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.
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.
I think that pretty much sums up why the “inquiry mode” is so rare: most people consider it an attempt to force your ideas on them. If there’s no immediate practical need for it, social incentives will almost always favor the people who stop you in your tracks, defending their close-mindedness by painting you as a close-minded wannabe dictator.
> 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).
It's hard enough to inquire into a difficult subject when the person you're talking to *isn't* lying to you, treating it as an affront to their ego that you disagreed with them and trying to hurt you in retaliation, exaggerating their certainty in their claim, claiming victory over you because you acknowledged doubt in your own, or refusing to hear you. These are intolerable obstacles to mutual inquiry.
People normally deal with these common behavior patterns by just avoiding sincere mutual inquiry. The more typical norm of behavior outside academia is authoritarian; one person gets to be the authority and the other person must listen and not question much, or the "authority" is going to get mad. You can't change that without changing the norms of how acceptable it is to be dishonest and mean. That's how academics are able to discuss difficult topics among themselves - the behavioral norms are different.
I am not sure that 'novels, TV shows, and movies' are going to help us much. Fiction wants to 'show but not tell' but joint inquiries generally are all about the telling. The part that we want to learn from is mostly the part that is edited out when you tighten up your manuscript.
We may do better in reading letter collections of correspondence between two or more people.
I also wonder if the British television show Quite Interesting (QI) has lessons here? I don't know how well known the long-running series is outside of the UK, but it's all available on-line now.
I think the closest conversations to an inquiry-type conversation that I've partaken in (outside of the classroom/workplace) were absurd hypotheticals to make conversation over a meal with friends. For example, "What if ____" or "Would you rather ____ or ____", where the ensuing conversation is us trying to come up with the best answer to the hypothetical, piggybacking off one another's responses, sometimes unanimously agreeing on the "correct" answer.
I'm not sure how closely this maps to what you're looking for, but it's the first thing that came to mind.
I suspect that the main social impediment to inquiring more is that differences in inquisitive competence are much larger than inquisitive people typically realize (because of the norm against revealing them by engaging in too much open inquisition.)
I was thinking about this with respect to games - why aren't more games played collaboratively? For example - instead of trying to beat each other in chess, why not sit down together and just try to figure out together what the next best move is for each player? Why did a culture of co-operative play never eventuate around this game?
But there are games which seem to be played co-operatively. Something like minecraft for instance - people seem to work together there far more. It could be played competitively, but that doesn't seem to be the most common way.
Maybe it's to do with the structure of the games themselves that determine whether people want to play it competively or co-operatively. Maybe chess is more competitive than Minecraft because the rules force destruction of the other player, whereas in Minecraft, there is a semantic possibility of building together - so people do.
So too with conversational contexts? Something structural? Maybe the possibility of being "right" and "wrong", just naturally militates a competitive aspect. Exploring a position necessitates the uttering of it, the uttering of it instinctually leads to the identification of you with that position, that identification leads to an instinctual need to defend it.
I'm kind of at a loss to understand this - DON'T we have important, inquiry-based conversations like this at work? Isn't work interaction and conversation much more *this* than anywhere else?
Whether you're in a lab working on a research problem under a PI, or in finance working on a new model, or in management services working on understanding some particular business vertical - most of the conversations you have are with the other smart people around you, explicitly inquiry-focused, trying to understand better and solve problems better.
So if that's true, we already do this, ~8 hours a day?
Ah, thanks, yes I was misunderstanding the "limited to personal life" scope you were proposing.
But in that case, aren't we all astonishingly self sorted into very strong bubbles? Scott Alexander has written about that a number of times. Like almost half the country are young earth creationists - but none of us ever see a single one.
We all have "types" in our friends and mates and so on, and they're typically very strongly clustered around certain attributes and ways of approaching the world.
I'd suggest that this very strong sorting does most of the work - if we're all in hyper-sorted bubbles, we already basically agree on the "big" questions. What schools to try to go to yourself or aim for in your kids, what degrees are worthwhile, what careers are worth considering, which short list of cities you're willing to live. Most of your friends are about as educated as you, have made the same STEM / non-STEM degree choice, have gone to similar "tiers" of universities and are in similar "tiers" of workplaces, they make about the same income, etc.
None of the "big" questions are really up for debate, because they're all 70-99% solved by the self-sorting we've done already, and anything else is just quibbling at the margins.
this tracks because I think reading rationalist writers and listening to quality podcast discussions have improved my ability to participate in inquiry
I think this has been trending for some time and the advent of cellphones and then social media accelerated the shift. AI will probably juice the process even more. (E.g., putting the question to 3 LLMs!) The perception is that life has to move at an ever increasing pace just to keep up, but few people question that perception or its origins. And the dissolution of third places is near complete, a fate sealed by the pandemic inspired lockdowns. In short, most people have neither the time or the place for extended face-to-face deep inquiries. More could be said about the need to establish trust before such conversations are possible. My fear is that most people have also lost the skill for such dialectics.
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.
I think that pretty much sums up why the “inquiry mode” is so rare: most people consider it an attempt to force your ideas on them. If there’s no immediate practical need for it, social incentives will almost always favor the people who stop you in your tracks, defending their close-mindedness by painting you as a close-minded wannabe dictator.
> 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).
Generally humans are not totally honest, even when they should be.
I'd like to learn with them anyway, the best we can.
It's hard enough to inquire into a difficult subject when the person you're talking to *isn't* lying to you, treating it as an affront to their ego that you disagreed with them and trying to hurt you in retaliation, exaggerating their certainty in their claim, claiming victory over you because you acknowledged doubt in your own, or refusing to hear you. These are intolerable obstacles to mutual inquiry.
People normally deal with these common behavior patterns by just avoiding sincere mutual inquiry. The more typical norm of behavior outside academia is authoritarian; one person gets to be the authority and the other person must listen and not question much, or the "authority" is going to get mad. You can't change that without changing the norms of how acceptable it is to be dishonest and mean. That's how academics are able to discuss difficult topics among themselves - the behavioral norms are different.
I am not sure that 'novels, TV shows, and movies' are going to help us much. Fiction wants to 'show but not tell' but joint inquiries generally are all about the telling. The part that we want to learn from is mostly the part that is edited out when you tighten up your manuscript.
We may do better in reading letter collections of correspondence between two or more people.
I also wonder if the British television show Quite Interesting (QI) has lessons here? I don't know how well known the long-running series is outside of the UK, but it's all available on-line now.
I think the closest conversations to an inquiry-type conversation that I've partaken in (outside of the classroom/workplace) were absurd hypotheticals to make conversation over a meal with friends. For example, "What if ____" or "Would you rather ____ or ____", where the ensuing conversation is us trying to come up with the best answer to the hypothetical, piggybacking off one another's responses, sometimes unanimously agreeing on the "correct" answer.
I'm not sure how closely this maps to what you're looking for, but it's the first thing that came to mind.
Yes, in those cases your initial question offers enough structure to let participants be effective in figuring something out together.
I started Uni as a mature student & since then I find it hard NOT to have this kind of conversation with everyone around me!
My friend group/ family are probably on the fence as to whether it's good or not!
I want to question everything and I can't go back now to anything less.
I suspect that the main social impediment to inquiring more is that differences in inquisitive competence are much larger than inquisitive people typically realize (because of the norm against revealing them by engaging in too much open inquisition.)
When Harry Met Sally
I was thinking about this with respect to games - why aren't more games played collaboratively? For example - instead of trying to beat each other in chess, why not sit down together and just try to figure out together what the next best move is for each player? Why did a culture of co-operative play never eventuate around this game?
But there are games which seem to be played co-operatively. Something like minecraft for instance - people seem to work together there far more. It could be played competitively, but that doesn't seem to be the most common way.
Maybe it's to do with the structure of the games themselves that determine whether people want to play it competively or co-operatively. Maybe chess is more competitive than Minecraft because the rules force destruction of the other player, whereas in Minecraft, there is a semantic possibility of building together - so people do.
So too with conversational contexts? Something structural? Maybe the possibility of being "right" and "wrong", just naturally militates a competitive aspect. Exploring a position necessitates the uttering of it, the uttering of it instinctually leads to the identification of you with that position, that identification leads to an instinctual need to defend it.
Yes, our desire to compete seems an obstacle to inquiring together.
I'm kind of at a loss to understand this - DON'T we have important, inquiry-based conversations like this at work? Isn't work interaction and conversation much more *this* than anywhere else?
Whether you're in a lab working on a research problem under a PI, or in finance working on a new model, or in management services working on understanding some particular business vertical - most of the conversations you have are with the other smart people around you, explicitly inquiry-focused, trying to understand better and solve problems better.
So if that's true, we already do this, ~8 hours a day?
I feel like I must have missed something.
Yes, we do inquire together at work, on the topics of our work. The question is why we don't do this outside of work, on the big questions.
Ah, thanks, yes I was misunderstanding the "limited to personal life" scope you were proposing.
But in that case, aren't we all astonishingly self sorted into very strong bubbles? Scott Alexander has written about that a number of times. Like almost half the country are young earth creationists - but none of us ever see a single one.
We all have "types" in our friends and mates and so on, and they're typically very strongly clustered around certain attributes and ways of approaching the world.
I'd suggest that this very strong sorting does most of the work - if we're all in hyper-sorted bubbles, we already basically agree on the "big" questions. What schools to try to go to yourself or aim for in your kids, what degrees are worthwhile, what careers are worth considering, which short list of cities you're willing to live. Most of your friends are about as educated as you, have made the same STEM / non-STEM degree choice, have gone to similar "tiers" of universities and are in similar "tiers" of workplaces, they make about the same income, etc.
None of the "big" questions are really up for debate, because they're all 70-99% solved by the self-sorting we've done already, and anything else is just quibbling at the margins.
this tracks because I think reading rationalist writers and listening to quality podcast discussions have improved my ability to participate in inquiry
I think this has been trending for some time and the advent of cellphones and then social media accelerated the shift. AI will probably juice the process even more. (E.g., putting the question to 3 LLMs!) The perception is that life has to move at an ever increasing pace just to keep up, but few people question that perception or its origins. And the dissolution of third places is near complete, a fate sealed by the pandemic inspired lockdowns. In short, most people have neither the time or the place for extended face-to-face deep inquiries. More could be said about the need to establish trust before such conversations are possible. My fear is that most people have also lost the skill for such dialectics.
My Dinner with Andre
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Ishmael
The Courage to be Disliked
Are only partial matches. Too many of these types of pieces portray one side as already having the answer.
My Dinner with Andre is the only one of those that might count.
The 1990 movie "Mindwalk" might have a place on this list, too.
That's mostly a sermon, not a joint inquiry.
Salon-style conversations are maybe a step in this direction
Sure this is the post you meant to reply to?
My apologies for the mistake ! 😅