Reason and Rationality

Doing discourse better →

Published June 7, 2022  ·  All posts on Jun 7  ·  

Do conversations have known best practices? How much do they improve the odds of landing on the truth?

~ “Dynomight” from, Talking about sugar

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I hate this terrific article. It’s completely stuffed with great ideas and great questions… and exactly zero answers. It starts talking about the particular type of conversation where two people acting benevolently are trying to find the truth about something under discussion. (Here I snicker at all of humanity, and myself, because we’ve been having conversations for like a gazillion years and we don’t yet know how to do it well.) It then narrows down to discussing just online conversations. Said narrowing feels like a great idea because there are a lot of online conversations and it feels like something we should be able to be good at. (Again here, snickering is warranted.) Anyway, at least some people are trying. Maybe, just maybe this is the epoch we get it sorted out?

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Discourse →

Published May 29, 2022  ·  All posts on May 29

You don’t know if your idea is any good the moment it’s created. Neither does anyone else. The most you can hope for is a strong gut feeling that it is. And trusting your feelings is not as easy as the optimists say it is. There’s a reason why feelings scare us—because what they tell us and what the rest of the world tells us are often two different things.

~ Hugh MacLeod

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This quote, I think, also alludes to the problem of people “not getting” new ideas. It turns out that the same problem exists for old ideas to which people have grown unaccoustomed through lack of use.

Online discussion in forums is not a new idea. It’s a time-tested idea; They can be a space to focus interaction. There are ground rules. There’s a border defining what’s inside and what’s outside. Those inside have skin in the game. There is accountability.

The challenge is for each of us to resume engaging in reasoned discourse with others. That can be done in many places, not just in online forums. But in general, we’ve lost it in, (something like,) the last ten years when the current incarnation of the social networks rose and ate our attention.

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Discussion →

Published April 30, 2022  ·  All posts on Apr 30  ·  

He that is not open to conviction is not qualified for discussion.

~ Richard Whately

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Weakness →

Published April 21, 2022  ·  All posts on Apr 21  ·  

Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause.

~ Victor Hugo

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A good argument →

Published April 15, 2022  ·  All posts on Apr 15  ·  

Arguments […] can have a great deal of force for us even if, perhaps especially if, we recoil from [the] actual positions. The better the reasoning, the more [the] work requires us—if we’re going to be honest—to pick out the step where we disagree, and to see what consequences that has for the rest of our thought.

~ Stephen E. Sachs from, Why Listen to Abhorrent Speech

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I do think about this sort of thing.

In my day-to-day life, I rarely encounter something abhorrent. That’s partly because of my privileged position in life, but it’s mostly because I don’t try to overreach. I don’t try to watch “everything” or keep up with “everything” and I very emphatically do not try to have an opinion on everything. But I do, sometimes, encounter things that, while not abhorrent, rise to the level of odious. Which then makes me think, “do I want to have an argument?”

Increasingly, approaching “always” these days, I don’t feel I have the energy for a good argument. That’s not a good sign.

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What do you know →

Published April 12, 2022  ·  All posts on Apr 12  ·  

Read that title in the Petulant Voice. (There are the 1st-person, 2nd-person, Narrator, Author, etc. voices; I’ve always thought failure to formally recognize Petulant Voice was a major literary oversight.)

Reasoned skepticism and disagreement are essential to progress and democracy. The problem is that most of what’s happening isn’t reasoned skepticism. It’s the adult equivalent of a two-year-old throwing a tantrum.

~ Shane Parrish from, The Distrust of Intellectual Authority

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As in this article, the majority of what I’ve read—in the 32 years I’ve been reading stuff on the Internet—has been about the skeptic in the skepticism/disagreement relationships. But the responsibility is actually with the side claiming authority.

Always.

Because that’s the moral high road. (The high road is always less crowded.) If one wants to hold oneself out as an authority, then one is responsible for reaching down and helping others up. (Also, is “Tortured” a recognized voice?) One is not responsible for the skeptics whose attention you do not have. But one is responsible for those whose attention you do have; Those skeptics see you. There’s your chance to do good work.

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Thinking through →

Published March 13, 2022  ·  All posts on Mar 13  ·  

Ignore advice to simply follow your intuition or gut without thinking through whether the course is likely to be fruitful and rewarding.

~ Steven Pinker

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Everything is figure-out-able →

Published March 11, 2022  ·  All posts on Mar 11  ·  

No matter what challenge or obstacle you face, whether it’s personal, professional, or global, there’s a path ahead. It’s all figure-out-able. you’ll find a way or make a way, if you’re willing to be relentless, stay nimble, and keep taking action. It’s especially useful to remember when things go wrong, because rather than wasting time or energy on the problem, you shift immediately to brainstorming solutions.

~ Marie Forleo

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Interconnected →

Published November 25, 2021  ·  All posts on Nov 25

The Scientific Revolution began in the 1500s; the Industrial Revolution not until the 1700s. Since industrial progress is in large part technological progress, and technology is in large part applied science, it seems that the Industrial Revolution followed from the Scientific, as a consequence, if not necessarily an inevitable one.

~ Jason Crawford from, What was the relationship of the Scientific Revolution to the Industrial?

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It seems clear to me, (and the article does not disagree,) that the the Scientific Revolution was a necessary precursor to the Industrial. So, “was it necessary?” isn’t a very interesting question.

But the question, “how did it lead to and enable the Industrial revolution?” is a very interesting question. I hadn’t thought about how, specifically, did the one lead to the other. The Scientific Revolution didn’t simply create some sort of encyclopedia of human knowledge, (spread out among all the scientists.) It did that, yes. But it also set things up for the Industrial revolution because suddenly the regular, uneducated people believed the world was knowable and believed that they could tinker, and iterate to improve things.

Which is an interesting point to keep in mind the next time I’m ready to throw my hands up in frustration at some wacky something-or-other.

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Successful →

Published November 13, 2021  ·  All posts on Nov 13  ·  

If you want to be successful in business, (in life, actually,) you have to create more than you consume. Your goal should be to create value for everyone you interact with. Any business that doesn’t create value for those it touches, even if it appears successful on the surface, isn’t long for this world. It’s on the way out.

~ Jeff Bezos

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