NelsonRushton
Doctorate in mathematics, specializing in probability theory, from the University of Georgia. Masters in AI from the University of Georgia. 15 years as a computer science professor at Texas Tech. Now I work as a logician for an AI startup. Married with one son. He's an awesome little dude.
I identify as an Evangelical Christian, but many Evangelicals would say that I am a deist mystic, and that I am going to Hell. Spiritually, the difference between me and Jordan Peterson is that I believe in miracles. The difference between me and Thomas Paine (an actual deist mystic) is that I believe the Bible is a message to us from the Holy Spirit, and the difference between me and Billy Graham is that I think there is noise in the signal.
User ID: 2940
Among the books he wrote, Thomas Sowell said that his favorite is A Conflict of Visions. I believe the theory put forward in that book best explains this observation.
The factors that determine which side of a political fence we are on are not based on dialectic; they adhere mainly at the level of one's vision of the world -- the way one sees things -- which consists of categories and concepts and their semantics, along with values and biases (aka, in Bayesian terms, priors). If we do not start from the same set of categories, concepts, and semantics, it doesn't even make sense to talk in terms of starting from the same set of facts, let alone the same values and biases. A vision acts a stage upon which the play of dialectic is put on. If two people share a vision they can participate in profitable dialectic with each other; and if they do not, they cannot.
But this doesn't mean it the situation is hopeless. Most persuasive dialogue outside of academia is, in fact, not dialectic but proselytization, aimed at massaging the listener's vision: their categories, concepts, semantics, priors, and values -- things that have no truth conditions and thus admit no logical or empirical arguments. This sort of dialog is the only kind that can promulgate or harmonize the visions of a community. Unfortunately, Enlightenment thinkers generally scoff at it. Frankly, in large part so do the Motte and other "rationality" communities on both the left and right -- labeling it as "fuzzy thinking", "superstition", "indoctrination", etc. Thus, as C.S. Lewis wrote, "We remove the organ and demand the function... we castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful." Good luck with that.
More options
Context Copy link