Chapter 2 (0:00 - 8:20): Joshua and Matthew sink their teeth into the universal driver of TDS, and begin framing a Solution.
Abridged Transcript highlights:
(1:34) Is there a solution for TDS?
(2:28) Rational argument meets HIRE decision-making
(5:54) “You and I disagree, so what do we do?”
(6:49) make space for Reason to re-emerge
(0:00) Joshua: Yes. So what you shared yesterday is, when having a conversation with someone who is, let’s say, experiencing what we might colloquially call “Trump Derangement Syndrome”—where no matter what you say, they’re going to attack it, they’re going to deny it, they’re going to devolve into name-calling—there are those of us who have family and friends that we can’t necessarily, quote-unquote, “easily get rid of,” and we’re still around them, and when this stuff comes up—because it always does—we would like to have a productive conversation with them.
(0:39) The goal is not necessarily to convince them that “we are right and they are wrong,” although that would be nice. (laughs) I think closer to an actual goal is something like, “you don’t believe I am evil,” or that “we are both kind of coming from good faith,” or something like that? And there’s not necessarily, a “Well, you believe that, but you voted for Trump because you're just an evil person,” that's generally where it goes very quickly. There are not, generally, conversations that are productive about the actual issue. There’s not even a shared, agreeable reality!
(1:18) @eyes4theWorld here, who’s with us, he replied “they believe that DOGE is secretly dismantling Social Security.” They believe all manner of ridiculous things that they have a religious devotion to believing.
(1:34) And, rather than argue about these issues, you seem to have a very different, we’ll call it, conversation tree, that you build with people who have this [mindset]. What you suggested yesterday was something like, “Instead of trying to disagree or argue, why not instead talk about what it is you’re talking about, to find consensus from the very beginning, and focus on what you agree upon?” That was helpful to me, and I was wondering if you could walk through that with us today.
(2:08) Matthew: Sure. So, by way of background, I've been playing with these kinds of ideas for about the last 20 years or so. It all started when, as a cellist, I was reading a book on artificial intelligence to try to figure out why my own habits were invisible. And that got me to emotion theory and then into a bunch of other stuff (so I have wide ranges)...
(2:28) But what it boils down to, is that there are two problems intersecting at once—and they're different problems. The first one of those problems has to do with reasoning, and the other problem has to do with deciding. And these are actually on different axes.
Two Problems…
(2:47) I’ve got a cartoon [see below], I post it around from time to time, that I made to demonstrate this: “have you ever reasoned yourself into doing something or not doing something, and then just gone and done the opposite anyway?” That's really common.
So we have a problem with both.
(3:05) The reasoning problem, is that the internet blew up argument by giving everyone their own facts and definitions—you know, it's “choose your own orthodoxy” at this point—so we need a way of repairing argument to be able to function.
(3:20) And the second problem is, decision making isn't purely rational, right?
(3:26) The way I describe it—because, you know, the whole problem is, it's too complicated, so you need simplifications— is the “HIRE” model of decision making (see below).
“HIRE” stands for Habit, Instinct, Reason, and Emotion. Together, those four pieces, “HIRE,” comprise “the entire mind space between inputs and actions,” which is how I define decision making.
[And, since the reasoning and deciding problems are on separate axes, we can tackle them separately. Which we are about to do.]
…that have a Joint Solution
(3:59) You know, what you need to do with an argument, is get someone to decide to listen to you (or ideally, to decide not to reflexively dismiss everything you say, or even to decide to help you).
(4:14) But the point is this: Argument is the lever, decision-making is the target.
[Let’s examine the Argument lever first.]
Breaking down Argument: the “What…”
(4:21) So if you have this sort of a problem, where you can’t argue productively with anybody, because everyone’s got their own facts, well then, the problem here [I meant to say “the big picture problem, the obvious first step we need to take”] is that, “we need a way of getting back to common ground.”
(4:36) The terminology I use to do this, is that I break rationality down into three flavors. They're different functions, different applications:
[Why bother? Because these are the finer-grained distinctions that allow us to restate the problem in a solvable frame.]
(5:21) So what we have now, on the internet, is [that no one argues anymore: instead, we have] a situation where everyone just leaps straight from Research, and jumps right over Argument, and starts Debating, without ever having argued out a shared set of rules for telling who wins or loses the debate in the first place!
(5:39) So in my mind then, if that's our problem—that we can't even agree what we’re talking about—[what we're even debating, much less who won or lost]—then our first goal is to use argument to build a shared sense of whatever we're talking about. FIRST, before any debate even starts.
…the “Why…”
(5:54) So if someone comes at me with “crazy internet facts”—you know, there's a freakout of some kind—I'm going to turn that around and say, “Okay, well, I see your point, but there's a whole lot of other people out there who disagree with you. So what do we do?”
(6:14) What I'm doing here is a couple of things.
(6:17) First, I'm trying to dent the freakout, not stop the freakout.
I'm also trying to not become its target. If someone is freaking out, it's generally “away from them,” not “at me,” it’s more like self-preservation-of-an-orthodoxy, that kind of thing.
[BEGIN ADDED NOTE]
The HIRE model predicts something fascinating:
Much more often than you’d think, what comes across to you as a freaked-out attack aimed at you is just a preemptive form of self-defense! To understand the freakout better, think of it as “Instinct (self-preservation) meets Habit (internet-amplified-identity) meets Emotion (big incoming danger-at-a-distance).”
By not reacting, you accomplish three things at once:
you confound the lightning-fast Instinct-Habit-Emotion reflex;
you buy time for slow Reason to re-emerge; and
you open up multiple hidden paths toward win-win solutions.
I know, I know. I’m describing right now. I’ll explain more of this in a later chapter.
[END ADDED NOTE]
(6:36) So [instead of reacting as if I have been attacked,] what I want to do is simply acknowledge. “Okay, I see you’re upset,” whatever, or “I get that you have this belief,” and I'll just turn it around. I’ll say “Okay, well, they're saying the same thing about you. So now, what do we do?”
(6:49) What I'm trying to do is create space for reason to re-emerge.
(6:55) The problem with Reason, is that of the four HIRE components—Habit, Instinct, Reason, Emotion—Reason is the slow one. It takes a loooong time to get going.
(7:08) And if you slam on the Instincts, Emotions or Habits too quickly, well, Reason's not gonna even get out the door. So you have to create time for that to happen.
…and the “How.”
(7:19) And the way you do that, is you're looking to [re]frame the [offending] idea in such a way that both of you agree what it is, argument style, so you can agree what you are talking about.
[See the green panel]
(7:29) So what I will try to do, is shift the problem from “Oh hey, this guy is evil!” to “Oh hey, people disagree on whether or not this guy is evil. How is that even possible?” And now (if we can get to that point), we can say “Ah, that's a new problem we can solve together!”
(7:50) Suddenly, I’ve converted this from a debate-style, “No holds barred, we try to destroy each other,” to “Hey, let's see if we can work out why it is that we disagree on this, and how [we might make sense of that together, argument-style].”
(8:02) And if I iterate that enough (keep doing it patiently), I find it has a surprising degree of success.
(8:10) So that's kind a nutshell of it. In far too many words, of course, but that's how these things go! I'll let you take it from there and direct it.
ADDED TAKEAWAY: Don’t get sucked into unwinnable debates over internet facts. Instead, reframe the debate as a puzzle! Just ask “How is it possible that you and I have got different facts & definitions? Given that everyone has different facts & definitions, how might we problem-solve through this mess together?”
(8:20) END OF CHAPTER 2.
Links:
full-length Twitter Spaces, the original audio, hosted by Joshua Lisec
full-length copy on YouTube, uploaded by Matthew Pierce
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Overview (you are here)
Chapter 3: Prepare for Battle
Stay tuned for further installments.