Re:The Yale Problem Begins in High School
by jimbokun on Wednesday November 25, 2015 @04:37PM
(#10629882)
If it's an academic setting and you are the instructor, you can
* Flunk them for not learning or engaging with the material.
* Limit their time in class discussions if they are not engaging constructively.
* Have the administration remove them from the class if they become belligerent.
Of course, the third item is the crucial one. It seems at many universities these days, administrations are taking the side of the customer, er, I mean, student, in every dispute, regardless of the merits.
Re:The Yale Problem Begins in High School
by cortesoft on Wednesday November 25, 2015 @04:02PM
(#10629666)
"You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into."
Re:The Yale Problem Begins in High School
by fleitz on Wednesday November 25, 2015 @06:27PM
(#10630460)
Run your meetings / classes according to Roberts rules, move to set out a time limit for each person to make their point, limit each person to 1 rebuttal, and then vote on the issue.
Whenever I had to deal with contentious issues as a chair of a meeting this is exactly how I proceeded, much to the dismay of the people who wanted to argue all day.
The people who cause the most issues usually take their rebuttal early and then the debate can proceed amongst the more reasonable people.
Re:The Yale Problem Begins in High School
by ploxiln on Wednesday November 25, 2015 @04:20PM
(#10629783)
You're not going to convince everyone to agree with you, or even just with what you think is most important. That's ok. You can agree to disagree. Especially if this is an acquaintance at a party, or a coworker, and the topic is not at all related to what you're doing.
Re:The Yale Problem Begins in High School
by wbsgrepit on Wednesday November 25, 2015 @11:51PM
(#10631333)
At one point in our history, it was contrary to known and upheld belief that the world was round. Given your position would we have ever had the debate and changed popular belief considering it was absurd by its very nature?
I had a guy simply insisting that evolution wasn't real. "Ok", I say, "what about (found some reports demonstrating observable changes in a species over time)?". "Oh, well sure, microevolution is real, but big things can't change, like humans." And around we go again and again. (Same guy believes that we can't actually analyze someone's genome and that people become resistant to antibiotics, not diseases, and 9/11 was an inside job.)
Show them video, show them photographs, bring in first-person witnesses, and they'll find a way to dismiss all of it. Either because they truly believe what they're saying, or, like a current coworker, they're just a contrarian asshole. That doesn't mean we shield people from these views, but we have to, at some point, accept that not all viewpoints are equal, some simply have no merit and aren't worth discussing beyond acknowledging that some people believe them (would you really want to engage with a flat-earth believer? I mean, it was fun once, but that was enough for me).