Swap Paradigms: Because If The Only Way To Maintain Your Worldview Is To Never Seriously Consider A Different One...

When you care about politics you spend a lot of time arguing with people. Once in a while you'd like to convince them that you're right (unless you just enjoy arguing) but this never seems to happen.

Why?

The biggest reason is confirmation bias; we only seek evidence that supports our current beliefs instead of evidence that counters these beliefs. So, in 2003 you may have witnessed "arguments" that went something like this:

Dave: "Now that Saddam has allowed the inspectors in and we've seen all of his palaces, old weapons factories, and weapons caches, it's looking as if Saddam doesn't have WMDs."
Barry: "But Saddam is blocking the exit of some of the families of his WMD scientists. Saddam must have WMDs."

Dave: "Now that we've been in Iraq for several months and have found absolutely no WMDs, I think it's time to admit that this WMD thing was a mistake."
Barry: "We've only been looking for six months and we found some shell that had sarin at some point! If you don't support the war, then you don't support the troops."

In the first, Barry responds normally; if your opponent makes a good point, rush past it, make a weak counter-assertion and restate your point. FOX news is all he watches, he has a poster of George Bush over his bed, and Bill Kristol is his favorite intellectual, so he's not hearing much counter-evidence and he's not interested in it when it's offered. In the second, Barry is probably in pain because FOX news has promised and not delivered to him proof of WMDs many, many times. But he is still convinced that Saddam had them, so he implies that Dave is a traitor. Barry has one goal: to maintain the mindset Bush put him in prior to the war.

So, how do we sidestep this confirmation bias? With a paradigm swap.

A paradigm swap can be something as simple as a trade of Wikipedia entries. I'm a born-again libertarian (ex-socialist) and I think that most government regulations are superfluous, impoverishing, or were enacted only to enrich allies of legislators. So, I would trade this entry for whatever entry a progressive thought made the best pro-regulation case. Then, we would read our respective entries (which, at first, would probably look like heresy or gibberish) and actively seek ways to integrate our opponent's model into our lives. We'd agree that the next time we talked, instead of arguing for our own respective views, we'd discuss the strengths of the opposing views. We'd mention instances where the opposing views best described something. We'd try to make better cases for our opponents' views than they did. This seems way more interesting and useful than the usual jousting.

I want to test paradigm swaps because I've found that liberals don't just believe that my politics are wrong, but have never heard the best evidence or have badly misunderstood it. They often can't describe the push and pull of greed and prudence associated with "profit and loss." They're convinced that free-market capitalism is brutal but have never considered how much governments coerce people in comparison to how much corporations do. I'm willing to assimilate much Zinn or Krugman if it will convince some smart progressive to consider this and how it could apply to single-payer health care.

How far could a paradigm swap go?

It could go as far as:

Paul Krugman (or some other liberal intellectual) arguing for purely free-market health care while Bob Higgs (or some other extreme libertarian) argues the side of single-payer health care.

You getting your Republican uncle to read Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky in exchange for you reading Skousen's Economic Logic.

You reading every post of John Stossel's for a week while your libertarian friend reads every post of Matthew Yglesias'.

But it probably makes more sense to swap short entries or mental models.

This sounds kind of interesting, but what are the problems?

How about:

You (a liberal) do a PS with some libertarian and you really try to understand his viewpoint, but when you speak again, you notice that he can't fairly describe yours. Clearly, he didn't take it as seriously as you did.

So, he's a jackass and you don't talk about politics with him going forward. Congratulations, you have the moral high ground!

Reading stuff you disagree with can be frustrating or migraine-inducing.

Sure, but you know that a reliable co-swapper is going through the same thing, will soon prove that he understands you, and may actually concede that you're right! That would be swell. Alternatively, you may permanently shift to his paradigm, which could be embiggening.

All is well.