Tag Archives: dialogue

How rational human beings exchange ideas

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Blogs are rarely a conducive medium for thoughtful discussions. (I do, however, think this blog’s discussions fare better than most.) The following diagram should serve as a general guide for how rational human beings exchange ideas:

Another instructive suggestion: Don’t be a dick.

Online discussions, especially those that concern sensitive issues like religion, are difficult to have. But if we’re civil and amenable to argument, such discussions aren’t futile.

I’ve invited several people to write guest posts for this blog, and they’ll likely be published over the next few weeks. Please show them the same respect you’ve afforded my posts.

Phil Plait: “Don’t be a dick!”

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I mentioned Phil Plait‘s talk a while back in my post “On dialogue and changing minds.” The video of the talk was recently released. I was going to tuck it into another link bomb post, but I think it deserves to stand alone.

I actually disagree somewhat with Plait’s contention that we (atheists/skeptics) need diplomats, not warriors. As Greta Christina argued at the Secular Student Alliance conference, both are important. My approach is to try to balance the roles by being a ‘diplomatic warrior.’

On dialogue and changing minds

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From a recent Boston Globe article entitled “How facts backfire”:

[A] few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.

Yikes. If facts do not disabuse people of false beliefs but instead further entrench those beliefs, how can we (SHAFT) successfully promote skepticism and scientific literacy?

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