Persuade or Be Persuaded | Hacker News Reader

Persuade or Be Persuaded

thepointmag.com

31 pointshowsilly6 comments

Pretending abstract principles have black-or-white truth value is the root cause of the problem. Each party trying to persuade the other in an argument is just papering over that fundamental issue. How can two people on opposite sides of a contentious debate ever agree if their logical axioms/priorities are not the same? Debating principles is a touch of luxurious navel-gazing that is available only when suitably screened from real world consequences and related emotions.

A far more constructive approach, IMHO, is to debate actions, and try to find middle ground. The reasons for which either of the disputing parties might consider the resulting action satisfactory might be completely different, but what matters is that it allows the deadlock to be resolved and for people to move on. In most cases, that is what the parties seek, and are happy to work towards and concede minor ideological points in the matter.

However, with increasing emphasis on abstract statements, people easily lose touch with reality and are prone to pointless bikeshedding, but with increasing polarization and anger, while the actual situation becomes worse.

It seems more natural that we derive principles from behavior as a bunch of abstractions convenient to communicate, rather than deriving behavior from principles.

Crying that something is too abstract to settle is a problem, too. If someone is refusing to let you move past something you wish they'd just let go, it's possible they're right and you owe it to them to persuade them or use force.

Edit: persuasion is generally preferable to force.

Often you cannot give the proper context of why an action is prefered until you debate/speak of the principles. For example, we both may want healthcare, but there isn't an easy 'action' to arrive at without discussing the 'truth' of if people have the right to their health or if the framing of the decision should be a market economic one. So I think you need both: both abstract arguments (without navel-gazing) and also a focus on the here-and-now immediacy of need fulfillment.

I think, increasingly these days, those who are in the wrong (like the picket-line crossing author) know that they're wrong and wallow in it like pigs in... mud. You can't convince folks like that, and it's disingenuous of them to demand that you waste your time trying to do so.

Good response here: https://thepointmag.com/2019/politics/whose-university-respo...

Don't be a scab.

This is a harsh thing to say and here goes. This article and its response are boring. They're what happen when you take a high-stakes situation (union creation, scabs, overworked grad students) and take all the emotion out of it. People already interested may read these happily, but as a layperson, it took some effort for me.

The tldr; is ("scab" professor) supports holding class even when the sky is falling because of their duty to educate. The other side (grad student organizer) argues that not holding class was okay because many undergrads supported the grad student's efforts. Scattered throughout are references to Plato/Socrates and some philosophical musings on if grad students are employees in the since of working for a business (and therefore able to unionize).

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