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If you ask someone "why?" enough about a subject you don't agree on, eventually both of you will come to a conclusion

Many hold strong beliefs and opinions, however not many know the roots of their belief. If a person agrees to explore it, both of you will learn something new and fascinating. The problem is finding someone who wants to think and ask the questions. This goes for both. Many want to “convince” someone, but how much do you truly know about the thing you’re trying to prove?

This also comes back to the “why?” game so many kids play. Parents get annoyed by it, but are they really annoyed at the game or their lack of knowledge depth? Play the game, find out how deep you lake of knowledge goes

intensely_human ,

I don’t believe that’s true. People have different value hierarchies, so you won’t necessarily agree with them no matter how much you clarify knowledge.

For example, my value hierarchy changed when I got attacked on the street once. It made me realize how terrifying it was to see my life about to end, and that moved “staying alive” up the hierarchy.

Now I think taking away people’s weapons is a terrible thing. But I can’t convince anyone else of this by talking to them about it, unless they value the protection of life as powerfully as I do.

I thought I valued my safety, but I really didn’t. I took a lot more risks before that happened, because I valued fun, social status, money, exploration over safety.

So my values shifted, without any new knowledge of the world (at least not that I can convey in words), and as a result my decisions and worldview changed.

It sounds horrible, but I don’t know if I could alter another’s philosophy on this by talking. I’d have to disguise myself as a stranger and beat them half to death, then come back as myself again to really get on the same page.

Vengefu1Tuna ,
@Vengefu1Tuna@lemmy.world avatar

This also comes back to the “why?” game so many kids play. Parents get annoyed by it, but are they really annoyed at the game or their lack of knowledge depth?

I used to think this as well, until I had a three-year-old. One day she yelled under the bathroom door, “WHY ARE YOU POOPING??” I’ve realized that young kids may ask “why” more often to annoy and test social boundaries instead of actually trying to learn something. When she does ask “why” in order to learn, it’s fun explaining and teaching her. But it’s not as often as I thought it would be.

DominicHillsun OP ,

Ah, I see :D I guess it is important not to miss those actual sparks of curiousity though

Squirrel ,
@Squirrel@thelemmy.club avatar

Well, why were you pooping?

cedarmesa , (edited )
@cedarmesa@lemmy.world avatar

💀

intensely_human ,

Sounds like being grilled on reddit.

intensely_human ,

Why should I do that?

rayman30 ,
@rayman30@lemmy.world avatar

Hmmm, but why?

sudo22 ,
@sudo22@lemmy.world avatar

Why do you ask?

Zed ,

Why wouldn’t they ?

Petter1 ,

Because if we did that all the time and everywhere, we would become smarter as a whole human race and maybe gain enough knowledge to stop slaughtering each other ❤️

JohnGarland1001 ,

Why do you think that is?

Petter1 ,

Because every human is continuously forced to check why they believe in what they believe and if it still makes sense. You build on pillars you once assume are stable. But with your latest knowledge and the question „Why?“, you may recognize some to be more brittle than you thought.

JohnGarland1001 ,

Why, necessarily, would they not follow human confirmation bias?

MrCheeze445 ,

I personally think that they wouldn’t follow confirmation bias because in the discussion of “why?” we already have them questioning and looking deeper

Petter1 ,

Why that?

Emanresu , (edited )

Be very careful @dominicHillson, you are close to realising that the dumbest 95% of people defaulted to their views and rationalise their surrounding beliefs. The important part is that at no point have they or will they verify their beliefs. They are literally copying others and aren’t aware of it. If you press them most of the time they will get progressively more “uncivil”. There is a reason fascists genocide their enemies and don’t care about honesty or correct language. Power is how you go against nature, and if you are wrong, the only way to “win”.

If you guys want to rebuild your beliefs so they are actually true, you have to start with figuring out what truth is. I know philosophy is a scary and worthless sounding thing, but its literally the attempts to understand things through reason(literally having reasons for believing) and refining those views.

Epistemology is the philosophy of truth and knowledge. Some examples of epistemological thinking are

  • Are the people around me a reliable way to determine truth? ex. In a Hindu region, the average person will vouch for Hinduism, in an Arabic region, Islam etc etc. Can mutually exclusive things in different regions become simultaneously true just because people around them believe it?
  • Are experts a reliable way to determine truth? ex. Blood letting was a common profession, as was astrology.
  • Are family members a reliable way to determine truth? ex. one family believes one thing, another believes the opposite.
  • Are the most popular people a reliable way to determine truth? ex. Hitler could be argued as a popular person in his area and time, so also could any random influencer.
  • Are the most powerful people reliable sources of truth?

You can clearly see a path this takes, so let me give a silly story.

The most popular politician during a debate says “You all trust me and my skill! That’s why I’m popular. The answer to the great question is three!”. Then, the expert mathemagician takes the spotlight to answer the question of one plus one. “Clearly an expert knows the answer and not some silly politician! After great calculations, the answer, is four!”. The crowd thinks, clearly the answer must be either three or four, maybe the uncertain could compromise to three and a half. If only there was some way to reliably come to a true conclusion.

To me personally, truth is the most internally consistent configuration of information that I have, cleaned up using cognitive dissonance as my guide!

dystop ,
@dystop@lemmy.world avatar

Why?

Emanresu ,

Why what? I wont answer unless you ask properly!

I think that style is the counter for kids asking “why?” just to piss you off or push boundaries. It’ll take too much effort to spam and will force real questions.

keenanpepper ,

See also Double Cruxing

Sdot ,

That was an interesting read - thanks for posting

blaamejsen ,

This reminds me of the 5 Why method from Toyota

DominicHillsun OP ,

Yes! Just learned about it, seems to be very similar to what I had in mind ^^

AFKBRBChocolate ,

We use this at work a lot when there’s been some kind of failure. The idea is to try and get to the real root cause of an issue, not just the immediate cause. Like maybe an engine failed because a valve didn’t open - you could correct that by replacing the valve, but why didn’t the valve open? Maybe it was stuck and the initial force to open it was more than the actuator could handle. Okay, so maybe we could lubricate it somehow, but why was it stuck. Maybe the supplier changed their cleaning method and switched to a new chemical. Why did they do that? Oh, because it was cheaper. That’s the real root cause: the supplier tried to cut costs by switching to an inferior cleaning chemical. Time to work with them to fix that. All of the other fixes would have only helped that one valve on that one engine - this one fixes all of them.

credo ,

eventually both of you will come to a conclusion

But not necessarily an agreement.

JackbyDev ,

I remember asking my father in law why he doesn’t believe in climate change. It boiled down to him saying the democrats just want to control us. When I asked why he said just so they have more power for power’s sake. I told him I’m willing to accept that politicians can be like that (because many are) but why does he believe that the republicans are immune to this craving of power or if he thought republicans denying climate change could be just for the sake of controlling people to get more power (like he accused democrats of) and surprise surprise he couldn’t give me an answer other than democrats are corrupt and want more power but republicans don’t (which isn’t an answer because I’m asking why).

key ,

Turns out most everyone thinks based on reasoning developed by years of cumulative, biased experiences that ultimately amount to fundamentally distinct axioms of how the world works. Few people actually have opinions based on “logic”, least of all the people who fly the banner of “rational” or “emotion free” opinions. Answering why just provides post-hoc explanations rather than an actual cause (which humans are great at coming up with, just look at split brain cases). Which just turns most “big topic” disagreements into competitions over who can come up with a better sounding justification.

HeartyBeast ,
@HeartyBeast@kbin.social avatar

Or, alternatively - you'll be accused of Sealioning

DominicHillsun OP ,

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/bbfbb613-ec96-461a-b33e-3c6c4d90dadb.png

Haha, yes that indeed might be a problem! Any idea how to approach this without being incredibly annoying?

HeartyBeast ,
@HeartyBeast@kbin.social avatar

I think the only way to avoid it really, is for the two people to agree in advance that they will each be open to questioning and will take the process in good faith. Know what yoiu are getting into.

Amanduh ,

Nice meme, never seen it before haha

Duchess ,
@Duchess@yiffit.net avatar

i’ve never come across this before but this is an excellent term. nobody is entitled to an unchallenged opinion but at the same time forcing someone into that type of conversation is unlikely to be productive.

Silviecat44 ,

Whoops! I may have been guilty of this in the past

HeartyBeast ,
@HeartyBeast@kbin.social avatar

Haven't we all.

More annoying though, is when you are really trying to understand the other person's point of view and they shut down debate by the accusation of sealioning. There should be a word for that

Ragnell ,
@Ragnell@kbin.social avatar

The word is "tired", I think. A lot of people just don't have the energy to answer the whys and are used to bad actors using why to exhaust them. So when it comes to things like racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia...etc.. it's a) an exhausting subject to begin with when its aimed at you, and b) a magnet for disingenuous bigots and trolls, so people will just shut down the conversation rather than try and explain their whole existence.

Honestly, I think isms are the only times when sealioning is sealioning, because that's the only time you get people arguing in such bad faith.

HeartyBeast ,
@HeartyBeast@kbin.social avatar

I think the only time I was accused of it was when trying to engage with a climate change denier. I wouldn't be surprised if they were tired. I'm not particularly sympathetic.

Ragnell ,
@Ragnell@kbin.social avatar

Oh, that's a thing that status quo lovers do where they steal a useful term and turn it against us.

HeartyBeast ,
@HeartyBeast@kbin.social avatar

"Rockin' all over the world"?

Dran_Arcana ,

This process is generally referred to as The Socratic Method. As you said, the devil is in first convincing both parties within a debate that they should be searching for shared understanding through the process of attacking and defending ideas, not attacking and defending each other.

Ragnell ,
@Ragnell@kbin.social avatar

I had a commander who used to drive all the techs crazy by asking "Why?" His philosophy was to ask "Why?" six times whether he understood or not to make sure his sergeants had thought through any proposal.

yanyuan ,

I don’t know. This can lead to completely different topics fast. An example:

You shouldn’t vote for XYZ.

Why?

Because he uses Nazi tactics and wants to be a dictator.

Why?

Because people often fall for these tricks and he likes the idea of being all powerful.

Why?

People don’t always think things through.

Why?

It costs energy and we try to save that.

Why?

Evolution.

Why?

DominicHillsun OP ,

Problem here is the answer contains multiple explanations. When asking “why?” it needs to be more specific otherwise you get your problem.

kimagure ,

Fucking evolution the root of all evil.

Weirdmusic ,
@Weirdmusic@lemmy.world avatar

You forgot to /s

massive_bereavement ,
@massive_bereavement@kbin.social avatar

Let's all go back into the water. Shun the landlubbers!

freehugs , (edited )

I think the key is to remember you are trying to discuss opinions/convictions not facts.

When B says something like “C is a nazi”, A correctly asks why B believes C is a nazi, not why C is a literal nazi. So when you go down one level, A’s next question should be something like “why do you think these are nazi tactics?” and “why are nazi tactics bad?” It really requires both sides to be intellectually honest and curious about someone’s actual beliefs, otherwise the technique doesn’t work. I also think limiting yourself to just “why” isn’t always helpful. Sometimes you need to ask for clarification or the entire conversation becomes a farce.

Remember the goal is to learn something about the other persons views, not to set each other up with rhetorical questions.

Coelacanth ,
@Coelacanth@kbin.social avatar

Exactly. It's harder than it sounds to ask the right "why".

rastilin ,

Not always. A lot of the time people will just lie about what they actually believe and why they believe it.

For example. People are going to say they support free speech because they believe in it as an important principle for a free society. No one is going to say they support free speech because actually they're a full on Nazi and this is the only way to get their message out to the public until they get the reigns and then they can dispense will al the "free speech" stuff and lock down the opposition.

Actually this applies to a lot of politics related stuff. For example politicians always talk about how tax breaks are going to stimulate the economy, none of them say "well my mate paid me a few million under the table to push this, even though 'trickle down' has never worked in the 100+ years that it's been around".

Security patches, Everyone says "We need to insure that all new software has up to date security and patches.", no one says "We want to collect every single bit of telemetry and integrate end to end DRM and the only way that can work is if the device is completely locked down so the users can't bypass or root it.".

Coelacanth ,
@Coelacanth@lemmy.world avatar

You’re right. Going down through the levels of “okay, and why?” works on a theoretical level but requires both the person asking the right why-question and a level of intellectual honesty from both parties that is incredibly hard to find.

It’s not a bad approach for questioning your own beliefs though, if you can muster the strength to be honest with yourself.

crossmr ,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJ0eWm5PxkU

Seems appropriate

DominicHillsun OP ,

I had Louis C.K bit in mind when I wrote about the “why?” game bit. Comedy is a wonderful way to introduce people to more complex subjects

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