From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Mon Jan 20 2003 - 18:38:27 MST
Brett scolds me for discoursing on the theme "People pretending
to be an authority on what other people's (or nation's) motives
are", and I admit that while that may sound relevant to this
thread, I got carried away and brought up material that should
properly be associated with other threads.
My apology. However, Brett was incorrect in saying that this
was "rude" of me. Correct would be "thoughtless"---but I'm
hardly the only one who needs more discipline in keeping
threads separate and making new ones when appropriate.
But strictly back to the subject:
> > > This choice, either to pursue "point scoring" or to pursue
> > > "deeper understanding" seems available to each of us each
> > > time we post.
> >
> > I wish I had a dollar for every time on this forum this
> > useless sentiment has been expressed.
>
> I see very little sentiment (useless or otherwise) in the statements
> at all.
Okay; I used the wrong word *again*. Jeez. I should have said
"opinion". Gimme a break. Must I scrutinize *every* word I use?
Could you try harder to get the drift?
> I certainly wasn't looking to do anything so pointless as express
> mere sentiment. I hoped to highlight a fundamental choice that
> each poster gets to make each time they post - to "pursue point
> scoring" or to "pursue deeper understanding".
>
> Do you think there is no such choice?
No, I agree with you that there is often such a choice.
Yet what you consider to be mere point-scoring is in
fact often constructive criticism. If someone thinks that
an idea someone else has contains a serious flaw, then
he should attempt to shoot the idea down. Now, if
that occurs, who among us isn't inclined to put another
notch on his missile launcher?
You may suppose that such inclinations smack of game-
playing, and yes, such a component exists. I might
point out, however, that the whole adversarial process
of law is based upon opportunistic exploitation of
these human tendencies. I think that we should live
with a balance between the utterly rigorous and detached
(and sometimes boring), and the visceral.
Nature will take its course so far as list dynamics go,
just as in all other human affairs, and the prohibitionists
eventually wise up and understand that suggesting tiny
course corrections is one thing, and profitable, but
revolutionary and radical programs are something else,
and inevitably fail.
> I think that if people are talking face to face either one to one or
> in groups that a different set of dynamics apply than apply on a
> list where posts are sequential. I think a list structure favours the
> "point scoring" mindset as opposed to the "seeking deep
> understanding" mindset more than face to face does.
Yes, I'll agree, at least to some extent. The phenomenon
of flaming is greatly magnified by the presence of a large
audience; witness the American newspapers of the 1790's
which make most on-line flame wars paltry affairs in comparison.
But we are talking here about one's adversarial nature
or opinionated nature, which is simply set differently
in different people. Get a crowd around a couple of the
usual Extropian wranglers at someone's house after an
Extro conference, and I predict you'll see I'm right.
Why, I've often had many quite heated and totally argumentative
discussions alone with a close friend. To take my former
example, fire and ice, (i.e., Mike Lorrey and Anders Sandberg),
it would be quite interesting to find out if Mike would lower
Anders' boiling point, or Anders would raise Mike's, in a
face to face discussion, though probably not as interesting
as attending to what they were actually saying.
> It is easier to tell in the more context rich face to face
> environment if people are serious, interested, in the middle
> of a conversation that matters to them or merely shooting the
> breeze, and so in a face to face circumstances I think the
> "point scoring" debater mindset would stand out more blatantly
> as rude and damaging and that people would therefore do it less
> as a consequence of the richer feedback that they'd get.
Well, that doesn't match my experience very well. The people
that I know (at work, for example) usually are tending towards
what you'd call the "point-scoring" end of the continuum, (what
I'd call the adversarial mode), when, say political matters
come up. What are your experiences with people, both as an
observer and participant?
> > Consider the exchange between Anders and Mike:
> >
> > > [Anders wrote]
> > >> One prerequisite for having a constructive discussion about a
> > >> powerful topic is to be able to handle it on a high level of
> > >> abstraction. When you know enough about a topic you can start to
> > >> look at it from different sides. You can be abstract enough about
> > >> it so that you become dispassionate.
> >
> > Mike replied
> >
> > > On the contrary, the more you know about a topic, when that topic turns
> > > on Objective Truth, the more likely you are to be very passionate for
> > > the side which you are able to objectively, quantitatively, and
> > > qualitatively determine is in the right. The opposition begins, more
> > > and more, to look not just wrong, but foolish, naive, stubbornly
> > > obstinate in their willful ignorance, and willing to believe anything
> > > that agrees with their prejudices.
> >
> > It's quite clear that the more someone learns about an
> > issue, the less affected is his or her basic personality
> > disposition!
>
> Not to me.
>
> I'm not sure what your saying. It seems that, your saying that, as the
> amount of knowledge one has on a subject increases one's personality
> (or) personal disposition, is less (e)ffected by each further unit
> increment.
Sorry, it was a joke, or at least was rather ironical, to
phrase it just that way. It misfired (my fault). I meant
to say that their basic personality dispositions are hardly
affected at all by how much they learn about a matter (with
some notable exceptions in some people and on some topics---
I have noticed that I shut up, or at least become much more
conciliatory after someone has made me realize an error that
I had been making).
> > Those who start by being quite opinionated
> > remain that way, and those who tend to reserve judgment,
> > have "working hypotheses", be indecisive, and so on, tend
> > to remain their way.
>
> I can't agree with the view that having a working hypothesis and
> indecision amount to the same thing, which seems to be what
> you are saying.
Yes, the wrong word again. Replace "indecisive" with "less
decisive". I only mean the opposite of "quite opinionated"
which maybe you should have picked up on.
> > And neither speaker here is distinguishing
> > between ordinary discussions of near-fact,
> > and discussions laced with ideology.
>
> I'm not sure I could hold someone to blame for not distinguishing
> "near-fact" from anything. What is a near-fact? How near?
By "near-fact" I was trying to connote troublesome examples
that should be matters of fact, but which are, for various
reasons, not, e.g., historical accounts. We probably are
best off to view the difference between facts and opinions
as also on a continuum, though with the two ends more
prominent than in many other continuums.
As an example of what I was talking about, suppose that a
scientific discussion of "entropy" was in progress, and
suppose that there aren't any strong ideological movements
separating people's views about entropy. What Anders and
Mike said, while entirely correct IMO for discussions like
that, was not correct when considering ideological debates.
Anders had written
When you know enough about a topic you can start to
look at it from different sides. You can be abstract
enough about it so that you become dispassionate.
which is true enough, if you are talking about entropy.
But it fails spectacularly if you (most people) are
talking about the Vietnam War.
> > It is *extremely* difficult not to have a
> > somewhat biased perspective on the latter
> > [ideological] issues, and only a fool has
> > such prejudices about matters of fact!
>
> But now you seem to be moving near-fact into fact.
Yes. It would be hasty to call someone a fool for
being prejudicial about matters in which opinion or
ideology was even a tiny component. Not that that
stops a lot of people.
Lee
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