Misunderstandings and Attributing Motives

[Old Things]

It must be nearly every day that someone assumes something about my position that I did not explicitly say.

The problem, in part, is that we live in a highly polarized culture, where we often assume what people's views are because we associate a person's arguments with "being like" a group of people we think we know something about. I have been guilty of this myself, with @Hadoblado probably taking the brunt of this from me on this forum.

Another problem in today's culture is that people are not very curious. They don't really care to understand what other people's views are. We are very argumentative in our anonymous online presence.

I think a good rule of thumb to help combat these problems is to only argue against (given you disagree) a person's position based only on what they have actually said, or, better yet, argue against the position you think could be made a better way than the way they have tried to articulate their position. This is called steelmanning. And if you can steelman a person's perspective and argue against it, that will make you a very formidable debater.

Of course, people are not always interested in what is most logical or what makes the most sense, which is another problem in our online discourse, both here and pretty much everywhere else online. Some people just believe something so strongly that no amount of evidence is going to change their mind. You can literally prove beyond all doubt that they are wrong, and they will not change a single thing about their view.

This is because, in some sense, we live in a post-truth world. People's convictions do not come primarily from what they think is true, but from what they personally like the most. "It appeals to me, so it is true," seems to be the way many people think today. This is a huge problem and can cause a lot of chaos in the coming decades until (or even if) we find some semblance of believing what we do because it is true and not just because it appeals to our sentiments.

What's the solution? I have no idea. It's a huge problem, and it is way above my pay grade to fix a societal-wide problem like this. All I can do is hope someone out there can empathize with what I am saying, and hope for a better tomorrow.

 

[ZenRaiden]

People's convictions do not come primarily from what they think is true, but from what they personally like the most. "It appeals to me, so it is true,"

Is it fair to say Christianity appeals to you?

 

[Old Things]

People's convictions do not come primarily from what they think is true, but from what they personally like the most. "It appeals to me, so it is true,"

Is it fair to say Christianity appeals to you?

How can I answer this? I am not supposed to talk about religious things outside of my main thread for God and Christianity. Go to that thread, pick a topic to debate, and we can have at it there.

 

[ZenRaiden]

How can I answer this? I am not supposed to talk about religious things outside of my main thread for God and Christianity. Go to that thread, pick a topic to debate, and we can have at it there.

OK another way to ask is, are you willing to steelman positions?

 

[Old Things]

How can I answer this? I am not supposed to talk about religious things outside of my main thread for God and Christianity. Go to that thread, pick a topic to debate, and we can have at it there.

OK another way to ask is, are you willing to steelman positions?

Being willing to and being able to are two different things. I try to be fair to the arguments that other people present. I'm not a perfect debater. I am not going to win every "debate." But it's also a question of whether the person has presented their own view well enough on whether I need to steelman it or not. If they represented their view well enough, then I don't need to steelman it since it is already adequate.