When I read a lot of comments on HN, I am reminded of this. People place all their faith in rationality, yet fail to see that they have the ability to rationalize anything.
This is a powerful yet profound lesson. It doesn't mean that argument itself serves no purpose, rather it means that collective discussion in search of common understanding is about a million times better than point-counterpoint. 'Cause we can play that game all day long.
It also means that varying up your sources of input is critical for growth. We need extremes, both in personalities and in opinions, for creative progress to happen.
Unfortunately all of the trends I see on the net are more in line with hanging out with people you agree with and talking past one another (in an effort to score points) rather than trying to find answers.
* talking past one another (in an effort to score points) rather than trying to find answers.*
Amen. This is something that I see rear its ugly head most often in the political and economic philosophy threads here, to my chagrin. Those exchanges become incredibly tedious and dogmatic in short order. In an almost inverse heuristic, the longer the posts in these arguments, the less informative, and dare I sare, more idiotic, they tend to be.
Oddly, it seems the younger posters seem to be the most completely convinced that their vision of the planet and how it should be run from those perspectives is perfect, which feeds into the point-scoring sagas.
I especially like it when you're making a case for something and make some generalization as part of it, like so "And just as the sky is blue, we know that X"
Then somebody replies with something like "But at night time the sky is black"
So you're either playing "let's find the nit" or ignoring the troll.
If you ignore, they feel vindicated (!) that they've corrected you. After all, critical parts of your argument are based on falsehoods!
I'm getting better at ignoring.
I can deal with long posts, as long as the tone is "Is this what you said? If so, I don't understand how you would account for X"
This is a powerful yet profound lesson. It doesn't mean that argument itself serves no purpose, rather it means that collective discussion in search of common understanding is about a million times better than point-counterpoint. 'Cause we can play that game all day long.
It also means that varying up your sources of input is critical for growth. We need extremes, both in personalities and in opinions, for creative progress to happen.
Unfortunately all of the trends I see on the net are more in line with hanging out with people you agree with and talking past one another (in an effort to score points) rather than trying to find answers.