How To Get Real

from a blog post i was writing a couple years ago

basically: "what do you want, and how to get it?"

of course, to really get real, you kind of need to go from the other direction: "what options are *actually possible*, and which are best?"

see also: Paved with Good Intentions and Problem Solving/Thinking Skills

## the blog post draft

### **How To Get Real And Have Real Conversations About Stuff**

What are you trying to accomplish when you're disagreeing with someone?  Are you trying to change their mind?  Or something else?

In this post, I'm talking about changing minds to reach agreement, basically.

What *should* change someone's mind?  Well, what should change *your* mind?  What would you want someone else to try if they wanted to convince you of something?  What would you want them to *not* try?

What *actually works* to make someone have the same views as you do? (Rather than some superficial agreement with you?)

I think the best approach to changing someone's mind is to do what you'd want other people to do if they were trying to change your mind. Not just in terms of "being nice", but also in terms of demonstrating that you are worthy of their time and trust. And yes, reasoning clearly and undeniably, from facts that both of you know and accept, is part of all of this.

In this post, I've put together a fairly straightforward outline of how I think it should work.  I don't claim to be an expert, just someone who really loves these topics, reads some relevant stuff, and has at least some experience (...mostly with internet arguments, where there is time and space to think).

I hope this can help someone.

### **In a disagreement, always continually dig towards these things:**

* what is important
* what is meant
* what is true (and how do we know)

No one is going to agree with you if the conversation doesn't get around to addressing what is important to them, or if they can't agree on the facts, or if people don't understand what you mean.

You want to figure out how things work in the other person's head.  Asking sincere questions is so important here.

Even if they are wrong, at least then you'll know the right places to push to get things moving.  But if you aren't learning what's going on in the other person's head, you'll be stumbling around in the dark.  And that won't be good for anyone.

### **What is important**

Lets start by talking about the disagreements that matter.  Stuff about actions, plans, decisions, policies and so on.  How things should be, what we should do.  The choices to make.

One of the things you need before you can determine the right choice is some way to evaluate the different options.  That is, some set of values.  Without them, you'd be choosing randomly between the courses of action, or not at all.  And if you disagree on values, it doesn't matter how much you agree on all the other facts, you can still end up disagreeing about which course of action is the right one.

The other reason to dig down to what is important (the real underlying desires), is because it actually opens up more space for solutions (which also reduces conflict).

For a simple example:  it might be hard to figure out a way for a car to get you across Canada in a day.  But if we forget about the car and just focus on the goal of getting across Canada in a day, then the option of using an airplane becomes available.  By being clear on what the real goal is, we can be flexible on the means of achieving that goal, and then it's easier to achieve it.

In reality, a lot of the time there are much longer chains of means and ends, and they are more complex.  Even in the above example:  why do we want to get across Canada?  Probably to achieve yet another goal of some kind.  At each step you might be able to dig further, and it might be worth doing.

From there, there's "only" "one" other place to go:  which actions will *actually* achieve the goals you care most about?

This is a factual question about cause and effect.  Not only about external things (like how fast cars go VS airplanes, or how long it takes to drive across Canada), but even:  will these external things make you happy?

So with that I move on to how to figure that out:

### **What is True (and How Do We Know)**

Here I'll return to what I started with talking about:  what *does* or *has* convinced someone of something, and what *should* convince people.

Since every decision depends on being able to tell what's true

foundationalism, building on what people already accept, the firm foundation.  The metaphor of strong support for other beliefs, VS weak support.  What is strong VS weak support.

Digging down to FIND that sturdy common-ground, or supply some sturdy foundation even THEY will agree with, without suspicion.

This will always require some *investigation*.  Simply saying something is true

We need to find out somehow.  We're born with no real knowledge of the universe.

[hmm, opposite directions sorta, going from ignorance to knowledge, or going from belief to reasons for belief.  What am I doing here?  I think, primarily, the latter]

We also have to dig below the surface here, too.  The surface is the belief, and below it is the stuff that makes people believe those things.  If you want to change the belief, you have to get down to the reasons the person already has for believing them.  They're like the roots of a tree.  You can cut down the tree, but it will just sprout up again if you leave the roots in place.  And ideas grow much faster than trees.

Of course, I probably don't have to tell anyone to supply your reasons for your own beliefs.  Plant those roots in the other person's mind, and they will grow there as well.  But you can't just place the severed trunk of a tree on the ground and expect it to take root there.  You want to plant the whole tree, including the roots, especially the roots.

Basically, that means giving them the idea is not enough, no matter how detailed.  It has to be rooted in place by key premises that they believe.

So if both of you do this, now you've both got two trees in each of your heads instead of just one.  Can you believe both things are true?

Sometimes, it's worth considering.

But other times it's clear only one can be true.  So what do you do?

As I said above, basically nothing is 100% certain.

If only one of the ideas can be true, then you have to weigh how the facts and evidence favor each of them.  That's going to divide up that 100%, maybe one will be 10% likely, another will be 90% likely (and of course you should believe that one, at least more than you believe the other).

Before looking at the evidence, you can still guess, just based on how often something like that is true.  Like right now you're probably not checking your bank account.  You don't currently have direct evidence that you haven't been robbed.  It's possible you were.  The probability of it happening are not zero.  But you know, based on experience and information, that it's pretty rare for that to happen.  So even without checking, you can say you've probably not been robbed.

Still, evidence could come along to change your mind about that.

So how does weighing the evidence work?

Sometimes it's really easy, and one side just doesn't really have much evidence on their side at all.  And even if convincing the other person is hard, at least you can be pretty certain about what you personally believe.

But if things aren't obvious to you, or to the other person, it's worth knowing how this really should work.  You can even bring this up in conversation, if the other person doesn't seem to be reasoning correctly.  It would be better if both of you were good at it beforehand, though.

Beliefs, like words, are meant to compress a bunch of information into an easier to handle package.

With words I compared them to the summary of a longer story.  If you read the summary, you should be able to predict a lot about what the full story is like.  If it's a good summary.

With beliefs, you should be able to predict a lot about what the factual details are like (or what they will be like).  If it's a good belief.

On the other hand, if the details are surprising or unexpected, you were kind of wrong.  And you're more wrong the more surprising or unexpected the details are.

Believing you have money in the bank doesn't predict that the ATM will tell you you have none.  But the idea that you've been robbed predicts that better.

Now, because nothing is 100% certain, you could make excuses.  "Oh, maybe the ATM is just broken, maybe there's an error or whatever".  Maybe.  But maybe not.  So how can you tell how likely it is that you've been robbed or not?

You have to apply the same process to those new reasons/excuses.  How often does something like that happen, compared to the alternative?  Does the evidence fit one explanation better than the other (does it predict it better)?

It's possible that the ATM is broken.  And it's possible that you've been robbed.  Neither possibility is enough to settle the matter.  You have to figure out which is more *probable*.

[can bridge to "what is meant" by noting that words and such are just the atomized pieces we use to build beliefs in the minds of other people, and even in our own minds.  And so "what is true" will always *be* a model built out of some language.  And "what is that model" will always require knowing what is meant, what the pieces of language/model are, how they fit together into the larger model]

### **What is meant**

This one seems simple, we all speak the same language, right?

Well, not exactly, no.

While *on the surface* it might appear to be the same language, what we really have is more like a *species*, many different individual versions of English.

Words are just names for patterns of experience.  If people have different experiences, they understand the words differently.  So, unsurprisingly, different beliefs can really change what people mean by words (see above, the "How do we know" section).  You'll run into this a lot in any major disagreement.

Individual words are a bit like the summary of a long book or movie.  The summary will try to convey the content, but it's less detailed, it has to leave a lot out.  And you might still have to check to make sure the summary is accurate, or that you really understand it.  [---------and prediction is what makes "what is meant", what makes it MEANINGFUL, does info compression also count as meaning?  Only if underlying is some prediction, probably... ---------]

Words can also combine facts *and* values (see "thick" Vs "thin" words).  Some words, like "traitor", carry with them a value judgement.  Confusion can happen when one person perceives a specific value judgement to come with a word, while someone else sees a different value judgement, or no value judgement at all, with the same word.  An example is the word "victim".  For whatever reason, some people see the word "victim" as meaning not merely that a person was wronged by someone else, but also as a judgement:  that the victim is a weak type of person.  Like the word "dupe".  (Beliefs also combine facts and values, and I talk about each of these in the other sections above)

And then there's "jargon".  Often times groups of people who work together in a specialized area or community come up with their own words, or re-shape regular English words to be more useful in their own endeavours. This is like evolution, memetic evolution.

For example, the word "proof" (in everyday language) just means strong evidence.  In formal mathematics, it means a 100% inescapable logical necessity.  I guess that's really useful to mathematicians, but in everyday life, basically nothing is 100% certain (especially not by logic alone), so using the word that way just isn't useful for most of us.

So, what do I recommend?

Well, asking questions of course.

But what if it's clear that people mean different things by the same words?

And what if people attach enough importance to these meanings and words that they don't want to simply adopt the understanding of the word that the other person has?

I think in that case it's best to focus on what you mean, in more detail.  Set the disputed words aside, they aren't going to help right now, they'll only be getting in the way.  Similarly, focus on what the *other person* means, and always bring the conversation back to what both of you mean if they start using the disputed word in a way that you don't think works.

Language is great.  It helps us help each other.  With mutual understanding, we can work towards even more mutual benefit.  That's the whole point of language, and that's the whole point of civilization.

[what about just techniques for changing minds?]