Why Not Inquire Together More?
My podcast cohost Agnes Callard has been thinking lately about why we don’t have more deep conversations wherein we try to figure out important things together. So I asked 3 LLMs:
In our practical talk, we often try to figure things out together. Why do we do this so much less in our social chit-chat?
They said (my summary) that we have many standard roles, tools, and scripts to guide practical inquiry, that we have little need to inquire into deep topics, and that social talk is often of short duration, has norms of impracticality and frequent topic changes, is more to bond via relaxing affirming comfort while inquiry is harder work, and it raises fears of seeming uncertain, wrong, in conflict, dominating, or overly serious.
However, we do often socialize via exerting sustained and substantial effort in cooking, sport, hiking, games, travel, and activism. And we often enjoy arguing with each other, even on divisive topics like sex, politics, or religion. We sometimes even sustain such arguments over long engagements, such as on social media. I think that comparison to these cases preserves the puzzle: why not also inquire together?
One of my most viral tweets ever was a few days ago, where I pointed to a N-S meridian line of fertility on a US map, and asked why that corresponded closely to a time zone boundary. Many responded with other maps that also correlated with this fertility meridian. They did in fact inquire together in this case, as they had a simple way to do that: post another correlated map. This move let them help while showing knowledge, and avoiding the appearance of doubt or hostility.
Recently learning lots on cultural evolution leads me to suspect that a big factor here is most of us lacking good models of shared inquiry conversations to copy. In our professional lives, and in practical areas of our personal lives, we have seen many examples of respectable inquiry, examples with enough detail to let us copy them. For example, academics learn how to write respectable “studies” in their field. And we all see personal examples of people figuring out together how to travel from A to B, or how to find a product of type X in area A.
But in our social chit-chat, as well as our songs, novels, movies, and TV, while we often see examples of arguments, we see far fewer examples of not-immediately-practical joint inquiry. We want examples that show us in some detail how to proceed in ways that avoid seeming uncertain, wrong, in conflict, dominating, or overly serious. What moves can be make re what topics so as make progress while showing sufficient mutual respect and avoiding violating common taboos?
A first start might be to just collect a list of scenes from novels, TV shows and movies depicting respectable non-practical inquiry. For each one, maybe quickly analyze what moves were made, why they helped, and how they avoided possible problems. Maybe start clubs where people use these as models to try their own joint inquiry convos?
Added 12Apr: Tyler Cowen responded to this post here.
I have four siblings and my father was a plasma physicist. Most of our conversation is in this inquiry mode. We enjoy it, but most others don’t. My long-term girlfriend called it “pontificating” which is a little derogatory, but not that much off the mark.
> We want examples that show us in some detail how to proceed in ways that avoid seeming uncertain, wrong, in conflict, dominating, or overly serious.
If you want to inquire together with someone, you cannot also have as a goal "avoid seeming uncertain, wrong, or in conflict." Because to avoid seeming those things is to refuse to honestly share your true beliefs on the topic with the other person. Doubt is honest; admitting error is a sign of emotional strength and fairness that's worthy of praise; conflict is inevitable in an honest exchange of views unless the two people already think exactly alike.
It is essential, though, to avoid trying to dominate the other person. In a good discussion, everyone involved needs to be Kind and Honest.
Kind, in the sense of not trying to dominate or attack the other person and being willing to hear them out and being interested in teaching them what you know.
Honest, in the sense of not lying, admitting error and uncertainty, being willing to answer topical questions (or admitting if you don't know the answer).