You don’t need to convince everyone of everything you think in a single event. 🙂 You probably didn’t form your worldview in the space of two hours either. 😉
When someone says they think giving locally is better, ask them why. Point out exactly what you agree with (e.g. it is easier to have an in-depth understanding of your local context) and why you still hold your view (e.g. that there are such large wealth disparities between different countries that there are some really low hanging fruit, like basic preventative measures of diseases like malaria, that you currently guess that you can still make more of a difference by donating elsewhere).
If you can honestly communicate why you think what you do, the reasons your view differs from the person you are talking to, in a patient and kind way, I think your local group will be laying the groundwork for a much larger movement of people who care deeply about helping others as much as they can with some of their resources. A movement that also thinks about the hard but important questions in a really thoughtful and intelligent way.
The best way to change other people’s minds for me is to keep in mind that I haven’t got everything figured out and this person might be able to point to nuance I’ve missed.
These really are incredibly challenging topics that no-one in this community or in any community has fully figured out yet. It didn’t always happen in the first conversation, but every person whose mind I have ever ended up changing significantly over many conversations added nuance to my views too.
Each event, each conversation, can be a small nudge or shift (for you or the other person). If your group is a nice place to hang out, some people will keep coming back for more talks and conversations.
Changing people’s mind overnight is hard. Changing their minds and your mind over a year, while you all develop more nuanced views on these complicated but still important questions, is much more tractable and, I think, impactful.
If it’s a question of giving people either a sense of this community’s epistemics or the bottom line conclusion, I strongly think you are doing a lot more good if you choose epistemics.
Every objection is an opportunity to add nuance to your view and their view.
If you successfully demonstrate great epistemics and people keep coming back, your worldviews will converge based on the strongest arguments from everyone involved in the many conversations happening at your local group.
Focus on epistemics and you’ll all end up with great conclusions (and if they are different to the existing commonly held views in the community, that’s even better, write a forum post together and let that insight benefit the whole movement!).
Oh, I totally agree that giving people the epistemics is mostly preferable to hanging them the bottom line. My doubts come more from my impression that forming good epistemics in a relatively unexplored environment (e.g. cause prioritization within Colombia) is probably harder than in other contexts.
I know that at least our explicit aim with the group was to exhibit the kind of patience and rigour you describe and that I ended up somewhat underwhelmed with the results. I initially wanted to try to parse out where our differing positions came from, but this comment eventually got a little long and rambling.
For now I’ll limit myself to thanking you for making what I think it’s a good point.
You don’t need to convince everyone of everything you think in a single event. 🙂 You probably didn’t form your worldview in the space of two hours either. 😉
When someone says they think giving locally is better, ask them why. Point out exactly what you agree with (e.g. it is easier to have an in-depth understanding of your local context) and why you still hold your view (e.g. that there are such large wealth disparities between different countries that there are some really low hanging fruit, like basic preventative measures of diseases like malaria, that you currently guess that you can still make more of a difference by donating elsewhere).
If you can honestly communicate why you think what you do, the reasons your view differs from the person you are talking to, in a patient and kind way, I think your local group will be laying the groundwork for a much larger movement of people who care deeply about helping others as much as they can with some of their resources. A movement that also thinks about the hard but important questions in a really thoughtful and intelligent way.
The best way to change other people’s minds for me is to keep in mind that I haven’t got everything figured out and this person might be able to point to nuance I’ve missed.
These really are incredibly challenging topics that no-one in this community or in any community has fully figured out yet. It didn’t always happen in the first conversation, but every person whose mind I have ever ended up changing significantly over many conversations added nuance to my views too.
Each event, each conversation, can be a small nudge or shift (for you or the other person). If your group is a nice place to hang out, some people will keep coming back for more talks and conversations.
Changing people’s mind overnight is hard. Changing their minds and your mind over a year, while you all develop more nuanced views on these complicated but still important questions, is much more tractable and, I think, impactful.
If it’s a question of giving people either a sense of this community’s epistemics or the bottom line conclusion, I strongly think you are doing a lot more good if you choose epistemics.
Every objection is an opportunity to add nuance to your view and their view.
If you successfully demonstrate great epistemics and people keep coming back, your worldviews will converge based on the strongest arguments from everyone involved in the many conversations happening at your local group.
Focus on epistemics and you’ll all end up with great conclusions (and if they are different to the existing commonly held views in the community, that’s even better, write a forum post together and let that insight benefit the whole movement!).
Oh, I totally agree that giving people the epistemics is mostly preferable to hanging them the bottom line. My doubts come more from my impression that forming good epistemics in a relatively unexplored environment (e.g. cause prioritization within Colombia) is probably harder than in other contexts.
I know that at least our explicit aim with the group was to exhibit the kind of patience and rigour you describe and that I ended up somewhat underwhelmed with the results. I initially wanted to try to parse out where our differing positions came from, but this comment eventually got a little long and rambling.
For now I’ll limit myself to thanking you for making what I think it’s a good point.