics, for example, all you will find is that there’s no right or wrong but rather opposing interests (of which there may be more then two). Then all you can do is start to appeal to the irrational - faith (religion), hope (expectations), love (e.g. patriotism), etc.
Thats kind of the point. It takes the wind out of my sails when I realize there isn't any sense of "right" or "wrong" that can be agreed upon. Instead, you have to talk about values, and why one approach favors one value over the other. At that point, you're not talking to a heretic, but a human being with a different value system, which is often not far from yours.
> I try to fully rationalize the opposing viewpoints.
Edit: "Both Sides"-ing an issue can be dangerous. Many times, there is actual harm on one side, and mere discomfort on the other. You may not be describing "both sides"-ing; but this could be read that way.
I would say it as "identify the deeply held beliefs that got this person to their viewpoint"
Previous statement:
This can be dangerous, depending on how it is done. I would say it as "identify the deeply held beliefs that got this person to their viewpoint"
I don't think being able to hold opposing viewpoints in my head is ever dangerous. Understanding the chain of logic that leads from, for example, some religious fundamentalism to misogyny does not imply I'm going to keep my girls out of school, it just means I get why they have that fucked up opinion: they grew up around it, it feels natural to them, their elders support it with scripture so it becomes sacred, etc etc.
It just helps understand how deep it goes, and therefore how challenging it might be to persuade someone out of it. It doesn't change my own beliefs on the matter.
To the contrary, I think your approach leads to, rather than understanding, identifying. In my opinion, it can be a little degrading to have one’s system of beliefs broken down to “this person believes X therefore Y”; there is probably a lot more going on in some people’s minds.
The best approach is probably somewhere in the middle. I can think of instances in people i know where they have deeply held beliefs that they don’t challenge that lead them to all sorts of conclusions. But I also know people who have deliberated on topics in depth to reach the conclusions they have. That is not to say that they are without bias, but their viewpoints are consequences of more than just deeply held beliefs.
Right. My method for discriminating between core values and rational deliberation is to walk myself through their decision tree. Usually I come up with questions to ask that make people uncomfortable and the Convo ends.
>How does members of the HN crowd try to combat this?
I think what can be lost in these conversations is the differentiation of a cognitive capacity and the drives to use that capacity. What are the conditions that have lead to your drive for empathic perspective taking? What are these conditions and are these conditions scalable to the world at large?
how do you know if its all a dream? Because the top doesn't stop spinning.
You need a top for testing rationality. Here's a nearly definitional one: you're being rationale when your explanation convinces people other than just you.
Or is it just another exercise in futility where the actual exercise is just part of the thing that make me biased in the first place?
I’ll go first. I see a therapist every other week. I hope that gives me an outsiders point of view.
But I think I have identified a way to know where my biases are could be strong. When I get a really uneasy feeling when I start to think about making changes in a certain area. And I don’t know if it’s a rational fear or just a sunk cost fallacy.
What I find really scary is that I have hard time understanding if I am just fooling myself or being rational. Because it’s always my own mind coming up with explanations, so the actual process looks the same to me.
I read a book called “Quit” recently and it gave me a lot to think about regarding biases and quitting different endeavors. Can recommend.