EFFECTIVE INTELLECTUAL ENGAGEMENT VS IDEOLOGICAL AND POLITICAL ARGUMENT. (I’m ri

EFFECTIVE INTELLECTUAL ENGAGEMENT VS IDEOLOGICAL AND POLITICAL ARGUMENT.

(I’m riffing off Peter’s point. Not so much countering it. Because political debate is not in the same class as intellectual and academic engagement.)

Status Update

By Peter Boettke

Four rules of effective intellectual engagement — from Daniel Dennett

How to compose a successful critical commentary:

(1) You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.”

(2) You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).

(3) You should mention anything you have learned from your target.

(4) Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.

I was taught these rules by Don Lavoie, I wish I was good enough of a person and scholar to always follow them. I will strive to do better.

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Curt Doolittle

Very victorian Peter. It depends on the sector and the consequences. The history of Ideological debate does not agree with your advice. The history of academic study does.

I learned a hard lesson from Hayek’s gentlemanly failure, and Friedman, Rothbard and Krugman’s immediate impact: if you’re debating science then that’s a gentleman’s game. Science is a luxury good. Politics is a proxy for war, and ideology is the weapon of influence.

Time is precious.

(Affections as always.)

Curt Doolittle

–” This is granting several enormous assumptions; (1) that your fellow actually believes what he says, (2) that he is stating the same reasons that he actually has for his position, and (3) that the crowd or stakeholders actually believe his argument based on the publicly stated reasons.

I find it entirely likely, if not 100% certainly the case that (1) The arguments are just publicly digestible justifications. (2) The fellow has actual motives and reasons that differ from the arguments given, and (3) the crowd believes in the position due to the hidden reasons, regardless of the stated reasons.

To accept your methodology, in my opinion, is to admit that Public Choice Theory is not valid.”–

OMG. STEALING THIS.

Curt Doolittle

Note: one of the problems those of us at the lofty reaches fall prey to is ‘smart people disease’. (Projection Bias) Because we are both better able to identify deception and error, and because we associate with people better able to identify deception and error, and because we and those we associate with encounter less deception and error, we discount the near universal presence of deception even if we do not discount the near universal presence of error. The biggest threat to rational discourse is not error, or fallacy, it is deception, obscurantism, and postmodernism. Against which, Victorian ethics are a handicap.

CLOSING

I try to draw blood.

Because your opponent is less likely to walk away when wounded.

And you can defeat him thoroughly.

I’m not a gentlemen. I’m a warrior.

And I understand the moral difference between the two.