Facts matter, but when they don’t seem to change minds, telling people they are stupid or commies or libtards or sheeple or blind or misinformed or brainwashed, makes it worse
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From the link:
Lastly, Sharot cautions against group conformity or the “knowledge and acts of other people,” which comprises the seventh component. She states that in some situations, we must be wary of being influenced by other people, especially in social media or political campaigns when the truthfulness of the information cannot be verified (Pandey and Gupta, 2019).
https://research.com/education/why-facts-dont-change-our-mind#5
What are you implying write?
It probably comes down to advising the individual of the preferred posting methods in a non-confrontational way.
And that is the hardest part… 
I wish we could make people pass a test on this
I’ll add some notes later
Just my quick bookmarks, so I don’t lose them.
11:45 Have a diversity of opinions. (As a moderator, this is the main reason I let people stay even though I don’t consider them logical) Note he talks about how people like to be validated by the news. This happens in MSM news watching, or unhinged YouTubes.
16 Try to create the opposition, to make it a “real” debate". AKA Steel Man. Keep listening from there for RISA
29 There are things that are off the table. We shouldn’t debate the equal moral standing of persons. I’ve seen a lot of this in recent ad hominems.
31:40 Social media debates. The solution of face-to-face has it’s limits, but we can stop doing performances as part of our posting. Talk to the person like a person, not like you are speaking to the lurkers. Creating a safe space to discuss will attract people to this forum. IMO
33- the dark side. People want to be heard, to connect, AND, they want to dominate the debate. These are in conflict. I had to rewind several times to get what he was talking about, that problems arise when we lack confidence in our interlocutors that they can receive our words with grace and respond kindly. The slightest slip-up and we are ready to pounce and bury them with our righteous data and facts.
49 Schopenhauer
54 Dodger, Twister, Wrangler, Liar (plug and replace is the solution, Richard Carrier does this often) The following section is about how to respond. Basically, pick one issue and try to work through it, show the logic problems, then speak broadly of how they are repeating those problems. If they won’t do that, then they are trolls and need to be banned
1:07 How Nixon handled Kruschev.
At the end he talks about the value of having disagreements. That it’s healthy. But we need to find healthy ways to have them. As Jonathan Haidt says, democracy thrives on disagreement.
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In the moment, this might be true. You have your facts at hand, and you know how to organize them, so it’s easy to whip up a post that responds to the latest comment. It takes a little more effort to find the logical fallacy and properly identify it, or choose a particular lie or illogical comment and address it thoroughly, and demonstrate how it is a lie or how it is illogical.
But, thing is, either one of those strategies can prove ineffective. If the quick response is ineffective, you are back to square one, ready to make another ineffective quick response. If you use the tools of debate, you have the thread you created of addressing the problems of both the truth of the post and the quality of it. Here at CFI, you have the rules, and members can flag or moderators can silence, or ban.
If you are with family or at a bar or whatever, it’s a little different. You might have to stop and establish what the rules are. If someone mentions their grandfather’s shotgun, it might be a good time to back out of that conversation.
Along the same lines, sometimes people on forums say that this is where they come to vent. Again, not what CFI is for. If you are mad at the MSM, or at the brainwashed anti-(fill in the blank) crowd, finding someone who opposes your opinion and ranting on them is not dialog, it’s not reasoned discussion, debate or anything else that is promoted here. It is disruptive, as described in the FAQ. The rules specifically state, “when you see bad behavior, don’t reply.”
This includes not replying that the person on the other end must be part of a government arm, or a secret government arm, or from a communist or fascist country, or a supporter of any of those.
The irony is, if it weren’t for people spouting false beliefs and unsubstantiated claims, CFI wouldn’t exist. They were formed with the intention of challenging bad information. They weren’t formed to gather pitch forks and go burn down the castle, but to provide an alternative scientifically based point of view. Join that, or go somewhere else.
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“If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do. If some one maintains that two and two are five, or that Iceland is on the equator, you should feel pity rather than anger, unless you know so little of arithmetic or geography that his opinion shakes your own contrary conviction.
The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion. So whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence warrants.“
— Bertrand Russell, An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish (1943)
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I heard this whole interview. Two great minds. They both use social media and follow it. I want people engaging here, but I know there is danger. People get sucked in. There are bad actors.
Please consider Sam’s words. If you watch it, please click like. For this one, it won’t mean you liked it, just that you watched it.
Thank you.
There are many ways to approach the conversation about how to have a conversation. Some of it is very similar to family therapy, some of it is about formally debating. All of it needs adapting to this new world of troll farms and authoritarians and propaganda that uses a tool that should have brought us together. These are just a few. I know I’ve come across others, but I don’t keep libraries of links. I’ll keep adding to this as I come across them.
Why you think you’re right, even when you’re wrong | - The Dreyfus case
Haven’t heard this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfIGTJ86oSs
This is how I was introduced to Plato’s cave, that the people making the shadows are MSM, or religion, or a secret cabal. Then I read it myself, and that didn’t seem right, but I didn’t have a way to confirm it one way or another. Then I listened to John Vervaeke.
It’s an analogy of the mind. As @Write4U loves to point out, we don’t perceive reality directly. The Greeks were just getting a handle on what their predecessors had been doing. Shamans had been fasting, or dancing, or sometimes using mind-altering plants, to get a glimpse into how their own minds worked, and to grasp the intricate patterns of the universe. That is represented by the person at the top of this picture, outside of the cave, in the “real” world.
One of the big flaws in the modern interpretation is the “people who seek the truth” label. Sure, if you do some practices, meditate, whatever, you’re a seeker. You can still fail. Some people just stumble on insights, or they have a good mentor. You could be practicing your Pentatonic scales on the harpsichord and feel the flow of time and space. Anyway, you’re not special. And the people still in the cave, they are still you. You can be fooled by what you THINK you saw in your vision quest.
Authoritarians, the media, the guy on the corner with a sign on cardboard, they are exploiting how your mind works. Plato’s lessons were designed to help you understand yourself and use how your mind works. He was also flawed, but anyway, aren’t we all.
I found this on facebook, with surprisingly good comments. One was on how propaganda starts with arguments that convince the moderates, some threat is coming. These are often logical arguments with some data, but still flawed because they extrapolate and assume a boogeyman that isn’t real. They might even state it as a theory, not believing it themselves, that is, they have open minds. Some people latch on to it, are radicalized, and become extremists, left or right, it’s the same process. The extrapolation is now stated as truth, minds close. The more vehement they are, the more they attract attention, especially from young people looking for easy answers. Within 10 or 20 years, they have an army, and whoever started it is no longer important.
This is not a warning to CC. Just an example of how it can be difficult to determine what is meant by “feeding the trolls”. No more comment for now, but “to be continued”
This fits here, I’ll get the comment in a minute.
Did I say a minute? Anyway.
CS Lewis started his book, Mere Christianity, with an analogy like this. He talked about a person staring out at a garden from a second-story window. Then he said, we don’t talk about the window, the thing that we are looking through, how it distorts our perception of the actual garden. Unlike Vervaeke, Lewis went on to try to sell distortions in the philosophy of knowing. He started with how we evolved from irrational material and earlier forms of life, so we can’t be sure that we are rational. It got worse from there.
Most important, after noticing the window, and doing whatever one might do, clean it, fix it, Lewis never goes back to looking through the window. He thinks he has some vision of reality for us if we would just look. So, he was a precursor to what we now call “misinformation” and “internet trolls”.
Adaptive behavior. A function of the mind. A “problem-solving intelligence” that has learned via natural selection to use the resources of its environment in various ways.
It has learned to control the body that is the host and affords the luxury of movement and choices of “least resistance”.
- ? This is a case of what scientists refer to as “motivated reasoning,” a phenomenon in which our unconscious motivations, desires and fears shape the way we interpret information. Some pieces of information feel like our allies — we want them to win; we want to defend them. And other pieces of information are the enemy, and we want to shoot them down. That’s why I call motivated reasoning “soldier mindset.”
In essence, the predator.
Just as the soldier mindset is rooted in emotional responses, the scout mindset is, too — but it’s simply rooted in different emotions. For example, scouts are curious. They’re more likely to say they feel pleasure when they learn new information or solve a puzzle. They’re more likely to feel intrigued when they encounter something that contradicts their expectations.
They are the prey, the unsuspecting peaceful passerby and a source of energy (food) to the environment. But they learn how to scout.
Scouts also have different values. They’re more likely to say they think it’s virtuous to test their own beliefs, and they’re less likely to say that someone who changes her mind seems weak. And, above all, scouts are grounded, which means their self-worth as a person isn’t tied to how right or wrong they are about any particular topic. For example, they can believe that capital punishment works and if studies come out that show it doesn’t, they can say, “Looks like I might be wrong. Doesn’t mean I’m bad or stupid.” This cluster of traits is what researchers have found — and I’ve found anecdotally — predicts good judgment
Symbiosis and Empathy.
“Civility and respect in political discourse, whether in an election year or otherwise, are essential,” it said.