Arguing from compassion (2021)

One of the companies I worked for seemingly attracted this type of personality. Of the people like this I've met (and been actually very cautious around), maybe 90% worked at that specific company.

This is why Hierocles the Stoic had the right idea when he pushed people to move one circle over. This is a far more practical goal than striving for a "just world".

Each one of us is as it were entirely encompassed by many circles, some smaller, others larger, the latter enclosing the former on the basis of their different and unequal dispositions relative to each other. The first and closest circle is the one which a person has drawn as though around a centre, his own mind. This circle encloses the body and anything taken for the sake of the body. For it is virtually the smallest circle, and almost touches the centre itself. Next, the second one further removed from the centre but enclosing the first circle; this contains parents, siblings, wife, and children. The third one has in it uncles and aunts, grandparents, nephews, nieces, and cousins. The next circle includes the other relatives, and this is followed by the circle of local residents, then the circle of fellow-tribes-men, next that of fellow-citizens, and then in the same way the circle of people from neighbouring towns, and the circle of fellow-countrymen. The outermost and largest circle, which encompasses all the rest, is that of the whole human race.

Once these have all been surveyed, it is the task of a well tempered man, in his proper treatment of each group, to draw the circles together somehow towards the centre, and to keep zealously transferring those from the enclosing circles into the enclosed ones ... It is incumbent on us to respect people from the third circle as if they were those from the second, and again to respect our other relatives as if they were those from the third circle. For although the greater distance in blood will remove some affection, we must still try hard to assimilate them. The right point will be reached if, through our own initiative, we reduce the distance of the relationship with each person.

I think is a way oversimplification of geopolitical situation in Ukraine and Russian motives.

Just my two cents

Many people have a spirit of benevolence, but many other people have endured trauma and deeply believe that the next generation must be hazed too.

As an optimist and humanist, a shocking revelation for me was hearing of the "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" in South Africa. (I think via a talk by Chomsky or Zizek)

Many atrocities were committed by both sides during the Apartheid era. Enough said.

Years later the Government of National Unity wanted to heal the country, to bury festering resentments and feuds. Perpetrators and victims were brought together under supervision to talk openly and work toward forgiveness. It's a great idea in principle. Although the commission is widely considered successful, a strange thing occurred, something that we also buried at the Nuremberg trials.

A quite small but significant group were not merely unrepentant, they used the commission as a platform to attack and abuse their victims again. "I'm really glad I tortured your children, let me tell you about how they screamed", and so on.

Sure, always aim to "star man" in debate, but one must be hard enough underneath to expect occasionally to be shot out of the sky, not by an uncharitable or entrenched interlocutor but by an plain old evil asshole. They exist. They're not "psychopaths" or even "trolls", but get a thrill out of acting so as to add chaos and pain to the world.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_and_Reconciliation_Commi...

Just look at the foreign policy of every country in power. Look at the willingness of any power group to give up that power without intense military or financial pressure. Let's see - slavery, wars of conquest, ecological destruction, finding black men automatically guilty, rape, child abuse, monopolies, wealth concentration, regressive California property tax policy, etc.

I wonder if more people actually want others to see our humanity than us to see the humanity of others. I would strongly bet on that actually.

I think a lot of people whose concern for others drops off sharply beyond their own family and friends believe that others don't have concern for them. It can become a preemptive indifference: they don't care about me, why should I care about them.

What I want to work on and help people realize is that I care about you, even if I don't know you. And the work I do to get there is often me realizing how much people care about me. Maybe this is what he's getting at with the starman concept, to flip ourselves from thinking others are trying to hurt us and reacting to them with hatred or indifference, to believing they actually care about us.

And I agree that many people may not want to do this, so I'm mostly just trying to do it for myself. I wonder if his argument would have come off differently if instead of telling people what they should do, he said these are the tools he employs and how they work in his life.

My conservative friends are very concerned about anyone they know, and very worried about how they can't backstop them because of supporting the whole of society. 2 of them would fly / drive across the country at a moments notice to help me out for weeks. But they aren't concerned with people outside that circle. Of the 2 I had deep conversations with, they both were more focused on setting up social circles to support everyone else such as churches, local community, family, which to them is the fallback, not the government.

That's about as far as I got.

When I read this, I scoffed a little bit. A better idea than one proposed two thousand years ago? Say it isn't so! Why haven't we thought of this before?

I think you hooked rightly on the Ukraine and Russia conflict. Sometimes, there is not a "best version" of someone.

The author seems to reject that outright, saying we need to recognize our opponents humanity in order to effectively argue, with the premise that there's something good in there to tease out.

On what basis can the author say that there's something good inside? Their "humanity"? That reasoning is rather circular...

It's not even that the Russians who think this are especially evil people, or irrational people, or people who are unlike us in any fundamental way.

The reason they think this way, and that you do not, is because they believe different myths than you do.

Let's say your worldview is defined by Ivan Ilyin [0]. You don't consider other people or ethics at all. The only thing that matters in the world is God. And God is displeased that the perfect Russia that He created has been spoiled.

The only way to heal the world and make God happy is to restore a certain kind of utopian Russia. That pure and perfect Russia is united in territory and belief, so it can't tolerate any division or fragmentation within itself.

Agents of the devil in the West are deviously dismantling and disintegrating that pure and perfect Russia, piece by piece. Westerners are carving off pieces of territory like Ukraine, and dividing Russian people with seditious Western ideas like democracy and gender fluidity and a free press.

So it's a supernatural struggle between good and evil. An existential battle like that means there's no room for this messy business of parliaments and voting, or compromising with different perspectives.

We need one strong leader, a true and pure leader, to inherit the mantle of past great leaders like Stalin and Peter the Great. He will be God's instrument to make the hard decisions and lead the nation in glorious struggle. This divinely inspired leader will create unity in the world by restoring and reuniting Russia itself.

----

Where do you even begin to have a conversation when you don't share the most basic of beliefs or values? There is no common ground in wanting a safer, fairer, more just world. We have our own foundational myths that we rarely acknowledge or interrogate, and our myths don't intersect with Russia's myths at all.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Ilyin

The 3 random people decide that now they can rob the store with impunity, take a bunch of stuff, and then leave the clerk on the floor. Eventually someone else came in and helped the clerk, but it wasn't like those 3 people were part of some psychopath convention. They just independently decided that getting about $20 worth of free stuff was a better option than calling 911 or checking on the man.

I think if such practices became mainstream, then people would begin to realize the difficulties involved in having a coherent conversation about a point of disagreement. The passive-aggressive cudgels you mention would fall flat because it is instantly noticeable as not fitting the necessary patterns for coherent conversation.

No one needs to accept or reject the other. the point of an argument is to educate each other, answer questions, and allow each other to fit both opinions into their own world view (ex. what are the limits / specifics to your belief?). Maybe someone changes their mind during that conversation, maybe they dont. maybe someone needs to let the new information ferment in their minds and life for a bit before it clicks. that is part of giving someone benefit of the doubt

maybe you are talking to someone who is venting, or in the middle of a mental episode (i mean that literally, not derogatorily), or was unfortunately born a narcissistic manipulator and cant help themselves. It doesnt matter, they cannot "win" the conversation - no one can - and the more people that realize this truth about conversations in general, the better the world will become

It is interesting to see how labeling a technique like this and assigning it a sense of moral superiority seems to invite the exact abuse you describe.

I’ve noticed this with the recent popularity of “steelmanning”; Many of the explicitly-labeled steelman arguments I’ve read lately are actually just strawman arguments, but the author tries to preempt criticism by labeling it a steelman and pretending it is the most robust counter argument that could exist. Often these false steelman arguments arise when the author doesn’t understand the topic as well as they think they do but they believe that “steelmanning” automatically makes them an expert on the counter arguments.

In the end there isn’t a lot you can do about it, except learn when to cut bait and move on. I agree with you that it’s still worth trying.

This remind me about the idea of "holy wars" in "The denial of death" of Ernest Becker.

“Since the main task of human life is to become heroic and transcend death, every culture must provide its members with an intricate symbolic system that is covertly religious. This means that ideological conflicts between cultures are essentially battles between immortality projects, holy wars.”

Also something along the lines of preferring to annihilate the other before they risk to be symbolically annihilated, like if we prefer the physical death before than the death of the symbolic. For both the other (when is an ideological opponent) and ourselves. We may be physically death, but symbolically immortal.

Even in very tense settings, it’s hard for people to be disagreeable about you accurately relaying their view — maybe even better than they did themselves. That makes people feel listened to and understood, which are powerful motivators in human psychology.

I won’t pretend I always do this, but I’ve certainly had the best success inquiring about their position until I can steelman it and only then addressing why I disagree.

As Chris Voss would say, you don’t want them to say “you’re right”, you want them to say “that’s right”.

But that's a good and self-reinforcing thing! If you are spending all your energy on compassion, then you are not spending your energy on talking angrily, and so are inadvertently lulled into listening, or at least not over-talking. If one can't be genuinely compassionate yet, then at least falling into a neutral non-attacking position is a good thing.

Agreed.

> What really helps you to progress is to work on yourself (whatever is your favorite tool, therapy, meditation, etc).

This, however, is very consistent with NVC. Not just with NVC but with most communications books - especially those involving difficult issues. These books focus more on figuring out what's inside of you than in the actual verbal communication. If you're upset/angry, the goal is to understand what is causing you to be angry and how you got there - why would you get angry and someone else wouldn't?

The audience are the other readers, not the other commenter. It's enough to convince them. If valid arguments are not enough for them then that's their problem.

... detached from any real trust system.

"Social media" is not social. As a business, it is the monetisation of strife.

As an exchange of ideas, social media is (as you say) mostly people flinging words at one another.

To be "social", participants in social media would need to manifest commitment to real solutions and people would be accountable for their words and deeds. This is how human society works. There are social consequences in real social exchange. It is a trust system.

I propose that the reason why we hear of people's long-time friendships and family ties collapsing is because those social ties have simply become weak. The pretext for the rupture doesn't much matter.

> To star-man is to not only engage with the most charitable version of your opponent’s argument, but also with the most charitable version of your opponent, by acknowledging their good intentions and your shared desires despite your disagreements.

This is an excellent approach. But it depends on the trust system of real society.

I don't think social media communication has to be dehumanizing, I think it comes into how much do I share about how I'm actually feeling and my actual identity on the internet where hundreds if not thousands or millions of people might see it? And yet it can be soooo easy to share on the internet, from our phone or computer, just talking/typing into the screen, at almost any time and any place?

So then I do think it can come into "how do I pretend to be cool and superhuman...so that people don't know too much about me?"

In a conversation with a friend over a beer, one might open up about why they hate inflation because they think they might lose their job and they're afraid if they lose their job, their wive and kids might leave them. I bet that's the real underlying reason for that person, yet on the internet, that same person might say that evil bankers are trying to destroy us with inflation because who admits to being afraid they're going to lose their life on the internet, with their name attached?

This approach could be used in meatspace, too. And, like it or not, our lives are increasingly being spent online.

What I've seen is that sometimes the simplest of arguments, when both sides continue opening up, can reveal some existential conflicts within us. I think one of the main conflicts we fight is actually opening up too much and showing too much of our humanity (or our perceived inhumanity).

So yeah, some of these conflicts might go deeper than we want and nudge/force us to confront things we've been trying to avoid. It's something I fear in resolving conflict with people, I like to keep going and sometimes people will say to me "that's enough!" and cut it off, and I think it may relate to them pushing up against those biases/conflicts as you've mentioned.

Sometimes it's just not possible. Some people have impenetrable barriers they will defend with no regard for how they do so and the way it affects others.

That being said I like to think of it like I'm reaching out to someone, and often they don't reach back, in a majority of cases they don't want that contact. Those times when someone does, though, brings me great hope.

I really appreciate this point. I do this not necessarily to win the argument or change how the other person is thinking/feeling, I do it mostly because I feel better when I do it. Believing someone is out to get me can cause me a lot of fear. Believing they don't care about me can cause me a lot of loneliness. Believing they're trying their best and are swamped with suffering? I actually feel relieved and maybe even grateful that they may have tried so hard to help me.

Will I ever know their deepest intentions? Probably not, but I sure feel a lot better when I believe they have good intentions for me.

Glad to see you comment on here, you're one of the few names I recognize on HN and appreciate what you said and what you often say, thank you.

So basically anyone who is not as passionate about some random issue as you are. This is a problem, you can’t even ask to talk about something else without becoming the enemy.

I'm not sure how the current world is any more post-truth than the one 30 or 60 years ago.

Be kind to people, but ruthless to systems.

We easily and consistently dismiss any argument that shows emotion, are in fact proud of doing so. It creates a dynamic where we're trying to outdo each other's inhumanity, flex how cold and logical we can be in pursuit of a goal or argument. But without the humanity beneath, without the emotion to motivate us, there is no point to anything, no reason to prefer any outcome to any other.

The ad hominem fallacy is meant to end discussion by attacking the interlocutor. This approach is meant to facilitate discussion by fostering a positive relationship with the interlocutor; the positive relationship is a means, not the end.

Logically, you are correct. Realistically, with a lot of people, failing to address the interlocutor will result in a failure to address the issue.

The "Let's keep personalities and egos out of this" methodology works in a rather narrow domain.

Because it is an absurd mischaracterisation of the benefits people see in UBI and most proposals for it.

> UBI literally lets people receive free money even if they sit at home all day.

See this is where nuance starts showing the straw. There is an important and significant difference between "you want UBI so you can sit at home and do nothing" and "even if you did nothing UBI would still cover you." One of the differences is intent. If you want UBI because you are lazy, is a very different situation from, you wanted UBI for good reasons but ended up using it while unemployed.

> At some level, a UBI proponent has to "want" this outcome.

Some proponents of UBI do not want it to cover rent + food + bills. So no, some proponents do not want that. Some just want to simplify goverment aid into a single payment. Some want the residuals of automation to be shared by all. In either case it would hardly cover for people to be sitting at home doing nothing.

An advocate might disagree (rightly or wrongly) that UBI will necessarily lead to people sitting at home all day.

An advocate might agree that some people sitting at home all day is a possible undesirable outcome of UBI, but might be willing to tolerate that risk in order to achieve some other outcome that they consider more important. that doesn't mean they want that outcome; just that they are willing to tolerate it if it happens, as long as the expected benefits are also possible.

An advocate might even agree that some people sitting at home all day is a necessary and undesirable consequence, but be willing to tolerate it, in order to achieve another desirable outcome.

All of these positions are logically possible for a rational person to hold, so long as they don't know them to be wrong. None of them require that person to desire people to sit at home all day.

Therefore we cannot conclude from UBI advocacy that the advocate desires people to sit at home all day, which means that claiming they must is a strawman.

The former is a clear misrepresentation of the views of most UBI proponents. The latter is an accurate part of their views, albeit a loaded/(mis)leading statement.

The poster is splitting hairs, of course.

Just because a minority might "sit at home all day and collect free money" doesn't mean the UBI proponent wants it on any level.

Projecting this want onto the proponent as part of their argument makes it a strawman.

So it's no different from a business investment then.

They were not talking about couching every fact or snippet taught in physics class getting couched in all this extra "sugarcoating". They were talking about the kind of conversations that almost never go well at all - they're trying to improve the odds of an interaction convincing someone to change their polarized viewpoint from 0.01% to 0.03%.

For that use-case, obviously there's value in exploring different techniques, given the typical technique (scream at them and then block them) doesn't work well at all at actually changing their mind.

The most rational thing someone can do is accept the reality that acknowledging feelings and emotion are a pre-requisite to problem solving.

Often, I see people arguing straw or steel with either their limited view of the oponents position or with the basic asumption that their oponent is an idiot or malicious.

You see it to a lesser extent in software and math too though - just look at any mathematical article on wikipedia. The "dynamic programming" article is a good one for this.

I'm not sure this is a new problem.

By the lingo, I assume the author is at least tangentially associated with the online rationalism thing, Slate Star Codex and Yudkowsky and effective altruism and all that.

By their standards, this is a damn haiku.

In my experience, this seems central to almost all ideologies. A common enemy, often greatly embellished or grossly misrepresented, has been used to bolster tribal cohesion since before humanity. I'm trying to think of an ideology that doesn't use this, but I'm coming up blank.

This is why, if you attack an idea, the person defending it feels threatened. They go into a fight-or-flight mode, which almost completely deactivates their ability to evaluate your arguments rationally.

Star-manning makes clear from the start that you recognize, appreciate, and share their intentions. You aren't opposed to the things they care about the most. You're actually an ally. They don't need to fight you or run from you.

From this vantage point, you can discuss strategies for accomplishing the goals you both share, and there is a much higher likelihood they will be open to hearing the reasons you think your strategy will be more effective than they would if their hindbrain activated at the beginning of the conversation.