In an era of post-truth, the strategy of rigidly defending your version of truth and attacking other people's view of the truth is a largely self-destructive excercise that just creates a never ending argument
Understanding the logics and rationales of those people we disagree with is a far better way but requires humility and nuance
Naomi Klein in Doppelganger and Büscher in The Truth About Nature show us how this can be done with #Covid, #Palestine and #ClimateChange
As much as it might seem like this is an answer, it largely isn't. When people place their 'tribes' views of truth over actual truth, no amount of reason can penetrate.
Other solutions are required. One such is to break the problem into the smallest undeniable truths possible, and to keep repeating them over and over again to as many nany ears as possible, Eventually they break down the barriers. It takes about a decade.
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@Alexlee@academicchatter
As true and satisfying as it is and may feel, attacking the falsehoods, willful as they are, only hardens the beliefs and feelings of the pretend conservatives.
Logic and reason cannot penetrate.
In large part this is the hardened shell of tribalism, only made tougher by attack.
One key here is to recognize that this is all about emotion. You cannot emote reason, or think feelings. Each mode operates under its own methods and rules.
Emotions are key to all persuasion. Good advertisers have known this since … oh, at least since the days of Bill Bernbach. But i guess this is the one area where even Aristotle got it right.
Another is to recognize that humans tend to be inherently tribal. We tend to identify with a group, bond with them, and then defend strongly against others.
Another too us that much of humanity at its core behaves and responds from emotion. Emotions must be emoted. They can't be thought.
Similarly thinking must be reasoned, it can't be emoted.
Trying to emote reason doesn't work. Even within ourselves.
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@Alexlee@academicchatter@samohTmaS I am so utterly unimpressed by all these … words. And even more so by someone referring to a book without being able to clearly and simply explain the reasoning. Show that you understood that shit, would you please?
It is, and believe me when I say this, much more important, not to mention impressive, to actually understand what makes people tick.
I believe I did "get" what you said. I have tried that approach unsuccessfully for decades. I philosophically agree with it. Perhaps I am a somewhat slow learner in that regard.
Or perhaps, I just don't understand it well enough.
More likely I suspect that may own moral core won't allow me to use those tools to fight back.
Do you suggestions for methods that have worked for you, and which adhere to moral behavior and honest exchange?
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@Alexlee@academicchatter
BTW My reactions about tribalism and emotional reasoning come not from thr current political issues but rather from decades of arguing over technical and science issues,
These same tribal us vs them issues arise. What seemingly should be straight forward discussions in logic based on data, devolve into pitched battles of emotion based on beliefs, with encampments, attacks, responses, and worse.
Though if integrity, full honesty, and moral values prohibit use of coercive or deceptive techniques, the majority of the tools they employ are off limits.
Using the thousand methods of NLP, winning such arguments is often trivial.It is also wrong. And it doesn't accomplish permanent change.
I personally think the concept of logic is unhelpful in a post-truth world.
Lakatos explains this well in his work. Those with different paradigms or worldviews cannot agree on a common rationality because they have literally different worldviews.
This is increasingly true in the post-truth era. There is no common worldview, so therefore no common rationality.
Emotion is a good approach. As is how worldviews are created, e.g. by narrratives.
@Alexlee@GhostOnTheHalfShell@samohTmaS@academicchatter I coincidentally read a foreword by Ian Hacking to Kuhn's Structure, which you might find interesting. Part of it specifically denies this interpretation of Kuhn (leaving aside whether it'd be convincing).
"And so Kuhn was accused, in some quarters, of denying the very rationality of science. In other quarters he was hailed as the prophet of the new relativism. Both thoughts are absurd. Kuhn addresses these issues directly." (cont)
"Theories should be accurate in their predictions, consistent, broad in scope, present phenomena in an orderly and coherent way, and be fruitful in suggesting new phenomena or relationships between phenomena. Kuhn subscribes to all five values, which he shares with the entire community of scientists (not to mention historians). That is part of what (scientific) rationality is all about, and Kuhn in this respect is a 'rationalist.'"
Even here there are difficulties. There are mental traps to avoid.
E.g. the misinterpretation that "defines: science (wrongly) as being the "scientific method". That is not definitional of science. It is but one tool, a very flawed tool, used in science to elucidate truth.
There are myriad others - embedded ideas that were and remain wrong, but which form key parts f the foundations of science.
No, you can't escape exposure. And hence there is a background.
The error comes in defining the background as absolutely rather than relatively "safe:, and then arguing that added exposure below that level then must be safe... which increases the "background" - recursively - until the whole house of cards collapses.
Asbestosis is a horrible disease. Entirely unnecessary. Similar to silicosis and others with similar mechanisms.
The same ideas of background and acceptable exposure often are or were applied and abused with asbestos exposure.
Ditto, lead, mercury and myriad others until we are swimming in a soup of microplastics and bathed in forever chemical toxins, breathing ozone and photochemical smog.
@GhostOnTheHalfShell
Walter Fisher's narrative paradigm is a good framework for understanding how logic and story intertwine to shape belief. His theory of "good reasons" is powerful. Isolated logic accomplishes little; it's the logic embedded in and expressed by the story that pulls weight @samohTmaS@Alexlee@academicchatter
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