So how do you deal with situations where your
words are likely to be used out of context, letâs say. And thatâs a situation Iâve encountered. Well, you see, you encounter a situation like
that very frequently. Everyone does in their life. If youâre having a discussion with someone
you live with, for example, so someone you have to be with for a long time â a lover,
boyfriend, girlfriend, wife, husbandâsibling for that matter. Youâre going to have contentious discussions
about how to move forward and itâs very frequently the case that your words will be
â that youâll be straw-manned. Your words will be taken out of context. The other person (and you too!) will try to
win instead of trying to solve the problem. What you have to kind of decide is â well
two things. The first thing is: youâre probably wrong
in some important way. And you might think âWell, so what?â But no, itâs not so simple. Being wrong in some important way is like
having a map that doesnât correspond to the streets. If youâre wrong in some important way, when
you go to where youâre going you will get lost and you might end up in a neighborhood
that you donât want to visit! So it actually matters if youâre wrong. And so now if youâre talking to someone
who is acting in opposition to you, itâs possible that during your contentious discussion
they will tell you somethingâabout how youâre wrongâthatâs accurate. Now youâre not going to be very happy about
that, because like who wants to discover that theyâre wrong? But itâs better to figure out that your
map is inaccurate than it is to get lost. And so one of the things you have to remember
when youâre discussing things with people, even if theyâre out to defeat you, letâs
say, is that there is some glimmering of the possibility that you could walk away with
more knowledge than you walked in with. And thatâs worth â that can be worth paying
quite a price for. And so Iâve had the opportunity to engage
in public debate of an exceptionally contentious nature for letâs say 18 months nonstop,
fundamentally. And itâs been very stressful. But the upshot of that is that my arguments
are in much better shape than they were, andâI shouldnât say that. My THOUGHTS are much more refined than they
were at the beginning of this process. Itâs not my arguments are in better shape. Thatâs not the right way to think about
it. Itâs that Iâm clearer about what I know. I can articulate it better. And thatâs all forged in the heat of conflict. If youâre discussing a contentious issue
with someone you love and that you have to live with and put up with, you want to listen
to them. Because what you really want to do is establish
a lasting peace, and you might even have to make their arguments for them. Maybe youâre more verbally fluent than your
partner (which doesnât mean, by the way, that youâre more right, it just means you
can construct better arguments on the fly. It doesnât necessarily mean that youâre
more accurate). You might have to help your partner formulate
their arguments so that you can really get to grips with what it is that theyâre trying
to say. So that you can alter the way that youâre
constructing your own narrative and your joint narrative, so that youâre not butting heads
unnecessarily as you move forward through life. Itâs not a very good idea to win an argument
with your wife. That isnât what you want, because then you
have a defeated partner. And a defeated partner is not happy. And a defeated partner is often out to reclaim
the defeat. And so as a strategy for moving forward with
someone who youâre going to wake up beside 5,000 times itâs not a very advisable strategy. Itâs better to listen, to flesh out the
argument on both sides, and to see if you can come to a mutually acceptable negotiated
settlement. And thatâs the case in most encounters in
life if you can manage that. But itâs easy to want to win. One of the things I do in my psychology seminar
is I assign papers to students and then I extract out propositions from the papers. And theyâre propositions that are debatable. And so then I outline the Pro side and I outline
the Con side. Like âif you agreed with this, this is what
youâd thinkâ. If you disagreed with this, this is what youâd
think. Then I divide the students into groups, like
four people per group. âYou four are pro. You four are con. Youâve got 20 minutes to make a pro argument. Youâve got 20 minutes to make a con argument. Weâll go around the table and weâll see
how, you know, weâll have each group rate the other and weâll see who comes out on
top.â Well, what you want to do as an educator is
you donât want to put forward a specific point of view. Not when what youâre trying to do is to
discuss a contentious issue! What you want to do is teach people how to
take an argument apart and formulate a response. And to do that itâs actually extraordinarily
useful to arbitrarily assign positions to people. Itâs like, I donât care what you think,
youâre âproâ on this topic, generate an argument.â And what that does is it vastly widens peopleâs
conceptualizations of the argumentative space. Because most really contentious issues â gun
control, abortion, those sorts of thingsâthere is a lot to be said on both sides. They wouldnât be contentious issues otherwise.Theyâre
issues that donât go away. Well why? Well because theyâre so complex. They donât lend themselves to easy unitary
solutions. One of the things you want to learn if youâre
educated is that on any complex subject thereâs a lot to be said. And that youâre going to come at that with
your particular ideological bias, letâs say, your temperamental bias. Maybe even you might even come at it with
things youâve actually thought about, although thatâs pretty damn rare. But you need to learn just exactly how localized
your viewpoint is. Thereâs psychology experiments that demonstrate
this quite clearly. So imagine that you come into my lab and I
ask you whether youâre âpro abortionâ or âpro lifeâ. And I get you to rate that on a scale. Maybe you say, âWell, on a scale of one
to ten, Iâm eight prolife.â And I say âOkay, now you have to write a
500 word essay thatâs opposed to your position.â Okay? Thatâs the experiment. And then I bring you back two weeks later
and I ask you to rate your position on the same scale. It will have shifted substantially to the
position that you delineated in your written report. And the reason for that is that most peopleâs
arguments are unbelievably shallow. Theyâre not arguments, theyâre just perceptual
biases. Thatâs one way of thinking about them. And if you get people to delineate out the
space in any rigorous manner then their attitudes shift. What you really want and if youâre going
to engage in a discussion about say something like gun control is you want to be familiar
with the entire range of argumentsâdeeply familiar. And have some respect for them. I mean itâs pretty clear that guns kill
people. Theyâre dangerous. But then itâs also not self-evident that
the only entities that should be allowed to be dangerous are the state entities. So thereâs things that can be said that
are intelligent across that entire distribution of opinion. And if youâre educated then you should be
conversant with the entire range of opinions. So thatâs one approach as an educator, is
to teach people how to analyze an argument and to formulate their opinions. You do people a great service by â thatâs
teaching them how to think. Not what to think, but how to think. Now when I lecture my psychology courses which
is a different approach letâs say, I take a position on the literature because I have
to. Thereâs no being neutral about the literature. What am I going to do, pick random studies? Itâs like that isnât how people work. I have a body of knowledge and it stems partly
from my biases and from my temperaments. But itâs an informed body of opinion. But what I presented to the students as is,
like look, this is my take on the literature. That doesnât mean Iâm right! It means that Iâm an informed observer. Iâm an informed, singular observer. And what Iâm doing then is modeling how
an informed, singular observer would deal with a complex body of literature. So itâs partly, in that role Iâm not exactly
providing facts and Iâm not exactly teaching people how to think. Iâm saying, âIf youâre a psychologist,
a research psychologist, and you want to engage with the literature, here is one way that
you would do it.â And so then Iâm a model and Iâm a model
of a way to be in a particular domain. Now that doesnât mean that you have to emulate
me from top to bottom, but at least you have a sense of what itâs like to be a person
doing that. And thatâs a different form of pedagogy.
I don't find what is surprising about this. Of course, a "guru" can make a good/reasonable argument. The problem is they also make a lot of bad ones. Most "spiritual gurus" also have arguments based on genuine insight into the human condition. The problem is they also make self-aggrandizing and disingenuous arguments too.
I have the feeling that most people in this sub are similarly uninformed. (I'm not a jbp fan at all, btw.) It's a bit of a political circle jerk. If true, it's ironic, because the DTG creators have the exact opposite spirit: listen carefully to actual content, understand the argument, then criticize. We should be more like them.
Maybe I'm just strange, but I actually enjoy listening to some of the gurus and hacks. Jbp can be interesting, entertaining, convincing, correct and very moving. (Especially when one is not listening attentively. đ ) It's a shame that many people don't see this side of jbp. He obviously cares a lot and his message, in the best case, can give one a "spiritual awakening" and a positive purpose in life.
This video and the way he speaks are all part of 'the white laboratory coat'.
It looks like the person wearing it is a scientist and thus knowledgeable. The coat has the power to convince you, even if the person wearing it knows jackshit. Once you start listening, you leave your critical defenses down and start thinking that it all makes sense. But you cannot look past the coat. Once you start agreeing, the agreeing becomes easy and before you know it you start to hold ideas that go against what you once stood for.
Your gut instinct, in this case, was the right one.
If you know the drink is poisoned, why still taste in the hopes that it tastes sweet?
He has some insights for sure, but there are much, much wiser people than him to get insights from. And his overarching worldview is badly off base.
Similarily, I like Eric Weinstein's argument about US politics being kayfabe. Because Eric is very bad at explaining his ideas in a concise way, I'd suggest watching this video instead.
Yeah Jordan has the ability to be reasonable. I first encountered him by watching him speak about the psychology of depression, which I found really interesting. I started watching more of his content later on and realized that he is a huge culture warrior and makes a lot of silly or even nonsensical arguments, but I still acknowledge that he has the ability to be reasonable sometimes.
I am definitely NO FAN of JPB AT ALL. My point is that human beings seem too complicated to be judged by one or several conversations. When we encounter a guru style person, it might be better to carry a mini DTG operating in our mind, rather than dispose the person entirely. But such point is only applicable to those mixed-bag gurus. For obvious grifters, just shut the door!
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