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Comment by the_af | Hacker News Reader

> Eg. If you take as axioms that it is always wrong to end life, and life begins at conception, abortion is wrong is a sound logical conclusion.

Do note that often in this kind of controversial topics, the axioms are not held consistently by a given side (or the actual axioms are hidden and differ from the stated ones). For example, "it's always wrong to end a life [except when bombing abortion clinics | except when it's a death row immate]". Then the ad hoc provisions start, "oh, I meant an innocent life" ("but how can a nonsentient being be called innocent in any meaningful way?"), etc, etc. The debate then becomes anything but grounded on well defined axioms.

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It's not even that they aren't held consistently. Honestly, nobody (outside of philosophy papers) lists out their axioms and derives beliefs. They have beliefs and "reverse engineer" the supporting axioms, and don't particularly care if the axioms required for one position conflict with the ones required for another.

Agreed, I don't think people really debate emotionally charged issues from first principles. I think it's an error to think of this as a matter of logical axioms. That's not how people (usually) debate.

Its obvious that logic isn't a good model for how people form and change opinions. (I just feel that it isn't)

So... what's the state of the art?

It's been out of favor since Derrida, but I think Structuralism is due for another pass in the limelight. An extreme subjectivism about reality, shaped by the stimuli you are exposed to. These external stimuli are what define your axioms, and from there, you use the same (fuzzy, bad, and prone to inducing contradctions) logic as everyone else. It provides a compelling model for why people have difficulty reconciling their opinions; they're not even talking about the same things, just using the same words, the same signs.

What is a belief but an axiom? A prior that must be assumed, as it cannot be proven within the system.

I will definitely concede that the logic people use on a day-to-day basis is much fuzzier than an analytic might prefer, and that there's much greater allowance for contradiction (see the phenomenon of Cognitive Dissonance). But I do think that most people argue from their own first principles, consciously or not. There are rare cases where you can convince someone of something when you discover and correct a logical flaw they have made. More often than not, though, a 'logical argument' is a veiled battle of dogma; both participants are moderately rational, and share the same rules of logic, but their axioms are so alien to eachother that what is plain as day to one is a violation of human decency to another. I'd reckon that in reality, it's rare that two people are actually even arguing about the same thing, even though they may be using some of the same words.

Very true. In fact, I don't think people even start out with "beliefs". They start out with feelings. The emotional response is the equivalent to an axiom, and is abstract and formless. They must use their life experiences to form a reasoning to justify why they feel a certain way, and that is their "belief". This justification is rarely entirely accurate, it's just an approximation filtered through their own biases and reasoning capabilities.

When I have an argument, I find it most productive to first seek out to understand how the other person feels. Peoples' feelings are rarely "incorrect", and usually align with my own feelings at some fundamental level, although perhaps with different intensities. I then try to work with them to put our brains and experiences together to find a more solid understanding for why we feel that way.

> "but how can a nonsentient being be called innocent in any meaningful way?"

This makes me imagine putting people through a trolley problem where you have a serial killer on one side and an 8 week old fetus [1] on the other. That said, many of the people I've known simply argue against the death penalty instead. This may be biased by knowing Catholics, though.

[1] https://www.babycenter.com/fetal-development-images-8-weeks

Well, the real mistake is believing that people think or behave in a consistent manner. All attempts at "rational" debate starts from this flawed premise, and thus always fails.

"All" and "always" are too strong. It's definitely possible to engage in rational debate with an intent to be consistent, and update one's own views when a conflict is discovered. It's just not universally done.

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