Forgive me for being somewhat mischievous, but I've been pondering an apparent paradox on this topic. I see quite a few writers advocating for reaching out, dialogue, etc - and they seem to have a success range from just pleading into the void, to a very minor niche with sociable centrists.
If you had a *scalable* workable recipe for persuading people, wouldn't you be able to apply it reflexively, and persuade many people of this, including those initially disagreeing? I don't mean a strawman version of convincing everyone like some sort of cult leader. But it seems like a kind of self-refutation if you can't convince more than a relative handful of people of the validity of the approach.
Hi Seth, you’re right to draw attention to the parallel. The approach I’m proposing here is slow, as is the work of convincing others that it’s effective. Just as it takes time to persuade Republicans to consider an alternative to Trump, it takes time to persuade Democrats to abandon argumentation in favor of trust building and dialogue. It sounds like you’re interested in Smart Politics, but doubtful. Have you had any specific experiences that have shaped your thinking about this or is this more of a gut feeling?
Karin, it's both personal experiences, and intellectual examination (not gut feeling at all). Briefly, I'm an extremely tech person (Math/Physics/Computers), who years ago got very interested in how technical people like me could have an influence on politics. If you read Lessig, you might know the Aaron Swartz case, like him. Overall, it's been a disaster. While I obviously didn't get driven to suicide as he did, policy work has been very harmful to my life. I had a very difficult time with the politics reality that there were people who had their entire job as professional lying - blatantly, shamelessly, maybe viciously - BUT IT WORKED! I couldn't, and can't, figure out how to deal with this. Most especially applied to me! I have gotten much "advice", and one frustration has been if I tell such well-intentioned people that I tried their advice, and it didn't work. They never accept that, and I'm commonly told I didn't do it right. To which my most polite response is that then it's beyond my ability, and so is useless.
But I still think about these issues. And especially now, when I fear America is entering some very dark times. I have a joke, "Not as bad as WWII Germany is a very low bar". That is, things can be better than the worst they've ever been, yet still be pretty bad. However, with all due respect, some ideas in response strike me as very well-intentioned, but sadly somewhere between mathematically impossible and practically unscalable. One common problem I've run into, is counteracting a lie blasted out to a huge number of people, simply can't be done effectively by individual dialogue. There aren't enough people, there isn't enough time, it's a whole belief system, and so on.
Anyway, I could go on, but I hope this is sufficient to give you a good answer. Forgive me if my bitterness and cynicism shows through too much at times.
- Passionate about politics but not sure how to get involved
- Really worried about the current state of the country
I'm curious what happened when you got involved in policy work--you said that it was actually harmful to you, and people told you how you "should" do things but it didn't work for you, so it sounds like you got stuck.
When I think of "politics" I think of people who enjoy social interaction and feel comfortable talking with others, which is the opposite of me--so I have really not seen it as an option. It would be about as likely as me becoming a car salesman.
However, since I also think that we are in some dark times, I've been thinking of all the ways we can do something, and that includes small things such as learning more effective ways of talking to people about difficult issues. Even if it's a little thing, like going out to protest every Friday with a bunch of other folks, at least I feel like I'm doing something and connecting with people. Even the conversations I'm having online like this one make me more hopeful--I can see there are a lot of people like myself out here, so I feel less alone.
You're concerned that individual dialogue won't scale. I also see that the right has built an effective propaganda machine. All the autocrats--Trump, Duterte, Putin, Hitler, and so on--spend a lot of energy on mass communication. But this is impersonal and manipulative. I don't see any simple solution, but maybe if I can do a small thing every day, it will start to make a difference. Hope that helps!
Bob, it's a long story, and kind of hard to explain these days, since it involves original Internet policy issues. Though it's not a secret - I've written essays and posts about it years ago. Do you know the Aaron Swartz case? That's sort of my one-sentence way of explaining to people. That this stuff can literally, I mean literally, kill you. Note, while I wouldn't have described him as a close personal friend, I did know him, and we did have discussions on the topic of tech people affecting politics. By "politics" here, I mean "affecting the course of policy", as e.g. today's hot issue is AI regulation. Back when I started, there was a big dispute over what sort of censorship rules should be applied to the Internet. These days, it's a very unpleasant thing to say, but I really wish I had tried to get rich back then, instead of putting in so much activism work on the side of having the Internet not be censored. It wasn't worth it.
I mean, there's nothing wrong with going to protests, or learning to have better conversations, and all that. But don't overestimate its effectiveness. As in, if you enjoy home gardening, great. However, that's not a solution to world poverty and hunger ("if we each just plant a few seeds in other's hearts, err, the window sills ...").
Forgive me for being somewhat mischievous, but I've been pondering an apparent paradox on this topic. I see quite a few writers advocating for reaching out, dialogue, etc - and they seem to have a success range from just pleading into the void, to a very minor niche with sociable centrists.
If you had a *scalable* workable recipe for persuading people, wouldn't you be able to apply it reflexively, and persuade many people of this, including those initially disagreeing? I don't mean a strawman version of convincing everyone like some sort of cult leader. But it seems like a kind of self-refutation if you can't convince more than a relative handful of people of the validity of the approach.
Hi Seth, you’re right to draw attention to the parallel. The approach I’m proposing here is slow, as is the work of convincing others that it’s effective. Just as it takes time to persuade Republicans to consider an alternative to Trump, it takes time to persuade Democrats to abandon argumentation in favor of trust building and dialogue. It sounds like you’re interested in Smart Politics, but doubtful. Have you had any specific experiences that have shaped your thinking about this or is this more of a gut feeling?
Karin, it's both personal experiences, and intellectual examination (not gut feeling at all). Briefly, I'm an extremely tech person (Math/Physics/Computers), who years ago got very interested in how technical people like me could have an influence on politics. If you read Lessig, you might know the Aaron Swartz case, like him. Overall, it's been a disaster. While I obviously didn't get driven to suicide as he did, policy work has been very harmful to my life. I had a very difficult time with the politics reality that there were people who had their entire job as professional lying - blatantly, shamelessly, maybe viciously - BUT IT WORKED! I couldn't, and can't, figure out how to deal with this. Most especially applied to me! I have gotten much "advice", and one frustration has been if I tell such well-intentioned people that I tried their advice, and it didn't work. They never accept that, and I'm commonly told I didn't do it right. To which my most polite response is that then it's beyond my ability, and so is useless.
But I still think about these issues. And especially now, when I fear America is entering some very dark times. I have a joke, "Not as bad as WWII Germany is a very low bar". That is, things can be better than the worst they've ever been, yet still be pretty bad. However, with all due respect, some ideas in response strike me as very well-intentioned, but sadly somewhere between mathematically impossible and practically unscalable. One common problem I've run into, is counteracting a lie blasted out to a huge number of people, simply can't be done effectively by individual dialogue. There aren't enough people, there isn't enough time, it's a whole belief system, and so on.
Anyway, I could go on, but I hope this is sufficient to give you a good answer. Forgive me if my bitterness and cynicism shows through too much at times.
Hi Seth, I relate to this on a lot of levels:
- Techy (computers/science)
- Passionate about politics but not sure how to get involved
- Really worried about the current state of the country
I'm curious what happened when you got involved in policy work--you said that it was actually harmful to you, and people told you how you "should" do things but it didn't work for you, so it sounds like you got stuck.
When I think of "politics" I think of people who enjoy social interaction and feel comfortable talking with others, which is the opposite of me--so I have really not seen it as an option. It would be about as likely as me becoming a car salesman.
However, since I also think that we are in some dark times, I've been thinking of all the ways we can do something, and that includes small things such as learning more effective ways of talking to people about difficult issues. Even if it's a little thing, like going out to protest every Friday with a bunch of other folks, at least I feel like I'm doing something and connecting with people. Even the conversations I'm having online like this one make me more hopeful--I can see there are a lot of people like myself out here, so I feel less alone.
You're concerned that individual dialogue won't scale. I also see that the right has built an effective propaganda machine. All the autocrats--Trump, Duterte, Putin, Hitler, and so on--spend a lot of energy on mass communication. But this is impersonal and manipulative. I don't see any simple solution, but maybe if I can do a small thing every day, it will start to make a difference. Hope that helps!
Bob, it's a long story, and kind of hard to explain these days, since it involves original Internet policy issues. Though it's not a secret - I've written essays and posts about it years ago. Do you know the Aaron Swartz case? That's sort of my one-sentence way of explaining to people. That this stuff can literally, I mean literally, kill you. Note, while I wouldn't have described him as a close personal friend, I did know him, and we did have discussions on the topic of tech people affecting politics. By "politics" here, I mean "affecting the course of policy", as e.g. today's hot issue is AI regulation. Back when I started, there was a big dispute over what sort of censorship rules should be applied to the Internet. These days, it's a very unpleasant thing to say, but I really wish I had tried to get rich back then, instead of putting in so much activism work on the side of having the Internet not be censored. It wasn't worth it.
I mean, there's nothing wrong with going to protests, or learning to have better conversations, and all that. But don't overestimate its effectiveness. As in, if you enjoy home gardening, great. However, that's not a solution to world poverty and hunger ("if we each just plant a few seeds in other's hearts, err, the window sills ...").