{"id":6409,"date":"2025-11-21T21:28:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T21:28:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/?p=6409"},"modified":"2025-11-21T21:28:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T21:28:12","slug":"ask-how-not-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/ask-how-not-why\/","title":{"rendered":"Ask how,\u00a0 not why"},"content":{"rendered":"

More ways to save democracy by talking about it<\/a>…<\/p>\n

Ask people to explain “how” their ideas would work, rather than asking “why” they believe in them:<\/p>\n

\n Curiosity is contagious. There\u2019s a \u201cmirroring effect\u201d in which the inquisitiveness is reciprocated: \u201cBecause you were curious, now they\u2019ll want to be curious back.\u201d If we avoid challenging people with \u201cwhy\u201d and instead ask for more information, he says, \u201cEventually you\u2019re going to find that I might disagree with 80 percent of what you\u2019re saying, but here\u2019s the 20 percent where we see that there are connection points.” – Spencer Harrison<\/a>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Recognize that people in your own “party” likely have more diverse beliefs than you might expect<\/a>, and consider how you’d advise others<\/em> to have a conversation with someone who holds a different view:<\/p>\n

\n \u201cOne of the many problems with extreme partisanship is that you assume that your group is more homogenous than it actually is, and because of that we come rigid…This is about allowing people to be black sheep in their groups where they can think differently.\u201d Todd Kashdan<\/a>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Challenging these efforts are the ways media and recommendation algorithms polarize groups of people, to the extent they don’t even talk to each other anymore:<\/p>\n

\n Not only are young people growing up very native to screens, to social media, and to these algorithmic impulses that push them into completely different worlds…[but also] COVID did a massive disruption for this younger generation that actually created for them an inability to even talk to each other in the normal ways…<\/p>\n

When you have young [people] who not only don\u2019t live together, but don\u2019t consume the same media, don\u2019t get the same algorithmic feeds…they\u2019re not talking and therefore not converging. – Sarah Longwell<\/a>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Time to touch grass<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More ways to save democracy by talking about it… Ask people to explain “how” their ideas would work, rather than asking “why” they believe in them: Curiosity is contagious. There\u2019s a \u201cmirroring effect\u201d in which the inquisitiveness is reciprocated: \u201cBecause you were curious, now they\u2019ll want to be curious back.\u201d If we avoid challenging people…more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[372,377],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language-2","category-politics-2"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9wjHJ-1Fn","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6409"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6410,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6409\/revisions\/6410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}