How can I influence others without manipulating them?
andiroberts.com
andiroberts.com
If it is truly two way in this sense, including your best efforts to extract from the other party their strongest, potentially unexpected, arguments for their position and give them your due consideration, it shouldn't feel like manipulation.
Well, yes there is.
In fact, that is the central problem of unresolvable divisions. People implicitly making themselves "the decider" by imagining their principles are so great as to preclude any need for revision. (Faith in the primacy of one's beliefs, is inherently the same as faith in one's own primacy to choose beliefs.)
There is nothing wrong with having strong core principles, because your best understanding supports them strongly. But as soon as you discount the possibility of them being wrong, even partially wrong, not the whole picture, framed within a non-tautological assumption, or not supercedable by other wiser principles, ..., you become the enemy of your own progress.
Nobody's knowledge, wisdom, or principles are complete, or have consistent primacy over all others.
Ultimately, principles, ethics and morality are a kind of economics. Decisions are tradeoffs between options. How does one make choices, so that the result is the outcome with the greatest value, and doesn't create other problems that exceed what is solved. That is a decidability problem, which will never have a complete or completely consistent answer.
The landscape for the question "What is best?" and "What is true?" is chaotic, fractal, non-Euclidean and infinitely complex.
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One of the biggest reasons to strong man the arguments of others, is the better at strong manning you become, the more likely you find something worth changing your own views over. Regardless of how explicit, implicit, or non-existent that was in their original argument.
Leveraging others disagreement, to identify misunderstandings and gaps in one's own knowledge, is the most important reason to talk to someone we disagree with.
Persuading them should be second, but is also more likely if we are clearly pushing ourselves to improve first.
There are very few cases where someone who disagrees with us doesn't see something wrong with our side. Or at a minimum, is not convinced because we are not as clear of a communicator as we think we are. Or not as good a listener as to what their question is, as we think. Even when we are "mostly right" and they are "mostly wrong", others rarely can't teach us something more about what we already know in one of those dimensions.
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Finally, don't try to persuade people in real time. Discuss, then move on. Discuss again if they want to.
People don't decide anything big in the moment.
They need time to understand an argument. Time to consider both its strengths and weaknesses. And time to consider ramifications we haven't even imagined. And the freedom to prioritize what is worth going down a rabbit hole for, in their life.
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I have been preparing to persuade a lot of people of something highly contrarian for a long time. This topic lights all the fires in me!
The easiest retort is Anne Frank. You're hiding her in your attic and a Nazi asks if you're hiding enemies of the state. There you go, a time when you'll definitely lie and cheat!
Someone might answer, "well, fine. I don't cheat or lie unless I'm in extraordinary circumstances." That's fine, they've let go of dogmatism then, now the interesting conversation starts of where the line is, what constitutes extraordinary circumstances. That's a very interesting conversation I believe.
I don't think this is the win you think it is. Kantians and se deontologists will absolutely say that no, you cannot lie and cheat even in that scenario. You have a moral duty to not lie but also a moral duty to resist tyranny. You cannot sacrifice one to achieve the other, you must choose only options that fulfill both duties.
If a Kantian can be put into a situation where their morals would require them to say the word that gives up Anne Frank, we can safely say it's a bad moral system.
Not unless you can present some proof of this. Your implicit assumption that we should care about outcomes over principles has its own set of moral failures, like the repugnant conclusion.
And I maintain my simple point: if your ethical system doesn't allow the flexibility to not give up Anne Frank, it's a bad ethical system. Unless you believe giving up Anne Frank isn't wrong? Then you're a bad person and shouldn't be considered in conversations about ethics!
Design it in a way to have good outcomes if you're worried about repugnant conclusions. Personally I believe putting it on paper is a fool's errand - vibes based ethics seems to work as good as one can get from an ethical system.
The universe doesn't respect that viewpoint. There is no mechanism in reality or life that prevents hard tradeoffs from having to be made.
What the universe does or doesn't respect has no bearing on what is or is not right / good.
That would be good and right, indeed.
Or, making actual choices in reality? Where there are limits to what we can do, but making hard choices well has positive impact.
I am speaking to the latter.
Impact is irrelevant in Kantian ethics, deontological ethics [1] and virtue ethics [2]. A choice is good and right because it the nature of the choice itself in deontology, or because of how it defines one character in virtue ethics, not because of what effects it may or may not have on the world.
Every novice approaching ethics naively assumes a framework of consequentialism [3], where every choice is judged by its consequences, but this framework is deeply problematic and we have literal proofs that not all ethic theories can be reformulated in terms of consequences [4].
The original post I replied to also naively assumed a consequentialist framing, and I replied that this framing is not universal and so his conclusion does not follow. You can continue to double down on "it's obvious that consequences matter for ethical choices", but that doesn't make it true, and thus, it does not support the original argument.
[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-deontological/
[2] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/
From an arm chair perspective, this is a wonderful shortcut isn't it! Roughly, treat everyone how we would want to be treated - or some other limited formulation, with no horizon of thought about downstream impact past that.
Presumably, inflexible pacifism would get a sympathetic response from Kantians.
A kind of intellectual purity, at the relative cost to others' lives.
Interesting as an idea. Not so great for actual humans.
What exactly is the imagined benefit, that outweighs the well being of others and ourselves? A circular form of philosophical purity? A view that is better because it deems itself better?
EDIT: Just saw this:
> Not unless you can present some proof of this. Your implicit assumption that we should care about outcomes over principles has its own set of moral failures, like the repugnant conclusion.
Well, most people start by caring about other people and themselves. Not as an assumption but as a real status.
Doing so has a particularly interesting and meaningful consequence. By prioritizing better results for human beings, positive impact can better produce more positive impact. Creating a positive spiral where benefits of the ethics of prioritizing impact compound, and compound.
So for those that care about our fellow beings, and nontrivial non-limiting implications of choices, there is solid ground for ethics. Nothing arbitrary or foundationally circular.
Need to make up assumptions.
In contrast, what is the assumption or principle that values principles over people. What is the actual point? How is that deemed better than prioritizing a better world. How is that better or richer than ethics that achieve a higher bar, by continually re-incorporating, navigating and producing an ever more complex enabling future?
Reframing that reality as "actually it doesn't matter what the consequence is as long as we followed our values to the letter!" is convenient, but in modern terminology, a cope.
I read your links and was already aware of deontology anyway but it was a nice refresher. Yup, you're right, we're describing what we care about! And in doing so we represent the majority of human thinking - maybe not the human thinking that gets written down, but nonetheless.
Why should people care to convince dusty academics what is right and wrong using logical systems and proofs when the dusty academic has lost the ethical debate immediately in the eyes of most when he admits that according to his ethical system, lying to prevent Anne Frank is wrong? This is instinctively wrong to most people, so, why should we care? Rigid logic is worthless when people are looking for something else, and rigid logic alone isn't enough to build a society.
I feel like you got to deontology and stopped. I've never actually met someone who studies ethics who got to deontology and didn't later end up with emergency exit modes, such as the Anne frank scenario. Using ethics to live a virtuous life is well and good, but Nazis don't do that, and you won't convince them using deontology to not round people up. You don't have to go all the way the other way and make "ends justify the means" arguments. Just allow yourself the flexibility to say "in an emergency, of course it's ok to lie," which may not seem logically sound, but society isn't logically nor is it possible to make it purely logical enough to be a valid ground for Kantian ethics to result in actual virtuous people - because the man that gives up Anne Frank telling the truth is not virtuous, he is a selfish monster, sacrificing a human life for his own sense of virtue and preservation of ethical purity, a disgusting trade off.
Caring about oneself and others' welfare is a direct result of being creatures that must make choices to survive. The compounding positive sums of increasing cooperative behavior are not arbitrary. They pay for themselves, many many times over.
Thus, practical virtue appears naturally, and persists, and grows, regardless of what you want to call it, or alternatives that anyone comes up with.
If you are going to argue about/against that practical impact, at least acknowledge practical virtue has a very special status.
Or you are arguing from (real or posed) ignorance.
The burden us on you, if you want to claim this practical progression should be superseded.
Without that, an appeal to impractical principles over practical good, is very much in the vein of "telling me what deity you believe in".
What "good" is "good" that doesn't reciprocally maximize "good" going forward.
So far your comments lack any grounding beyond itself. Perverse "purity". That relegates virtue to an hermetic aesthetic or OCD tick.
In your hypothetical situation, I owe no such obligation to the Nazis who as you'll remember were an occupying force. I entered into no social compact with them.
If person A can't accept or understand that a human life overrides lesser considerations, then no, I don't put my trust in them.
Whut?
Surely it would also depend on the situation, and the relevance and reasoning behind B's view.
Are we in preschool with children? Then probably A is right.
But if B is a teacher and explains that the kids love a game in which they all rampantly cheat, and the teacher has given up because they are having an absolute blast breaking the rules and trying to trick each other? I hope you would change your mind too.
Are we talking about an undercover agent in a dangerous country, attempting to get a critical component from a drunk bioweapons scientist, at a card table in a casino?
These are humorous examples, but real world versions are not hard to come by.
Principles that have few or no exceptions tend to be very narrow in scope. Like don't preemptively launch world ending nukes during a stable peacetime.
The sensible approach is have the best principles you can, be willing to improve them, and apply them with care and situational flexibility.
Principles are maps, not the actual moral territory.
Principles are wisdom, not an algorithm.
"I'm an empath." "I don't like drama." "I never cheat people." "I value honesty."
That said, the point I want to make more is that both of these exist whether we like it or not. So rather than saying there’s no place for those strong convictions I disagree with, it is better to understand and empathize than to debate. That doesn’t mean changing my convictions necessarily. But it does mean I should treat others well regardless of how I think of them. This is the true meaning of “love thy neighbor”. And It is a shame more people who quote such scriptures don’t exercise them.
So I 100% agree with general (reciprocated) respect.
No, it is not the definition of integrity. If you opt to double-down on positions you held in spite of being presented to evidence that contradicts or refutes your prior beliefs, the behavior you are displaying is opposite of integrity, specially the part about honesty and commitment to do what's right.
lack of integrity: “EU bad, even if you give me evidence to say that it’s the UK’s own politicians that have screwed us for decades.. not the EU necessarily”
Rather, central members of the categories of 'rape' and 'murder' are wrong for reasons, and while those reasons may differ depending on your ethical framework, pretty much all ethical systems agree on this point.
"That's immoral by definition" isn't really how words work. Some philosophers would call that a category error, others would call it meaningless, and yet others would call it equivocation.
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¹: For the record: I think the "don't rape" deontological principle is extremely reliable, and if anyone alive finds themselves in a situation where they think they should break it, they're almost certainly wrong about the facts. The dilemma faced by Lot's daughters was a false dilemma: many other options were available, including "talk about the dilemma and thereby acquire either consent, or a good counterargument", or "double-check with the supernatural being who created the otherwise-unlikely circumstance where you have good reason to believe everyone else died in fire and/or conversion to salt, to confirm whether you are in fact the last remnants of humanity". I can't think of a situation where rape is actually justified. Trolley problems don't occur in real life.
> in war, murder is often praised;
The killing of an enemy combatant, for example, is usually lawful, praised and not considered murder. Generally speaking, the killing of a civilian is sometimes a war crime and considered a murder.
You also have a lot to say on the nuanced ethics of killing and on sexual violence, but these deal with the underlying concepts themselves and the words don't matter; in fact philosophers frequently give common terms a specialized, ad-hoc definition when they want to discuss these concepts themselves.
If you asked any (non-bloodthirsty) soldier, officer or general whether they'd press a button to magically achieve their military objectives without bloodshed, they'd certainly take that option. Killing enemy combatants is praised as good because it is (considered) a necessary evil, but "necessary evil" is awful for morale. If you take people outside that situation, they tend to hold the view that "killing is wrong", or "killing non-wrongdoers is wrong" at worst.
You've (re)defined the word "murder" to exclude "lawful killings of enemy combatants", but whether we use your or my definition, that doesn't change the morality of the actions. You also observed that philosophers do that kind of (re)definition all the time. That's the point I was trying to make.
I am not responding to your discussion on the morality of killings, because your argument was primarily about the definition of the word "murder", and I wanted to point that you were not accurate either.
Wartime killing of the enemy could be any of these (except probably not the last one), but it's probably going to meet the requirements for murder. The main reason it's not considered murder is that in war, we use a different classification system for violent acts, because the social context of violence in wartime is very different to the social context of violence in peacetime.
If you're taking the perspective that the social context is bundled up in the definition of the word (Later Wittgenstein's "use" theory of language), then killing an enemy soldier in war is not murder. If you're taking the perspective that a word refers to a meaningful proposition, i.e. a family of states of affairs (Early Wittgenstein's "picture" theory of language), then killing an enemy soldier in war is a non-central member of the 'murder' category, and just nobody calls it that. Personally, I'm a "use" theory proponent, so, uh… hm. Guess I was inaccurate.
Indeed, I think that your original reply would have been more useful and less apparently combative if you had
1. replied with this definition, 2. showed why this commonsense definition that does not definitionally involve morality is useful, and gave examples of it, 3. finally showed marginal cases where murder is not a moral bad according to certain ethical frameworks, 4. acknowledge that it's OK to redefine the word so that it is definitionally morally bad, but since it differs from a commonsense notion, it needs to be signposted,
but I think you had a bit to figure out yourself.
RE 2: I just looked through a few country's English-language laws and cribbed (what I saw as) the consensus definition of "murder". I'm not sure the other definitions I gave actually correspond to any real-world legal system, but many of them have something similar.
RE 4: Defining the word as "definitionally morally bad" means you have to make a moral assessment before using the word – but that takes most people way longer than the language processing of two syllables, so it leaves you open to equivocating rhetoric. Appeals to "common sense" (which, in my experience, is far from common) aren't why I object to that definition (except as signposted technical jargon, narrowly-scoped to a particular context).
The post I originally replied to was equivocating in this way (probably unintentionally), hence the strong objection. Though in my experience, explanations are better than intensifiers: that's something I should look out for in my editing passes in future.
This is easily refuted: look up “murder” in any English dictionary and you’ll find a definition like this: “the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another.” The inclusion of “unlawful” makes it definitionally wrong. You might want to quibble about legality vs. morality but in this case at least, the one entails the other. Perhaps you’re thinking of words like “killing”.
This is why "#metoo" was so controversial.
I always though it was controversial because it did away with the 'innocent until proven guilty' argument...
Do you believe that you were already presented with evidence that compelled you to change your personal position on rape, and the only reason you didn't changed your position in spite of that was your stubbornness to stick with them in spite of you feeling your belief was already refuted?
Or does the rationale still holds?
I think you tried very hard to find a moral argument to try to refute the argument on integrity, but you unwittingly just proved the point.
And do you suggest a crusader or jihadist or keep this point of view as well? They too might think they are in the right and should keep their (religious etc) integrity, surely?
Everyone/most people always assume they are always in the right; if this was objectively true, there would never be a single debate or argument in the world.
In other words, for every belief I have, I think it's right. Clearly, otherwise I would have abandoned it already. But I don't think that the set of all my beliefs is 100% free of errors or inconsistencies.
That's called being dogmatic. Sure, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but, in the face of extraordinary evidence you'd be a fool to stay unswayed and adhere to your proven false core principles.
Silly example, but I find arguments fall apart most at the edges.
I challenge you to develop a better definition of integrity. For me, integrity means I will change my mind when presented with convincing data.
Anything that is not a repeatable event under a microscope has no “data” and never will.
I'm not convinced by the argument that this falls apart for your categories. Logic and reasoning still exists. Philosophy can be argued and principals agreed upon. Historical things leave traces. And I am appalled by blind faith.
At some point, our society and ways of doing things boils down to trust or faith. I trust that people thinking about things, trying to validate those things, and who employ a way to change their minds will move towards "more correct" understandings. People knew not to hang around people with the plague before germ theory.
An example I also posted in another comment: you can be objectively right about the color of the sky, but that won't save you from becoming dinner to wild animals after your people cast you out for believing differently.
We've evolved to navigate this social dimension as much as physical one, because we're social creatures and other people have forever been a part of our environment. Recognizing that, and recognizing that this social reality is more relevant than physical one, is IMO the key to understanding why people behave they do - why they believe obvious bullshit, and refuse to align their beliefs with the truth of physical reality, despite ample and indisputable evidence. It's the key to understand why seemingly smart people say and believe dumb things, especially after they start a career in sales or politics. It's all because, for almost everyone and in almost every case, being seen as in good standing in one's social circles is much more directly relevant to everyday experience and long and happy life, than getting some facts right.
Having that understanding, it becomes more apparent than just about the only way to convince people to change their mind, is to make things relevant to them personally in either dimension, and at a larger scale, to bring those two dimension more in alignment.
Ergo, there is no “objectively right” about the colour of the sky (or anything). There is only “using the same labels” or “using different labels” compared to everybody.
You know, I've always figured, if our culture was based on an epistemic fundament that acknowledged and properly accounted for the fundamental incommunicability of percepts, it probably would've been a better world. (One where it's much easier for everyone to communicate accurately and effectively; as people would not expect of themselves and of each other to be "objective", just verbalize their current understandings as best as they could, without stressing too much over how understanding can only ever be subjective and incomplete.)
Some of us do envision such a world, but instead find ourselves living in a planetary culture based on the very rejection of the exact distinction that you're trying to point out. Turns out Cartesian dualism offers a lot of leeway along the "is-ought" axis, huh. (Qui bono, et sapienti sat.)
Enough to make the generally accepted standard for "objectively right" to be "the house is always right". (Supposedly, a supermajority of objects does not a subject make - or vice versa. And yet post-Enlightenment history is rife with efforts to scientifically desubjectify subjects in the service of some objectively rational philosopher king.)
And yet it seems to work well enough for most prosocials, you don't see them complaining, now do they? (What's a little mass neurosis between civilized folk?) I think it's safe to say that a member of the general public is cognizant of the labels they've been accultured to, at least to the same extent as they're aware of the physical reality which surrounds them. (If not vastly more so, physical reality being the more predictable of the two.)
This would mean that they have not actually experienced the quale of "incommunicable, inaccessible between humans [qualia]" and therefore the distinction you're trying to point out here is not in fact something they are able to think about; only perhaps to construct sentences about it by example, much like a LLM or a(n M)BA does.
As I'm sure you already know your own subjective version of most of the above, but I'm guessing you maybe view it more like a problematic to be struggled with, rather than a natural paradox and absurdity deserving of a more playful approach, I'd totally leave the celestial color coordination (along with all the worrying about whether people get it) to you - you, personally, and certainly none of the other folks. Not in the least because agreeing with people on how colors are called does not seem to be inherently conducive to being able to fly.
> Sounds about right, until the reality check. How often do you raise the problem of the incommunicability of qualia outside hacker news?
This is HN, and I was replying to a specific thought experiment posted in a comment:
> you can be objectively right about the color of the sky, but that won't save you from becoming dinner to wild animals after your people cast you out for believing differently.
That’s it.
You trying to bring into this people not complaining about it is, again, irrelevant. Most people, unless they are into philosophy, don’t tend complain about the inability to read someone else’s mind or feel what someone else’s feel. People also don’t tend to complain about the inevitability of death, the inability to go back in time, and in fact pretty much any fact of life that they cannot change. Yet, indeed, people absolutely do bring these up on regular basis in relevant philosophy-adjacent discussions and thought experiments, such as when correcting a claim that verbal labels assigned to feelings can be “objectively correct”.
News to me. The rest is irrelevant.
Changing your mind given data isn't going to apply when there's no data to go by, so this concept of integrity isn't related to faith
Then yes, he does have integrity. He has his principles and stands by them (however misguided it may seem to others). But all this illustrates is that integrity alone doesn't define a good person.
It's not as binary as that.
Each new convincing data point may cause me to re-evaluate my position, but simply re-evaluation may not cause me to change my mind, but may cause me to slightly shift in the direction of the new position.
At some point, I would have ingested and/or seen so many convincing data points that my position is effectively neutral. And some point after that, my position may have actually shifted and not be neutral anymore.
IOW, it's a spectrum, and journeys across this spectrum are:
a) Slow - position moves in tiny amounts, and
b) Not guaranteed to end up on the opposite end - you might get to neutral and remain there for the rest of your life, or you might shift back towards your original position.
I see what you're saying but I think this is called obstinance...
Is that part of my character Integrity or Obstinance?
In this way, what you suggest demands significant labor on the part of the person arguing an obvious fact against an ideologue who will proclaim an open desire to change their belief but whose world view is entrenched in magic making it fundamentally impossible to actually change it.
Long story short I don't buy it and think what you said is full of shit.
I was an idealist, so I understand the position.
Ideally, you explain your position and they explain theirs and it’s an open dialogue. Truthfully, you could be wrong about any number of things you have resolute conviction about- even things you believe are well evidenced.
The cynic in me is aware that actually us as individuals have finite time and mental energy to keep debating things which are base, and our lives are improved by just accepting some base assumptions and engaging our energy at higher levels instead of litigating the basics.
Just nod and smile :)
No, I think they are being downvoted because they dismiss a thoughtful comment that makes a good attempt at providing an actual answer to the question at hand as "full of shit".
Seems more likely the downvotes are related to the last sentence. Telling someone they are “full of shit” is not the type of curious discourse HN wants to promote.
That being the case, you might be getting downvoted for incorrectly assessing the situation and inaccurately placing blame.
I’m speculating, as it’s impossible to know what went through the heads of those who came before, but seems like a reasonable explanation to me.
Which is precisely why most people considered Earth to be flat until it became more fashionable to consider it spherical, and continue to believe it's spherical because that remains in vogue.
I mean, it's not like people in general suddenly got gained some intrinsic reasons for getting to the true nature of things. Nah, all that changed is what you have to say so others don't think you're stupid.
Call it a more realistic take: humans are social animals. Ever since we started cooperating in groups, the social reality became more important to our survival than actual physical reality. For better or worse, that is a fact of nature. You may argue all you want that the sky is blue, but if the rest of your tribe calls it green, all you'll accomplish is to get yourself shunned and cast out and then eaten by wild animals.
"Is Earth flat or round", from the perspective of a regular person across all history: why are you asking me that question?. The answer has no direct, immediate relevance to anyone's lives - so either you're contrarian, or trying to pick a fight, or have some political angle, or just have too much idle time. Either of that means you're a potential threat. The right answer is always "flat" or "spherical" depending on the time period you live in, followed by "go away and do something useful for a change".
Note: I'm not promoting idiocy or lack of interest into the nature of things - all I'm saying, one needs to cut other people some slack. Most people aren't idiots; if they're holding on to "wrong" beliefs there's probably a damn good reason for it, and with some politically charged questions they may actually be smarter, on a pragmatic/survival level, in giving the "wrong" answer, than someone rocking the boat.
If you want to convince people, don't assume they're idiots - rather, try to connect your arguments to their experience, so getting it right matters to them, and then - that's the pragmatic/cynical part - be ready to accept that, in some cases, having the right answer doesn't matter in practice.
If someone doesn't believe in complicated sciencey stuff, they just won't believe you, and they'll conclude they have evidence and you don't. At what point do you just walk away from the argument?
Edit: my favourite argument is to look at a half moon, and what angle the "shadow line" on the moon is relative to the horizon. Then ask your friends around the globe to report what angle it looks like to them. Because we are all standing on the side of a globe, we see it at different angles relative to our local horizon, which should perfectly correspond to each person's latitude etc. Fun easy experiment for an online community!
There’s mountains outside my window, so… not flat.
Do you have evidence that it’s flat? — what do you even mean by “flat” when I can see ripples in it?
Anyway fun topology aside a lot of flat earth discussion is not really done with the attempt to disprove anything, unfortunately.
That’s a tremendously high bar. Who defines what constitutes “legitimate” evidence? Anyone can disagree on what that means and you’re back to square one.
Look up “The Final Experiment” and its aftermath. Despite convincing the flat earthers who participated, the ones who observed it via livestream dug their heels in further.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Experiment_(expediti...
Then you step outside of the scientific community into the flamethrower of public opinion, and suddenly you have to deal with people who think it's a good idea to give their kids measles.
Well, the earth you walk is indisputable flat. That all of earth is round, comes not from direct observation (except for the very few people who have been in space).
So I dare you to actually argue with flat earthers. It is a good way to test your basic scientific knowledge. If you poke deep, you will find, that most people learned science the way people learned religion before. By memorising it, not by applying the scientific principle of questioning everything and aim for confirmation via experiment. Some flat earthers are actually more "scientific" in the way that they try out (weird) experiments and not just believe things. (But most probably do have a serious mental condition)
Long story short, this could have been the start of a interesting debate, if you would not have finished your argument with that insult.
Debates with them are not remotely interesting; they're constantly reaching to religion, magic, and Jewish control.
Find someone grounded who also enjoys debating and it's a fun topic to cover, however.
I don't feel responsible for grounding the facts you somehow believe in.
But in another mood, I might have shared links to certain Telegram groups, or connect you with some people I know personally. They would be eager to enlighten you, if you are in for that.
Do you think the earth is flat? Who the fuck cares about Telegram groups in this context?
(Otherwise I would have shared links where you can find me debating the topic at length with various people)
Because indeed, most flat earthers are immune to reason as they are in the realm of irrationality. So at some point someone needs to accept that and that helped my attitude towards my need to correct wrong information in people in general.
And if you believe now, I am a flat earther, because I said I discovered some flat earthers that act somewhat scientific sometimes and are open for arguments, well, so be it.
:D
Have you ever watched a we-have-never-been-on-the-moon conspiracy freak engage a flat earther?
With both trying to top each other who has the most superior knowledge and who is the real sheep?
But yes. All that borderlines on the dangerous mental crazy side, so I cannot really recommend it, unless you have a fascination with the abyss of the human mind.
or anyone who's been in a plane?
I mean, I just checked, it seems under ideal conditions one could see the curvature of earth at 10.5 km height, but to me it was not really a convincing curvature last time I did a long flight. Your experience was different?
The curvature of the earth can be quite apparent on a clear day at that altitude when flying over water. Or the midwestern US.
Where I grew up you can stand by the shore on a clear day and see the tree tops on the neighboring island, but not the beach. Sailing there, the beach emerges from the horizon.
The only way anybody can come up with "Flat Earth" is by living in the middle of a continental landmass.
The main cause I could determine was rather a deep trauma of some sort or the other and with the result of them now mistrusting everything mainstream by principle and only now trusting their eyes and "intuition".
And believing the earth is flat is maybe the most anti mainstream position ever.
Edit: and my conclusion sort of was, that the only thing, that would really convince some of them is indeed to let them see it with their own eyes. So maybe I will organize a high altitude baloon trip for some people some day, but personally I also always wanted to get as close to space as possible at least once in my life..
Of which, until recently, there were very few. Civilizations developed not just on the coasts, but along the rivers, and until ~industrial revolution, the bulk of people at any given time didn't really have a chance to see the sea.
> The only way anybody can come up with "Flat Earth" is by living in the middle of a continental landmass.
Yup, that is still true for humanity; what's changed in the last few hundred years is trains, cars, airplanes, and them all becoming broadly accessible to people.
Still, that was then. Today, "flat Earthers" are mostly just peer groups of shitposters or extreme contrarians.
The notion that “seeing the ocean” was a very special thing to most people in history is unlikely. To a Hungarian peasant or a Mongol shepherd, sure, but there were far more people along the Mediterranean coast, the Pearl River delta, and so on.
The reason is very simple: Ocean = free food.
(people didn't think Columbus would fall off the edge of the world, they thought he wouldn't make it to India, which to be fair, if it was only ocean between the Pacific & Atlantic, him & his crew most definitely would've perished)
have you never seen a hill or a hole?
But other people grew up in flat areas, far from the sea and maybe exposed with too much BS and maybe drugs at some points in their life, so ended up with a very different point of view.
It was interesting for me to find ways to maybe guide them back to reality and sometimes I succeeded a bit, but I don't think that argument would have helped me. On average and to our senses the earth is pretty undisputable flat.
It takes thinking to go further.
That's very easy to dispute
> have you never seen a hill or a hole?
Ok, fine, "other people ... maybe exposed with too much BS", but let's not pretend sticking to some patent nonsense can be traced to simple observations when those don't exist, that's not how you become a true believer
(But that does not mean I waste energy seriously trying to negate flat earth theory for good, I am more interested in the psychological reasons that makes people think like that)
It does! Sit on a beach near a harbour and watch how far you can see the waves and ships. Aristotle did this and came to the same conclusion.
Edit: Oh and also there is some "proof" with a certain camera model they present. Where they zoom in closely to ships on the horizont, while not knowing the difference between optical and digital zoom. I am still not sure what they were trying to proof with that, but I did saw a visual glitch of the image processing on high digital zoom. Some vague impression that indeed you can enlarge the ship again fully, despite it being over the horizon. To me it was rather pixel soup, but for them confirmation. So to be on topic a bit again, if you want to influence irrational people of anything, logic only gets you so far and appealing on emotion quite further.
I can give you the adress, but maybe be a bit careful. To him you might be one of the evil NASA brainwashers.
When you have a debate with someone who is only waiting for their turn to talk and visibly doesn’t care to parse what you’re saying, you are not motivated to hear them out.
It has to be a discussion, not a lecture combined with light condescension and dismissal.
“Ratianolising” is the word used in the most wrong way. The word normally describes inventing post-hoc reasons for some decision or behavior.
“Negotiating” is a big list of aphorisms which pull in different directions. Some of the advice sounds like amateurish art-of-the-deal tips which encourage you to extract as many concessions as you can from the other side. Some of the advice pulls in the opposite direction. And then, to mix everything up, the advice to compromise and meet half-way rears its ugly head.
The more I read in this article, the worse my opinion gets. I’m stopping.
:-(
I think if you already have well-developed thoughts about persuasion and social interaction, it might not add much, but it was useful for me.
As an attorney, I've found that the best persuasion is the removal of impediments and friction standing between the person you hope to influence and what they want to do in the first place.
Most other tactics amount to force or deceit ("manipulation").
For most of us ideally a colleague is more aligned than that.
exactly!
A baby smiling at you is manipulation.
This is nothing bad in itself.
> We influence others every day, whether we intend to or not.
And then it’s expanded as it continues.
> Every effective communication is manipulation to a degree.
Yes, to a degree. Seems to me the author is attempting to be pragmatic and not let excessive pedantry cloud the larger point. A friend trying to convince you to stop smoking because they want you to live healthier for longer may be technically manipulating you, but that’s not a useful definition and realistically no one would colloquially consider it to be the case. Whenever you find yourself dismissing an argument because a word can be applied universally, instead steelman the author’s argument by trying to understand the definition they are working with.
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
It's possible to communicate without manipulating if all you aspire to do is describe reality as you see it, and make an effort to separate your own aesthetic judgements from mere observations of what exists.
People may change their actions without changing their goals when their model of reality becomes more accurate.
I always found that put me in the right headspace to focus on listening first, then being clear. Whether they sort themselves into a yes or no is on them.
IMO people get too caught up in the words "influence" and "manipulate", and effectively start arguing over definitions (whether they realize that's what they're doing or not). I don't think any of that matters.
What matters is whether you're behaving like a decent human being who respects and cares about others. The negative things that people associate with the word "manipulate" are things like trickery, dishonesty, etc. As long as you are approaching others with respect, authenticity, honesty, and a reasonable amount of humility, then I don't think you need to worry about whether your influence counts as "manipulation" or not: you'll be avoiding the aspects of "manipulation" that make it a bad thing.
But yeah, aligning incentives and making friends. Even if they don't go the way you want, you both still had a positive experience and can potentially find a way to work together in the future.
Sadly, that description doesn't even narrow it down to one "no-win" situation I can think of, so your comment is slightly concerning on its face.
Even the one you mention, at this exact moment, a win/win could be framed around the benefits of stopping the war. While it's entirely reasonable to pick a perspective that focuses on the awfulness that has occurred, looking ahead, a peace deal would benefit all sides. Certainly it's closer to win/win than continuing down the current path.
My point is that the perspective we take is a choice.
-- Blair Warren
Like how he dehumanized women by saying they should submit to their husbands. Or when he said Joe Biden should be killed. Or all the times he used slurs for lgbt. Or the time he joked that it would be funny if the Pelosi attacker would be let loose. Or all the many times he called women and black people dumb. He can't help himself, he goes on and on with his explicit hate and racism. I've had they misfortune of watching the full length videos of these clips, and they just make it clear that he really means these things. He just keeps speaking his hateful heart.
He wished death on his political opponents. That alone should make him someone you wouldn't want to associate with for fear of how it reflects on you.
I had a bit of a moment when I first became a PM. (I've done a bunch of things, engineering / sales / founding, but PM only sort of recently.) I realized that my job was to wake up in the morning and pick fights. Or more diplomatically: to tell people they were doing the wrong thing, and they should be doing a different thing, in a way that made them want to listen to me more in the future, not less.
That's the job. In fact, in almost every job, that's the job.
Impact happens when you reach people and they behave differently because of you. That's nothing to be ashamed of. If you do it authentically and with good intent, it's one of the best things you can do with your time.
There might be systemic issues getting in the way. You and them having competing OKRs for example. Good to surface that and deal with it too.
Even in direct selling, many people don't want to feel they're being sold to! At a minimum, they don't want to feel out of control on decision they care about. But they're frequently open to learning, even if the constraints of how much time / credit they'll give you are extremely different.
What most people mean when they ask questions like yours isn't "How do I avoid manipulation?" but "How do I live with integrity?". Answering this question is a field in its own right and isn't coupled to communication per se.
> Yet logic alone is not enough. Overused, it can become cold and detached.
The author here shows show their hand.
My first reaction to this? I think that you’re using “manipulate” to describe a process where somebody doesn’t want to do something, and make them do it anyway, but without using force. It feels like this has to be rooted in some kind of denial of other people’s free will—that they are somehow incapable of choosing to help you or agree with you, and can only be tricked. It seems like you would need to believe that other people don’t genuinely like you or value you.
Kidding aside, my first reaction was: perhaps the occasions they were aware of their own influence were ones in which they didn't much care for the outcome. Or maybe a conflict of interest, like trying to win over a hiring manager for a position you know you'll hate.
I don't think cajoling or persuading others inherently manipulative, but I can think of a lot of examples where doing so feels grimy.
What I am trying to do is understand why sema4hacker, and some others, feel that influencing people is manipulative. So if you pop into the conversation and say that you don’t feel the same way that sema4hacker does, that doesn’t really help me understand sema4hacker’s perspective.
That’s the bounding leap here and I want to pull it apart, dissect it. The bounding leap from “I influenced somebody” to “I manipulated them”. I think there’s not just raw, random feelings here, but some kind of rational thought that I want to understand.
None of them are necessarily bad on their own, but the choice of words seems like it depends on the perspective who is perceiving or describing the influencer/manipulator and their motives. Influence can be seen as manipulation and manipulation seen as influence.
For example someone who dislikes an "ifluencer" is probably more likely to think of them as manipulating their audience into buying products. Convincing someone to join a religious group could be seen as positive influence by current members, and manipulation by an outsider.
Clarity of purpose from the person doing the persuading is not necessarily clear as well. There is likely there's likely a mixture of factors motivating them to persuade, including some to their own benefit. People, especially those who think they are doing good, will also generally grade themselves on a bit of a curve and rationalize their actions towards being positive, especially in moral and emotional contexts.
In an "original" definition, manipulation literally means "to move". In that sense, we all manipulate. We move.
The two combined together: You're allowed to "move". You are broadly "allowed" to "manipulate" in that sense. If you add lies, deceit, etc, you're in territory others might not find acceptable, and will in turn reject you or remove you from their lives.
If you feel bad about your "success" but can't see why on a rational level, you may want to remember how your parents or other people growing up treated you. Can you find some childhood memories related to this? Potentially "adverse" experiences related to "manipulation" around you?
Just give your clear arguments, be detailed, be honest, don't use fallacies, point out fallacies.
It's not about "influence", it's more about communicating your point of view and making it visible and understood by others.
The action of manipulating people is fairly obvious. It means you have a predetermined outcome that you want other people to accept The same assumption is implicit in the "How can I influence others..." Again there is the same predetermined outcome.
The answer then is obvious. You cannot. Perhaps what you are looking for is instead a way to join with other people in a participatory/collaborative fashion. You can ask what other people think, you can talk about what you think.
But as long as you have a predetermined outcome in mind, I suspect your only choices is manipulation.
You might also want to reassess what the question is. We talk about so much, but we do so little. Imagine that my car won't start and I want to fix it. The idea of influencing people here is silliness. We care very little about who thinks what, as long as the car starts. The thinking is in service of an action that produces a result.
In my opinion! :-)
[edit: fix wording, typos]
But yes, you can and did influence me. Or perhaps more accurately, your thinking about this helped me think about it better and more clearly. Thanks!
What they mean is "influence" (positive connotation) without "manipulate" (negative connotation). But this is simply a nuance on "intent" i.e. whether it is good or bad from the pov of the instigator. But the recipient also has an important role to play in this interaction since they are the one perceiving the intent which might be different from what was intended. So the instigator has to sometimes "manipulate" to gain "influence". The End-Goal often (but not always) justifies the means.
This is the realm of Worldly Wisdom/Propaganda/Politics covered in the classic works of Baltasar Gracian/Machiavelli/Francesco Guicciardini/Kautilya/Kamandaki/Vishnu Sharma/Edward Bernays/Jacques Ellul etc.
On the Psychological realm, see the works of B.F.Skinner on Operant Conditioning/Behaviourism and Verbal Behaviour.
And you never control how the influence works exactly :). You influence others in ways you won't be able to control or predict.
The key question is whether we use our moral compass when we influence or manipulate. Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with moral manipulation.
The real inquiry is about the moral values we prioritize. Are we only focused on our own gain? Do we genuinely aim to help others? Or are we somewhere in the middle?
When we seek to benefit others, is it truly for them, or is it more about our own satisfaction from doing something “good”? Do those “good” actions genuinely help everyone, or merely specific groups at the cost of others? Perhaps someone has lost out because of our so-called “good” deeds.
By pondering and answering these questions, you'll be able to influence others without resorting to non-moral manipulation.
Attempting to argue with people, in good faith or otherwise, to change their mind is a philosophical trap.
Persuasion is just getting people to come around to your way of thinking without direct argumentation. It gets manipulative, psyopy and evil when fear, envy, lust, guilt, etc nudges are applied.
You need to realize that people are not inherently individual beings. In some cultures, individuals hardly have any identity of their own. The identify themselves with a larger creature and they become part of that creature. They play a role assigned to them.
So, influencing involves making an individual to lose their individuality to some extent and become a part of the larger interest group. From that point, it is a matter of telling them what to do for the larger community.
This was easier in the old times when social bonds were stronger in families, tribes, villages etc. Individuals hardly had any privacy. Everyone in the village knows what's going on in every home in that village.
Getting these bonds back is the first step. When you try to influence someone, your need to make them understand who you are, to them. And why it is beneficial to have that bond. Once you have that "we" between you two, there is no explicit influencing required.
By listening to them.
Next question.
I had a relationship with this book. I had read it years before and put it into practice as part of my life. It worked, but I became jaded, yeah I could be a great friend to people but it was almost never reciprocated, and I came to believe that using the techniques in the book were manipulative and deceitful at worst, and just not genuine at best.
So the consultant got to the end and asked for questions, and I asked “isn’t this all just manipulating people and dishonest?” Be sputtered and stammered and didn’t have much of a response. My boss was not thrilled that I had called it out, I was being difficult. That started a real problem for me at that company and I eventually left.
Make an effort to separate your aesthetic judgements from your observations.
When doing evangelism, Jesus told us to scatter seed, water, and harvest. God provides the growth. So, we can share the Gospel or truths in God's Word... His work, not our schemes... while letting them make their own decisions. Instead of manipulation, we are simply offering a gift out of love for them that they can do what they want with (or ignore). We do it while praying their choices have maximum glory to God and benefit to them, not us.
We're also commanded to display Christ-like character in our interactions with people. Paul reminds his critics "we were blameless among you" and cared like a mother nursing her child. James said to show our faith by our works, like taming the tongue or feeding a starving brother. Paul says imitate me as I imitate Christ. Our character can have a profound impact on people around us. Personally, I've been able to improve a lot just by seeing how my brothers and sisters speak and act in many situations. They've also sometimes learned from how the Holy Spirit showed me to handle specific situations.
So, these are examples of how to influence people without selfishly manipulating them. In two cases, without any manipulation of your own since one is asking the sovereign God to make the right calls and the other is just demonstrating godly behavior in a way that positively impacts them.
My advice would be: Stay honest with yourself. To influence IS to manipulate.
Playing squeamish is a slippery slope into avoiding accountability for your actions.
In other words - don't judge the tools - judge your motives and the outcome.
Accept there is always a trade and balance.
If you can be honest about your motives and actions with yourself your friends and colleagues - chances are that you can achieve your goals with ethics and empathy intact.
If you can't, then it's time to take a look at yourself - not the tools.
Good luck
Use a Comic Sans-adjacent font in your essays?