More on charitable engagement
When people in a discussion disagree strongly, I see a tendency for them to get especially exasperated when the discussion gets to the point where both of them are reading a small (e.g. 20–50 word) section of text, and disagreeing on what it says, or what the direct implications of it are. But I think this is exactly the opposite of what the right reaction is. When you find that kind of disagreement, it should be very easy to structure the remainder of the discussion around it to figure out exactly what some of your different assumptions and mental models are, which is very likely to lead to a lot more understanding. So you should be glad to find this sort of disagreement, since you’re lucky to have such a clear example of the nature of your underlying differences.
Unfortunately, people are much too quick to jump to the conclusion, in this situation, that one or the other must be acting in bad faith, even in the uncommon (but commendable) situation where they both remain civil about it. I think this is because people have a very hard time integrating the belief, if they have it at all, that differing assumptions and worldviews can run very deep and influence how we acquire and process information in very substantial and unintuitive ways. And so arguments often end up getting dropped at the very moment where they could begin to be the most fruitful. If people would just understand how deep these differences can run, and that they don’t necessarily make the others’ views illegitimate, then I think they would more easily see these instances in the light I do.
This might be one of the big mechanisms behind the tendency for people to have so much more trouble debating with people the further apart they are ideologically. The likelihood of encountering and disagreeing about a small section of plainly-written text increases proportionally to the magnitude of ideological difference between the participants. If this tendency weren’t there, people would still have a lot of trouble, but at least they wouldn’t end up doubting the other’s sanity.
Unfortunately, I don’t think everyone is capable of working through a disagreement on this level. It takes both an unusual willingness to dig into the argument, and a capacity for detailed philosophical or semantic discussion.
I think I’m going to edit this into my charitability post.
