On these types of forums it’s easy to jump into an argument about the technicalities or a post or comment.
You should know, though, that there is a theory called Ways of Knowing which defines Separate Knowing and Connected Knowing. It’s been a part of my masters program I’m taking.
Separate knowing disconnects the humanity and context from what’s being said and tries to only argue the “facts”. But facts, and the things people say, don’t just occur in a vacuum. It often is the case when people are arguing past each other, like on the internet.
Connected Knowing is approaching the thing someone said with the understanding that there is a context, humanity, biases, different experiences, and human error that can all jumble up when people are sharing information.
Maybe even just knowing that there’s different ways to know would be helpful for us to engage in a different level of conversation here. I’m not sure. I just wanted to share!
https://capstone.unst.pdx.edu/sites/default/files/Critical Thinking Article_0.pdf
This reminds me of the One Health approach to healthcare.
One Health is a collaborative, multisectoral, and transdisciplinary approach — working at the local, regional, national, and global levels — with the goal of achieving optimal health outcomes recognizing the interconnection between people, animals, plants, and their shared environment.
One example of this would be trying to curb antibiotic resistance. We have banned certain antibiotics for human use, but let veterinarians still use it for animals. Well humans aren’t dumb and just went to a vet for the same antibiotic they’re used to using which defeated the purpose of banning it for human use (to reserve it so resistance to it doesn’t spread). An understanding of the connectedness of people and a bigger picture of antibiotics use was needed before policy should have been made.
Can you share some examples? This concept is too obscure for me to understand.
Yes good question! It was actually this response on one of my posts that got me thinking about it: https://programming.dev/comment/4765560
I felt it missed the point of my original post, because I didn’t do intensive research before posting it and just wanted to have a casual discussion and start some Lemmy engagement. I think this would be an example of Separate Knowing, missing the forest for the trees of a sentence or two I threw together in passing. And then I remembered that happens a lot on the internet but I didn’t want it to deter me!
Here’s another example I saw on the inter webs. One of the questions in the research was “Do you start to argue the opposite point of view of what someone’s saying while they’re saying it?” Or something like that.
Removed by mod
Sounds like a slippery slope to my hydrochloroquine is as good as your scientists
That “slippery slope” is absolutely vital to slither down if you want to formulate public policy.
If you don’t understand why people mistrust “big pharma” or “big government” or “big [sobriquet]” and reflexively dismiss anything that involves them, you cannot formulate public policy that will be effective.
Very rarely do people say “I’m going to dismiss centuries of scientific progress for this quack cure” without a reason. It’s maybe not a reason you agree with. It’s maybe not a reason reality agrees with. But you know what it might be? It might be a reason that traces back to how “big [sobriquet]” has acted toward such people in the past, often persistently over a long period of time, that has led to that breakdown in trust. In short: you (as in the beneficiaries of the status quo and “big [sobriquet]”, directly or indirectly) may be at least partially historically culpable in the opposition you now face.
Now I get it: accepting that you yourself are partially culpable for “irrational” opposition is a bitter elixir to swallow, but if you don’t take that first step toward understanding, you can’t take the second step to correcting the problem. And the problem will continue to fester and take root until, oh, I don’t know, something utterly fucking insane happens and a million of your fellow citizens die in a public health disaster because half your population doesn’t trust the very institutions that were needed to prevent said disaster.
So maybe you should learn to enjoy sliding down slippery slopes. Or, you know, die in the next easily-preventable pandemic. Like a million of your fellow citizens (assuming you’re American: insert your own numbers for your own country if not) did in the current one.
It’s not alternative facts, or accepting that anything someone is saying is True. But maybe trying to start from a place of “this is true for them and I wonder why that is, because it’s so far from what I know to be true.”
The separate knower might say “hydrochloroquine is not as good as science.” They’d be right and could absolutely leave it at that.
In my opinion though, the connected knower actually has a chance to change their stance through empathy and curiosity, recognizing the way that under education and economic strife has disillusioned this person from trusting science and being curious about whether or not a path exists for this person back to truth and science.
Makes me think of this wonderful man, Daryl Davis: https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544861933/how-one-man-convinced-200-ku-klux-klan-members-to-give-up-their-robes
Compassion is not the same as blind acceptance of what they’re saying or rejection of science and truth. It’s bringing in a human element and choosing connection and curiosity.
“this is true for them
“True for them” is the wrong way to put it. “X is something they believe, even in the face of contrary evidence” is a better way.
I can tell you’re a very separate knower.
And now in a human language, please.
In human language: You are completely and absolutely devoid of any degree of empathy or compassion and thus your own worst enemy when it comes to persuading others. You are far more likely to damage any cause you espouse than to promulgate it.
Human enough for you? If you’d rather have it in binary bits, let me know which ISA you are programmed in and I’ll write the program that explains it to you.
Really? Leaving people to believe stupid, damaging, dangerous things just because you don’t want to make a scene or don’t want even the least hint of rudeness (probably because you learned that extreme politeness, even at your own expense, is a value) seems a lot less empathetic to me.
But you do you and follow “your own truth”.
Are you defending leaving the people believe whatever they want, however wrong, damaging, wrongheaded, contrary to evidence or inane, just to avoid offending them? If not, what is your fucking point?!
I think you’ve missed the core point of this whole thread.
You’re also conflating empathy with acquiescence.
Separate knowing is understanding someone’s position logically or factually. Connected knowing requires an understanding of the context.
You can’t reason someone out of an unreasonable position.
Hitting a flat earther with logic and facts will obviously be counter productive. Even a modicum of empathy and curiosity as to why someone thinks the way they do will serve you well.
Conversations are about much more than who is wrong and who is right.
This is really interesting. Without knowing there was a word for it, I’ve often found myself wishing people (including myslef at times) did a better job of the Connected Knowing approach.
I thought so too! It can feel like people are missing each other and talking past one another in our typical discourse. It’s not how adults change each others minds though, or change our ideology or grow our understand, we have to connect at a deeper level for that.
Personally I’ve always found that style very patronising.
I think some people just don’t have much capacity for connected knowing.
You can just frame this as semantics and pragmatics. I basically disagree with the premise of this branch of sociology and find it disrupts discourse and effective problem solving.
Another way of putting that would be, such nuance is the skin on the apple, not the whole apple. It can add a little extra to your analysis, but shouldn’t be used as a cudgel to undermine the foundation.
I would argue that having facts without context isn’t knowing. I accept the definition of knowledge to be justified true belief. Ultimately this is a probabilistic argument, Solipsism cannot be overcome so we can never absolutely know anything but phenomenologically it is best to assume our external reality exists and functions roughly the way we perceive it. With absolute knowledge out of reach we need a functional construction to serve in it’s place. Justified true belief is as close to absolute knowledge as we can achieve. In this construct belief uses it’s conventional definition, true means that it doesn’t contradict reality as we perceive it, and justified means that we can point to strong evidence in our perceived reality to support the belief. Without at least some context the belief cannot be justified so the thing cannot be known.
I wonder about what unknowns I don’t know about yet!
Intetesing. But doesn’t that like forget about bad actors? People arguing in bad faith and so on?
Also it’s obviously waay different if you “debate” someone on the internet vs someone say at work when eating together.
Something I’ve encountered constantly online is the pedantic type who simply wants to “win” the argument at any cost, and will very much argue in bad faith and ignore (or pretend to not understand) a solid counter-argument or facts that don’t fit their narrative.
I think making a good effort at radical empathy and trying one’s best to see the other side can potentially help expose the bad faith arguments. But, there are a lot of dirty tricks out there like the Gish Gallop, etc.
And I don’t always have the energy if I’m being honest! Connected knowing takes energy and heart and it’s not always available for me to use. I have to pick my battles with this one too.
Same here. I prefer discussion with reasonable folks. When it starts getting nasty I usually disengage or even block the person. I respect the radical empathy approach, and I try to use it with people I engage with in person. But I have little patience with online trolls and pendants anymore. It’s a waste of time and energy.
Fair yes!
the pedantic type
The pedantic type is one thing; the propagandist troll is another. “Making a good effort at radical empathy” won’t do a damn thing against the latter; in that case the correct tactic is to call out their bullshit and mock them mercilessly until they’re driven away (or get the mods to ban them, but you can’t always count on that).
I guess it’s also getting curious about their intentions and that would be part of learning about the context. Bad people say true things for evil reasons sometimes, does that bad intention matter?
It probably matters if the goal is to harm you or your close friends.
It’s always a good idea to understand ppl and their views, because it helps to confirm or reject your own hypotheses, which are plenty. But there’s a reason you always have to take any claim from an unknown or untrusted source with varying grains of salt. Especially considering we are living in a world where the internet is the one central source of information and bad actors are starting to flood all channels that provide information.
God, I hope amber turd doesnt flood the channels
