Niceness Stealth-Bombing

post by things_which_are_not_on_fire · 2018-01-08T22:16:45.621Z · LW · GW · 4 comments

Epistemic status: Tested in an environment very favorable to its success.

Guys, I know it’s hard to believe and I’m sure very few of us have experience with it, but sometimes the people around us have opinions we think are really stupid.

Fortunately, there’s an easy solution to this problem. It’s a well-established fact that telling people they’re Hitler immediately converts them to your side of the issue.

Rationalists are supposed to discuss topics with the goal of finding the truth. Non-rationalists are supposed to discuss topics with the goal of convincing others they’re right (or at least I assume that if you asked they’d say that, not “WE MUST POUND OUR ENEMIES INTO THE EARTH!”). Neither of these two goals is fulfilled when debates turn acrimonious, when we respond to disagreement with fury or to fury with more fury. People who perceive enemy fire drop their original goals in the process of picking up their laser blasters. I’m gonna go really radical here and say that setting yourself against someone is not a great way to make them honestly consider your points. And that this is obvious enough that people who do it anyway have probably lost sight of their priorities. And that forgetting what you’re trying to do is really bad if you want to actually do it. Maybe some people enjoy this kind of argument, and maybe there are social benefits to showing that certain opinions will be shouted down. But it's still better to convert your enemies than to shut them up.

So I present to you: niceness stealth-bombing.

Niceness stealth-bombing slips quietly under the “enemy argument” radar, so confirmation bias and all its friends don’t know to shoot it out of the sky. The military metaphors end there, because stealth-bombing means finding a point at which we’re all on the same side.

The trick is to communicate specific disagreement, but broader support. You have to demonstrate to the other person that you share a goal with them, and that you think your idea will help them reach that goal. You also have to communicate that you see them as an ally, that you recognize they're also playing for the good guys. “It’s awesome that you care enough about helping people to give up your own money for strangers. I just think that checking out GiveWell would help you help people even more.” Or “I agree with you that x-risks sound pretty crazy, I totally reacted the same way when I first heard about them. But I’m sure we both agree that human extinction would be bad, so if they turned out to be real, they’d be really important, don’t you think? So you should check them out and judge for yourself, because being wrong could be really bad.”

You have to find a point of agreement, even if it’s as deeply buried as “We should make the economy better” or “Making people happy is good”. You have to hold really tight to that shared goal and remember that the other person could help you reach it. And, of course, you have to be nice. People don’t listen if you’re not nice. In most circumstances, if the disagreement damages your relationship, you’re probably not stealth-bombing right.

You can use a modified version of niceness stealth-bombing to defuse fury directed at you. “It would be really bad if the things you said about me were true. Can you explain to me what makes you think that, so I can try to do better in the future?” Or simply, “Okay, what should I do to fix this problem?” If you sound sincere enough, you’ll either redirect the conversation onto a productive track or stump them if the object-level disagreement was just an excuse to yell.

I used the first version of stealth-bombing, the persuasive kind, very often and very successfully in high school class discussions. (This was recent; I’m a college freshman.) I managed not only to frequently change people’s minds, but also to never make anyone hate me for trying. However, most of my classmates were very smart and demographically similar to me, they knew and mostly liked me and respected my opinion, and we were nearly all on the same side of the political spectrum so our actual disagreements were not often very large. I would guess that stealth-bombing is less successful in environments where any of these factors is changed, except maybe intelligence since it’s not an appeal to logic. Also, I don’t have a control here since I never actually tried being rude. Maybe I’d have convinced people that way too, but it seems unlikely.

I’ve used the second kind of stealth-bombing, the response-to-fury kind, when people were angry at me. It’s defused fights very quickly when the other person really did want a specific problem solved. When I’ve used it with people who clearly just want to yell, they’ve settled into angry brooding. Which, at least, is blessedly quiet.

One thing I do feel confident in saying is that niceness stealth-bombing done right both requires and expands empathy. You have to recognize the good motivations of your opponents, and conceive of them as potential allies. I think that’s a very good thing to practice. It reminds you what we all should be: team players for the human race.

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