Aumann’s Agreement Theorem says two perfect rationalists can’t “agree to disagree”. Therefore, when two people disagree, a good question is one that makes either the asker or askee change their minds. Some examples of bad questions are:
– Why don’t you agree that abortion kills innocent babies?
– Why don’t you support welfare programs that help children with cancer?
– Isn’t it obvious that Politician Bob is corrupt?
– Do you deny supporting the poaching of baby seals?
These aren’t really questions. They’re more like attacks, with a question mark tacked on at the end. Instead, a good question tries to roll back a chain of inferences. A person might support E because they support A, and they also believe in the chain of arguments A (therefore) B (therefore) C (therefore) D (therefore) E. A good question tries to bring the debate about E back to a debate about D, and ultimately all the way back to A.
Some thoughts on how to ask better questions:
– Try to be quantitative. For example, someone might say “I think idea X is too expensive.” So you might reply, “About how much do you think X will cost?”. Sometimes this is a bit more difficult, like if your co-worker said “I think Bob would be a terrible person to hire”. But you can still be semi-quantitative; eg., “On a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is the worst candidate and 10 is the best, where do you think Bob is?”.
– Ask for examples. Your friend might say, “Policy X has always been a disaster.” So a good next question might be, “Can you talk about some times when people tried X, and it turned out really badly?”. A lot of words are vague enough that two people will hear them, and imagine totally different things in their heads, often without realizing it. So examples can help clear up semantic misunderstandings.
– Talk about probabilities. Eg., a lot of people will say that X is a serious threat, for various different values of X. But sometimes X is very unlikely to happen; the most famous examples are media sensations like terrorist bombings, shark attacks, and stranger abductions. So a good question might be, “If I did X, about how likely do you think it is that <bad thing Y> would happen?”.
– Investigate where ideas come from. Even when people are wrong, it’s rarely because they made something up out of their heads. Much more often, they’ll hear something from Alice, who heard it from Bob, who heard it from Carol, and so on, and the original (correct) idea got lost in a long game of “telephone”. (The Science News Cycle shows this process in action.) So if you can find the original source for an idea, you might both wind up agreeing with it.
– Ask what a supporter thinks about an idea’s downsides. Sometimes, they might disagree that a downside exists; sometimes, they might think a downside exists, but that it’s very small; and sometimes, they might think the downsides are large, but the benefits are so big that it’s worth it. So if eg. someone supports using a new chemical in agriculture, you might ask “How dangerous do you think chemical X is?”. (Don’t let this become rhetorical, though. A question like “But won’t idea X kill millions of puppies?” is back in attack territory.)
– Find comparisons to other examples. A person who really liked X might say things like “X is the best Y ever”. So you might ask, “what are some other Ys, and what makes X better than them?”. Luke Muehlhauser’s post on textbooks used this technique very successfully – people who liked a book also had to name two other books they thought were worse. Otherwise, people might recommend something just because it was the only book they’d read in the field.
This assumes that each knows, doubtless by magic mind reading powers, that the other is a perfect rationalist.
A glance at human history suggests that evil and madness are pretty plausible explanations for disagreement.
Now I can read my own mind, and know I am a pretty rational. Cannot read the other guys mind. Therefore, stubborn disagreement is likely to be caused by the other person’s evil or madness.
“Never attribute to malice what is adequately explained by stupidity” is a good rule. “Never attribute to stupidity or madness what is adequately explained by misunderstanding or differing information” is less catchy, but no less true.
Take the three most recent questions I have seen argued
Are there huge numbers of rapes in college and we should automatically believe rape allegation, destroy the lives of anyone accused, while keeping the names of the accuser secret for fear of deterring rape accusers?
Or are college rapes very rare, and false rape accusations frequent, and we should follow the complete reverse policy, with the the intent of deterring false rape allegations similar to the numerous false rape allegations that have recently received wide publicity and caused immense damage to innocent males?
It is not like we have different data available. Everyone can check out the same data. But the answer has has effect on the power some people have over other people, which fact results in total immunity to reason and evidence.
Does twenty first century Jewish law torture the text of ancient Hebrew law documents – do the rabbis, just like the Christians, allow stuff forbidden in the old Testament, and forbid stuff allowed in the old Testament?
It is not like we have different data available. Everyone can check out the same data. But the answer has has effect on the power some people have over other people.
What is the death rate among male homosexuals and male to female transexuals. Do rather few of them live to be old. Do male homosexuals have an extraordinarily high death rate caused by murder, suicide, drug abuse, suspicious accidents, and disease? Again the answer has has effect on the power some people have over other people.