Quite so, at least empirically speaking (in my own observations, anyway).
I guess a natural follow up would be, is there any feasible external (to such a group) or general (trans-group) impetus to either (a) increase abstract reasoning or (b) avoid "baser" framing, assuming that's not intrinsically pointless? Obviously with e.g. politics, this is the goal of many folks (to incite emotionally rather than engage rationally, or to mask emotion as rationality), but I wonder how feasible it is to increase rational discussion (through abstraction, or other means) about rational topics for the sake of productive discourse.
However, school is usually a place where authority, hierarchy, and group-think is reinforced rather than questioned. I can't see schools encouraging kids to do thought experiments like "Let's say your parents don't like it that a boy wants to have a boyfriend instead of a girlfriend. Instead of you just believing whatever your parents say, let's talk about why they believe that, how they might be getting it wrong, and why it's okay if you don't agree with them." Actually, some schools are trying that, with the predictable backlash from parents and others in the local community.
That's a pretty manipulative way you phrased it here. I'd agree with your example, if you phrased it as "if they could be getting it wrong, and why it's okay if you don't agree with them in that case". I.e. for a honest thought experiment, let's not sneak in the preferred answer in the phrasing, even if we both agree on what the preferred answer is.
> Actually, some schools are trying that, with the predictable backlash from parents and others in the local community.
That's the unfortunate effect of... I'm not sure exactly what. I initially wanted to say "democracy plus media", but perhaps a better way is just... "transparency". The context of this subthread contains, quoting from the top-level post:
> it doesn't matter how intelligent you or your group are if you are outnumbered by a herd that responds to the appeals and actuation of its lower instincts
In case of schools, as you correctly note, when a school attempts - or even discusses - something like it, they'll get a backlash from whichever side feels threatened in a particular case. There's no room for trying and observing anymore, because it's a standard aspect of our society to run disagreements through broadcast media at one level above the actual parties involved. E.g. in school case, it'll run the gossip mill and if that doesn't help, someone will alert the local journalist. For larger issues, it'll hit national news. Etc.
Fanatics are remarkably reality resistant but sustaining it within a group is more difficult and expensive in abstract ways, such as worse ability to recruit.
Not that I'd necessarily agree, its just an interpretation.
there's some pretty interesting research related to this done with criminals. At lower levels of IQ they aren't capable of hypotheticals like "how do you think the person felt when you robbed them" or "how do you think the mother of the person you killed felt about that". Which raises the question of how much they can even be held accountable for their actions to some degree
Empathy requires a certain level of intelligence, children don't have the cognitive ability for it until they are a few years old and there are many "normal" adults walking around with IQ in a similar range as those children. High IQ psychopaths are interesting because they seem to be able to overrule most criminal behavior despite also not feeling empathy, they probably just run some sort of cost-benefit analysis that simulates empathy
I think they can still be held accountable. They were told not to do a thing, and they did it.
Political disagreements have been structured in our society along dialectics of power and, as such, are designed to attack and malign the very identity of the parties who disagree. This triggers the social isolation / anxiety response and can amount to amygdala hijacking, and then people lose their cool.
It helps a lot to keep in mind that these responses have been exquisitely engineered via social media, cable news, etc. and that the person in front of you (or even online) is likely not your true enemy and you probably have more shared interests than you might think.
"If you stop, you calm down and sort yourself out. In the jungle in the SAS, if you were lost, you stopped, made a brew [cup of tea], worked out where you were and worked out where you needed to go. It’s desperate panic that gets people into really big trouble."
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-33203...
The phrase dialectics of power is framing the concept that a lot of a political discourse is centered around arguments of who has power, and who doesn't.
Its superficial arguing. "Oh no, X has won the house that means the future of Y is in peril!" instead of discussion around why X won the house or why idea Y is something we want in our future.
Much of this line of thinking is about making sweeping assumptions about policies, and what groups of people/political organizations believe and support.
It's almost taboo to suggest that these enforced dichotomies aren't really helping anyone but that they do seem remarkably well-suited to preserving the status quo.
>Alice: say, for the sake of argument, that A is true
>Bob: But A isn't true?
>Alice: Whether A is true or not is a different question. For the purposes of our conversation (that we're talking about the consequences of A being true), it is.
>Bob: But... A isn't true.
>Alice: I give up!
>Bob: I win!
For Bob, it seems to be completely impossible to talk "stipulatively".
It's equal parts frustrating and baffling to me that some people just can't understand the concept of talking about logical conclusions from some starting point independently from the veracity of that starting point, and I'd agree it's one of the big issues with (online) discourse today.
"If we lived in a completely imaginary world where A were true" could address Bob's sensibilities a bit better.
First make yourself heard, then make your point. Otherwise your point falls on deaf ears. This takes some ability to listen and tailor your arguments to fit your audience.
Sometimes online, I suspect it's insincere. They know why you are doing the hypothetical, it hurts their position, so instead of engaging with it they become absolutists.
Other times, though (especially easy to see in person) it is VERY real. They simply are not capable of dealing with hypotheticals.
Where that came up the most for me was when tutoring math in college. The abstract nature of math past algebra was just something some people could not grok. They wanted the hard and fast facts. "Ask me to do 7 * 5 and I'll have that answer in an instant, don't ask me riddles about x * 5 = 35".
edit: not begging the question is literal racism.
Why should that be a concern? Are you afraid you'll be forced to accept their conclusion?
As per the great-great-grandparent post [0], the conclusion under discussion is based on a premise they just made up and that both speakers "know is wrong". Why should I be afraid I'll be forced to accept their conclusion? Is that a property of arguments using made-up premises? I was under the impression that such arguments were bullshit.
I think I've been pretty clear in my desire to not engage in bullshit arguments in which people are allowed to make up premises; you're the one who framed it as a "concern" I might be having. It seemed like you were initially suggesting that that was unreasonable. From your response I guess it was just a non sequitur.
What's a "non sequeter", by the way?
> What's a "non sequeter", by the way?
Lol. Yeah, very clear.
Bob: P is False, there's no point
Alice: It's just a starting point for my argument
Bob: And what are you trying to go with your argument?
Alice: A proof by contradiction
Bob: A proof by contradiction assumes not(X), shows that it leads to a contradiction, therefore proving not(X) is false, and X is true. In this case assuming P to perform proof by contradiction means you will prove P is False. If that's all you want to do, there is no need as I am already in agreement that P is false.
There's a difference between believing something is true and having a proof.
Bob: that's bullshit
Alice: humor me
Bob: no
Alice: I have a proof that P!=NP
Bob: I already know that
Alice: You don't, you just guess, I have a proof
Bob: whatever, go away
You would just have to stop the conversation there out of a complete inability to posit a theoretical in which the earth was flat?
Might as well ask me “imagine gorgokanakawommbledorks were a real thing, who would have motivation to hide it?” WTF is a gorgokanakawommbledork and what does it have to do with a civilization that never even acknowledged them?
Frankly though from your responses I think your real position is more that you are particularly weary of this topic and/or don’t feel the need to retread topics with new people if previous conversations have been unproductive.
I actually haven't had many interactions with flat earthers but the answers tend to follow one of two patterns: giant conspiracy in history or giant conspiracy in physics.
I feel like the former can be dismissed out of hand because the provenance of any evidence they present is suspect - if they had the qualifications to even know why provenance is important, they probably wouldn't be flat earthers [1]. Conspiratorial thinking is so popular now that you're right, I just don't have the energy to engage (which makes for some boring Thanksgiving dinners, thank god)
The other response is far more rare and interesting... and most people who hold this view are either trolls or come back around to reason really fast. The only time I've ever run across this kind of flat earther, all it took was to remind them that one of their family members - sitting right next to them in a permanent state of cringe - circumnavigated the globe in sailboat.
[1] +1 for circular reasoning
Maybe there are societal cycles. I read that witch trials were gripping the public attention a couple centuries ago.
I remember a decade ago when r/conspiracy was all about Area 51, Orwellian surveillance, and the X-Files born from the cultural zeitgeist of the 90s. Now it's a bunch of closet pedophiles trying to distract us with QAnon MAGA bullshit.
And sure, I think your view point is fair, but I also think you muddied the top level waters a little because the topic at hand was the ability to reason abstractly past a point of contention and your point seems to be that there are signals where you don’t believe the juice is worth the squeeze. Which, yeah, fair.
To relay a related experience I once listened to this guys MLM pitch. The things that seemed to reach this guy the most were conversation points past ‘is there any indication this works that survives a cursory inspection’, like ‘given that this is good and everyone should do it, what happens to the half of humanity that joins and has no one to recruit?’.
>> The only time I've ever run across this kind of flat earther, all it took was to remind them that one of their family members - sitting right next to them in a permanent state of cringe - circumnavigated the globe in their sailboat.
Side note: glorious
Now imagine if A was "you committed this crime yesterday". There are so many reasons beyond "acting emotionally" over why perfectly logical people wouldn't entertain a premise like that.
You'd have to have some pretty non-standard circumstances. I have no problem entertaining such counterfactual in a normal discussion. I'd only squirm if there was a risk the conversation would be used against me - e.g. quoted by a journalist, a law enforcement officer, or some crazy rando on Twitter, with the fact that it was a hypothetical conveniently omitted.
You can, in fact, declare some popular premises morally off-limits.
Just because 51% of people believe something, that doesn't mean we're bound to respect it. If that was true, Wikipedia would be infallible.
That may be a USA-centric view. It differed in other areas.
https://www.historyireland.com/from-baltimore-to-barbary-the...
When you say that we should ban debate of slavery because it's settled, what you're in effect saying is that society has made a decision and you would like that decision to be final. In this case, so would I. But there's nothing final about it; it's not like God has spoken on the matter. Deciding to ban further appeal of the matter is just a form of moral entrepreneurship, not some kind of absolute correct answer.
Maybe a counterfactual analysis is not the point, but it's the first step to making some other relevant point, say by formal analogy. You shouldn't shoot down an argument before it even starts. Judge the actual argument when it's presented.
I imagine you might dispute that that ever happens to you, and it may be that you are so thoroughly rational that it doesn't. But let me suggest a counterfactual for you: imagine you are not as rational as all that. How would you know? You would never engage in the conversations which would demonstrate this. So, as a general principle, maybe you should not assume that you are.
No, I think GP is just aware that the risk of missing a useful dialogue needs to be weighed against the risk of wasting time on a fruitless one.
Proof by contradiction[1] has quite a number of important results. We shouldn't denigrate that machinery.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_by_contradiction
""" G. H. Hardy described proof by contradiction as "one of a mathematician's finest weapons", saying "It is a far finer gambit than any chess gambit: a chess player may offer the sacrifice of a pawn or even a piece, but a mathematician offers the game." """
EDIT:
Perhaps this is another skill, related to counterfactual analysis: being able to consider you're wrong just a tiny bit, even if you're certain you're right, just to reaffirm yourself. Holding the two conflicting states in your mind, in parallel, for however brief a moment. Kind of like speculative execution. Doesn't cost much if the other party is an obvious troll, but can pay off handsomely if you somehow ended up with a strong belief based on badly flawed assumptions.
That’s a strawman. Not being willing to entertain every prospective interlocutor with (as in the upthread poster’s specific example) flat-earth theories is not the same as assuming everyone who disagrees with you is a hardcore believer of some really stupid thing.
Thesis “Earth is flat” can’t be disproved then.
But even if (imagine...) I was dealing with a flat-earther, I'd probably listen just to respect someone being able to work with counterfactuals in the first place. There may be something interesting on the other end, perhaps something I could help them rethink. And, if it was ultimately a waste, and then if I kept hitting on "imagine Earth is flat" people, I'd probably just short-circuit my response to "Is this about argument $X for idea $Y? I've heard it before many times, it doesn't work because $Z.".
But, funny thing, I don't think I've ever met a person capable of discussing counterfactuals who also strongly believed in something completely stupid. In practice, being able to work with counterfactuals during conversations - particularly assuming, for a moment, something they disagree with - has been an effective litmus test for me. If they can handle it, we'll have a productive conversation. If they can't, there's no point in talking to them.
Even if you were right, that particular definition of implication is just convention. There are other logical systems and views that don't interpret it that way.
“But there’s definitely no bug there! I wrote that code myself!”
These conversations seem pretty useful to me.
Especially on twitter where post length forces shortcuts which are very easy to maliciously leverage.
In some cases if the assumption is what's being argued itself doing this is an attempt at manipulation, not genuine discussion.
Alice: Say, for the sake of argument, Bob beats his wife.
Bob: But I don't beat my wife...
Alice: Whether you beat your wife or not is a different question. For purposes of our conversation about consequences you beat your wife.
In this scenario Bob understands the implication of logical conclusions but considers the conversation to be a trap.
> Politically and physically, it doesn't matter how intelligent you or your group are if you are outnumbered by a herd that responds to the appeals and actuation of its lower instincts.
But this is not purely a matter of raw, inherent intellectual potential. Academics are notorious for having a history of rationalizing power or depravity of all kinds. The tyrannies of communism, for example, were the product of intellectuals who exploited the vices of the "proletariat" as a cudgel against their opponents. Ultimately, these intellectuals were fools because they either actually believed the absurdity of communism or they exploited a communism they didn't actually believe to gain power for themselves and through especially wicked deeds, and all evil is, after all, foolish and opposed to reason. I object to the notion that the more intellectual potential you have, the less evil you are just because you have a greater potential for intelligence. You can choose to be unwise for emotional and vicious reasons, thus thwarting the exercise of reason when it leads you some place you cannot handle.
Politically and physically, it doesn't matter how intelligent you or your group are if you are outnumbered by a herd that responds to the appeals and actuation of its lower instincts. Enjoy the ride. The whole thing is quite a spectacle.