Calls for “more productive discourse” are a staple of political discussion anywhere. This is because people have noticed that when two or more individuals with different worldviews come together to discuss these differences, more often than not, both leave with the same model of the world they began with while equally or more convinced of their own rightness. If the individuals in question are unusually tolerant or non-judgemental, they’ll just walk away with a polite agreement to “agree to disagree.” The less fortunate will snark and fight and judge before walking away with a conviction the other is so clearly irrational and morally depraved as to not be worth taking seriously ever again. Commentators will often advocate virtuous sounding, fuzzy ideals like “openness to new ideas” or “willingness to challenge one’s own assumptions,” but these ideals often just end up being used as weapons. If the person I’m arguing with isn’t convinced, she’s being close-minded. If she accuses me of close-mindedness, she’s glibly diverting attention away from the reality that her points just aren’t that persuasive.
Political problems tend to have very high stakes, and solving them will probably require a lot more people having a more accurate map of reality. So this tendency for most political discussion to be counterproductive is a real problem.
The solution is quite simple: Put up or shut up!
If you find yourself disagreeing with someone, ask yourself ‘what measurable thing would I have to see out in the real world to prove that I’m right, which would be different if I were wrong?’ Once you have an answer, make a testable prediction and bet on it. If you can’t reach any such prediction, then this could mean one of two things. First, it could indicate that you don’t actually disagree on anything, in which case your conversation is a waste of both of your time and you should move on. On the other hand, it could be an indication you should put a lot less faith in that particular belief. If you don’t know what you being right would look like, how can you know you’re right? In either case, you have absolutely no excuse to get snarky or sanctimonious, and you should probably stop making any distracting argument noises on that subject until you can answer the question.
As for the bet itself, it doesn’t have to be monetary. It could be as simple as committing in advance to acknowledge that, yes, the bet’s winner won the bet and yes, that should matter to each party’s confidence in its worldview. If someone proposes a bet and you don’t think it’s fair, then you have to work out what would be a fair bet between you.
The reason we need to start doing this is that our real goal in any political or other discourse should be to bring our own and other’s model of the world closer to reality so that we can actually start fixing things. However, that goal is often sabotaged by our brain’s pursuit of less meaningful goals such as “win the argument,” which may or may not be an expression of our monkey brain’s evolved imperatives to “wave that tribal flag,” “vanquish that enemy” or “avoid that stressful thought.” Regardless, whatever it is we’re doing, when we argue with Uncle Jim over the Thanksgiving lunch table, it clearly ain’t working.
I think the betting system should work for two reasons. One, it gives us as close to an objective means as we have available to figure out who’s right, or at least, less wrong. Second, we’d be more likely to actually change our minds upon seeing our beliefs fail tests we’d agreed to in advance, not to mention the incentive we’d have to abandon beliefs that were losing us money. As an added bonus, it would give us something better to do than rant about how pigheaded, irrational and morally depraved everyone who doesn’t agree with us is. I think the practice of substituting political arguments for bets would give us a less polarized and better informed society that got more things right.
Why yes, I would be willing to bet on it.
Contact Nick Pether at npether ‘at’ stanford.edu, especially if you’d like to make that bet. Why yes, you did see that reference to a certain blog you thought you saw.