There’s no good way to kill a bad idea | Hacker News Reader

There’s no good way to kill a bad idea

qz.com

44 pointsspcelzrd28 comments

The article demonstrates a specific way that "bad" ideas can become more deeply ingrained.

I am mildly agnostic towards the amount of contribution man is making towards temperature change, I've read reasonable people with various opinions on it. I consider myself an environmentalist, I think the clean air act was a good thing and I am fine with government regulations around the environment, since it is a commons towards which we have an intergenerational stewardship relationship.

However, when I see skepticism towards man-caused climate change lumped in with believing in lizard people, I can feel myself physically becoming more dug in in my skepticism.

This is not rational, of course: it's a "yeah, well fuck you" reaction. And perhaps it reflects poorly on me. Certainly it will earn me no karma here, nor among the people I usually associate with. But, nonetheless, it is a phenomenological reality, pushing me more deeply into what the author considers a bad idea.

> Once a view is popular with the general public, or just within your own ‘tribe,’ it takes a lot of courage even to question it to yourself

Indeed. One wishes this criticism was raised more frequently to self-criticism.

> However, when I see skepticism towards man-caused climate change lumped in with believing in lizard people ...

As it should be. It should be viewed as even worse. The lizard conspiracy people aren't destroying our planet.

There's three things wrong with this:

- you're failing to heed the warning that demonising your opponents makes them further entrenched in their position. If you're trying to save our planet by persuading climate change skeptics, you should stop doing that.

- You're equating the plausability of the lizard conspiracy to the plausability of climate change being man-made. Don't, because they're not equally implausible, and it's counterproductive.

- Your argument that climate change skeptics are destroying the planet is only true if climate change is indeed man-made, and therefore has no relevance to the determination of climate change's existence and causes.

> Your argument that climate change skeptics are destroying the planet is only true if climate change is indeed man-made

Even if climate change is man made (and I believe it is), the argument is only true if the predicted dire outcomes of climate change in the predicted timescales are also true (this I'm not as convinced of). There are likely currently unknown variables that will retroactively devalue the predictive strength of our models one we observe how the future actually is vs. the predictions.

Also, skeptics aren't destroying the planet any more than non-skeptics - everybody still drives cars, eats meat, and uses electricity.

It can be argued that skeptics are hindering government policies that could help mitigate negative effects of climate change, but so far the policies I've seen proposed would have a near negligible effect other than making us feel good for doing something.

> But, nonetheless, it is a phenomenological reality, pushing me more deeply into what the author considers a bad idea.

Humans have an awareness of social manipulation being practiced. It helps us to preserve our own independent perspective in spite of coercion from "influencers".

> This is not rational, of course: it's a "yeah, well fuck you" reaction.

This is why I question the value of the popular practice of demonizing skeptics.

It's one thing to discuss solutions "Hey, I know you are skeptical of the severity of the predicted outcomes of climate change, but I think we can both agree that any kind of pollution is probably bad in the long run. How do you feel about nuclear power?" vs. "You climate denier! Do you also deny the holocaust? Thou fool!"

> However, when I see skepticism towards man-caused climate change lumped in with believing in lizard people, I can feel myself physically becoming more dug in in my skepticism.

There is a benefit of such a thinking btw. It may not be rational based on what you really know, but when someone is attacking you irrationally for 'questioning' something, your response is also to drop the rationality of it and go "Fuck You".

I have the same reaction to whenever people started claiming that if you believe that Obama wasn't born in America, then you're a racist, my "Fuck You" reaction is the same, to take a piss in this pissing competition, whereas I couldn't give a rat's ass to where he was born, nor I consider that to be a disqualification of being the President.

Regarding Climate Change, I don't believe that the issue of 'Climate Change' is an issue of science. Take for instance this is the first comment on the highly controversial editorial NYT recently published:

> Brett Stephens is a smart guy who knows absolutely nothing about the most urgent issue of our time. People are dying now, people are starving now, people are forced to leave their homes and their countries now. Species are dying, forests are disappearing the oceans and coral reefs are being damaged beyond repair. And Greenland and the Antarctica are melting and seas are rising.

> Facts, science, not opinions. Mr Stephens should come down from his Ivory Tower at the WSJ and go see the world. If he is one more Republican pawn that has been bought off by the fossil fuel lobby, and Russia, like our Illegitimate President, we don't need him cluttering up The NY Times OpEd page.

The guy is claims to be all about science and reason, but is cheering 'emotion'. His 'emotional rhetoric' does not make me wanna embrace 'science, reason and facts', rather to fight his real position: 'Emotional rhetoricism'.

Edit: My point is that killing an idea is necessarily hard, because ideas automatically have moral superiority over humans. We as humans must intentionally choose to endorse certain ideas which serve our interests, and we must do so knowing that we are indelibly influenced by those same ideas.

Pirsig, from Lila:

"Just as it is more moral for a doctor to kill a germ than patient, so it is more moral for an idea to kill a society than it is for society to kill an idea."

Persig elaborates, explaining how e.g. civil rights in the USA are an example of an idea coming to kill off a societal practice (racism) in favor of an idealized society (post-racist egalitarianism).

Hofstadter, from GEB:

"It is not such a bad image, the brain as an ant colony! ... It is not such a bad image, the brain as an ATN-colony!"

In this section, Hofstadter explains that the brain could be viewed analogistically to symbol networks, and explores how individual symbols could exist in many different contexts but are nonetheless coalesced in meaning when doing actual computation.

Similarly, ideas are like symbols in the network of humans, and the computation carried out by humans communicating in their daily lives automatically gives rise to higher-level idea networks which use humanity as a substrate, not unlike how Hofstadter's anteater perceives the intelligence of an ant colony on top of the individual ants in the colony.

A final tweet [0]:

"Nobody likes hearing that they are merely an idea-forge, a virus-hold for memetic mutation, a propagator of the idea-marketplace, do they?"

[0] https://twitter.com/corbinsimpson/status/733424172651581441

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Backfire_effect

https://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/06/10/the-backfire-effect/

What should be evident from the studies on the backfire effect is you can never win an argument online. When you start to pull out facts and figures, hyperlinks and quotes, you are actually making the opponent feel as though they are even more sure of their position than before you started the debate. As they match your fervor, the same thing happens in your skull. The backfire effect pushes both of you deeper into your original beliefs.

It would seem that your position is impossible to argue. But what about the times when two people do come to an agreement?

I will agree you are right in many cases, but "never" is a strong word.

Their rule tells them not to debate it with you, though.

We wouldn't have had much of a debate anyway. People here on HN are pretty reasonable and we agreed save a choice of one word.

> What should be evident from the studies on the backfire effect is you can never win an argument online.

Nonsense. It may be difficult to win such an argument, but it's not impossible. I've seen people being convinced online, and I've managed to convince people of opposing views myself on occasion.

> you can never win an argument online

This is true online and it's true in person. As you said even if you "win" by getting the other person to concede, the net result is often that they are more walled into their position than before.

I've come to believe the real issue is that you should not be trying to "win" a discussion in the first place.

Rather, you should assume (or at the very least pretend) for the moment that their position is justified and they are "right". Under that presumption, ask questions and allow them to elaborate on their position. In short, instead of talking, listen without judging until you really, truly understand and have acknowledged and accepted their position.

At that point you have a tool very few people ever acquire in a discussion. You have the ability to frame your argument in their terms.

Now, that doesn't mean you will convince them you are right and they are wrong, but it does mean they are going to be far more likely to listen to you and consider what you've said more fairly than if you had simply bombarded them with facts and figures, i.e. "logic".

Or, in other words, "have conversations, not debates". It's surprising how many otherwise smart people don't realise that only a very, very small minority actually enjoys debating.

“Once a view is popular with the general public, or just within your own ‘tribe,’ it takes a lot of courage even to question it to yourself,” says Blackford. For example, just 50 years ago, homosexuality was banned in many western countries. “It would have been a very brave person to put their hand up and say, ‘There’s nothing wrong with being gay.’”

And there you have it. The absolutes slither and shift. One generation's unquestioned truth is another's indisputable anathema. Today, it would take a very brave person to put his or her hand up and say, "There's something wrong with being gay".

in Blue America, yes. In Red America, no.

social cohesion (or lack of it) and ideological balkanization has dramatically intensified lately.

Here is the funny part. This article is a bad idea and it now can't be killed.

Turtles all the way down.

P.S. If you believe you are the rational one and that other people are irrational, you are acting irrationally.

Interesting postscript you have there. If I can predict the irrational actions of other people, can I not be rational?

This certainly appears to happen frequently in the stock market, when only a few people will be rational while the hordes are irrational (e.g. market tops and market bottom being the most visible points of this behavior).

I suppose it's in the title, but I was disappointed the article doesn't even attempt to provide some solutions.

The one proposal the article makes is poorly thought out.

It's become clear that in today's political culture ignoring or dismissing bad ideas without properly addressing them with at least feigned respect pushes the on the fence population into echo chambers where the idea can be confirmed as good, e.g. anti-vaxxers, flat world believers, etc...

I think one of the problems is that most people (who live in liberal-as-in-Locke societies) want the world to work on their terms, which includes rationality-as-they've-constructed-it. So most people want things to be "logical," or think people should respect "logic," while missing the points that logic must be grounded on premises that are taken to be true-in-themselves, that deduction can only be done after the fact to justify one's instincts, and that most statements can't really be posed formally anyway. It's better to think about rationality as a certain kind of intuition, where some things trip the bullshit alarm and prompt closer inspection.

I say this to answer the question, why don't philosophers and psychologists come up with good ways of convincing people of things? I think it's because they're blinded by their paradigms---as are we all.

As for how to change people's minds, I find that it only works if people are already unsettled about what they believe. How can you unsettle people? That's more of a skill that has to be discovered, and I'm not the best at it myself, but the answer probably revolves around really deeply exploring the other person's beleifs with them. Not trying to argue they're wrong, but just trying to figure out what their beliefs might look like if carried through. If you can manage to decohere their worldview, you'll probably get somewhere.

I think you might find some solutions in a great negotiation book called "Never Split the Difference". Written by a former hostage negotiator. If you can negotiate with someone who thinks they are the Messiah and has a gun you might stand a chance online.

The problem is negotiation requires care and a lot of work. It's hard. And in public forums others will probably mess up your progress.

My best guess in a public forum would be to play the "good cop" and quote and defend the person I wanted to persuade. And while looking like I'm defending them, and being their friend, I would put forth an idea that is more moderate and thus move them towards being persuaded. This would be hard to do in the chaos of an online forum like HN or Reddit though.

Thanks I'll have to check out that book.

I agree, a public forum really complicates the issue.

Yep, we still believe in the humors theory of medicine. In fact, there is a popular app to help remind people to get their blood drained regularly. There are also billboards reminding everyone that washing your hands is a waste of water. We also believe that the sun rotates around the Earth. As such, since we are the center of the universe, everyone laughs at the crackpots who suggest that we would ever want to travel to other planets or even the moon. /s

Of course, there has been a good way to kill ideas - evidence with real world effect and patient engagement of naysayers over time. It makes me sad as from the 1500s - 1900s we had so much invention and progress and revolutionized people's thinking about the world, and we the heirs of all of that despair that we can't get rid of bad ideas. If so, the fault lies with us, and this fatalistic view is a bad idea that needs to be killed.

Living with the internet has made rational people less tolerant of ignorance, as the real answers are certainly out there to dispute dubious claims.

However, the internet has also provided enclaves for those who wish to embrace ignorance with solidarity.

The big question: are we as a species and a civilization moving forwards, or backwards?

> The big question: are we as a species and a civilization moving forwards, or backwards?

malformed question. do you believe that there is a linear trajectory of "civilization development"? I certainly don't.

> We also believe that the sun rotates around the Earth.

Is it possible to prove that the sun doesn't rotate around the earth other than saying "the supporting mathematics are much, MUCH easier if the earth rotates around the sun"? From a relativistic perspective, couldn't you define the earth as being still and everything else as moving relative to it?

What do you mean by "prove"? Yes, you can define the earth as stationary, but if you're taking that definition seriously – rather than just doing it to make the math easier within that frame of reference, or for rhetorical purposes – if you're taking it seriously then you've got a whole host of implications that you have to explain. For example, why is Earth stationary, with the sun rotating around it, while all the other planets rotate around the sun? Given what else we know about gravity, how do you account for the sun with its huge mass orbiting the relatively tiny mass of Earth?

One response is that you throw those "known" things out as well, and so on down the rabbit hole.

We prefer theories to be coherent with the rest of our knowledge. Depending on the extent to which you're willing to dispense with that – and to dispense with a huge number of claims we take as settled – sure, you can choose to hold on to basically any view. The question is why you're holding on to that and throwing out the rest.

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