Aspects of polarization and debate

Wednesday 31 May

I really enjoyed reading a (very) short article by Sabrina Keinemans and Maja Ročak about how to talk to people who are unable to reason properly (my wording, not theirs) and thereby lessen the polarization. I’m not sure how effective their approach is. Perhaps it’ll prevent people that feel ignored to take a violent path. Or perhaps it’ll make an elite person realize that there are more sides to a problem than they were able to gather from other data. (The article is behind a paywal.)

An attempt to rephrase key points:

• rich people (by which I mean people that can afford to buy solar panels for example) may be inclined to pursue ideals in an abstract sense. On the other hand, less well off people may have not only less options but may also be affected in their well-being by certain policies that the rich folk may be able to push through (instead of a debate between people with different opinions a debate between people that live in different realities).
• ideally a debate is between people that know how to debate. People who keep their calm, try to address arguments made rationally. Perhaps even change their opinion based on new facts or arguments. However, most people are not equipped to debate in that way. They don’t keep their cool, may get really emotional because they feel threatened, may use arguments that are based on gut feelings... The authors think that it’s useful to make space for these passions, even when it gets ugly.
• lack of respect for people who feel threatened but do so on the basis of poor arguments that they can’t even formulate particularly well is really destructive.
• excluding people from the debate because they lack the skills to enter the debate properly will lead to more polarization.