{"id":3331,"date":"2020-05-13T22:57:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-13T10:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/?p=3331"},"modified":"2020-07-30T14:30:10","modified_gmt":"2020-07-30T02:30:10","slug":"how-to-think-alan-jacobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/2020\/05\/13\/how-to-think-alan-jacobs\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Think — Alan Jacobs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I almost always find it faintly depressing reading comment threads on social media. They so often consist of two sides vigorously attacking imaginary strawman arguments from the other side. Nobody wins; everybody just ends up looking shrill and petty. I often start typing a response, but usually think better of wasting my time adding fuel to the fire. As Alan Jacobs says in this excellent book: \u201cWe have an inbuilt and powerful disposition towards dichotomising — but one that we don\u2019t have<\/em> to obey.\u201d I have gotten better at not doing this, partly because I find it so dispiriting when reading comments from people who have eagerly retreated far into their corner so they can poke barbs at the \u201cother\u201d in their<\/em> corner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jacobs more or less recommends my approach. He cites entrepreneur Jason Fried\u2019s advice to \u201cgive it five minutes<\/a>\u201d before responding hot-headedly to anything. Five minutes is long enough for the first wave of certainty to pass, and you end up responding in a more measured and potentially less embarrassing way. Or in my case, deciding that the best response is no response at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In contrast to the cesspit of social media, Jacobs describes a wonderful style of debating in which, before arguing your position, you must summarise your opponent\u2019s position to their satisfaction<\/em>. Once they agree that you have fairly and accurately summarised their views, then you can proceed with your argument. And when you\u2019ve finished, they<\/em> must fairly summarise your<\/em> arguments. It sounds as if not just the audience, but the debaters too would actually learn something from such a debate. Sadly, this is not the sort of debate we often see. As an excellent Guardian article about the Death of Debate<\/a> said, \u201cmodern debate has a structural bias in favour of demagoguery and disinformation. It inherently favours liars\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a marvellous book. In it, Alan Jacobs offers a wealth of insight into why people think (or fail to think), disagree and argue. He cites a huge range of other writers — I could spend a long time following up all the references. But in the meantime How to Think<\/em> has encouraged me to continue to be a (moderate) force for moderation on Facebook and Twitter and be<\/em> the change I want to see in the world.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I almost always find it faintly depressing reading comment threads on social media. They so often consist of two sides vigorously attacking imaginary strawman arguments from the other side. Nobody wins; everybody just ends up looking shrill and petty. I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3332,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[182,42,4,26],"class_list":["post-3331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-alan-jacobs","tag-arguments","tag-books","tag-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3331"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3333,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3331\/revisions\/3333"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}