Vladimir_Nesov comments on Rational Communication - Less Wrong

23 Post author: Swimmer963 10 September 2011 02:30AM

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Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 10 September 2011 11:00:44AM *  3 points [-]

These are perhaps good pointers for communicating with normal people, but go against a number of useful things that you should be able to do to communicate more efficiently, with someone you can cooperate with in that regard, or teach to get better at eventually:

  • Interrupting to fix (point out) a technical problem with reasoning, that would be forgotten and ignored as insignificant otherwise. Persisting at this leads to gradual improvement. (For example, fighting the many faces of rationalization the moment it's detected, or problems with misusing words.)
  • Interrupting an explanation that doesn't help you, that you don't accept and won't benefit from for one reason or another, getting the conversation back on track or reframing it.
  • Make sure you understand details of the described idea, and not just the outline. Summarizing at the end only checks the outline and ignores the texture.
  • I concur that approving/disapproving is not a good idea, but for a different reason, for you should point out considerations that you think relevant and expect the other didn't take into account, which can change the conclusion.
  • Confronting emotionally-driven reasoning helps with developing a measure of immunity to it, and ability to notice. People can be at their craziest when driven by emotion, so it's particularly important to notice when you are so influenced and take sufficient precautions to confound the craziness.
  • Above all these is, of course, educating people about the basic concepts that would allow communicating the nature of the problem when it manifests.
Comment author: Swimmer963 10 September 2011 11:30:28AM 4 points [-]

Good points. That is the easiest way to quickly communicate with someone and figure out why, if at all, you aren't coming to the same conclusions. That being said, with 90% of the people I know, speaking in this way wouldn't help the conversation and would annoy them. Back before I had realized this, much fewer people liked talking to me.

Interrupting to fix (point out) a technical problem with reasoning, that would be forgotten and ignored as insignificant otherwise.

If I can find a good place to interrupt (a pause or break in the explanation), and I'm speaking to a "normal" person, I'll say "sorry, can you go back to X again? I don't think I get it." Or "I think we might be using the word 'value' for different things. What do you think it means?" Which, to 'normal' people, doesn't sound as much like "your logic is flawed, you idiot."

for you should point out considerations that you think relevant and expect the other didn't take into account, which can change the conclusion.

No reason not to do this. Most people don't find it rude or confrontational, AFAICT.

Interrupting an explanation that doesn't help you, that you don't accept and won't benefit from for one reason or another, getting the conversation back on track or reframing it.

I will do this, as gently as I can, in an intellectually-driven conversation. The number of people I can have intellectually driven conversations with is already significantly less than the total number of people I know. I will not do this if the conversation is in any way a person seeking advice or empathy about their personal life. It's their life. They get to decide what parts are important. (And yes, I do value being someone who people come to when they want advice or empathy. Not only does hearing about their inner emotions help me better understand people in generally, but it makes me feel valued.)

Confronting emotionally-driven reasoning helps with developing a measure of immunity to it, and ability to notice. People can be at their craziest when driven by emotion, so it's particularly important to notice when you are so influenced and take sufficient precautions to confound the craziness.

Nurses are supposed to do this, too. Usually you would do it by making an observation like "You seem angry. Am I right?" "..." "Do you think maybe you're thinking X because you're angry?"

Comment author: juliawise 10 September 2011 07:07:43PM 4 points [-]

with 90% of the people I know, speaking in this way wouldn't help the conversation and would annoy them.

This. Code-switching is important. As a social work student, there's a different way I speak to clients (especially irrational clients) than I would to someone I think is more capable of reasoning.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 10 September 2011 12:03:41PM *  0 points [-]

It's their life. They get to decide what parts are important.

They don't. They might emotionally detest any disagreement or the audacity of thinking about the question (to the point where at a particular stage a conversation wouldn't work, without extensive background work), but there is no magical rule that makes particular people right about particular questions. It doesn't matter who judges, only which questions have which actually correct answers.

Comment author: lessdazed 10 September 2011 12:10:27PM *  0 points [-]

It depends how she meant it. What is important to them depends entirely on them, not intrinsically on what Swimmer963 thinks or the way the rest of the world is.

But they don't get to choose what parts are important. If it's important to them how the world is (as humans, they do), then they can be wrong and rightfully judged wrong, exactly as you say.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 10 September 2011 02:57:18PM 3 points [-]

In a similar vein: correctly diagnosing at what level someone is confused. It's way too easy to correct a surface level imperfection when you know that they're moving in entirely the wrong way. Teaching people how to play chess or how to play guitar probably helps with this since everything is so concrete; it's extra important to do right when philosophilizering or whenever you're discussing something abstract.

Comment author: lessdazed 10 September 2011 11:05:02AM 1 point [-]

Interrupting an explanation that doesn't help you, that you don't accept and won't benefit from for one reason or another, getting the conversation back on track or reframing it.

Going back to the fork in the argument, the point at which one first began to disagree, is helpful and the main way I would put that. For me, reframing usually comes after going back to the fork doesn't work.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 10 September 2011 11:10:24AM *  1 point [-]

I find that "misunderstanding" describes the difficulties in the process of actually trying to communicate better than "disagreement". "Disagreement" is not so much a failure mode, as a way in which to focus on the questions that you need to form better mutual understanding about. So you abort a line of conversation not because of disagreement, but because of misunderstanding, while disagreement refocuses the conversation.

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