david

On understanding

If you asked my father what Dave’s favorite music is, he would have told you what his favorite music is, and (importantly) he’d think he’s answering the question. If you ask someone why Dave works so hard, he’ll tell you what he aspires to. He might say Dave does it to get rich. That wouldn’t tell you anything about Dave, but it likely tells you something about him. This is important to understanding disputes, and is why listening is so important. For example, the US thought North Vietnam was fighting because they were part of a global communist alliance to defeat the west. The Domino Theory. Because we were at war against that. The Vietnamese were actually fighting a war of independence, and were puzzled why the US, a former colony that fought for its independence, was fighting them. Moral of the story: Unless you ask, you probably don’t know why someone is doing what they do.
Dave Winer (Oct 11, 2018)

how to be generous in a debate

He has some differences of opinion with himself…

What could easily have been an accidental (and funny) dig on someone else’s argument turned into an honest reflection on the difficulty of being intellectually consistent with complex issues.

Jordan Peterson was speaking on a panel at OCON, and brought up an argument he’s had with Sam Harris (who was not in the room) about where values come from.

If he was in a mindset of winning an argument or one-upping Harris, he could have let it stand as a great soundbite.

Instead, he followed up with:

Well, it’s very difficult to be entirely coherent when you think through something that’s complicated. There’s likely to be inconsistencies in your argument because it’s so complicated.

LIVE from OCON: Jordan Peterson, Dave Rubin, Yaron Brook, Greg Salmieri
From The Rubin Report, 2018-07-02
Full episode: Omny.fm

check out my sick elephant!

I’m loving the sick elephant series on right now over at Wondermark.

I started reposting them all here for myself, but the best thing you can do is go to the first in the series and click through them on his site, so he gets good feels from knowing people are reading them. And so you’ll never know if you’re reading an elephant comic until you know you’re reading an elephant comic.

Don’t deprive yourself — go read them.

The second best thing you can do is read them all here if you’re too lazy to click through.

Update: I’ve posted up to number 13, but Wondermark is up to number 19 20 on the elephant train! Check out the sick elephant over there — I’m not going to keep reposting them.