I recently Tweeted:
I don’t want to crush, humiliate, frighten, silence, irritate, defeat, discredit, demoralize, delegitimize, depress, frustrate, or ostracize my intellectual opponents. I want to convert them and be friends.
— Bryan Caplan (@bryan_caplan) November 11, 2018
The first sentence won wide acclaim, but the second sentence provoked much criticism. Why do I want to “convert” my intellectual opponents rather than learn from them?
I have several partial answers:
1. Of course I want to learn from them. But eventually, I finish learning. As a rule, we still disagree. Once we reach that stage, we can drop the subject – or I can try to convert them to my view. Yes, I could reconsider the possibility that they’re right and I’m wrong. Eventually, however, I finish reconsidering – and we still disagree.
2. Doesn’t this reveal enormous arrogance on my part? Well, you could say that anyone who publicly defends a controversial view is enormously arrogant. The subtext, after all, is “I’m right and almost everyone else is wrong.” On the other hand, if you don’t consider your judgment on the topics where you publicly speak to be exceptionally good, why are you speaking? Most people who seek converts don’t deserve them. But if you do deserve them, why wouldn’t you seek them?
3. I don’t start calling someone an “intellectual opponent” until after I’ve heard what they have to say and learned whatever I can from them. Indeed, a good working definition of an intellectual opponent is, “Someone who disagrees with you who has very little to teach you.” If that’s where you find yourself, you again face two paths: agree to disagree… or try to convert them.
Final point: You don’t have to imagine you’re infallible to responsibly seek converts. You just need to think that your knowledge and judgment are better than those of your audience for the topics under discussion.
READER COMMENTS
Daniel Klein
Nov 15 2018 at 2:37pm
Yes, no shame in seeking converts.
But doesn’t conversion imply a demoralization etc. of certain parts of the convertee?
Intellectual improvement is a crushing of unworthy sentiments, beliefs, etc.–one might even say a killing.
Philo
Nov 15 2018 at 3:35pm
A minor emendation: “[A]n intellectual opponent is . . . ‘Someone who disagrees with you who has very little to teach you’” *about the subject of disagreement*: he may, and generally does, know a lot of other, unrelated information that you do not know.
Alan Goldhammer
Nov 15 2018 at 3:47pm
I think you overlook a critical fact; your view might be the incorrect one and it is you who need to be converted.
“You just need to think that your knowledge and judgment are better than those of your audience for the topics under discussion…” displays an excessive amount of hubris much the same way as Goethe’s Faust.
Mark Z
Nov 16 2018 at 12:28am
On the contrary, he doesn’t overlook it at all. Everyone approaches a debate believing that his position is the correct one; no one (well, no one who is sane) simultaneously holds an opinion while believing it is false. Determining the correct opinion is done precisely by two people of differing opinions, each convinced of his own opinions correctness, attempting to convert the other. I don’t think Bryan is saying, “I want to convert others to my position regardless of its accuracy.”
I don’t want to put words in his mouth (or rather his keyboard), but I would infer what he’s saying to be something like: I seek to convert people to the position I believe is correct; if you disagree, you seek to convert people to the position you believe is correct (rather than humiliating, degrading them, etc.), and engaging with each other and attempting to convert each other is how we best determine which of our opinions is the better one.
Andre
Nov 16 2018 at 6:45am
“I think you overlook a critical fact; your view might be the incorrect one”
He explicitly covered that in point #1.
Mark Bahner
Nov 15 2018 at 5:12pm
Because at least you start out thinking you’re right! IMNVHO, it would be bizarre not to want to convince your intellectual opponents.
Benjamin Cole
Nov 15 2018 at 7:27pm
Converts…But to what? I regret to say that what is offered in Econlog is some sort of Swiss-cheese libertarianism. Rent-control is clearly labeled as a bad. But property zoning…well, not so much.
Where are the clarion calls for legalized polygamy? An end to workplace sexual harassment and racial discrimination laws?
If we are to have a mercenary military, why not an American Foreign Legion composed of very cheap soldiers from the Third World?
Why not decriminalize pushcart vending for every type of good or service, including recreational drugs or sex?
Why not privatize the VA communist healthcare system or even better, eliminate it?
I assure you in the coming seasons there will be Econlog posts on the glories of open borders and the evils of the minimum wage, often in the form of sermons from the very pinnacles of moral righteousness.
But, curiously, very few sermons on the evils of the Communist Party of China.
America’s libertarians have proved that discretion is the better part of valor.
David Henderson
Nov 16 2018 at 1:34pm
Benjamin,
All good ideas. Sounds as if you’re a libertarian.
If you don’t like our choice of topics, I do have a suggestion: start your own blog. Make your arguments compelling enough on your blog and I will start linking to them, thus raising your traffic.
One other thing I would suggest is that you read our blog more carefully. I have dealt with some of the issues you want dealt with. I don’t have the time (no, that’s not true–I’m unwilling to take the time) to do your research for you. But put in some of the key words in an EconLog search and see what pops up.
Benjamin Cole
Nov 16 2018 at 8:36pm
David Henderson: yes, I think the choice of topics on Econlog is a type of Swiss-cheese libertarianism. My comments reflect my perception.
My comments don’t hurt anybody, and they may broaden the range of topics Econlog devotes space to. Probably not, but maybe.
If I started a bona fide libertarian blog, I doubt anyone would read it.
And why have a comments section, if one doesn’t want to embrace dissent and critique?
Tom Davies
Nov 15 2018 at 10:48pm
Is you changing your mind and being converted also a desirable outcome?
Mark Z
Nov 16 2018 at 12:21am
I think people misunderstand your meaning or what they imagine to be its implications. By saying you seek converts, you’re saying you’ve ‘figured it all out,’ you’re right about everything. They think, to use Hegelian terms, that a debate works from a thesis and an antithesis toward a synthesis; each person changes their position by learning from the other person. They may acknowledge that the exchange is not always equal. However, they may say, it takes considerable hubris to assert that one is in a position to utterly convert, rather than meet somewhere in between.
However, this critique, imo, mistakes epistemological absurdity for humility. Of course most of us are well aware that we are almost certainly wrong about some things. Knowing that is humility. However, we don’t know what, precisely, we’re wrong about; obviously, if I knew one of my opinions were wrong, I would cease to hold the opinion, so on any particular question, it is self-evident that I believe I’m right and others wrong, and the easiest way I can learn if I am wrong about that question is by putting my opinion up against the alternatives, i.e., attempting to persuade my opponent of my position.
Duncan Priebe
Nov 16 2018 at 1:12am
The idea that those who disagree with us are minds to be swayed rather than enemies to be crushed is a vital aspect of any free and prosperous society. We should recognize that our true enemy isn’t evil people, but evil ideas, and that every enemy is a potential ally.
Also, I don’t think that seeking to convert someone implies that there is nothing more for us to learn, only that you have enough confidence in what little we do know and enough love for our fellow man that we would like him to adopt our superior ideas.
The fact that we even engage in such conversation betrays the assumption that we think that our views are worth adopting and that we would like to see other people join the team. After all, if anyone really thought that the adoption of their ideas didn’t provide any benefit, what would be the purpose of sharing them?
Thomas Leahey
Nov 16 2018 at 10:44am
Why use the word “convert?” Why not “persuade,” or “convince?”
To my mind, conversion implies at least to some extent, a non- (or supra- ) rational change of mind. Protestants speak of “conversion experiences” in which a person intuitively grasps some Truth and is profoundly and emotionally changed in a way that passes rational thought. And it’s not just a Christian idea: in his Metaphor of the Cave in the Republic, Plato implies that the man released from the cave of culture and ignorance rises to the Empyrean to just see the Forms in all their glory, and becomes converted to Platonic Truth. In his Symposium, the lesson is repeated in the simile of the Ladder of Love, where love of Beauty, not reason, leads to love of Truth. See also the Buddhist emphasis on intuition.
Richard Wallace
Nov 16 2018 at 11:21am
I think “let us agree to disagree” is one of the great cop-outs. The give and take of the marketplace of ideas involves both parties making their best effort to convert the other, and doing so makes each side more self-critical and improves the precision of the argument. “Let us agree to disagree” is simply and admission that one is too lazy or too incapable of rational thought to trouble oneself with the effort of making an argument.
john hare
Nov 17 2018 at 5:09am
I disagree with that. Sometimes one realizes that it is a waste of time trying to get through to some people. If someone has a firmly held belief that will not be budged by any level of rational discussion, it might be better to use your time in more productive ways. Some people firmly hold certain views on religion that I find incomprehensible, but I have to ask if it is worth my time to endlessly debate them knowing that it is futile. My time is worth more than that.
Comments are closed.