Show HN: How to discuss with opinionated people using the Socratic method[video]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15080693

by xchip • 9 years ago

38 49 9 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

We all have an opinionated colleague, manager or even a relative. Discussing issues may get tricky and frustrating. In some cases this can end up in aggressive debates where nobody changes opinion.

I came across a YouTube channel where a guy uses the Socratic method to discuss god believes with random people, in a few questions he gets people to lower their level confidence. On top of that his discussions are friendly, last only for 5 minutes and he is often greeted at the end of the conversation.

This video shows off the Socratic method in action:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5EpfExorQQ

Here is the trailer of the channel:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moApG7z2pkY

damnfine• 9 years ago

The Socratic Method is one of persuasion, not discussion. The effort is to guide the person to your idea, on their own, so to speak. This is a poor method of actual discussion. In essence, you become the opinionated one.

elcapitan• 9 years ago

Agree. It's not a method of equal-level discussion, it's a method of teaching.

xchip13• 9 years ago

It is a method for examining believes or ideas, either you or the other person can learn things over the process, a thing that is great.

smokeyj2• 9 years ago

And the point of discussion is..?

I like the method because you can learn why people believe something along the way. Sometimes you might even change your own view based on their reasoning.

onion2k• 9 years ago

And the point of discussion is..?

To discover what others think, know, or believe; not to change their mind.

xchip13• 9 years ago

Exactly, that is what makes the method great, because it could be us holding the wrong belief and this helps us learn too.

wu-ikkyu• 9 years ago

Why do you think the socratic method cannot be used for a means of discussion and learning for both parties?

booleandilemma• 9 years ago

I can't tell if you're using the socratic method or not.

dsacco• 9 years ago

I disagree. I very often use the Socratic method, or elements of it, when I don't know much about a topic and want to passively challenge the other party's ideas without trying to convince them of an opposing view point.

I do this in person and in online forums like this one. I'm not trying to guide someone to my own conclusion, and I might not have enough information to have an educated opinion, or I might be ambivalent about the subject. It takes the form of me asking for clarification in a non-antagonistic fashion.

I would say I most often use this strategy to force people to justify their own opinions to me when I have no opinion at all. I even do this to people I agree with.

xchip13• 9 years ago

Fantastic, this was the whole point of my post, to promote this type of approach, especially at work.

cJ0th2• 9 years ago

This is a poor method of actual discussion. In essence, you become the opinionated one.

Exactly. And this becomes very clear in the video. The interviewer harps on about the "reliability of faith" without really listening to what Antony is saying. Different people who are having different faiths but still believe in the same thing is only illogical if you wish to see it like that. All programs in your computer, for instance, can safely assume that memory does exist. There is no point for a program to find out whether something like memory is real. I am not talking about finding out whether space is left etc. I am merely saying that a piece of software does not need a science library to investigate the existence of memory. Sure, sometimes you don't receive something from memory when you need it, sometimes bad things happen when you work with the bits it gives you and so on. But questioning the existence of memory is besides the point.

Now lets imagine another program which also "believes" in the existance of memory The user uses this program to remove the other program. In other words, two programs who have the same "faith" kill each other. This is not a contradiction.

Someone should do the Socrates on him to elicit why "reliability" is something one has to discuss when it comes to faith. I am pretty sure his answers would also be contradictory within a short amount of time.

m_mueller2• 9 years ago

I think you're concentrating on the wrong word - reliability. That doesn't seem the central assumption of Anthony here, it's just an attribute to arrive at the central assumption: That there is a universal truth, i.e we all live in the same world, only our models of that world are different (i.e. subjective).

Panoramix• 9 years ago

You say:

1) Person A: I hold a belief for which there is no proof or rational support. I just have faith in it.

2) Person B: I too hold such a set of beliefs. Mine are different than yours and they even compel me to kill you.

What interviewer meant is that this method of thinking arrives at vastly different, even conflicting views, hence it is inconsistent and unreliable.

xchip13• 9 years ago

From Wikipedia: "The Socratic method [...] or Socratic debate, is a form of cooperative argumentative dialogue between individuals, based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to draw out ideas and underlying presumptions"

It seems that it is a method for discussing ideas.

pgeorgi• 9 years ago

A method for discussing ideas.

... when done on a level playing field. That's not what usually happens when people want to deal with "an opinionated colleague, manager or even a relative" (as the OP suggests).

YCode• 9 years ago

Seems like a bit of projection here... The method isn't intrinsically persuasive.

It's often used to find the root of a problem or set of values when the questioner doesn't know the issue with enough precision to fairly discuss it with the subject.

And most of the time the theoretical "goal" is to examine a belief or potentially invoke doubt on a belief previously considered solid rather than reach any conclusion.

Anecdotally I recently fell into this line of discussion with an anti-vaxer friend of mine. Instead of trying to persuade him he's wrong I asked questions about his beliefs and asked him to justify his decisions. Questions like "You were vaccinated, did that negatively impact you?" or "Do you worry about your children getting those sicknesses?"

Questions meant to clarify or examine, not persuade. In the end neither of us changed our positions on the topic, but if we're honest that was never on the table.

At least now I have a clearer understanding of his perspective and he was willing to share some of the more vulnerable details of his beliefs that he wouldn't have admitted had I come at him persuasively.

neonnoodle• 9 years ago

No, YOU shut up!

kelukelugames• 9 years ago

Show HN is not for videos or blog posts. Please update title.

xchip13• 9 years ago

Thanks for the remark kelukelugames, I cannot remove the "Show HN", the edit link is not showing up. So sorry!

RoutinePlayer• 9 years ago

I'd more impressed if this could be done via a chat channel. Face-to-face people are subject to the charm of the interviewer.

xchip13• 9 years ago

true, but when you are discussing things in a meeting or with an architect you have to deal with being face-to-face

SKYRHO_• 9 years ago

Details the socratic method and its purpose for discovering the true essence of knowledge through refined definition:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EB4MYGInRl4

abathur• 9 years ago

For the curious, the "Street Epistemology" movement, which employs the Socratic method, was coined/outlined by Peter Boghossian in his book "A Manual for Creating Atheists" (https://www.amazon.com/Manual-Creating-Atheists-Peter-Boghos...). You can find more about it's goals and methods by searching around for street epistemology, or by reading the book. It's a relatively quick read.

xchip13• 9 years ago

I think discussions at work would be shorter and more meaningful if we all used this method.

Before I knew this method existed I noticed a colleague had this approach with my claims and it did wonders :D

kelvin0• 9 years ago

Many things are at play here: 1) the interviewer has a calm and very open demeanor. 2) He is able to build rapport with that person (first URL video) quite quickly. 3) The interviewer obviously has an 'advantage' because they have thought about the subject and are focused on it, which is not the case for the interviewee being 'ambushed'.

I think given some time and thought that interviewee would be better able to gather his thoughts and better articulate them.

Quite simply, taking the time and listening to what other people are saying and really giving their opinion some importance goes a long way into both parties learning something new, without having to 'persuade' them of anything.

zebrafish2• 9 years ago

I've had this thought recently, that staged debate is not necessarily a great way to settle disputes. It mostly relies on the skill of the participants to think critically on the fly or their anticipation of the opponents questions and their practiced retort.

Effective discussion or debate should take place over time such that each participant has time to logically organize their thoughts or gather more evidence/ evaluate the evidence presented by the opponent.

"Ambushing" average people on the street in their sweats headed to a math test isn't exactly fair. To be honest, it isn't much different than what your typical atheist purports to oppose. I have found that people are typically against faith based religion because it's pushed on youth by families and takes advantage of their malleable mind.

You should probably allow for people to be in the correct state of mind for these discussions, not take advantage of their unpreparedness. This video makes it seem like he can only engage these people when he clearly has the upper hand.

jcmoscon• 9 years ago

Funny thing that he is using this Socratic method only to religious believes. What about using it on science believes like evolution for instance. The guy in this video did it and it's interesting hear how people blindly believe in whatever science says without thinking too much about it. Watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0u3-2CGOMQ

xchip13• 9 years ago

That is the point, that the same method can be used to question many other topics. For example ideas of a new product/service.

0xfeba• 9 years ago

A Ray Comfort movie, seriously? He is king of editing footage to make people look the way he wants. Watch around 6:15 as PZ Myers is abruptly cut off before he can explain why we don't see fish change into bears, or whatever impossible goal post Comfort has setup.

Comforts insistence on "kinds" is not based on any science. He just claims that because we only see a bunch of small steps, A->B, B-C, E-F, etc. changes in genetics, we will never see A-Z changes. That is, we can only witness incremental changes in DNA, therefore large changes cannot happen because reasons. He's given and shown multiple examples of the process of natural genetic drift, change, etc. and then proclaims that it can only go so far, up to "kinds" without providing any evidence for this limit. Also without defining what a "kind" is.

Sorry but this man irks me. He is not honest.

He also is known as "banana man" for this pretty weak argument from design: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KqJuITAVWc

JohnKacz• 9 years ago

(Slightly off-topic) In a graduate theological program I was introduced to the idea of "second naiveté." Simply, if the faith we inherit is a naive one and a process like a graduate education deconstructs such a faith, second naiveté looks like a choice then to return to an assembled faith held in tension with the modern criticism used in the deconstruction.

It's an intensive and disruptive process that I'm not sure many want or are able to go through, but I wish would. The key here is to walk through the entire process (one which is actually cyclical in my opinion) with the individual. Anything less seems malicious or inconsiderate at best. Said another way, to destroy someones worldview or belief system (even flawed or dangerous ones) and not help them rebuild something is not going make the world a nicer place to live in.

xchip13• 9 years ago

The point of this was to learn how to question decisions at work, and doing so in a way that you will be appreciated. The god believe was just an example of a believe that usually is hard to challenge.

megamindbrian• 9 years ago

Everyone's faith is different. This guy can't define everyone's faith in one Youtube video. As a scientist I am trained to question anything and everything. As a spiritual person, my God is knowing what the right answer is before knowing the reason why or the purpose of the question. If an answer is already written down, God is the life that came before me. If I guess what the right answer is before, that is the God inside of all of us. How does an Atheist explain intuition?

xchip13• 9 years ago

Just to make sure I we agree on the meaning, what is your definition of intuition?

tarboreus• 9 years ago

They would say intuition is a cognitive process. You could check out Blink by Malcolm Gladwell for a decent, if shallow, treatment of that perspective.

zebrafish2• 9 years ago

I would argue that intuition is an evolutionary construct that is not actually intuited but is an aggregation of many small pieces of data which biases your expectation of an outcome.

I'm having trouble coming up with an example of a kind of pure intuitive experience that I've had along the lines of what I think you're talking about. If you can give a good example of what you're talking about, I think that would be helpful.

I say all of this as a former atheist who has recently converted to some form of theism that I haven't quite figured out yet.

xchip13• 9 years ago

Any idea why this has been flagged? Having meaningful discussions is crucial in a work environment.

I have seen posts about Alzheimer, resilience, psychology... Using it do discuss god believes was a kind of stress test to prove that any topic can be addressed succesfully.

Mods, any help please? Thanks!

Show HN: How to discuss with opinionated people using the Socratic method[video]

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