How “Silence is Violence” Can Become Compelled Speech – JONATHAN TURLEY

How “Silence is Violence” Can Became Compelled Speech – JONATHAN TURLEY

Jonathan Turley’s essay identifies a trend that is surfacing: “failing to utter certain words, prayers or pledges is deemed a confession of complicity or guilt.” He cites this an example.

This week, a mob surrounded diners (https://www.businessinsider.com/white-protesters-confront-dinersduring-black-lives-matter-protest-2020-8) outside several Washington restaurants, shouting “White silence is violence!” and demanding that diners raise a fist to support Black Lives Matter. Various diners dutifully complied as protesters screamed inches from their faces. One did not — Lauren Victor, who later said she has marched in protests for weeks but refused to be bullied. The mob surrounded her, and Washington Post reporter Fredrick Kunkle identified a freelance journalist (https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2020/08/25/dc-protesters-blmdiner-confrontation/) as one of the people yelling at Victor and demanding: “What was in you, you couldn’t do this?”

Later Turley says:

The transition from speech codes to commands is based on the same notion of “speech as harm.” Just as speech is deemed harmful (and thus subject to regulation), silence is now deemed harmful.

Turley doesn’t talk about where the idea of speech as harm arose but Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt do in their The Coddling of the American Mind. They refer to a 2017 The New York Times essay by Lisa Feldman Barrett, professor of psychology and emotion researcher at Northeastern University, in which Barrett claims: “If words can cause stress, and if prolonged stress can cause physical harm, then it seems that speech – at least certain types of speech – can be a form of violence.” Turley’s example above shows that now it’s not enough to avoid politically incorrect language or even “micro-aggressions” where you can be taken to task even for unintentionally using the wrong words. Now even silence can be wrong. As he says, “the appetite for collective suppression will become a demand for collective expression.”

Turley’s use of the word “collective” twice in the same sentence reveals an issue I have with the constant drive to police expression: the drive to suppress individual thought. One side believes they have a monopoly on moral rectitude. So disagreement automatically means you’re immoral. You’re expected to purge your mind of “bad thoughts.”

I recall when I was going to Catholic Church in my youth we were taught that bad thoughts were as sinful as bad actions. (If I may take a slight and somewhat crude detour, George Carlin had a great skit on this where he says just thinking about “feeling up Ellen” consisted of multiple sins. It was a sin for you to want to feel up Ellen. It was a sin for you to plan to feel up Ellen. It was a sin for you to figure out a place to feel up Ellen. It was a sin to take Ellen to the place to feel her up. It was a sin to try to feel her up and it was a sin to feel her up. There were six sins in one feel!)

I have a reason for bringing up George Carlin and religion. As a former Roman Catholic, I was raised to believe humans are born with Original Sin, that we are all sinful by nature

My point is that we are expected to all think and speak alike. No diversity of opinion of allowed. It’s almost like we’re expected to plug into the Borg collective where not only is resistance futile, so is disagreement. (If you’re not familiar with my reference to the Borg collective the Borg was a cybernetic life form in Star Trek Next Generation that conquered other species then absorbed them into the Borg collective where each member became a drone with no individual free will. This link explains in more detail. When confronting the Star Trek crew, the Borg drones would say, “Resistance is futile.”) 

A kernel of truth lies under the concern of using language that can make people feel diminished, abused or oppressed. Pushing the idea that there is no such thing as an innocent misuse of language washes out the validity of this concern. Instead, ALL language that doesn’t meet these speech codes (as Turley calls them) means the person who uttered them is sinful, regardless of intent. Ultimately, it’s a no-win situation. The ultimate result squelches individual thought.

If you don’t agree that silence is violence then these people feel it’s OK to use violence, the physical kind, to silence you. Ultimately speech control boils down to thought control.

Tweet by Naval

https://twitter.com/naval/status/1320071888551358464?s=20 

One of the people I follow on Twitter is Naval. He condenses his thinking into short, pithy posts. Below is an example which I like.

“Artists” calling for censorship don’t know what art is.

“Scientists” citing consensus don’t know what science is.

“Teachers” indoctrinating students don’t know what teaching is.

“Journalists” parroting propaganda don’t know what reporting is.

Programming us all day long.

Media Bias 101: The Difference Between News, Analysis, and Opinion | AllSides or How to Recognize Skewed News

Media Bias 101: The Difference Between News, Analysis, and Opinion | AllSides

I've referred to AllSides before as a source for analyzing bias in news reporting. This article explains the three different aspects of a news story: news, analysis and opinion. Here is how AllSides describes each category.

News: What happened.

Analysis: What happened and why — writer considers facts and draws conclusions.

Opinion: What I think about what happened.

The article provides three examples of a story about a protest with a headline of "violation of human rights."

News: Crackdown "Violation of Human Rights"

• attributes information to a source
• uses quotes, cites source
• describes what is objectively observable (something was said, something happened)
• to be truly balanced and unbiased, the piece would also include a quote from the other side (in this fictional example, the perspective of law enforcement, or perhaps a bystander or another organization who has a different account of what happened)

Analysis: Crackdown Violation of Human Rights

• explains what events may mean
• someone with experience, knowledge, and background considers evidence and interprets events
• conclusions are drawn based on evidence (they may or may not be accurate conclusions)

Opinion: Crackdown Violation of Human Rights

• offers judgement, viewpoint, belief, feelings, or statement that is not conclusive (notice the writer does not directly describe what happened)
• language is colored by subjective spin words and phrases

The AllSides article highlights the problem when all three factors are mixed together in a story. The resulting stew results in what I call "skewed news" which I think is more accurate than Trump's "fake news." I say skewed because most news outlets leave out key information that doesn't support the narrative they want to create. In this case the term "news story" is accurate if we take the word story to mean crafting a narrative or trying to lead the consumer to reach a specific conclusion. We tell stories to influence the listener or reader to agree with us.

For examples check out the weekly Blind Spot report of Ground News. Each week Ground News provides examples of stories that the left will cover much more than the right and vice versa.

 

Sneaky Bias

I normally don’t bother trying to document examples of biased reporting because, frankly, I don’t have the time or interest. Years ago a friend and I put together a course on critical thinking that we gave at a local center for adult education. My partner and I used examples from various publications like the Boston Globe or Newsweek. We had absolutely no trouble finding examples. They were literally on every page. It was a target-rich environment. 

However sometimes I see particular example of how sneaky the bias is in the reporting. Here are two, both related to the controversy over mail-in voting.  I have my own concerns about mail-in voting, just to be transparent. I’m not going to talk about them here because the point I’m making has to do with how some news reporting tries to influence your opinion by their choice of the words they use … or don’t use.

The first example comes from the local Boston evening news. They showed Trump saying that absentee ballots were OK but that mail-in voting was subject to fraud. When they cut back to the news anchor he says, "There is no evidence of mail-in voter fraud." Period. The anchor doesn't cite any sources while saying it like it's an established, unquestionable fact. They then immediately shifted to a different story. So this leaves the uninformed viewer with the impression that Trump is wrong as usual and that mail-in voting has no risk.

The second example comes from the CBS This Morning Show in their coverage of the 2020 DNC convention. After showing some clips from the convention the anchor briefly reported on what Trump was doing at the same time and his “unsubstantiated” claims about mail-in voting fraud. Period. The anchor provided no substantiation for this statement.  If you’re not listening critically words like “unsubstantiated” slip by your filter and could influence your opinion. I think this is intentional, not accidental.

You could argue that the available time in news shows is too tight to get into detailed counterarguments. Fair enough. However, I’d say they could add something like, “Some experts say there is no evidence of mail-in fraud.” In fact, I used to see statements like that added at the end of a story where the news aired a claim by someone who challenged something like the validity of claims about global warming. I haven’t seen that recently.

My main point is to show how they sneak in their own unsubstantiated claims as if it were an indisputable fact. These days there is no such a thing!

The centrifugal forces of ideology

Someone posted a comment on another blog about the strong reaction some people have against Trump supporters. The commenter related how her own daughter who is an ER doctor called the mother a racist. The daughter also said she can’t believe the mother was supporting Trump who puts her the daughter’s life at risk because of inadequate personal protective equipment. The mother feels that it’s the responsibility of the state governor, not the president. As a result the mother and daughter haven’t talked in months.

Her story reminds me of an encounter I had when Romney was running against Obama. I was at a get together at a friend’s house where the daughter of a friend proclaimed that she wouldn't vote for Mitt Romney because "he wants to kill me." When I asked what she meant by that she explained that she has a condition that was life-threatening if she got pregnant. She wanted the government to provide contraceptives for people like her. Romney was against government-provided contraceptives. Ergo, he wants to kill people like her. Makes perfect sense, doesn't it? There is no arguing with that, literally. 

In her mind her need became a right and there is no honest disagreement with her position. If you don't agree with her that means you want to kill her. That probably helps explain why people like this hate Trump (and conservatives) so viscerally and viciously. They're literally threatened by the existence of people who disagree. I'm speculating here but I think the people who hate Trump and conservatives see them as evil, not wrong, so this justifies the whole cancel culture agenda. Actually I'm not speculating or mind reading so much. I've heard people explicitly say Trump and his supporters are evil. And, yes, you can find similar examples of people on the right calling Obama or Biden supporters evil. 

I suppose this reaction typifies what it means to be an ideologue. They see everything as either-or with no shades of grey. If you say you support Trump that means you agree with everything he says or does. Every. Single. Thing. Or if you’re an Obama supporter he never did anything wrong. Never. As I said above there is no arguing with an ideologue. You either agree 100% with an ideologue or you’re no longer human. Unfortunately that mentality justifies a lot of what is playing out in front of our eyes today. Cancel culture. Tearing down statues. Rioting. And so on. The centrifugal forces of fear and hatred fueled by ideology tear us apart.

Media Bias Chart | AllSides

Media Bias Chart | AllSides

AllSides recently updated the chart they post on their web site on media bias. I generally agree with their ratings which are: Left, Lean Left, Center, Lean Right and Right. I also like how they caution readers not to automatically assume that Center means no bias or that it's better than being on the left or right side of the spectrum. Here is what they say:

Center doesn't mean better! A Center media bias rating does not always mean neutral, unbiased or reasonable, just as "far Left" and "far Right" do not always mean "extreme," "wrong," or "unreasonable." A Center bias rating simply means the source or writer rated does not predictably publish opinions favoring either end of the political spectrum — conservative or liberal. A media outlet with a Center rating may omit important perspectives, or run individual articles that display bias, while not displaying a lot of predictable bias frequently. Center outlets can be difficult to determine, and a case can often be made for them leaning one way or the other.

Pandemic Perceptions

I’ve recently learned a lesson in how people hear things. Yesterday I mentioned to a friend that several doctors who specialize in infectious diseases ranked various activities such as playing tennis or food shopping with 1 being the safest and 10 being the most dangerous in terms of COVID exposure. When I said that going to the grocery store was rated 3 (relatively safe) in both lists my friend thought that meant I was saying grocery shopping was dangerous, like a 7 on the scale. She then went on a rant about how she sees people doing bad things in the store. My wife confirmed that I said a 3 and had clearly explained the 1 to 10 scale.

Later in the same conversation I said that when I looked at the ratio of deaths to positive cases I noticed that Massachusetts has a ratio of 1 death for every 10 positive cases. On the other hand, states where the cases have spiked generally have a ratio of 1 death to 100 positive cases. Once again, my friend thought I was saying that the ratio of deaths in the spiking states was higher than it is here in Massachusetts. That’s because her perception is that these southern states are run by stupid Republican politicians and have a stupid population. (Hmm, I thought we’re not supposed to stereotype people.) 

(By the way, I don't know what to make of these ratios; I just was curious to see if there was a difference between the states. The ratio in the spiking states might narrow if the normal delay between the detection of infections and the uptick in deaths.)

Getting back to my friend, she casually stated later that she watches CNN all day and I know that CNN pushes the pandemic panic so I think what happened is that her filter translated what I said into what she expected to hear. I didn't bother to correct her. (What is more important is that I'm thrilled that tennis is rated #1 in safety!)

Stephen Hicks, "A Primer on Objective Journalism"

Stephen Hicks, "A Primer on Objective Journalism"

Stephen Hicks, a Canadian-American philosopher who teaches at Rockford University, explains what objectivity entails, especially in journalism. For instance, he explains that being objective doesn't mean suspending judgment or not having an opinion. It does mean having a respect for the facts and reporting them without distorting them (at least not consciously!) to fit a narrative or to pitch a predetermined case.

On “White Fragility” - Reporting by Matt Taibbi

Matt Taibbi just posted a long piece on the book White Fragility which he correctly takes to task. Here are his opening sentences. "A core principle of the academic movement that shot through elite schools in America since the early nineties was the view that individual rights, humanism, and the democratic process are all just stalking-horses for white supremacy. The concept, as articulated in books like former corporate consultant Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility (Amazon’s #1 seller!) reduces everything, even the smallest and most innocent human interactions, to racial power contests."

Taibbi doesn't mention postmodernism in his article but I think this philosophy which denies the idea of objective truth is used to disarm and dismiss those who challenge this White Fragility ideology. 

Self-censor to avoid censure?

This morning I played tennis with a guy who is roughly my age (60s) and who emigrated from the Russia when it was under Communist rule. He said he came here to have freedom of speech. He feels he doesn't have freedom of speech anymore. My friend said it isn't the government that is preventing him from expressing his ideas. He is self-censoring to avoid censure from his "friends" and family. That could be the sad slogan of our time: "Self-censor to avoid censure."

I know there is a fundamental difference between government censorship of speech and the feeling you can’t speak freely on politics with family or friends. The first is political freedom of speech; I’d call the second one social freedom of speech. (Yes, I know there are some limits on what you can say about other people that falls under defamation.)

Andrew Sullivan: Is There Still Room for Debate?

I like Sullivan's approach. While he addresses his comments to liberals everyone could benefit from his ideas.

Andrew Sullivan: Is There Still Room for Debate?

Dave Rubin On Where Liberals And Conservatives Can Agree, And Can't

An interesting read.

Dave Rubin On Where Liberals And Conservatives Can Agree, And Can't

Left vs. Right = Empathy vs. respect?

One of the people I follow closely is Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert and author of several books such as his latest, Loserthink: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America. Adams was interviewed recently by Hotep Jesus about the protests and riots triggered by the death of George Floyd. I found the interview to be filled with fascinating insights by both Scott and Hotep. While they didn’t agree 100% I liked how the respected each other’s viewpoint. I also was impressed with Scott’s reaction when Hotep said something that Scott didn’t necessarily agree with or didn’t understand the point Hotep was making. Instead of going on the defensive Scott asked Hotep something like “What does that look like?” which got Hotep to flesh out in clearer terms what he was truing to say. It was more like a true conversation than a traditional interview.

Scott commented on Hotep’s claim that Republicans’ and conservatives’ lack of empathy doesn’t resonate with blacks. If I recall correctly Scott said the right emphasizes respect more than empathy and that they suspect those who talk about empathy because it could be used to subvert the rule of law (which the right says protects civilization from collapsing into barbaric chaos).

This comment reminded me of an article Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind and co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind, posted:  “Where microaggressions really come from:  A sociological account” which comments on a paper titled Microaggression and Moral Cultures by Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning. Their paper claims there are three moral cultures: honor which people have to earn, dignity which we have inherently, and victimhood in which people claim to be easily hurt by slights, real or imagined. Haidt posts parts of the paper with key text emphasized.

Here is a quote from the conclusion of the paper, which Haidt provided in his post.

“What we are seeing in these controversies is the clash between dignity and victimhood, much as in earlier times there was a clash between honor and dignity. … One person’s standard provokes another’s grievance, acts of social control themselves are treated as deviant, and unintentional offenses abound. And the conflict will continue. As it does each side will make its case, attracting supporters and winning or losing various battles. But remember that the moral concepts of each side invokes are not free-floating ideas; they are reflections of social organization.”

Why am I bringing up? I might be stretching things a bit too much to force fit into a theory I’m mulling: a parallel between Arnold Kling’s three languages of politics and these moral cultures. Kling claims conservatives explain things in terms of civilization versus barbarism and therefore defend law and order. (Look at how many of Trump’s tweets consist of “Law & order!” in response to the riots. Tucker Carlson has regularly harped on the breakdown of civilization threatened by the riots.) Liberals, on the other hand, see everything in terms of oppressors and the oppressed. Libertarians (who are the smallest and least visible group) focus on freedom versus coercion and advocate protecting individual rights. I’m thinking that conservatives gravitate toward the respect of the “honor” culture (and somewhat to the “dignity” culture) while liberals empathize with the victims of oppression. (Although I think it’s interesting that liberals claim most oppression comes from capitalism, not from the government which they see as the tool to abolish oppression.)

I would admit that conservatives don't fall neatly into the respect culture. I think there are elements that fall into the dignity culture and some into honor. I'm also using honor in a broader sense than personal honor such as honoring tradition, law, the constitution, the family unit, etc.

This leads me to Integral philosopher Ken Wilber who proposes that humans (and cultures) go through stages of mental evolution; he uses colors adopted from Spiral Dynamics, created by Don Beck and Christopher Cowan, who based their work on Clare Graves, professor of psychology at Union College in Schenectady, New York. This model describes each stage of evolution. Red refers to gang culture (as in red in tooth and claw), blue for traditional culture with a clearly established hierarchy or pecking order (some conservatives) and laws, orange for Enlightenment values of reason, individualism and hierarchies based on meritocracy (libertarians and some conservatives) and green for liberals and the Green movement in which they denounce hierarchies in favor of egalitarianism. Wilber claims each stage, if it is to be a healthy evolution, should transcend yet include the previous stages. Pathologies set in when the next stage rejects the former stages entirely.

This might sound like New Ago woo-woo stuff but I think there is some merit to these distinctions that can help with the current situation. The trick is to find a way that integrates all of them. If the right wants to make progress with the black community they need to find a way to express their ideas and concerns in terms of empathy or in terms of fighting oppression. The same goes the other way too. If the left wants to be more convincing to those on the right they could coach their ideas more in terms of protecting traditions and civilization or, for libertarian, in terms of protecting rights. (Notice I said “if” in both cases. The problem is that it’s easier to band together with our selected tribe and tut-tut about how bad the other side is rather than making the effort to find ways to explain your position in terms that the other side is more likely to accept.)

I’m sure someone could come up with better ideas but here is a first attempt.

For the right they could say something like, “What happened to Floyd should not occur in a civilized society that recognizes the inherent worth of every person’s life regardless of their race or ethnic background. Just as racism oppresses blacks, excessive use of force by the police AND in response to the police oppress too, neither of which we do not condone.”

Liberals could say something like; “Excessive force does not protect us and, as the resulting riots have shown, contributes to the breakdown of law and order, the very thing we on the left and the right value.” When both sides talk with a libertarian they could say; “What the policeman did to George violated his right to life and due process. The failure of the authorities to protect the people who live or have businesses in the areas ravaged by the riots amounts to violating their rights too.”

I’m not saying this attempt to translate your language into a form that the other side uses will always work. I do think you stand a better chance of being heard than what is happening now which is a cacophony of outrage and demonization of the opposing sides.

May 30, 2020: Riots, Rights, Rhetoric and a Rocket - a day of contrasts.

With SpaceX-NASA rocket launch we saw an inspiring display of the ingenuity, intelligence and bravery needed to launch a 1,000,000-pound rocket carrying two astronauts into orbit on a tightly controlled pillar of fire. On the other hand we saw the depressing desire to destroy by those who launched bricks through store windows and set fires in the protests over the death of George Floyd that have degenerated into riots and looting. The injustice of his death will unfortunately be lost in the wanton destruction that followed, thus adding to the injustice.

It’s been interesting to see Arnold Kling’s Three Languages Of Politics in action when listening to the different political groups react to the riots. Conservatives like Tucker Carlson warn that the riots are an ominous sign of the potential breakdown of civilization into barbarism. (Thus showing conservative’s preference to express things as civilization vs. barbarism [“law and order”].)

Liberals defend the riots as release of pent-up anger of blacks at being oppressed. (Liberals tend to see life as a struggle between oppressors and the oppressed.)

Libertarians (such as Reason magazine) point out that Floyd’s rights were violated as well as the stores owners when rioters torched their businesses while the police were ordered (or chose) to stand down. (The libertarian preference to see things as Freedom vs. coercion or in terms of individual rights vs. force.)

As a result the three camps talk past each other. All three sides have a point. Yes, I know saying this could seem to be a cop-out (no pun intended) but I believe it’s true. It appears that Floyd didn’t deserve to lose his life. Protecting individual lives requires enforcing our rights, which also ensures law and order, combining the conservative and libertarian angles. And we do have the right to peacefully protest when oppression occurs or rights have been violated.

Three Resources for Checking News Bias

Scott Adams recommended an app called Ground News in one of his Periscopes. I checked it out and installed the app. When you open the app it lists the latest stories with a banner beneath it with the following categories: Left, Lean Left, Center, Lean Right and Right. It shows which news outlets in each category have covered the story. You can click on the five buttons for the political bent you want to check out to compare how each news outlet reported that story. Here is their URL. https://app.ground.news/top

If you sign up for their weekly email it shows examples of stories that show the "blindspots" of the coverage on the left and right. They'll post stories with a breakdown of how many news outlets in the five different categories of bias covered that story. They breakdown might show that, say, no outlets reported a particular story on the right or on the left. 

There is another site called AllSides that does pretty much the same thing. I don't think they have a phone app like Ground News does. Their home page lists stories in three columns: News from the Left, News from the Center and News from the Right.

AllSides also has a chart under the tab Media Bias that ranks news sites by their bias. You can vote to indicate whether you agree with their rating. There is a table that includes a column that shows whether the site's users agree with the AllSides rating. https://www.allsides.com/unbiased-balanced-news

You can follow both Ground News and AllSides on Twitter or Facebook.

6/3/2020 Update. Found a third site that also compares the news reporting of the left, right and center. https://leftright.news/

Arnold Schwarzenegger's 2020 Snapchat Commencement Address on Overcoming Obstacles

I liked the message in this video Schwarzenegger made for 2020 commencement. Below is the opening words. Be sure to watch to the very end. There are a couple reasons I like this video. First, the message: follow your vision. Two: enjoy the journey and the work it takes to make the vision come true. Third: the ending. I don't want to spoil the ending so that's all I'm going to say!

I am not going to bullshit you and say this is a fantastic time to graduate. But I am going to tell you about one of the biggest obstacles I faced in my life, because the obstacles that coronavirus had created won't be the last you face, but they can prepare you for the next obstacle.

Review of How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide

It seems just about everyone agrees that the vicious rift in how we disagree with each other has never been worse than it is today, especially in politics. Friends have disowned each other over whether they support gun control, immigration, climate change or Trump. We all shake our heads as if this was a hopeless, irreconcilable divide. Although this might be ultimately be true I believe we should still try.

I’ve read several books and articles that offer suggestions on how to bridge this gap. Of the ones I’ve read I’d highly recommend How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide by Peter Boghossian, James Lindsay. Peter Boghossian is a faculty member in the philosophy department at Portland State University and is a speaker for the Center of Inquiry and an international speaker for the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. James Lindsay holds degrees in physics and mathematics, with a doctorate in the latter. Because I liked this book I’ve been planning to write a review for this blog. However, this review by Eric Barker, author of Barking Up The Wrong Tree, does such a nice job hitting the key points that I’ve decided to quote from his blog entry to share the key points from How to Have Impossible Conversations.

I should note that the book’s advice is laid out in a sequence starting with beginner’s level recommended skills then intermediate and expert levels. The authors explain that they evolved these skills “drawn from the best, most effective research on applied epistemology, hostage and professional negotiations, cult exiting, subdisciplines of psychology, and more.”

Quoting more from the book, it is “organized by difficulty of application: fundamentals (Chapter 2), basics (Chapter 3), intermediate (Chapter 4), advanced (Chapter 5), expert (Chapter 6), and master (Chapter 7). Some techniques teach you to intervene in the cognition of others, instill doubt, and help people become more open to rethinking their beliefs. Other techniques are oriented toward truth-seeking. Some are just plain good advice. Their underlying commonality, regardless of your conversational goal, is that they all empower you to speak with people who have radically different political, moral, and social worldviews.”

So what are the key points of this book? Here I’ll rely on Eric Barker’s summary. (I’ve edited it slightly and added comments to explain a point if it needs to be expanded.)

·      Be a partner, not an adversary: If you’re trying to win, you’re going to lose. The best approach is: Be nice and respectful. Listen. Understand. Instill doubt. (I refuse to change my mind about this.)

·      Use Rapoport’s rules: They can seem awkward but they reduce conflict better than Valium. [I’ll add an explanation of Rapoport’s rules below.]

·      Facts are the enemy: Unless we’re talking about the savvy, attractive people who read this blog, yes, facts are the enemy. [I have some additional thoughts below.]

·      Use the “Unread Library Effect”: Let them talk. Ask questions. Let them expose their ignorance. Do not cheer when that happens.

·      Use scales: Bring extreme statements down to earth with numbered comparisons. And unless they’re certain at a level 10, they’ll mention their own doubts which can aid your cause.

·      Use disconfirmation: “Eric, under what conditions would disconfirmation not be effective?”

·      Serious beliefs are about values and identity: Don’t attack what they believe, focus on the validity of their reasoning process and whether that identity is the only way to be a good person.

What are Rapoport’s rules? Impossible Conversations explains, quoting from Daniel C. Dennett’s book Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking. (Rapoport is a game theorist.):

1.    Attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.”

2.    List any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).

3.    Mention anything you have learned from your target.

4.    And only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.

Rapoport’s rules would fall under the concept “steelmanning” in which you restate your opponent’s case in the strongest possible way before challenging it. This approach treats your partner’s beliefs more fairly than using the “straw man” approach in which you purposely weaken or exaggerate someone’s case then refute it.

What about facts? Why do Boghossian and Lindsay urge us not to argue with facts? Well, they don’t say you should never use facts. “It does mean that introducing facts into a conversation is likely to backfire unless done at the correct moment and with great care. … Many people believe what and how they do precisely because they do not formulate their beliefs on the basis of evidence – not because they’re lacking evidence. … Few people form their beliefs on the basis of rigorous consideration of reasoned arguments. Complicating matters, most people believe they do have evidence supporting their beliefs.  … We tend to form beliefs on the basis of cherry-picked selective evidence that supports what we already believe or what we want to believe. Virtually everyone formulates most of their beliefs first then subsequently looks for supporting evidence and convincing arguments that back them up.” As Jonathan Haidt says, we think we’re being detectives who piece together the facts before reaching a conclusion when in fact we act like lawyers who choose facts to make a case.

The authors conclude that introducing facts can backfire and harden your partner’s viewpoint rather than leading your partner to change their mind. They suggest that a more effective way to work facts into a conversation is through questions and by saying something like “I may be wrong about this. It’s my understanding that …”

They also offer a valuable tip on choice of words: eliminate the word “but” and replace it with “and.” For instance, instead of saying “Yes, but how should we deal with the children of illegal immigrants?” we say, “Yes, and how should we deal with the children of illegal immigrants?”

I’ve found that when I disagree with someone on a subject the person I’m talking with often asks why I disagree. They’ll ask what evidence do I have. That gives me the opening to introduce the facts I’ve used to support my conclusion. I should note that sometimes my partner doesn’t ask for my reasons. The less reasonable person will just launch into an attack because I dare to disagree with their unshakeable opinions. In that case, I might still cite my reasons but find a way to end the conversation. Diplomatically, of course!

While I admit I haven’t mastered all of the techniques in this book the key points discussed above have helped me when talking with people who don’t see things the way I do. Read How to Have Impossible Conversations because I think it is possible to have reasonable conversations.

Scott Adams on Twitter: "The #Coronavirus is acting like an unwelcome Olympics for scientists, doctors, engineers, entrepreneurs, techies, leaders, parents, and ordinary heroes of every kind. Setting records in every event." / Twitter

I like Scott Adam's thoughts on the effects the Coronavirus could have on us once it's behind us. The link takes you to a Twitter thread he posted; I've also added the text below in case the link doesn't work.

Scott Adams on Twitter: "The #Coronavirus is acting like an unwelcome Olympics for scientists, doctors, engineers, entrepreneurs, techies, leaders, parents, and ordinary heroes of every kind. Setting records in every event." / Twitter

The #Coronavirus is acting like an unwelcome Olympics for scientists, doctors, engineers, entrepreneurs, techies, leaders, parents, and ordinary heroes of every kind. Setting records in every event. You can almost feel humanity getting smarter. The most capable among us are forming lasting connections. Sharing best practices. Learning shortcuts. Building a working trust. Creating tools at blazing speeds. One way to imagine the future is that the economy will lose trillions of dollars and we will never get it back. Another filter on the future is that energy doesn’t disappear, it only relocates and changes form. A huge amount of energy is leaving the economy. We know that for sure. What is less clear is where that energy is going. My filter shows a global “mind” being formed, in real time, to fight our common enemy, the virus. That mind needs a lot of energy, like a newborn. And wow, is it getting it. I had resisted the common pundit prediction that “everything would be different” after this crisis because I expect a speedy recovery. But I revise my opinion. While I still expect a speedy recovery, I also think this experience is rewiring the collective mind of civilization. We probably crammed years of innovation into months. We’ll be coming out of this with a LOT of extra knowledge about our systems and ourselves. And that energy will get channeled back into the economy. The coming weeks will test us all. But when it is over, we will be far smarter, and far tougher, in every way. As Steve Jobs proved, the right thoughts and the right skill stack can turn into trillions of dollars. Civilization’s skill stack is undergoing a major upgrade. Watch how much energy that later pumps into the economy. It will be amazing.

Media Mistakes in the Trump Era: Sharyl Attkisson

Sharyl Attkisson is one of the sources I refer to often for an objective (I think!) take on the news. Attkisson was a correspondent and anchor at CBS News, PBS, CNN and in local news for thirty years. She also won the Emmy Award five times, and received the Edward R. Murrow award for investigative reporting. 

With that as background I'm sharing a link to Attkisson's website in which she tracks how many "mistakes" the news media has been making in reporting on president Trump. As of this posting her list contains 119 mistakes! 

https://sharylattkisson.com/2020/03/50-media-mistakes-in-the-trump-era-the-definitive-list/

She introduces this list as follows:

[A]s self-appointed arbiters of truth, we’ve largely excused our own unprecedented string of fact-challenged reporting. The truth is, formerly well-respected, top news organizations are making repeat, unforced errors in numbers that were unheard of just a couple of years ago.

 Our repeat mistakes involve declaring that Trump’s claims are “lies” when they are matters of opinion, or when the truth between conflicting sources is unknowable; taking Trump’s statements and events out of context; reporting secondhand accounts against Trump without attribution as if they’re established fact; relying on untruthful, conflicted sources; and presenting reporter opinions in news stories—without labeling them as opinions.

I think there are several factors at play here. One is that Trump flies fast and loose with his rhetoric. As Scott Adams probably would say, Trump exaggerates or misstates facts but is shooting in the right direction. (As one reporter once said, Trump's critics take him literally but not seriously while his supporters take Trump seriously but not literally.)

The second factor is that the "mistakes" in their reporting. I'm sure some of these mistakes are honest, maybe driven by the desire to break a story first without taking time to corroborate. But I also think some of these errors reveal the news media's bias and disagreement with Trump's policies while denying it. As Attkisson states the reporters and editors have appointed themselves as arbiters of truth. I think the desire to push a preferred narrative and the belief that they have a monopoly on the truth conspire to produce this steady flow of mistruths.

An Idea for Civil Discussion

Recently I had dinner with a couple friends when our conversation eventually drifted to the 2020 presidential election. One of my friends expressed disappointment that President Trump had done nothing about gun control. I said that I’m happy he hasn’t been pushing for more gun control. Knowing that my friend is liberal I figured it would carry more weight if I cited a study done by Leah Libresco, a statistician, former news writer at FiveThirtyEight, a self-described liberal and an advocate of gun control. Libresco wrote an article on a study in which she describes a study she conducted. (I also wrote a blog entry on her article.)

[M]y colleagues and I at FiveThirtyEight spent three months analyzing all 33,000 lives ended by guns each year in the United States, and I wound up frustrated in a whole new way. We looked at what interventions might have saved those people, and the case for the policies I'd lobbied for crumbled when I examined the evidence. The best ideas left standing were narrowly tailored interventions to protect subtypes of potential victims, not broad attempts to limit the lethality of guns.

Libresco’s study revealed that most gun deaths fall into one of these categories: suicide, gang violence and domestic disputes. She admits that the most commonly touted gun control measures would have no impact on these outcomes. When I cited this study to my friends I also referred to the high murder rate in Chicago which has tough gun control laws.

But here is where I stumbled onto a potentially valuable approach to talking about controversial subjects. Given the findings of this study by a gun control advocate and the results in cities like Chicago I said, “I’m not sure what else we can do.” My friend said maybe longer waiting periods to buy guns and universal background checks would help. She didn’t say “let’s confiscate guns” and didn’t label me as an unrepentant gun nut. I said I’d be willing to consider her ideas. I think by citing these facts from a source on her side of the political spectrum and saying that I didn’t know what else we could do about gun violence left the door open for a civil discussion.

[Note: Libresco concludes her article with: “A reduction in gun deaths is most likely to come from finding smaller chances for victories and expanding those solutions as much as possible. We save lives by focusing on a range of tactics to protect the different kinds of potential victims and reforming potential killers, not from sweeping bans focused on the guns themselves.” Amen!

Review of The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure

Coddling of the American Mind Review
How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure
Greg Lukianoff & Jonathan Haidt

Recently my wife and I went to Portland, Maine with three other neighbor couples for a charity event. All four of us couples have kids between 20 and 30 years old. While we were walking around Portland the four of us guys started to talk about how our kids don’t know how to do things that we could do when we were their age. I’m talking about things like if the “Check Engine” light comes on it doesn’t mean the car is about to explode or the engine is going to melt down. Or how to balance a checkbook. Or unplug a toilet. We all agreed that we as parents had a hand in this by doing too much for our kids. We did so much for our kids, thinking that we were helping when in fact we were hindering their ability to deal with life’s challenges.

One of those challenges includes being able to deal with political opinions that are deemed dangerous or unsafe. I brought up how some colleges and universities cancelled speaking engagements of conservatives such as Ben Shapiro or Charles Murray (who probably would classify himself more as a libertarian). Or, if these speakers tried to deliver their speech they were shouted down by the vocal contingent of student or even physically threatened. My friends were completely unaware of these incidents.

During our conversation I brought up a book I had just finished that claims our kids have been taught three key ideas that are setting them up for failure. The book? The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff. The Amazon summary of the book nicely captures their thesis and explanation how these ideas became prevalent.

[T]he new problems on campus have their origins in three terrible ideas that have become increasingly woven into American childhood and education: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people. These three Great Untruths contradict basic psychological principles about well-being and ancient wisdom from many cultures.  Embracing these untruths—and the resulting culture of safetyism—interferes with young people’s social, emotional, and intellectual development. It makes it harder for them to become autonomous adults who are able to navigate the bumpy road of life. 

Lukianoff and Haidt investigate the many social trends that have intersected to promote the spread of these untruths. They explore changes in childhood such as the rise of fearful parenting, the decline of unsupervised, child-directed play, and the new world of social media that has engulfed teenagers in the last decade. They examine changes on campus, including the corporatization of universities and the emergence of new ideas about identity and justice. They situate the conflicts on campus within the context of America’s rapidly rising political polarization and dysfunction.

Quoting directly from the book: “Many university students are learning to think in distorted ways, and this increases their likelihood of becoming fragile, anxious, and easily hurt.”

These “untruths” as the authors label them, contradict ancient wisdom, contradict modern psychological research on flourishing, and harm individuals and communities.

The authors point to an influential idea lying behind the idea of unsafe ideas and language. They refer to a 2017 The New York Times essay by Lisa Feldman Barrett, professor of psychology and emotion researcher at Northeastern University, in which Barrett claims: “If words can cause stress, and if prolonged stress can cause physical harm, then it seems that speech – at least certain types of speech – can be a form of violence.”

The authors disagree. They hold that verbal harm does not equal violence. “Interpreting a campus lecture as violence is a choice, and it is a choice that increases your pain with respect to the lecture while reducing your options for how to respond.” “As Marcus Aurelius advised, ‘Choose not to be harmed – and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed – and you haven’t been.’”

So how did we get to this point? Lukianoff and Haidt identify six trends: “the rising political polarization and cross-party animosity of U.S. politics, which has led to rising hate crimes and harassment on campus; rising levels of teen anxiety and depression, which have made many students desirous of protection and more receptive to the Great Untruths; changes in parenting practices, which have amplified children’s fears even as childhood becomes increasingly safe; the loss of free play and unsupervised risk-taking, both of which kids need to become self-governing adults; the growth of campus bureaucracy and expansion of its protective mission; and an increasing passion for justice, combined with the changing ideas about what justice requires.”

[NOTE: please see a table at the end of this post that captures the key untruths and their counter ideas.]

Lukianoff and Haidt do an admirable job ferreting out these trends but if I had to criticize this book I’d say that Lukianoff and Haidt don’t identify the deeper premises behind the subjectivity prevalent in universities and culture. (Note: I’m not saying everything can be reduced only to the prevailing ideas. Trying to avoid the mistake of reducing everything to one dimension.) I think they miss one source of these three Great Untruths. I think we need to look a bit deeper, to philosophy. While most of us don’t deal directly with philosophical trends I believe universities are a major transmission belt for ideas where young people can flock to the ideas pushed by their professors. The kids are impressionable and idealistic at the same time so they’re susceptible to latching onto ideas that sound good but haven’t been tested in the world outside of the cloistered school.

So where do these Great Untruths come from and why are most people unable to refute them? For a possible explanation I recommended another book to supplement The Coddling of the American Mind. I'm referring to Stephen R. C. Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault. What is postmodernism? Here is how postmodernism is described in Wikipedia.

“[P]ostmodernism is generally defined by an attitude of skepticism, irony, or rejection toward the meta-narratives and ideologies of modernism, often calling into question various assumptions of Enlightenment rationality. Consequently, common targets of postmodern critique include universalist notions of objective reality, morality, truth, human nature, reason, language, and social progress. Postmodern thinkers frequently call attention to the contingent or socially-conditioned nature of knowledge claims and value systems, situating them as products of particular political, historical, or cultural discourses and hierarchies. Accordingly, postmodern thought is broadly characterized by tendencies to self-referentiality, epistemological and moral relativism, pluralism, and irreverence.

Hicks provides this: “Postmodernism, Frank Lentricchia explains, ‘seeks not to find the foundation and the conditions of truth but to exercise power for the purpose of social change.’ “The task of postmodern professors is to help students ‘spot, confront, and work against the political horrors of one’s time.’”

“Metaphysically, postmodernism is anti-realist, holding that it is impossible to speak meaningfully about an independently existing reality. … Epistemologically, having rejected the notion of an independently existing reality, postmodernism denies that reason or any other method is a means of acquiring objective knowledge about that reality. Having substituted social-linguistic constructs for that reality, postmodernism emphasizes the subjectivity, conventionality, and incommensurability of those constructs. Postmodern accounts of human nature are consistently collectivist, holding that individuals’ identities are constructed largely by the social-linguistic groups that they are a part of. … Postmodern accounts of human nature also consistently emphasize relations of conflict between those groups; and given the de-emphasized or eliminated role of reason, postmodernism accounts hold that those conflicts are resolved primarily by the use of force.” [This was written in 2004 but accurately describes what Lukianoff and Haidt say is happening in universities today.]

“In education, postmodernism rejects the notion that the purpose of education is primarily to train a child’s cognitive capacity for reason in order to produce an adult capable of functioning independently in the world. That view of education is replaced with the view that education is to take an essentially indeterminate being and give it a social identity. Education’s method of molding is linguistic, and so the language to be used is that which will create a human being sensitive to its racial, sexual and class identity.” [Hence the focus on language and microaggressions.]

To summarize, postmodernism says that there is no objective truth. Therefore, your feelings are as valid, if not more so, than critical, objective thinking, especially if you’re feeling oppressed. Power is used to “correct” the legacy of white male “supremacy.” Therefore it’s OK to suppress certain ideas and speakers because their ideas are dangerous, discredited, aggressive and oppressive. Power trumps truth because truth doesn’t exist; feelings trump reason and logic.

Lukianoff and Haidt offer some solutions to counter the ill effects of the Great Untruths. One tool is to engage in “productive disagreement.” “It is part of the process by which people do each other the favor of counteracting each other’s confirmation bias.”  “[L]earning how to give and take criticism without being hurt is an essential life skill. When serious thinkers respect someone, they are willing to engage them in a thoughtful argument.”

Another tool they recommend: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). “CBT teaches you to notice when you are engaging in various ‘cognitive distortions,’ such as ‘catastrophizing’ (If I fail this quiz, I’ll fail the class and be kicked out of school, and then I’ll never get a job . . .) and ‘negative filtering’ (only paying attention to negative feedback instead of noticing praise as well.”

Basically they’re offering tools for us to be a bit more objective. Some might argue that it’s impossible to be perfectly, completely objective, given how many biases inherent in our mind, but I maintain (and I think Lukianoff and Haidt would agree) that our lives will be better and our political discussions a bit less contentious if we strive to be more objective even if we fall short of perfection.

Bottom line: this is an important book. I can’t recommend it highly enough. I’m pleased to say that this book appears to have done well both in terms of sales and in the discussion it has generated on Twitter. Bravo!

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I’ve put this table from the book at the end because it lays out a good overview of the great untruths, sound psychological counter principles and related wisdom.

Psychological Principle	Wisdom	Great Untruth
Young people are antifragile.	Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child.	What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.
We are all prone to emotional reasoning and the confirmation bias.	Your own worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own thoughts, unguarded. But once mastered, no one can help you as much, not even your father or your mother.	Always trust your feelings.
We are all prone to dichotomous thinking and tribalism.	The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.	Life is a battle between good people and evil people.