How Do I Find the Best Information Regarding Counter Arguments?

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - All right, Jesse, let's do some calls.

00:00:09.120 | Who do we have on the old call docket today?

00:00:12.580 | - Okay, our first call is from Mark.

00:00:15.000 | He's like you, he's a professor in DC,

00:00:17.320 | and he has a question about finding the opposing views

00:00:22.140 | when you're dealing with certain topics.

00:00:24.540 | - Hi, Kel, my name is Mark,

00:00:28.340 | and I'm also a professor at an R1 university in the DC area.

00:00:32.320 | My question for you is the following.

00:00:33.940 | Often on your show, you'll discuss this idea

00:00:36.140 | of building up the Socratic dialectic, as you call it,

00:00:38.840 | or finding the best thinkers or writers or speakers

00:00:43.200 | from opposing viewpoints on a given topic.

00:00:46.140 | My question is the following.

00:00:47.560 | If you want to explore a given topic,

00:00:49.880 | but perhaps you're not as familiar with the topic

00:00:52.540 | enough to kind of know who the key thinkers

00:00:54.920 | are on that topic,

00:00:56.280 | how would you go about the specific mechanics

00:00:58.640 | of identifying who the best speakers were

00:01:01.720 | for that specific topic?

00:01:03.600 | For example, let's say I wanted to understand

00:01:06.040 | the causes of the Baltic War.

00:01:07.600 | It's not a topic I'm typically familiar with.

00:01:10.840 | How would I go about finding the two or three

00:01:13.840 | best thinkers or speakers on that,

00:01:15.560 | given that I have no knowledge of that area?

00:01:18.960 | So this is sort of the curse of knowledge situation,

00:01:21.300 | where if I know who the best thinkers are,

00:01:23.780 | I'm probably already knowledgeable enough

00:01:25.980 | about the field to understand what the key points are.

00:01:30.800 | But if I'm just entering something for the first time,

00:01:33.080 | it's actually quite difficult to do what you're describing.

00:01:37.600 | Thank you for your time.

00:01:39.480 | - It's a good question, Mark.

00:01:40.760 | Let me start by just underlining the bigger picture method

00:01:44.520 | that Mark was talking about here.

00:01:47.200 | So it's one of the big points I've been making on this show

00:01:49.720 | since the beginning,

00:01:51.280 | is when it comes to having an interesting,

00:01:54.360 | thriving, resilient, but also authentic

00:01:56.720 | and value-producing intellectual life,

00:02:00.060 | you have to be very worried about

00:02:02.220 | or wary of intellectual groupism.

00:02:05.300 | And this is where you say,

00:02:06.740 | I just want to be told

00:02:09.300 | what I'm supposed to think about something,

00:02:12.820 | who the good guys are and who the bad guys are.

00:02:15.580 | Your mind knows that you are being subservient

00:02:19.540 | when you do that, and it's not happy with yourself.

00:02:22.100 | It's not a approach to intellectual life

00:02:25.040 | that is sustainable.

00:02:26.040 | It makes you feel bad about yourself.

00:02:27.800 | And it brings you into weird tribal places.

00:02:30.160 | It's also, by the way,

00:02:31.080 | the dominant mode of intellectual discourse on social media.

00:02:34.200 | So beware if you are wandering through the waters of Twitter,

00:02:39.160 | you're wandering through the waters of,

00:02:41.520 | I don't know what people use these days, Instagram.

00:02:43.480 | So my alternative, and by my,

00:02:46.000 | I mean this goes back to the very early days

00:02:48.580 | of systematic thinking about thinking,

00:02:50.520 | is the Socratic dialectic method.

00:02:52.460 | If you want to understand something better,

00:02:54.700 | listen to really good thinkers on multiple sides of it.

00:02:56.940 | In that collision, you see what resonates,

00:02:59.620 | you get more insight,

00:03:00.480 | you get a more nuanced rooted understanding of that topic.

00:03:03.220 | One that you can actually base real action on

00:03:05.300 | and feel good about it.

00:03:07.220 | If by contrast, you just do intellectual groupism,

00:03:10.540 | your mind often is not going to really trust your stance

00:03:13.300 | because you know you're just following a crowd.

00:03:15.000 | So it's not a good foundation for action.

00:03:17.340 | You don't feel confident taking action.

00:03:20.140 | You don't feel confident taking real action based off it.

00:03:22.060 | So then you end up just doing very little about a cause,

00:03:25.140 | maybe like tweeting about it or yelling at people,

00:03:27.820 | or like getting mad at your cousin or something like this.

00:03:30.400 | And nothing really happened.

00:03:31.680 | So there's this irony of intellectual groupism

00:03:34.160 | is that often people think this is the key

00:03:37.600 | to changing the world.

00:03:38.560 | If we could just get people to just be on our side

00:03:41.080 | and don't question it and attack the other side,

00:03:42.940 | then we'll change this issue.

00:03:44.060 | But actually what you do is you defang people's

00:03:46.440 | actual activist impulses and very little action is taken

00:03:49.200 | because they don't trust the intellectual foundation

00:03:51.840 | of what they believe.

00:03:52.680 | They just vaguely think you're on their team

00:03:54.720 | and don't want to get yelled at.

00:03:56.040 | So encounter real argument, real argument on both sides.

00:04:00.780 | You will not be tricked.

00:04:02.080 | Your deep moral intuitions will not be tricked

00:04:05.100 | because you read a particularly clever National Review

00:04:09.140 | or Mother Jones article.

00:04:10.400 | It's not going to trick you.

00:04:11.560 | It's going to make your beliefs stronger and more nuanced.

00:04:13.680 | It's actually going to make you a better advocate

00:04:15.320 | for what you believe in.

00:04:17.240 | So how do you find these things?

00:04:18.520 | Well, for really specific issues like the Baltic War,

00:04:22.000 | you know, something that's kind of niche,

00:04:24.700 | you don't have to find from scratch the best thinker.

00:04:27.080 | You just have to find someone who knows about it

00:04:28.960 | and ask them who the best thinker is.

00:04:30.600 | That's almost always the right way to do it.

00:04:32.840 | Like, oh, here's a professor who wrote an article

00:04:35.320 | about the Baltic War.

00:04:36.640 | That's why I'm thinking about it.

00:04:37.720 | I read this article.

00:04:38.800 | Let me talk to this person.

00:04:40.280 | Like, hey, what are like the definitive books on this?

00:04:43.400 | Who are the definitive thinkers on it?

00:04:44.660 | What are the different sides of this?

00:04:45.840 | You can do that for almost any topic.

00:04:49.280 | Find someone who knows about the topic

00:04:52.600 | and then ask them who they think the best thinkers are.

00:04:56.120 | Now, if there's already a clear tribal divide on the topic,

00:04:59.400 | just find a reasonable person who

00:05:01.320 | seems to be roughly speaking on one side.

00:05:03.640 | Find a reasonable person who, roughly speaking,

00:05:05.520 | seems to be on the other side.

00:05:06.920 | And say, what are the best articles

00:05:09.080 | or books about this topic?

00:05:11.440 | Then you're going to get those two opposing viewpoints.

00:05:13.820 | You read them both.

00:05:14.560 | Let them collide.

00:05:15.560 | You are going to have the more nuanced understanding.

00:05:18.840 | All right.

00:05:19.340 | So Mark, I appreciate the question

00:05:20.760 | because it gives me a chance to go back

00:05:23.000 | to that general thinking.

00:05:24.920 | There's actually a name I heard for that approach

00:05:28.840 | to intellectual life, especially culturally relevant

00:05:31.120 | intellectual life.

00:05:32.400 | It was a name that was coined by a former doctor who is now

00:05:37.320 | a full-time podcaster YouTuber who

00:05:41.800 | talks about medical issues.

00:05:43.960 | And he goes by-- and this name is not

00:05:46.160 | going to make you feel better about what I'm about to tell

00:05:49.920 | you here-- but he goes by the name ZDogg with two Gs, MD.

00:05:54.560 | That's how you can find him on YouTube, ZDoggMD.

00:05:59.240 | I don't know what his actual real name is.

00:06:02.400 | Really funny guy, really smart guy, really funny broadcaster.

00:06:05.000 | But he coined this term alt-middle.

00:06:09.760 | And I kind of like this terminology.

00:06:11.600 | So alt-middle is basically an approach

00:06:13.760 | where instead of partaking in intellectual groupism, where

00:06:18.920 | you say, where's my tribe?

00:06:20.840 | What do we believe?

00:06:21.720 | Send me the memo.

00:06:22.720 | Great.

00:06:23.200 | Who can I tweet at?

00:06:24.960 | You approach topics one by one and say,

00:06:27.200 | let me get into this if it's interesting or relevant to me

00:06:29.280 | and I have the time.

00:06:30.320 | Let me look at people on both sides of it

00:06:33.200 | and come up with my own take on it.

00:06:35.480 | And then-- and this is critical--

00:06:36.920 | be willing to change that take if I get better information

00:06:39.520 | down the line.

00:06:40.280 | That hold that position with some empathy

00:06:43.240 | and with some contingency.

00:06:45.120 | I might not quite be right here.

00:06:46.880 | This is a complicated topic.

00:06:48.680 | And so I'm going to hold that with some contingency.

00:06:50.960 | And I'm going to be relatively empathetic to people

00:06:53.000 | on other sides.

00:06:53.640 | Other people aren't evil.

00:06:55.000 | And that is what he calls the alt-middle approach.

00:06:57.440 | It really emerged because he's a doctor.

00:07:00.320 | He does a lot of sort of COVID-centrist type

00:07:03.400 | communication.

00:07:03.920 | He's sort of a COVID-centrist, so one of these people that's

00:07:06.880 | very plugged in and mainstream on COVID

00:07:10.080 | and understands the science, but also is alarmed by both sides.

00:07:14.680 | Alarmed, for example, by really extreme anti-vaccination type

00:07:19.920 | of discussion.

00:07:20.520 | Also alarmed by really extreme, we

00:07:23.320 | need to lock down the kids and put them in underwater cages

00:07:25.720 | because there's a guy who lives six states over who was once

00:07:28.200 | immunocompromised type thinking.

00:07:29.920 | And so through COVID-centrism, he has evolved this idea.

00:07:33.560 | But I think it could apply to all of intellectual life.

00:07:35.840 | Alt-middle.

00:07:36.800 | So ZDogg, I appreciate that terminology.

00:07:38.840 | Mark, I appreciate you bringing this up.

00:07:41.040 | Find people who seem reasonable.

00:07:42.680 | Ask them who the best is.

00:07:44.080 | Read on both sides of the topic.

00:07:46.040 | Think for yourself.

00:07:47.360 | Hold ideas with some contingencies.

00:07:49.800 | Be empathetic to the other side.

00:07:51.640 | And trust your moral intuitions.

00:07:53.880 | You're not going to be tricked into believing something bad.

00:07:57.680 | Your views are going to get more nuanced.

00:08:00.320 | Your beliefs are going to get stronger.

00:08:02.120 | Your ability and motivation to actually make

00:08:04.320 | change in the world, which is what actually matters,

00:08:07.240 | is actually going to be improved when

00:08:09.600 | you encounter the very best thinkers

00:08:11.200 | on all sides of an issue.

00:08:14.920 | All right, thanks, Mark.

00:08:17.400 | Jesse, I showed you ZDogg's--

00:08:20.160 | I showed you one of his videos.

00:08:21.480 | I guess his studio looks very nice.

00:08:23.360 | I'm jealous.

00:08:24.920 | So what is it that makes it look nice?

00:08:26.520 | It's like a lighting, but--

00:08:29.960 | I don't know, it's like a big studio,

00:08:31.520 | and it's in soft focus or something.

00:08:33.880 | Yeah, it kind of looks like a really nice yoga studio.

00:08:35.680 | Yeah.

00:08:36.280 | Now, I don't know if he has a nice camera.

00:08:38.200 | We have pretty nice cameras.

00:08:39.000 | Maybe he has an even nicer camera.

00:08:40.040 | But they're good-looking videos.

00:08:41.720 | He's also a funny guy.

00:08:43.240 | I like him.

00:08:43.960 | ZDoggMD.

00:08:46.760 | That's such a-- the first name I came up with when I--

00:08:50.080 | I bet if we asked him, he's like,

00:08:51.400 | I signed up for YouTube on a whim 20 years ago.

00:08:53.640 | And it was the first name that came to mind,

00:08:55.080 | and then you're stuck with it.

00:08:57.520 | It's like when you end up with your email address is

00:08:59.760 | like nsyncfan24@aol.com.

00:09:05.800 | And you're kind of stuck with it because all your family,

00:09:08.160 | that's the one they know to use.

00:09:10.160 | I wonder if that's where ZDogg came from.

00:09:13.640 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:09:17.000 | (upbeat music)

How Do I Find the Best Information Regarding Counter Arguments?

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