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Vaniver comments on We Change Our Minds Less Often Than We Think - Less Wrong
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Vaniver. Mate. I accept that you believe
but I dispute that it achieves those. I believe instead that it maximises arrogance and maximises doubt in the others point of view, and in maximising doubt in the other persons view we minimize our doubt in our own view.
The belief that it's difficult to be completely right, encourages people to look for that gap that is "wrong" and then drive a wedge into it and expand it until it's all that's being talked about.
If 95% is correct and 5% is wrong, criticising the 5% is a means to hurting the person - they have after all gotten 95% correct. It's not rational to discount peoples feelings by focusing upon their error and ignoring their correctness. It's destructive, it breaks people. Sure some few thrive on that kind of struggle - most don't, again this is proven stuff. And I'm not going to post 10 freeking sources on that - all that's doing for me is wasting my time and providing more opportunity for others to confirm their bias by fighting against it. If someone wants to find that information it's out there.
When you (or anyone else) got a high distinction for a unit or assignment or exam, was that a moment to go, fuck - didn't remember that a pre ganglionic fibre doesn't look anything like a post gangleoic nerve (aka ds9), or was it a moment to leap for joy and go, you little ripper I got 95%!
I agree negativity has its uses, often it's about "piss off" and go away, leave me alone; sometimes that's useful, but you'll note that those fall on the arrogant side of emotions - that of self. (this will get a wedge driven in it too, heck I could drive one in, but it remains somewhat true).
Vaniver, I'd consider it a positive discussion to talk about negativity. Would you mind explaining to me where "negativity has its uses".
And to show that I consider the
viewpoint.
Yeh, ok I get that, when we apply the concept to ourselves then we are minimizing our arrogance and maximizing our doubt. And that'll work. We'll second guess ourselves, we'll edit our posts, and re edit, and check our dictionaries and quote our sources and these are all useful things. They keep us honest. But what about when we apply those concepts to others - as is our tendency due to the self serving bias and the group serving bias?
There are many fields in which it is better to not try than to get 5% wrong. Would you go bungee jumping if it had a 5% failure rate?
Mostly in discouraging behavior. As well, an important rationality skill is updating on valuable information from sources you dislike; dealing with negativity in safer circumstances may help people learn to better deal with negativity in less safe circumstances.
Thanks for the post on negativity Vaniver. I wouldn't go bungee jumping if it had a 5% failure rate.
That viewpoint can be considered as based upon Skinners model of Behaviourism, it's been shown to be less effective for learning than being positive.
Makes sense - we tend to remember what we are emotionally engaged in and what is reinforced. When the negativity is associated with the 5%, what is reinforced is that a person is "wrong", that's associated with feelings of low self efficacy and tends to discourage (most) people from the topic. When that happens they regress - not progress, they tend to get even more wrong next time as they've not stayed engaged in the topic.
I agree that an important skill is to update ones information, however the discouragement that is provoked by negativity isn't efficient in evoking updating. Confident people update their information, people who aren't attacked have no need to defend and so they remain open, openess is the key attitude for updating information. Negativity destroys and/or minimizes confidence which contributes to closing a mind.
What negativity does, in context of learning, is to encourage secrecy, resentment, avoidance and close mindedness. Again this stuff is all known as a consequence of punishment, which is what negativity - as discouraging behaviour is associated with.
Apparently a more effective way forward is to model the behaviour that one wants to encourage and ignore the behaviour one wants to discourage - extinction.
I agree that saying "Good job putting down that toy" to my 22-month-old is more effective at reducing throwing of his toys than saying "Don't throw toys." And extinction works great on tantrums.
But you seem to be overgeneralizing the point a bit. When dealing with competent adults, saying "X is wrong" is an effective way of improving the listener's beliefs. If the speaker doesn't justify the assertion, that will and should effect whether the listener changes beliefs.
Of course, this is probably bad management style. We might explain that fact about people-management by invoking psychological bias, power imbalance, or something else. But here, we're just having a discussion. No one is asserting a right to authority over anyone else.
Without necessarily asserting its truth, this just-so story/parable might help:
For various social reasons, popular kids and nerds have developed very different politeness rules. Popular kids are used to respect, so they accept everything that they hear. As a consequence, they think relatively carefully before saying something, because their experience is that what is said will be taken seriously. By contrast, nerds seldom receive social respect from their peers. Therefore, they seldom take what is said to them to heart. As a consequence, nerds don't tend to think before they speak, because their experience is that the listener will filter out a fair amount of what is said. In brief, the popular filter at the mouth, the nerds filter at the ear.
This all works fine (more or less) when communicating within type. But you can imagine the problems when a nerd says something mean to a popular, expecting that it will be filtered out. Or a popular says something only vaguely nice, but the nerd removes negative that isn't there and hears sincere and deep interest.
TimS, I'm glad we agree on several points, extinction and positive reinforcement of children. I wonder why these methods are espoused for children, yet tend to be used less for "competent adults". Thanks for planting the seed that I might be overgeneralizing the point a bit, I'll keep an eye on that.
I am reminded that saying "X is wrong" to an adult with a belief is ineffective in many circumstances, most notably the circumstance were the belief is a preconception, based in emotion or more specifically an irrational belief. Is this not one consequence of bias? That a person, in some cases/topics, won't update their beliefs and indeed strengthen their belief in the counterargument against the updating. Presumably you've read http://lesswrong.com/lw/he/knowing_about_biases_can_hurt_people/ Which alludes to how knowledge of bias can be used dismissively, i.e. an irrational use of a rationale.
"Why logical argument has never been successful at changing prejudices, beliefs, emotions or perceptions. Why these things can be changed only through perception." De Bono, "I am right, you are wrong". De Bono discusses this extensively.
If the belief is rational, and perhaps that's one component of what you consider a "competent adult", the adult could be more open to updating the fact/knowledge - yet even this situation has a wealth of counter examples, such that there is a term for it - belief perseverance.
In my experience unsolicited advice is rarely accepted regardless of its utility and veracity. Perhaps I communicate with many closed minds, or perhaps I am merely experiencing the availability heuristic in context of our discussion.