Discussing High Conflict

In my congregation’s 4th Principle Dialogue Group, we discussed the book High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out, by Amanda Ripley. We found it to be a good source for understanding community conflicts when they turn polarizing, and here are some resources if you want to run your own book discussion or just learn about the book on your own.

Concepts & Terms

The book High Conflict has several concepts and practices that seem like pure gold. In particular, I have seen looping lead to productive dialogues on hot topics that are otherwise impossible to discuss.

Fourth way. A way to go through conflict that’s more satisfying than running away, fighting, or staying silent, the three usual paths. Leaning into the conflict.

Illusion of communication. The extremely common and mistaken belief that we have communicated something, when we have not.

Looping for understanding. An iterative, active listening technique in which the person listening reflects back what the person talking seems to have said—and checks to see if the summary was right. Developed by Gary Friedman and Jack Himmelstein and detailed in their book Challenging Conflict. 

“Tell me more.” Simon Greer’s ground rules were: “We’re going to take seriously the things everyone holds dear”, “We’re not going to try to convince each other we’re wrong”, and, “We’re going to be curious”. The phrase “tell me more” embodies these rules, and it’s a handy response whenever someone says something that you don’t know how to respond to. 

Magic ratio. When the number of everyday positive interactions between people significantly outweighs the number of negative, creating a buffer that helps keep conflict healthy. (In marriage, for example, the magic ratio is 5 to 1, according to research by psychologists Julie and John Gottman.) 

Crock pot. A shorthand term for the issue that a conflict appears to be about, on the surface, when it is really about something else (see Understory). 

Understory. The thing the conflict is really about, underneath the usual talking points (see Crock pot).

Online Resources

Here is a link to Amanda Ripley’s list of discussion questions. Some of them you can answer from your personal experience with conflict even if you haven’t read the book. 

https://www.amandaripley.com/blog/discussion-questions-for-high-conflict

Here’s a solid review from the NYTimes (no paywall).

https://nyti.ms/3OsHdLl

Session Schedule

Our format ensures that everyone gets to speak. Our goal in the Dialogue Group is not just to discuss valuable topics but also to develop the skills and habits of good dialogue. 

7:00 welcome, settling in

7:05 introductory words, intentions, ground rules, do-not-disturb, chalice lighting

7:10 opening comments. 2 minutes each: introduce yourself, questions or comments about the chapters we’re discussing, or for that matter what you’d like to say about any part of the topic

7:30 suggestions for topics and questions to discuss (might be obvious)

7:35 forty minutes of open conversation (alternatively, 50 minutes with a 10-minute break in the middle)

8:15 last words, 1 minute each for closing comments or thoughts about future sessions

8:25 closing words

8:29 optional group photo

8:30 done

“High Conflict” in Unitarian-Universalist Communities

Ever since 2017, the UU community has been in “high conflict” over the national leaders’ political agenda, so for us this book is timely. The section on gang violence is interesting but doesn’t much apply to our experience. The section on conflicts within a liberal Jewish community, on the other hand, parallels our own experience in a lot of ways.

More Resources for Better Dialogues

See also this post: https://jonathan-tweet.blogspot.com/2022/03/resources-for-better-dialogues.html

Resources for Better Dialogues

Open Mind Platform is one of
several programs for better dialogues.

This page compiles resources for fostering better dialogue. I compiled these items to share with friends, and I’m making them public because these days more and more people seem to be talking about dialogue.

Books

The first two are highly recommended in general, and the third is great specifically for the issue of how to deal with “high conflict” (usually about politics, religion, or identity).

Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler

Game-changing. Even just reading the chapter titles helps you think better about conversations. An important point is that you and the person you disagree with should agree on a shared goal for the conversation you’re having, such as understanding each other better.

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, by Jonathan Haidt
Eye-opening. We think mostly with our feelings, conservatives and liberals feel differently, and our differences are heightened when they fall along differences of group identity. An important point is that adversarial positioning, such as in a debate, makes it harder for people to be open-minded. See also Open Mind Platform, below.

High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out, by Amanda Ripley
A close look at conflicts as they are playing out these days, including a Jewish congregation that was nearly divided over political issues. A big idea is that when you are in “high conflict”, the things that seem like the right approach, such as hosting a debate or referendum, usually make things worse. 

Online Resources
Two online programs that I’m familiar with.

Open Mind Platform
This program puts into practice the theories developed by Jonathan Haidt and others. The solo introductory program is worth doing on its own. The program features guidelines for various sorts of communities, such as congregations. 
https://openmindplatform.org

Braver Angels
This program brings together people with differing views and fosters dialogue in a variety of formats. I’ve done one of their forums, and their structure works well. 
https://braverangels.org

Previous Dialogs
Here are recordings of a few moderated dialogues that I’ve participated in.

Christianity: Good and Bad
A “better debate” hosted by Seattle Atheists. I moderated this one.
https://youtu.be/3AoG5gIt6uI

Religion: Good and Bad
Another “better debate” among atheists, this time with me as a participant. 
https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/seattle-atheists-podcast-596599/episodes/valerie-tarico-and-jonathan-tw-24102396

White Privilege
A Unitarian-Universalist future minister (Justin Almeida) talks with an ex-UU friend of mine, with me as the moderator. Both interlocutors said that they felt heard. How often does that happen in a conversation like this? 
https://youtu.be/wboY_DPR6v4

Foot Poll
One way to get a group of people to share their opinions without a few voices dominating the discussion is to conduct a “foot poll” or a “walk-and-talk”, which I blogged about back in 2015. 
https://jonathan-tweet.blogspot.com/2015/07/walk-n-talk-discussions.html

Take-Away
Dialogue between people with different perspectives can be wonderful, but usually it’s terrible. When done popcorn-style, with one speaker popping up at a time, forums and Q&A sessions get dominated by people whose desire to talk exceeds everyone else’s desire to hear them talk. Fortunately, a little structure goes a long way in helping dialogues be more productive. 

Honest Dialogs Outperform Debates

Dialog is hard but doable.

tl:dr Better dialogs are possible and in fact have been occasionally taking place, especially when participants try to paraphrase each others’ views. 

The traditional debate format is counterproductive. Luckily, we have some new and better ways to approach disagreements. Daniel Dennett recommends four rules in particular, and the most powerful of them is generously paraphrasing the other participant’s position. In Scout Mindset, Julia Galef refers to this tactic as the “epistemological Turing test”—can you state an opposing position so accurately that you could be mistaken for a proponent of that position? It’s also basically steel-manning, the opposite of straw-manning. See Agreeing How to Disagree.

Starting 2014, Brandon Hendrickson and I developed a number of dialogs as we experimented with how to put these principles into practice. Our best result was a dialog about the value of religion. See Honest Debate: Religion, Good and Bad.

Brandon and I also arranged a dialog on Christianity, which went better than your average debate. Both these debates are by and for atheists, but the format of the dialogs is generally applicable. See Honest Debate: Christianity Good and Bad.

Brandon is a innovative educator, and he boiled down the process to a series of structured exchanges. It really works. Here’s a dialog about white privilege, at the end of which both participants feel as though they have been heard. It starts with a lot of glad-handing in order to establish mutual trust between two strangers. You can fast forward through that part, but if you run a dialog, give this step the time and energy it deserves. See White Privilege Dialog.

Resources

Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt is amazing. I’ve run two book discussions on it at my Unitarian Universalist Church, and Haidt’s a fan of Grandmother Fish. His book helps explain why people are so polarized over symbols. See Resources for Studying The Righteous Mind.

Human Swarm by Mark Moffett grounds Haidt’s theories in anthropology and zoology. Roughly, he explains what a “nation” is, for humans, pinion jays, Argentine ants, and a few other species. Can a student of E O Wilson’s do wrong? See my review of Human Swarm.

High Conflict by Amanda Ripley is like the practical take on Haidt’s theory. At the end of the book discussions on Righteous Mind, people would say, “OK, but what do we do?” Ripley has some ideas in that direction, including an account of a liberal religious congregation managing unexpected conflicts among members. 

Scout Mindset by Julia Galef zeroes in on the experience of the individual, especially the attitude one needs to cultivate in order to be right more often. If you want to be right, you must be willing to learn that you’re wrong. 

The organization Braver Angels organizes structured dialogs across lines of polarization, and they’re worth a look. 

The Open Mind platform takes Haidt’s theories and puts them into practice, not as a book but as a program. The introductory module is done individually, and it’s worth undertaking. I’d love to get some experience with this system. 

2019

Two timers, no waiting

Timing Group Discussions

Previously, I’ve posted about the problems I’ve seen during free-form discussions, specifically where some people talk more than they need to at the expense of others. When I teach my game-design class each fall, my rule is that students have to raise their hands and be called on. Without that rule, students with certain personality types would speak up more than their share. (The Y-chromosome seems to correlate with this behavior.) When I moderate panels at conventions, I give each member of the audience one chance to ask a question or make a comment before anyone speaks a second time. Otherwise, the quiet members of the audience are shut out while the talkative members get more than their share of attention. I’ve got a new trick that I’m using for a discussion of Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind: using one-minute hourglasses to give each participant a one-minute spotlight. We start the discussion with a round of one-minutes statements from each person, about a dozen of us.. Then we discuss things more less freely, after which we have a second round of one-minute comments near the end of the 90-minute session. There’s some time after the second round for discussion, but not much. The people in the book discussion group say they like the new system with the timers. 

The trick is to get two timers. We go around the circle and give each person a chance to speak. The first speaker turns over their one-minute hourglass, and when they’re done they hand the hourglass to the third speaker. If the hourglass hasn’t run out, the third speaker lets it run out while the second speaker talks. When the first speaker has finished, the second speaker turns over their hourglass, and when they’re done, they hand the hourglass to the fourth speaker, etc. You could use an electronic timer that restarts instantly, and then you wouldn’t need two, but where’s the fun in that?

I have seen single one-minute hourglasses used before, but they’re awkward when the previous speaker still has time left in their hourglass. I copied the two-hourglass system from a Unitarian meeting about climate justice. Having little props to fiddle with is fun. The timers may be a little dorky, but one thing I like about us Unitarians is that we’re not afraid to be a little dorky together. The Science Book Discussion group that’s reading The Righteous Mind is also through my Unitarian church. 

The one-minute timer is just one way to manage a conversation with a lot of different people and different personalities. My point isn’t that you should use my particular system. My point is that open-format discussions are systematically unfair and that everyone running a discussion needs ground rules or protocols of some sort to even things out better. 

PS: One-minute timers. If you’re in Seattle, you can get one-minute hourglasses at Top Ten Toys in Greenwood, like I did. It’s a neat store. 

Previous blog post. Talking Over Women: Misadventures in atheist meet-ups (October 2014). 

Evidism and Respect for Evidence

In the book Sharing Reality, Jeff T. Haley and Dale McGowan promote the idea that we science-oriented secularists should promote not particular philosophical conclusions but instead a disciplined respect for evidence. They point out that religions have been becoming more evidence-oriented, and they would like to hasten the trend. The two suggest a neologism—evidism—as the term for this approach to personal belief and public policy. In the tribal conflicts between atheists and believers, it’s easy for atheists to focus on hot-button issues, such as nativity scenes or the Ten Commandments on public land. Haley and McGowan propose that we should instead focus on respect for evidence and on spreading the norm that policy-makers use evidence to guide them. They have a point. “Evidence” is a winning touchstone to help people agree and collaborate. 

At Seattle’s March for Science in 2017, I said that evidence can bring people together. Sharing Reality makes a similar point. An advantage of pointing people toward evidence is that almost everyone says that they value evidence and thinks that they value it. Atheist PZ Myers makes the point that creationists try to bolster their position by portraying it in scientific terms. For example, they love to talk about the laws of thermodynamics, as if natural selection contradicts those laws. Even the people who disagree with scientists still affirm the authority of science. Likewise, almost everyone affirms the importance of evidence. Will evidence really convince anyone that they’re wrong? But without evidence the odds are zero. The authors expand on the topic at length, discussing the value of evidence and the best ways to communicate the importance of evidence. They show how a respect for evidence leads naturally to agnostic and secular behavior, even for people who believe in God and scripture. 

In my personal experience, I can confirm that people usually can’t ignore the importance of evidence even when they wish they could. People arguing on the Internet often rely on abstract arguments, but they recognize the value of evidence when you ask them for it. Focusing on the evidence might not change the mind of one’s opponent in a debate, but it impresses the audience. 

The term “evidism”, however, doesn’t grab me. If lots of people start using the term, I won’t be the last, but I’m not going to be the first, either. I’d rather call it empiricism. For some people, empiricism has negative connotations suggesting soullessness or faithlessness. That’s fine by me. I’d rather use a word that people care about than one that they don’t. 

Haley and McGowan say that believing in God demonstrates that the believer isn’t following the evidence, but I would not make the same judgment. While the authors reluctantly agree that it would be worth working with science-oriented believers, I would be enthusiastic about it, not reluctant. I don’t care if someone believes in God, but I do care if they respect science. I have more in common with an evidence-oriented believer than with an atheist who thinks that reality is constructed by language, by power hierarchies, or by the power of positive thinking.

Sharing Reality makes an important point, that focusing on evidence is a promising way to improve dialogs about policies, injustices, and other issues of general concern—especially with religious people. 

Sharing Reality: How to Bring Secularism and Science to an Evolving Religious World. 

By Jeff Haley and Dale McGowan. Pitchstone Publishing (US&CA), 2017

Honest Debate: Religion, Good and Bad

Valerie Tarico tackles the intersection between
religious belief, psychology, and politics.

Atheists love to talk about religion, usually to criticize it. Here are two atheists, Valerie Tarico and me, debating whether religion is mostly good or mostly bad. The debate is the fifth in our series, using a format that prevents the debaters from talking past each other. The debaters also field a question from Daniel Dennett.

Podcast (iTunes)

http://bit.ly/podcastReligionTaricoTweet

After the debate, an atheist from the audience asked me if I really believed the positive things I was saying about religion. He also told me that I had made him think. He told me that twice. The debate format is designed to circumvent the human predisposition to block out what “the enemy” is saying. Most debates make people feel more sure of their own position, and we’re trying to do better than that. 

The moderator and I also run moderated one-on-one dialogs between people who disagree on political issues. The dialog uses the same “summarize in a sentence” structure that you see in this debate. 

I’d love to get feedback on the debate, especially the format, but also the content.

Valerie’s blog post

Valerie talks about how she “played the gender card” in our debate, as part of her blog post about #MeToo. Link to her post, January 15, 2018.

Participants (besides me)

“Bad” Side: Valerie Tarico, a psychologist and writer.

Moderator: Brandon Hendrickson, an educator and school founder.

Guest Interrogator: Miles Greb, a comic publisher.

Guest Interrogator: Jeff Haley, co-author of Sharing Reality: How to Bring Secularism and Science to an Evolving Religious World.

Guest Interrogator (via email): Daniel Dennett, who promotes the discussion techniques that these debates are based on. 

MC: George Juillerat

Speech at March for Science Seattle

Here’s the 4-minute speech I gave at the March for Science in Seattle, Earth Day 2017, April 22. That’s Karen up on stage with me, wearing a coral reef on her head. It was an honor to speak and a joy to march.

My topic is how evidence can unite us all. My book, Grandmother Fish, gives children evidence for evolution when they wiggle like a fish and hoot like an ape. Kids love learning that humans are part of the great family of animals. Evidence also says that humans are all one family, as Charles Darwin concluded. Evidence can unite the human family because it allows people to share ideas across cultural boundaries.

“Can you wiggle?”

Karen and I are available for artist and author visits, either together or independently. Contact us here: http://www.grandmotherfish.com/contact/

For what it’s worth, here are the notes I used when giving the speech.

evidence together
grandmother fish
earliest fish with jaws
over 400 Mya
200 million greats
3 years
evidence
Grandmother Fish
evidence for little kids
wiggle like a fish—earliest fish
crawl & breathe early reptiles
squeak & cuddle early mammals
grab & hoot early apes
walk & talk early humans
kids love: animals, family, animal family
“I am a HUUMAN”
family of life
humanity one big family
Charles Darwin knew—evidence
evidence says: all related
evidence bring us together
Chinese translation of Grandmother Fish—language, culture, political system, economic system
Not like me: English, Seattle, Mary Oliver, Unitarian
everyone’s story
we are all related
a vision of who were are that we can all share

Honest Debate: Christianity Good and Bad

Moderator, pro-Christianity guy, & anti-Christianity guy

Here’s a video of a recent debate about Christianity, good and bad. I was the moderator, and I think it turned out well. Both debaters are non-believers because this debate is not about atheism versus Christianity. These debates are by and for atheists, created for the atheist community here in Seattle. Each debater represents a different viewpoint, but both viewpoints fit within the atheist worldview. The debate was what we call an “honest” debate. We have specific ground rules, roles, and expectations that prevent problems you see in typical debates: the unfair arguments, evasive answers, and rhetorical tricks. This format is inspired primarily by Rapoport’s rules for criticism, as popularized by Daniel Dennett. With that sort of approach in mind, I’ve been working with the Seattle Atheists to develop dialogs and debates that would facilitate a significantly more meaningful dialog than many of us have come to expect. This “honest” debate on Christianity is the third, and it’s the best. 

Here’s the video.

Sometimes people think that the point of Rapoport’s rules is to be nice. It’s true that the rules have the beneficial effect of taking some of the heat out of a disagreement, but niceness is only half of it. The other half is intellectual honesty. One rule is that you state your opponent’s viewpoint in terms so reasonable that the opponent accepts your paraphrase. Once you’ve done that, you can’t resort to caricature or exaggeration. When you state the opponent’s viewpoint, you demonstrate that you know exactly what you’re disagreeing with. Most people don’t. Over the years, I have seen people have a surprisingly hard time articulating their opponent’s point of view. You see some of this paraphrasing in the Christianity debate, and both debaters are pretty good at it. Before the debate, we had some preliminary discussions, so the debaters were already familiar with each others’ general positions. 

Another of Rapoport’s rules is to find places of agreement. I’ve come to appreciate the power of that technique more and more. This technique also appears in the book Crucial Conversations, about how to de-escalate conflicts and facilitate cooperation among people who are at odds with each other. In this Christianity debate, you see some times when the two debaters find things to agree on. 

The video ends before the results of the polls are announced. By the end of the debate, the pro-Christian side had picked up more undecideds than the anti-Christian side, but the anti-Christian side still had more sympathizers overall. 

The anti-Christian debater is Bob Seidensticker. He’s the author of Cross Examined: An Unconventional Spiritual Journey, and he critiques Christianity on his Patheos blog, also called Cross Examined. Bob had heard of Rapoport’s rules and was eager to participate.

Christianity was our third topic. Our first dialog was on Islam and Islamophobia, and it was not recorded because the topic is too touchy. The second was on Jesus, and you can see it here. We plan to do more.

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Agreeing how to disagree: Here’s a post that lays out the thinking behind better debates. 

Direct dialog on religion: Here’s a moderated video debate where we tried out some of the “honest debate” techniques. 

2016

YouTube video from 2 years ago

Direct Dialog on Religion

Daniel Dennett has long promoted rules for criticizing honestly instead of insultingly. For example, you should start by stating your opponent’s position clearly, in terms that your opponent would use. This exercise demonstrates that you understand the position you’re about to criticize, not attacking a straw man*. It also sets a tone of exceptional reasonableness. Recently, the idea of “steel manning" seems to be gaining attention, and that’s in the same ballpark as the rules Dennett popularizes. Steel manning means addressing the opponent’s position in its strongest terms. Usually we caricature an opponent’s view without ever realizing we’re doing it. We honestly state our judgments, and we don’t try to caricature anyone else’s view, but the caricature starts in our own heads, so it’s almost impossible to avoid. On the other hand, if you intentionally make a “steel man” argument and address the opponent’s strongest points honestly, you overcome the reflexive tendency to caricature the opponent’s view. Sam Harris has made arduous efforts to communicate across lines of disagreement, and he has suffered some dramatic failures. He’s still trying, and sometimes it works. Two years ago, Dennett’s proposals got me experimenting with formats for disagreeing. Two years ago, I talked two other atheists into joining me online for a video conference where I would debate one of them and the other would moderate. The topic was “how useful is it for us atheists to challenge the religious beliefs of others?” I just reviewed the video, and it holds up surprisingly well. Take a listen if you like. There’s video, but it hardly matters. The action is all in the audio. 

View on Youtube

It’s an amateur performance and recording, for sure. At one point there’s a technical glitch, but soon enough everyone is back in the conversation. None of us are familiar with the format we’re trying, not the Google Hangout nor the moderated discussion. No one’s timing anything, so sometimes our answers go on too long. The performance is uneven. But given all that, it’s an interesting record of our experiment because the conversation is different from a regular debate. We…

• figure out what we agree on, which is as important as what we disagree on.
• take absolute either/or questions and turn them into questions of proportion. 
• state each others’ views fairly.
• clarify where our differences of opinion really lie.
• address each other’s points directly. 

This video is not ready for prime time, but as food for thought it seem worth sharing. 

- - -

* “straw man” and “steel man”: These terms are needlessly gendered. Any chance that introducing “steel manning” is also a chance to change both terms at once? How about “straw dog” and “steel dog”? This switch works for me because men are dogs, but dogs are not men.

Walk-n-Talk Discussions

Walk & Talk at Burning Man

How do you get a large number of people to share their opinions in meaningful discussions? An open discussion seems to be something of an ideal among atheists, perhaps because we lean toward analysis and individualism. The first problem with open discussions of any size is that they are too easily dominated by extraverts. If someone gets angry over a sensitive topic, they also take more than their share of the spotlight. Usually, a few people do most of the talking. I’ve organized and participated in a lot of discussions over the years, and I want better results than that. Particularly if you’re concerned with empowering women’s voices, the issue is salient because on average it’s men who do most of the overtalking. Part of the problem is with extraverts, especially the loudmouths who feel compelled to talk and often talk over others. Don’t judge them too harshly. Everyone’s different, and some people are different by being more of a loudmouth. There’s another reason, however, that we don’t hear from some people. Speaking up in front of a big group is scary for a lot of people. And honestly it’s a big responsibility, taking the spotlight and asking a large group of people to listen to you instead of saying what they have to say. Plenty of people don’t even want to take their share of the air time. They have things to say, often some really insightful things, but they’re comfortable speaking in smaller groups, not big ones. How do you even things out, so that loudmouths can’t shut people out, and so shy people can contribute to a discussion without being forced to take the stage? My proposal is to run the discussion as a “walk-n-talk.” It’s an event that I’ve run several times at Burning Man, game conventions and Unitarian Sunday school. Instead of sitting, the participants stand in an open space and they all share their opinions on a question by walking to one side of the room or the other. A moderator leads a more or less regular discussion, except that each participant also gets to “voice” their opinion without taking the spotlight and in a way that can’t be talked over.

Here’s an example of the walk-n-talk format working. One year we had a quiet 7th grader in Sunday school. She paid attention in our discussions but she never spoke up. Near the end of the school year, we did a walk-n-talk, and for one question she walked way to left, as far as she could get. I asked her why she felt so strongly, and she explained her perspective to the class. It was easier for her to finally say something because she the walk-n-talk format allowed her to first voice an opinion without commanding others’ attention or even talking. We can encourage shy kids to speak up in class, but context counts more than words. 

Here’s my boilerplate description of the event for game conventions.

Walk & Talk
Stand and be counted with your people! Everyone stands in a group. The leader presents the group with either/or choices such as, “If you like pirates better than ninjas, move left. If you like ninjas better than pirates, move right.” Everybody gets to see how everyone else in the group answers each question. After each question, we talk briefly, and people on either side can explain their choices.  Then we move on to new questions. The questions cover whatever topics would be appropriate to the event. Participants can also pose questions to the group. Originally a Burning Man event.
   
Requires an open space where a dozen people or more can walk back and forth. Good for a high-traffic area because people can drop in at any time. Works best at 50 - 90 minutes.

Instructions for Moderators
If you have a feel for moderating the process, no instructions are really necessary, but here is the process spelled out. If you’re not moderating, these instructions still work as “the rules.”

1. You, the moderator, stand on the centerline of the room or area, dividing it into left and right. You stand at the edge of the play area. The participants gather into a mob in front of you, in the center of the play area.

2. Explain that this is a safe place for a conversation where people can disagree without criticizing someone else’s feelings or questioning their experiences.

3. The moderator poses a two-answer question to the group, such as, “Which do you like more, dogs or cats? If you like dogs more, move over that way.” Point right. “And if you like cats more, move that way.” Point left. “If you like them equally, stand on the center line.” Indicate the halfway line across the area, the imaginary line directly in front of you.
    

4. Participants move to one side or the other, often groaning at the difficulty of the decision.
    

5. You elicit a conversation on the topic. Call on people on each side. Encourage them to try to explain their viewpoints and possibly convince people in the middle. People can change position as they see fit.
    

6. Keep the conversations short. When they get too long, tell everyone to get back in the middle for the next question. You can often do new questions inspired by the discussion.
    

7. For some questions, you will want people moving not just left and right but up and back. For the cat and dog question, for example, you can add a new dimension to differentiate city people from country people. Once people are divided into right and left for dogs and cats, have them move forward (toward you) if they’re city people and back if they’re country people. Are there correlations? Do urban dog-lovers love different sorts of dogs from rural dog-lovers?
    

8. Start with safe topics, like movies or food. Gradually you can get to more personal issues, such as personal life.
 

9. My events are usually 50 to 90 minutes.
 

10. In a public venue with an open invitation, it’s nice to position the players so that you are facing the entrance, and it’s behind the players. That way new players can unobtrusively join in the back. They can also slip away if they like.

Advice for a Burning Man Walk-n-Talk 

For anyone who want to know more, here is a link to a document that I wrote to coach a friend the first time he was running the event.

Guidelines

Verbatim Notes from Gamefest

Here are the notes I prepared for the last walk-n-talk I did at Gamefest in Denver. The topic was gamer identity, an easy catch-all topic. As you will see, the notes are highly sketchy, really just reminders for me to refer to quickly when I need a new topic.

Verbatim Notes

Availability
If you want me to run a walk-n-talk at your event, email me: jt at jonathantweet dot com.

Agreeing How to Disagree

Daniel Dennett offers four rules for
more intelligent disagreement.

What if atheists were the best at disagreeing? What if we were the ones that could be counted on not to attack straw men or exaggerate someone else’s viewpoint? In theory, we atheists should be the best at deliberation because we have no holy books or dogmas to bias us. Furthermore, we don’t consider believers to be worthy of hell, and we don’t consider ourselves to be God’s favorites, so we ought to be the nicest, most respectful disagreers out there. That’s my dream, but we’re not exactly there yet. Daniel Dennett advocates high standards for critical commentary and I think we can do more along those lines. Here’s a concrete suggestion: replace the debate format with an intentional, moderated dialog. The debate format is outdated, and we could use a new way to disagree, one that better anticipates the human tendency to deceive oneself.

Debating is Outdated…

In October, Bill Maher and Ben Affleck got into a heated exchange about Islam. They talked over each other for a while, and the next day everyone was saying that their guy had won. Online, the Maher and Affleck partisans would link to the same video clip, and each would claim the score was 1-0 in their favor. Arguing over each other doesn’t work, and the problem is that it looks like it works. Each side thought that reason had prevailed, which shows that it hadn’t. If anyone, Maher is the one who prevailed because he got a heated exchange on tape and got a lot of free publicity. But did the conversation get anywhere? People on both sides seem to say that there’s nothing more to be said. Each thinks that their side has been proven right, and that people on the other side are just being pig-headed. Audiences like to watch smart people talk about important issues, but the antagonistic emotions of the debate trump rationality. Could a better format for a discussion reduce how much the participants talk past each other? After all, the debate format hails from a time when faithful people thought God-given Reason could deduce the Truth. Now we know that humans are political side-takers, and that reason is primarily our tool for making ourselves look good. 

…Because Reason Doesn’t Rule.

It’s traditional in Western culture to give reason pride of place among human faculties. The thinking part of you thinks that the thinking part of you should be in charge. We tell others that we believe what we believe because we’ve reasoned it out. We atheists in particular love to assert that we came by our faithlessness through rigorous cognitive effort. With the premise that reason rules, it’s logical to deduce that you can bring people’s opinions closer together by giving them more information and a better understanding of a topic. The more information that people have in common, the more their opinions should converge. In fact, the opposite is true. After an even-handed debate on a controversial issue, the audience finds itself further apart rather than closer together. It turns out that we’re biased little social apes, not detached intellects. When we hear an argument that agrees with us, our intuition responds positively before our reason has had time to analyze the argument. My side’s arguments sure sound rock-solid! But the other side’s reasons? We intuitively react to them as threats, and we spot their flaws effortlessly. That’s how an even-handed debate polarizes people rather than helping each side understand the other side better. 

Your Instincts Know a Fight When They See One

It turns out that instead of detached intellects, we’re flesh-and-blood creatures connected emotionally to each other, and especially to our respectve groups. The thinking part of your brain might think it’s watching a rational debate about, say, abortion, but your unconscious mind recognizes the event as a battle between your tribe and the enemy. You listen to the enemy debater tell horrible lies, and your blood boils. Conflict between groups can trigger the fight-or-flight response, which channels blood away from the part of your brain that makes you reasonable. You sit quietly, but you’d like to throw something or yell. The Internet, with its anonymity and lack of social cues, is even worse. Forums are littered with endless threads of people arguing back and forth across political and religious divides. Each side presents logical arguments the way a rational person is expected to do, but the energy driving the flame war is good old us-versus-them. These threads can get abusive pretty fast. An attempt at rational argument quickly turns into mere arguing.

The human mind comes with several self-serving biases. Our ancestors evolved to get ahead in life, not to evaluate life objectively. Some positive biases aren’t too bad, such as thinking you’re better than you really are, but a host of other biases evolved to help us unite against the hated enemy. These instinctive biases get us to judge people by what group they belong to and to see one’s own group as more virtuous, reasonable, worthy and varied than out-groups. When intellectual disagreements turn vicious, they typically concern questions of identity: religion, gender, race, nationality, politics, and evolution. People who are on the opposite side from you on these sorts of issues are generally “them,” the enemy. Truth is the first casualty of war, and objectivity is the first casualty of us-versus-them thinking. 

New Ways to Disagree

So if we’re hopeless partisans doomed to see things from a biased perspective, can we ever communicate across a tribal divide? Yes, but it takes work. Daniel Dennett has long popularized four rules for criticizing constructively. The best one, I think, is that before you can criticize someone you have to summarize their viewpoint so generously that they agree with your summary. This approach has been called "kind," but as Dennett points out the real benefit is that it's effective. By acting non-antagonistically, we set aside our us-versus-them instincts. By following Dennett’s four rules, you communicate to your own unconscious mind that the exchange isn’t a fight, and with any luck your opponent's unconscious gets the same message. I’ve used these rules in correspondence and have achieved mixed results, which is to say that they work miracles. Typically, a reason-oriented, antagonistic debate feels compelling but leads nowhere. To get mixed results means enjoying an unprecedented amount of success communicating across a tribal divide. These rules work well enough that I’d like to see them incorporated into a moderated dialog, in place of a debate. Another of Dennett’s rules is that one should describe areas of agreement with the person that you’re criticizing. This step confounds the us-versus-them instincts, too. In fact, in a dialog, I’d like to see the moderator working with the participants to find more common ground between them. Debates highlight differences but systematically exclude commonalities. 

It seems like rational debate should be effective in reaching agreement, but instead it’s usually divisive. Now that we understand our own evolved tendencies to lie to ourselves, it’s obvious why debates don’t work the way we thought they should. With this improved self-understanding, we could use a better way to frame disagreements. So my friends and I are working on something along these lines.

Update, February 2017: The Seattle Atheists nonprofit has now hosted three moderated dialogs, one on Islam and Islamophobia, one on historical Jesus, and the last on Christianity. They have been well received, and the last one in particular seemed successful. Here’s a link to the Christianity video.

Christianity: Good and Bad. An honest debate among atheists. 

Further Reading

This post is based on insight gained from a number of different sources. Here are the major ones. 

Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking, Daniel C. Dennett. For the complete treatment of his four rules for criticizing.

Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High. Kerry Patterson and Joseph Grenny. Focusing on the context of the conversation rather than content, avoiding impasses, managing emotions during verbal disagreements. Probably worth paging through at a bookstore even if you don’t buy it. 

The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It. Kelly McGonigal. The flight-or-fight response versus the pause-and-plan response. 

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. Jonathan Haidt. Emotional foundations of morality, including tribalism.

Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them. Joshua Greene. Emotional foundation of tribalism.

Thinking, Fast and Slow. Daniel Kahneman. Quick, effortless intuition versus slow, difficult deliberation. 

How We Decide. Jonah Lehrer. Emotional basis of decision-making. 

Other Evolution-Themed Posts

Crow Scientist is Live, 2020

[Review] Human Swarm, by Mark Moffett, 2019

Not “Race” but Ancestry, 2019

Testosterone for Amateurs, 2019

Evolution Unites Us All, 2018

March for Science, Seattle, my speech, 2017

Evolution Activities for Darwin Day, 2017

Mother Love and Human Nature, 2017

Kids and Grandmother Fish, 2017

Reading about Religion, 2014

Creatures of Love, 2011

Grief and the Human Animal, 2011

2014

More Talk About Talking

Last weeks’ post about men talking over women generated a lot of commentary, so please allow me to clarify and elaborate. The universal relegation of women to second-class status is obviously a huge issue around the world, but here I’m focusing on one particular issue. The phenomenon of men talking over women deserves special attention, I suggest, because it’s ubiquitous and overlooked. That makes it a big opportunity for men to have their consciousnesses raised, and maybe even to make a real difference in how people communicate. What I recommend is that people spend some time observing conversations. There are plenty of gender-related dynamics to look for, but a good place to start is to watch who talks over whom. It can be eye-opening.

As with any social or political movement, feminism includes an us-versus-them element. Our social instincts provide use with adaptations such as pigheadedness and selective hearing so that we can successfully engage in identity-based, us-versus-them struggles. Feminists who try to prove male privilege have limited success because opponents can pigheadedly derail the conversation with straw man arguments, contentious demands for definitions, and other handy devices. If you cite the wage gap, an opponent can question all the details of how you compare one employee’s career to another’s. Any statistic is easy to question and possibly ignore. But what if someone observes a conversation and sees for himself how often men talk over women? Maybe seeing it happen will be like a Zen koan, an experience that circumvents logic to offer enlightenment. It’s hard to argue with something that one has seen oneself.

There are plenty of communication dynamics that one could look for, but the dynamic of men talking over women is easy to see and requires little interpretation. You could look for which participants in a conversation are one-upping each other and which are connecting with each other, but that can be subtle. You could see how much “air time” each participant takes up, but it’s generally OK for some people to talk more and others less. But when you see someone talk over someone else, that’s not a matter degree. No amount of shutting others down is good.

Self-awareness is a hallmark of post-modern society. More than any people before us, post-modern Westerners understand their perspectives as their own personal perspectives. Even so, we’re subject to blind spots and biases. Here’s an opportunity for some men in particular to learn a little more self-awareness. The subtext of this lesson is that the everyday interactions that you take for granted might reveal an underlying bias, if you just know how to look. That’s a big lesson.

Talking Over Women

In 1990, this book got people talking
about male and female conversation styles.

In social gatherings, it’s common to see men talking over women. I don’t think the Y-chromosome has a gene for interrupting women, but there’s no mistaking that males interrupt and talk over females more often than the reverse. In the geek population, it seems to be worse than average, and it’s probably also worse among people don’t know each other well, such as at a convention. The gamer and atheist communities can be uninviting or even hostile to women, and when women get talked over that doesn’t help. Geek conventions have taken to adopting explicit anti-harassment policies to help women be safer, and that’s great. I’d like to go further and implement an anti-interrupting policy. Women commonly have their voices silenced metaphorically, such as when their opinions are dismissed as hysterics. When a man talks over a woman in person, her voice is being silenced literally. How do we get that to stop?

In an open conversation with lots of people and no ground rules, a few people tend to dominate. They’re typically men, and I’ve often been one of them. To make the conversation more even, it helps to have some structure. The Burning Man discussions I lead are “walk and talks,” where everyone in the discussion answers yes/no questions by walking one direction or another. We also discuss the questions, and a few people tend to dominate the verbal discussion, but everyone gets to “speak up” by walking either left or right. When I’m moderating a panel at a game convention, during Q&A I give each member of the audience an opportunity to ask one question. We start at the front of the audience and work our way back one row at a time. Quiet fans get their chances to ask questions before we open the floor. Once the floor is open, a few people dominate the rest of the Q&A. The formats for Burning Man discussions and panel Q&As are gender neutral, but they have the net effect of reducing men’s dominance of the conversations. When I’m out with a group somewhere, I often notice women being talked over. There’s no moderator in these discussions, but sometimes I break in to ask the woman what she was going to say. 

It wouldn’t surprise me to hear that geeks, gamers, atheists, and similar populations see more talking over than average. First, the populations are skewed in the male direction, so a woman’s odds of getting talked over go up. Second, these populations include a lot of educated, analytical people who don’t always have the best social instincts. In tabletop roleplaying, several people are gathered around the table and only one talks at a time. That setup invites more aggressive talkers to shut out the less aggressive ones.  

An explicit rule against talking over people should be phrased as gender-neutral, the way anti-harassment policies are. Loud people talking over quiet people is bad regardless of the genders involved. But making people aware of previously unconscious conversation habits is a teaching opportunity. The beauty of having a norm about men not talking over women is that anyone who doubts the feminist perspective can simply observe people talking and see for themselves what happens. You don’t have to hate men to say that they interrupt too much. You just have to watch us. And it’s hard to argue with the idea that people should be allowed to participate in a conversation. That’s why I bring up the gender issue, because men are the ones who need the most practice checking their privilege. A rule against talking over people would not only make our conversations more equitable, it would give men a good opportunity to see unthinking sexism in action. Maybe even in their own actions.

Presuming that anyone agrees with me on this point, how do we spread the norm of not talking over people? It’s a tricky question with different answers for different groups. In any event, it probably starts with some discussions on the Internet. Let’s see if that leads anywhere.


Walk-and-Talk Discussions: A post on this structure for “free-range” conversations.

Why Atheists Are Jerks: A closer look at certain interpersonal styles that are common among us atheists.