Rather than trying to pick winners and losers among ideas, Critical Fallibilism says we should find win/win solutions which address all the good points raised by all the conflicting ideas.
I’ve seen people irl do win/win solutions.It’s like an untapped skill.
I think win/win solutions aren’t done that much these days
Win/Win solutions would be good if it was done by default in society. We would be able to figure out problems more. We wouldn’t be so lost and regretful.
Win/Win solutions would be good for humanity to do cuz they can find a way to be happy. Like they wouldn’t have to do the ideal thing or the thing they think they have to do. They would be able to do things for the side of them that wanted something too. The side of them that has important wants and needs too.
All the good points raised by all the conflicting ideas? That can be a lot of good points sometimes no?
I’ve been wanting to look at methods for conflicting thoughts for a while cuz Im sick of living in default ways that keep the cycle going. I want it to be better. I do like the default ways cuz they’re much quicker tho
To accomplish this, we can mentally model each conflicting idea as a person, imagine them discussing, and find a solution that satisfies each person.
I’ve been practicing mentally modeling each conflicting idea of my own as a person. It’s been going ok I think like the ideas are more organized to deal with. Also imagining them discussing was good too. It’s like talking to a real person who has something important to say.
Finding a solution that satisfies each person is the harder part I think. I try to intuitively find ways to satisfy each person like find a common preference. I don’t know if you said to find common preferences or if was just the “find a solution that satisfies each person.”
To accomplish this, we can mentally model each conflicting idea as a person, imagine them discussing, and find a solution that satisfies each person.
We can do this in everyday scenarios like: waking up before school and choosing what to eat. You want to eat the tasty pancakes from a local diner. You have no money tho. One person wants to eat the tasty pancakes from the local diner and the other person says you can’t with no money.
I want to try some examples of the mental model:
-
What to have for dinner: Idea X says they want to have soup for dinner. Idea Y says that want to have a Steak for dinner.
-
You have a $100 to buy a game: X says they want to buy the new game that just came out, cuz they want to try something that’s trending. Y says they want to play an oldie that they haven’t tried. Idea Z says to save your money and wait for something newer to come out
-
You lost your watch coming back from grocery shopping: X says to check your house and your driveway. Y says to check inside the car. Z says to drive back to the store and retrace your footsteps.
-
Wanting to post on CF: X says I want to reply in long paragraphs. Y says I want to do real quick responses there’s not a lot of time. Z says I should split up my time up well between activities.
-
I want to post on CF pt2: X says I don’t want to say anything dumb so I should wait before I press the reply button. Y says I shouldn’t be so hard on myself and focus on posting something natural. Z says don’t worry so much about posting badly and focus more on the structure of the convo.
-
Posting on CF pt3: X says look for mistakes before posting the reply button. Y says what kinds of mistakes do I look for? Z says how much is enough proofreading?
There’s a lot of overlap between rationally approaching conflicting ideas within your own mind and rationally approaching disagreements with other people.
Short response:
Dealing with ideas rationally in your own head is a lot like dealing with ideas with other people.
Longer response:
There’s conflicting ideas in your head and disagreements with others. There’s lots in common when dealing with those. You can treat your ideas like a person like you treat others sharing ideas as people.
Even longer response:
There’s dealing with conflicting ideas rationally and dealing with disagreements with other people rationally. I don’t know what overlap means but I think it means there’s a lot that’s the same between the two. Like they’re two different processes but they have so much in common that they’re differences aren’t that relevant.
How to resolve conflicts between ideas is basically the same issue as how to do problem solving.
I think you can substitute resolving conflicting ideas for how to do problem solving sometimes and it can be a good way to see the problem a different way. Like a part of you brings up an actual issue and you can find a common preference between that part of you and solving the problem.
Like, in Terraria, it was so difficult to walk across the map to reach the snow biome. There were just so many mobs on the ground that would mess you up. One part of me wanted to not walk across map cuz I would run into zombies and they would kill me. I thought what if I can fly via a gravity potion that way I don’t have to walk across and I can get to the other side of the map. That worked.
Have you tried evaporating clouds by Eliyahu Goldratt? (They’re from his book It’s Not Luck. Also Elliot has some examples here: Evaporating Clouds Trees.)
I used them a little in the past and remember finding them to be clarifying and helpful for brainstorming win-win solutions that I didn’t feel conflicted about (or at least felt a lot less conflicted about).
I think a lot of the power of evaporating clouds is just in articulating the conflict and making it explicit. Then it’s easier to think about.
Also the step of finding a shared goal is another part of what makes evaporating clouds super helpful I think.
PS After writing this I did a search and found that you have mentioned evaporating clouds before here.
Yeah, a little bit. I saw you found my posts on that in your edit
I wanted to try them while reading this post and thought that because you can have more than two conflicting ideas that maybe it wouldn’t be a good idea to use it. I noticed tho that when I do try to organize conflicting ideas that I use two most of the time. Revisiting the Evaporating Clouds sounds like a good idea.
That’s cool that you can brainstorm win-win solutions you didn’t feel conflicted about. When I try to use a method like that I don’t think about much if it worked. Usually I notice that something clicked to solve my problem and I move on. Maybe being more aware of the success would be good.
Similarly to brainstorming the win-win solutions, I like using brainstorming for these kinds of methods. Like, when I try to personify the conflicting ideas I might change a detail by brainstorming it. It lets me know sometimes that maybe there was a different hang-up than I originally thought.
Similarly to the evaporating clouds making things easier to think about, I sometimes argue ideas back and forth and argue against a word or phrase by brainstorming and that makes things easier to think about too sometimes.
That’s cool that it does make the conflict easier to think about. Sometimes I think by using the method it will show me the answer like adding two plus two, but I also think that it’s not that straightforward sometimes.
That step of finding the shared goal is what I’m most interested in I think. The idea that two conflicting ideas share a goal is not intuitive to me and that’s something that would be cool to learn.