loup-vaillant comments on Philosophical Landmines - Less Wrong

84 [deleted] 08 February 2013 09:22PM

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Comment author: Emile 08 February 2013 02:34:21PM 23 points [-]

If it happens, which it does, as far as I can tell the only effective damage control strategy is to abort the conversation.

My ideal approach (not that I always do so) is more to stop taking sides and talk about the plus and minuses of each side. My position on a lot of subjects does boil down to "it's really complicated, but here are some interesting things that can be said on that topic". I don't remember having problems being bombarded with slogans (well - except with a creationist once) since usually my answer is on the lines of "eh, maybe". (this applies particularly to consequentialism and deontology, morality, rationality, and QM).

I also tend to put the emphasis more on figuring out whether there is actually a substantial disagreement, or just different use of terms (for things like "truth" or "reality").

Comment author: loup-vaillant 12 February 2013 12:12:44PM *  3 points [-]

I also tend to put the emphasis more on figuring out whether there is actually a substantial disagreement, or just different use of terms (for things like "truth" or "reality").

Even that can fail, especially with "truth" and "reality". I have a concept behind "truth", and I'm sometimes not even allowed to use it, because the term "truth" has been hijacked to mean "really strong belief" instead (sometimes explicitly so, when I ask). I do try to get them to use "belief", and let me use "truth" (or "correctness") my way, but it's no use. I believe their use of a single word for two concepts mixed them up, and I never managed to separate them back.

Also, they know that if they let me define words the way I want, I'll just win whatever argument we're having. It only convince them that my terminology must somehow be wrong.

Finally, there is also a moral battle here: the very idea of absolute, inescapable truth whether you like it or not, reeks of dogmatism. As history showed us countless times, dogmatism is Baad™. (The Godwin point is really a fixpoint.)