@freemymind 🇨🇭 wow, two of my favorite topics in one thread.
#grownostr #meaningcrisis #leadership #philosophy
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> how do you react to controversial views?
Depends on the complexity they've been demonstrating. I may decide to not participate in the first place, especially if I suspect signs of passive aggression or insincerity (sarcasm or cynicism in particular). But if I decide to participate, I'm mostly focusing on minimizing misunderstanding on either side. In my experience, a lot of unnecessary drama comes from misunderstanding, not the actual disagreement.
I'm trying to see things from their perspective. Open-mindedness is not believing in random things: I may temporarily take some of their beliefs *as if* they were true statements for me (still explicitly signifying that these are not my real beliefs) in a hope to better understand arguments they have.
I often verify my understanding of their position by summarizing what they've told me, without adding anything extra, so they can correct me. I may verify whether they're not using some unusual definition of some term when I suspect a paradox.
I'm not a big fan of using explicit concrete logic fallacies labeling because any kind of label is a potential trigger. Premature labeling specifically is a concern to me. Instead, I prefer to directly demonstrate why something appears wrong to me.
When I'm still not sure whether I'm missing something, I may use questions that demonstrate a paradox instead of directly stating that something appears wrong to me. If I provide options—I ensure it's not a false dichotomy.
This one is the most important: I use Four Parts Of Speech from the Bill Torbert's Action Inquiry as a checklist. The more parts I use to represent my position, the harder it becomes to misunderstand it. For me, this has been especially important and practical tool for tech discussions. For issues and pull requests. It's a very anti-manipulative tool, hard to misuse by either side.
Looking at the comments:
> drift away from discussions that use coercion or insults
Definitely. In addition, in the toughest moments, I find it useful to specifically check both sides with the Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement. However, I disagree with Graham about the following: "It matters much more whether the author is wrong or right than what his tone is"—I find this a misleading and possibly even psychopathic statement. Identifying that either side is operating from the 3rd level or lower is a chance to stop the discussion and decide whether it's possible and practical to attempt to elevate it to the higher levels. It's an urgent thing, empathy is important; taking into account that either side can hallucinate something evil is important. It's not about being nice. I talked a bit more here on this:
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Also, noticing what I interpreted as rationalism vs relativism debates in the comments: realizing the limitations of both rationalism (up to the formal Gödel's and Tarski's stuff) and relativism, and transcending all this using post-postmodern discourses was super super important to me too. It doesn't mean we can't share common truths at all, doesn't mean there's no objectivity, etc. There's too little worthwhile stuff I'm aware exists on this and I'm still diving into it. You might want to try this:
Meta-rationality
In the Cells of the Eggplant | Meta-rationality
An introduction to meta-rationality: ways of using rational systems more effectively by understanding how they relate to their contexts.
If it seems too hard or annoying—I'm not sure if you're familiar since it's kinda mainstream, but you can first try this concise Postmodernism overview (and then retry the previous link from whatever unfamiliar chapter; otherwise, you know, usually worldview collapses into something unnecessarily nihilistic after realizing the stuff from the playlist):
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLz0n_SjOttTcLQyeXoDeqR0LGO3JCoLbO
