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Paying People to Argue With You
The interesting result was that some of the rebuttals were quite insightful, and resulted in me making changes to the argument that I would make if I had to present it again. Judging by the literacy and intelligence of some of the respondents, most of them probably wouldn't need Mechanical Turk as a source of income, so I assume most of them fit the profile of this Salon.com writer and are doing it just for fun. Hell, you can find enough people on UseNet and Slashdot who will argue with you just for free.
But there were a few reasons I found this preferable to the conventional ways of gathering interesting rebuttals to your own reasoning. If you send out a sample argument to all of your e-mail buddies, you will probably get some useful replies, but they may start to think you're a little weird for asking them to evaluate your thought processes, especially if you do it over and over. Post an opinion on UseNet or Slashdot, and you may have to wade through a lot of crap to find the useful responses (while others may consider your post to be part of the crap that they have to wade through). And in both cases, there's the potential embarrassment of what you're asking for -- the risk of seeming so uncertain about your own opinions that you want other people to check your work for you. (I actually think that being uncertain about your own beliefs is a virtue, but it doesn't seem to be one that our culture prizes very highly.) Using Mechanical Turk addresses most of these problems; even though you're still admitting to total strangers that you might be wrong and asking them to shoot you down if they can, at least the evidence of your insecurity won't turn up when your next employer or Internet date does a Google search for your name. ("Damn it, I want a man who doesn't question his bumper stickers!")
So, while I didn't find it useful enough that I would run every opinion through the Mechanical Turk machinery to see what feedback I could get from it (I'm not paying a bunch of them to proofread this article), I did like enough to recommend it to people for certain arguments in certain settings. The main kinds of arguments that I would try out on the Mechanical Turk service would be about abstract philosophical or moral questions on issues that have been around forever, like abortion or the death penalty -- topics so explosive that you'd risk making your friends very uncomfortable if you test-marketed your arguments on them, and which would seem almost rude to post about in a public forum because the debate topics have been around for so very, very long. But on Mechanical Turk, $1 is apparently enough to get people to ignore the awkwardness and the exhaustedness of the topic and to focus on what you ask.
And what was the argument that I used to test it out? Perhaps the geek crowd will feel more sympathy with this than the general public does. Basically it was that the conventional wisdom behind allowing adults to smoke, but banning cigarettes for people under 18, is wrong. Either you can believe that smoking should be permitted for everybody, or that it should be banned for everybody, but there is no consistent set of assumptions that could lead you to conclude that smoking should be banned for people under 18 but allowed for everyone else. You have two groups of people under consideration -- people under 18 who smoke, and people over 18 who smoke. What possible reason could there be for wanting to protect the health of the people in the first group, but not the people in the second group?
The problem with the conventional reason for smoking age restrictions -- "Younger people have worse judgment, so they are more likely to smoke" -- is that if this is true, all that means is that the first group of people will be proportionally larger, relative to the total population of people in their age range. But even after that assumption, you're still left with two groups of people, who exhibit the same continued bad judgment with regard to smoking cigarettes. Treating the two groups differently, is a bit like saying we should have lighter sentences for female murderers than for male murderers, just because men are more likely to commit murder.
And yet this conclusion did give me pause, so this is a classic example of an argument where you'd want someone to check your work. Off I went to create a Human Intelligence Task (HIT) on Mechanical Turk simply asking people to read the argument and respond. In the first round, most responders missed what I thought was the point of the argument, and responded with some variation of "Minors are more likely to smoke because they have worse judgment", without addressing the question of why the two groups of smokers should be treated differently. A few people responded with variations of "We've always done it that way" (referring to similar restrictions on alcohol, pornography, etc.); fair enough, it just reminded me that if I asked the question again I'd have to say I didn't consider any argument valid that boiled down to "We've always done it that way".
But then came some more interesting responses. One worker replied that I was wrong to assume that the effects of a cigarette were "the same" on adults and minors because cigarette smoke has been shown to be more damaging to developing tissues. OK, that was worth a dollar. On the other hand, that just means that there is some number N cigarettes that would be just as harmful to an adult, as 1 cigarette would be to a minor, so you're still left without a consistent reason for why you'd let the adult buy those N cigarettes but prevent the minor from buying 1 cigarette. Then another user called me out on the opening line of my original argument, "There is no reason to ban cigarettes for minors but not for adults." He said, quite correctly, that I had only attempted to debunk the most commonly given reason, but it was wrong to conclude that there was no such reason.
So, this led me to another idea for how to present an argument and solicit feedback on Mechanical Turk: in the form of a series of mathematically precise statements, each one following from the previous ones. The new HIT was to ask users if they disagreed with the conclusion, and if they disagreed, then to identify the first statement that they disagreed with. The idea was that each statement would follow logically from the ones before it, so identifying any statement as the "first" one that they disagreed with, would be tantamount to a self-contradictory paradox.
Now, whether or not you want to use this format when running an argument past the Turk workers, depends on what your goal is. If you want to really find out if your own argument is valid, then breaking it down mathematically is one approach. On the other hand, if you already believe your own argument, and you're just trying to find the most persuasive way of phrasing it, then you may not learn anything useful by breaking it down into a series of mathematical steps, because that's probably not going to be the format of our final persuasive essay.
Anyway, the new mathematical format of the argument was (slightly reworked from what I posted on Amazon):
- Government should ban smoking by people under 18, because of the harmful health effects.
- If that's true for the entire group of underage smokers, then it's also true for each individual smoker under 18. In other words, even if only one person under 18 smoked in the entire country, it would still be justified for the government to ban them from smoking.
- Whatever bad health effects are caused by the average person under 18 smoking 1 cigarette, there is some number N cigarettes that would cause the same bad health effects in the average adult who smoked them.
- If banning 1 person under 18 from smoking 1 cigarette is justified (even if they were the last smoker on Earth), and the health effects would be the same for an average adult who smoked N cigarettes, then banning 1 adult from smoking those N cigarettes would also be justified (again, even if they were the last smoker on Earth).
- If banning 1 person over 18 from smoking would be justified, then the same logic would apply to every person over 18, which would imply banning smoking for all people over 18.
- Hence, if you believe that smoking should be banned for people under 18, then the same logic would lead to a ban on smoking for people over 18 as well.
The response from a lot of workers who responded to this HIT was that... I lost them. Each of them identified the first statement in the list that they disagreed with, as required by the HIT, but many commented that the whole thing was phrased confusingly. There was no clear winner for the first statement that people disagreed with, but several people picked #3 and #4, arguing some version of "People under 18 have less developed judgment." (I still say that doesn't matter, because you're talking about comparing a person under 18 who smokes, with a person over 18 who smokes, and their judgment in both cases is the same, etc.) So this particular experiment failed -- it didn't make it easier to persuade people by formulating the argument as a series of steps, and it also didn't lead to any agreement on what was the Achilles' Heel of the argument itself.
However I think the general idea, of using Mechanical Turk to find sparring partners, may be useful to a lot of people. If you were interested in publishing some kind of persuasive argument, you could use an Amazon HIT to have readers compare several different versions of the same argument and identify the one that they thought was most convincing. If you were feeling more philosophical and simply wanted to know if your argument was correct, you could pay people to look for flaws in it (and here is where the mathematical phrasing could come in handy). If you're crafting an argument for public consumption, you could even have HIT workers build up your argument for you -- start with a position and have them come up with reasons supporting that position -- although to me that feels like a cheapening of the debate process that crosses the line, because you're not even trying to reason your way to a conclusion, instead starting with the conclusion you want and then working backwards (not that this isn't what a lot of debaters do anyway!). My own interest would be to see next if certain types of arguments are more likely to persuade people who are more mathematically inclined (by asking respondents to indicate how well they did at math in school). Perhaps arguments with flowery language are more likely to appeal to people who were English majors, while arguments spelled out as a series of logical steps are more likely to appeal to people who look at things in a mathematical way (also known as the "real" or "right" way of looking at things).
Maybe my preference for the controlled, user-reimbursed process of "debating" that is enabled by Mechanical Turk, has to do with a lifelong focus on bottom-line results: Decide what the result is, and judge the process by how well it brings about that result. I don't think debate and discussion should be like soccer, valued for the fun and the exercise; I think a good debate should actually get somewhere, persuading the participants or the listeners of a new point of view that builds on their old one, or else the debate has failed. If paying HIT workers kills the "spirit" of a good debate but helps achieve the goal, then so much the better. On the other hand, we'll never run out of people who enjoy the process of debating and arguing for its own sake, and will continue to debate things into the ground without anybody paying them. Hey look, here come some of them now!...
Do you want to have the full argument, or were you thinking of taking a course?
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
Oh I cant help it! This reminds me too much if Monty Python's Argument Clinic
"Hell, you can find enough people on UseNet and Slashdot who will argue with you just for free."
no you can't.
What the fuck are you blabbering about? Is there any way you can summarize it into 100 words or less?
Shut your festering gob, you tit! Your type really makes me puke, you vacuous, coffee-nosed, maloderous, pervert!!!
Or is that in another office down the hall?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
No offense, but your argument's not that good, or maybe I'm not understanding your point.
-You just "proved" that no paternalistic intervention is ever justified, *even by parents to newborns*. Hey, if you believe compelling someone to eat is okay if they're under 2 years old, obviously, there must be some insufficient amount of eating you can do when over 2 years old that would justify force-feeding. Er, yes, there is, it's just not encoded in any specific law that way.
-The "judgment" argument is completely unrelated to the "health results" argument (up to a limit). You seem to think the argument is that
"People under 18 shouldn't be allowed to smoke, because if they did, they would smoke a lot due to bad judgment, and people over 18 would not excessively smoke due to bad judgment."
It's not. It's more like,
"People under 18 shouldn't be allowed to smoke because their poor judgment makes them unable to accurately weigh long-term consequences of smoking. Therefore, they will smoke, and later regret the poor health and addiction. Adults may do it in the exact same amount, but then it would be with accurate judgment of the consequences. The rational self would not be victimized by the previous irrational self."
-You perform a reductio saying that banning smoking for minors would imply banning some amount of smoking (N) for adults. There is such a ban, so there's no contradiction. Namely, if you smoke so much at once as to nearly kill yourself, that can be considered a suicide attempt, and people can legally restrain you from doing it further until your body can cope.
(I'm not saying 18 is right age to ban smoking. I'm not saying there should be any one age. I'm just saying that this is a poor representation of the case for banning underage smoking, and a poor argument for a change in policy.)
Now, give me my $1.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
If your argument has anything to do with religion, you can get free "rebuttals" by posting about it on Slashdot.
...that is, if the quality the reasoning is not important.
I don't need to pay someone to argue with me. I have children.
Here's the first argument I thought in favor of the under-18 ban. It has nothing to do with "people under 18 have worse judgement".
(1) Adults inherently have more rights, and are expected to shoulder more responsibility, than those who are minors (e.g., voting, driving, running for office, registering for military service, medical care, curfews, etc.)
(2) Granted that smoking is bad, we have considered banning it for everybody.
(3) It's been decided that this is not so critical an issue that it trumps adult rights and self-responsibility; therefore we feel it would be improper to make a ban for adults. However, it does rise to a level above the threshold for minor rights, and therefore a ban for minors is considered an acceptable prohibition.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
The presented rationale for not banning smoking for youngsters misses, I think, the real reasoning for having the ban. The reasoning goes something like:
1. Smoking is bad, and should be discouraged as much as possible.
2. All people should have the freedom to do what they like to themselves. However, an exception to this rule can be made when it comes to minors, who may make poor choices. The freedom of a minor can be abridged if it can be shown that this is "for their own safety". In any case, adults (defined as 18+ in most jurisdictions) shall have full freedom to do what they want to their own possessions and bodies.
3. Smoking is sufficiently "bad" that it warrants the restricting of a minor's freedom.
In this argument, the difference between the minor and the adult is not the harm it causes them, but the assessment about personal responsibility. Our society views the safety of minors as being a communal responsibility. Until the minor is old enough to reason for themselves (arbitrarily set at age 18), then their parents and/or society will make certain choices on their behalf. If they still select the harmful behavior as an adult, that's their choice. But it would be immoral for society to allow those without full cognitive ability to make harmful decisions. (Same rationale applies to adults who have impaired cognitive abilities; in which case someone is designated to make responsible choices on their behalf.)
We "allow" adults to smoke not because the consensus is that it isn't "bad" but rather because personal freedom and self-determination are viewed as being more important than saving someone from themselves.
Linux is a terrible, insecure operating system with a higher TCO than Windows.
Bill Gates is more enigmatic than Jobs and more intelligent than Stallman
The MPAA/RIAA are well within their rights when they sue people.
Darl was right.
I love the PS3 and hate the Wii
Discuss!
Monstar L
Not quite; people of any age are allowed to make their own decisions.
The thing that happens when you're 18 or older, though, is that you then have to be responsible for your decisions. When you're less than 18, the consequences get handled by society at large.
That's the difference that sets the line for smoking at 18. Doesn't have anything to do with health issues except for who has to pay the majority to fix those issues. (Here's a hint: what tax burden is paid by those younger than 18?)
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
This is a much better use of the Mechanical Turk service:
http://www.thesheepmarket.com/
Get 1,000 random Internet users to draw you a left-facing sheep.
Comment of the year
I don't see any problem about this disrespecting people in Turkey or this being offensive to anyone of Turkish or Near Eastern heritage. The one problem I see is if you use this service for any kind of serious scholarship. Low-wage labor is used in scholarship all of the time (grad students, undergrad hourly workers), but if someone makes a significant contribution, a co-authorship may be in order, and for a more minor contribution, even the undergrad hourly often gets acknowledged. If one of these low-wage anomymous knowledge workers helps you make a key argument, how do you properly cite this in your journal article?
You imply that adults "weigh" the long-term consequences of smoking and then make a rational choice to continue smoking. As a former smoker, I'm not sure that's an accurate reflection of what's happening with smokers (adults or children) nor a compelling answer to why we ban underage smoking.
A clearer explanation, in my opinion, would be that we expect adults to accept the consequences of their actions as a matter of personal responsibility. In other words, adults could reasonably know that smoking is dangerous and choose to smoke anyway, but they have to live with the consequences; lung cancer, emphysema, etc. We don't necessarily hold "minors" to the same standard. If a child gets their father's gun, takes it to school, and shoots another child, the consequences (should) fall mainly on the parent.
Of course, in our modern society, there are some really wacky things going on. People can sue corporations for the result of bad choices they've made, because we've pretty much abdicated on the idea of personal responsibility in non-criminal cases, while at the same time a five-year-old can be tried as an adult and sent up to the Big House if they use crayons to draw a gun in kindergarten.
But my take on this is more that (historically) we've decided that kids aren't held to the same standard of personal responsibility that we've (historically) assigned to adults.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
are you kidding me? i'd kill you for a klondike bar.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
The benefit of a ban is possibly improved health in the group of people the ban effects.
The cost of the ban is decreased freedom in the group the ban effects.
Your argument address the possibility that the value of the benefit might differ with age.
You argument fail to address the possibility that the value of the cost might differ with age.
Since society value freedom for adults much higher than freedom for minors, the age discrimination is justified in this case. QED.
(A totally different discussion is whether society should value freedom for adults higher than freedom for minors, but it clearly does).
Just come to /. and quarrel for free.
Well, not really for free. You employer pays.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
On the topic of underage smoking, I think the author has missed the effect that smoking has on the very judgment that is considered inadequate before a person turns 18. Because of addiction effects, having chosen and been allowed to smoke as a child permanently inhibits the ability to apply reasoned arguments to the choice to continue smoking even after the age of 18.
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
Why aren't all drugs given a consistent set of regulations under the FDA? If someone needs to get morphine, they get a prescription. If someone gets morphine without a prescription, they're being naughty. If someone needs to get marijuana, they get a prescription. If someone gets marijuana without a prescription, they're being naughty. If someone needs to get cigarettes, they get a prescription. If someone gets cigarettes without a prescription, they're being naughty.
Also, maybe then people would not consider it weird or awkward when their friends asks them for a serious discussion and their intellectual opinion on an issue.
Perhaps people will even stop considering submitting their opinions to rational debate a sign of weakness and an "embarrassment" - which is a particularly disturbing trend.
My 2 bills of monopoly money:
- I really like the general idea, simply because intelligent argument is a valuable commodity.
If that is the price of creating a transient forum with critical mass, having people take the discussion seriously, and not seeing it degenerate into highschool psychology, it seems pretty cheap.
- Even more valuable by far: friends who would not consider it weird that you want evaluate and improve your thought processes, at least not any weirder than sharing youtube links, jokes, and all the other less purposeful conversations that friends carry over all the time.
Having someone open to a meaningful discussion who is willing to contradict you and tell you when you're wrong is not impolite; that is what friends are for.
It may be the thing that makes the difference between 'friends' and 'long term acquaintances'.
This contemporary fear of argument is chilling, if it gets to the point that even publicly thinking through your opinions is a cause for embarrassment.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
They person you buy the abuse from called is a Dominatrix. Or so I heard... I mean a friend told me ...
I agree.
I remember in a democracy seminar I took in college, society as a whole decides who has the right of franchise, and this age frequently denotes the point at which a person is responsible for their actions. This is usually for those who fall under a certain age, and within certain norms and other boundaries. Additionally this is why criminals lose their franchise in the democracy (they "gave it up" when they exceeded a social norm for antisocial behavior).
The discussion came down to why "18"? or "16" (for some things in europe) or "33" (I recall something about Masai and having to travel for an extended period before being able to marry - but could be mistaken)? It was purely based on a social decision, that at a certain age/limit a person is able to enter into a contract with another, and will be held responsible for that agreement.
Sure you can look at brain development to back up your argument after the fact... but its a bit like coming to a conclusion then looking for physical evidence to support it. I believe it is related, but I believe the primary focus is just more fuzzy.
18 is an arbitrary age for responsibility in our society, that is all it is. By consensus, we all pretty much agree 18 is a pretty good marker. Personally, after watching others (and myself), I think 21 should be more appropriate.
meh
Political consultants and focus groups are common tools used by the politically savvy (like presidential candidates) to vet and refine the language of major policy speeches (and even the content of the policy itself). These are people that are paid to help identify the weak points (either the content or the presentation) in the speech and improve it. Focus groups largely are paid a small amount to give you soft impressions: do you agree or disagree, are you excited or bored, etc. Political consultants are paid a lot more to tell you more specific things: change the wording of this sentence, emphasize this point by saying XYZ, don't say this or you'll antagonize so-and-so, etc. This is, in part, how a State of the Union address comes about.
Ideally, the President (not just Bush, any President) would have people on salary whose sole job is to play the devil's advocate. These would NOT just be people who actually agree with you but can argue the other side, but rather people who genuinely believe the other side. Democrats should hire Republicans, and vice versa. One common criticism of the current President is that he surrounds himself with people who all agree with him. To the people they work for, they're royal pains in the ass, but they are of benefit, too.
Now, one might ask why a President should pay someone to disagree with him, when he can surely walk down the street to Congress and get an earful for free. That has merit, too, and it's something that appears to be lacking these days. But there are advantages to having your own nay-sayers in house: it allows you to craft better policy from the start, rather than duking it out in public; you don't tip your hand before you are ready; when you do announce policy, you are prepared for counter-arguments; and, you avoid the appearance of always doing it your way (again, a common criticism of this current President).
Obviously any age limit is going to have
1. People younger but mature enough.
2. People older but not mature enough.
While he makes a good case the 18 is arbitrary, he hasn't come up with a better way of handling the problem. We ban all sorts of (potentially harmful but fun) things for minors that adults can enjoy freely. Some things (like driving) we have both an age limit and a test, others (cigarettes, alcohol, sex) we have only an age limit. An age limit isn't perfect, but it's a reasonable way of handling the problem- alternatives would be having tests with some way of authenticating 'maturity', or having no limits at all.
He could just as easily be complaining that TCP/IP is a arbitrary protocol that has some disadvantages. His complaints may be accurate, but unless he has a better way of handling the problem they mean very little.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Why did Constantinople get the works?
It's interesting and surprising to me that you do not even consider the possibility that a rebuttal may change your mind. You seem to assume that the only thing that will happen is that you will change or improve your argument in order to strengthen it. Apparently if you have some reason for your belief, and you find that there is a very effective rebuttal, you will simply avoid citing that reason in your future arguments; but knowing that one of the reasons for your belief was wrong will not make you less likely to hold it.
It's a pretty sad commentary on the state of our reasoning process and makes one wonder why people even try to come up with arguments. I guess they can be seen as tools for closed-minded people like the OP to persuade the open-minded (which the arguers apparently consider weak-minded).
Are you suggesting that our banning smoking by 18-year olds is a rational economic response to the minuscule amount of taxes we let ourselves pay? Horse-cookies! If we were rational economic actors, there are a lot of bigger-ticket items we would have eliminated first.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
I know this is sort of off-topic, but here's my take on the children-smoking issue:
1) It's true that children have less mature decision making abilities. The ban on children smoking is partially a ban on *advertising* to children. The advertising has a much greater affect, regardless of the volume of advertising. It is more likely to result in a child making a bad decision than advertising directed towards adults affects adults.
2) The negative effects of smoking on children is more severe than on adults. When a child gets cancer or emphysema, it runs through the system quicker. The resulting illness is much more damaging. This isn't affected by the number of cigs the person smokes. Smoking more increases your chances of getting cancer, but it doesn't increase the damage the cancer does. Being younger both increases the chances and the damage.
3) Right or wrong (I think wrong), our system of laws has always had 2 standards. A child simply does not have the rights an adult does. This means it's much easier to enact draconian laws that target children than adults. In reality, we should ban smoking for all citizens, or allow it for all. But, we also recognize the rights of adults to make self-damaging decisions is much more broad than that for children. So, it's not that the laws devalue the adult, but that enacting similar laws against adults would come up against resistance by the ACLU and others.
4) Most of these laws were made before children were recognized as a valuable demographic. If we tried to make it illegal for children to smoke today, the tobacco companies would resist much more forcefully than they did in the 1970s when these laws were made.
-Dave
Citizens Against Plate Tectonics
So in the end this posting to Slashdot will serve the author (at least) three purposes:
:)
1) Additional rebuttal arguments for the smoking issue
2) Feedback from a group of people on the "pay for argument" model.
3) Help the author assess other people's reaction to his "debate for debate's sake" viewpoint.
Ok, I don't really fell THAT used, but I do find it amusing that item number three might actually be the authors true intent of this entire exercise.
Also... Go Slashdotters! I already see several great rebuttals posted!
RudeDude
Perl/Linux/PHP hacker
Actually, it's not the attempt to mathify that I find problematic—I find that encouraging. It is, though, the results.
My (awesome) university philosophy professor had us do a very interesting exercise that was, though more logical than mathematical in nature, similar to what the author of TFA was going for. It goes like this...
Write down a belief that you have. For people new to this process (the entire class), this should be a strongly held belief...doesn't matter how controversial. Let's say, for example: I think abortion should be a woman's choice. (For you controversy-hounds out there, please don't mistake this for my actual belief—I'm intentionally not going to define my actual belief on this topic here.) Don't worry about getting the wording just right—you're free to revisit your initial statement as many times as you like throughout and revise it to more concisely represent your intent.
Now write down the set of "sub-beliefs" that you have which form the basis of your belief. For our example: 1. Life begins at conception. 2. Every life is equally valuable. 3. A life has no quantifiable value, but is inherently precious and ought to be protected if at all possible. Etc. Next we iterate, applying the same process to each belief listed. Obviously, you will very quickly diverge into an explosion of statements that resist corralling at every effort. Do not fret—I haven't told you about the thrust of the exercise yet.
(I should mention here that we did an entire section on identifying context-free statements, and we were asked to make our best effort to ensure that each statement was context-free, or as free of context as possible. "Context-free" means that the statement is true of our beliefs regardless of the circumstances in which the statement is tested. If that's not possible—and it's not often possible—we'd go for "generally" true, where "common sense"—whatever that is—dictates obvious exceptions.)
You will find it unnecessary to list each and every belief supporting your initial statement, which would quite likely fill several thick volumes if you did so exhaustively. Luckily, you don't have to do this to satisfy the point of the exercise, which is: where necessary, skip down to "lowest level" beliefs...that is, at some point you will mentally reach a point where you have identified a belief for which you have no further basis beliefs. When you reach this point, you have identified an axiomatic belief—that is, something you accept essentially on faith, on gut feeling, because you think it is correct. If possible, identify the key beliefs that go from your initial statement to the set of axiomatic beliefs identified.
The next step is to look at your beliefs, both axiomatic and intermediate, for consistency. In every case in carrying out this exercise, one will invariably find a whole host of contradictory statements. Then we did an iteration that attempts to resolve these conflicts by tweaking our initial statement, etc...provided we were tuning up the language to indicate real intent and not moving the statements further away from our actual beliefs, great. The ultimate idea is to identify our beliefs in all their gory, inconsistent, warty detail.
Then, we make up a list of so-called axiomatic beliefs and they are given to 5 random classmates (all double-blind, of course). You then are tasked with taking home those 5 lists of axiomatic beliefs and attempt to drill down further. If they are truly axiomatic, you won't be able to do this—the idea here is that you ultimately get back 5 people's analysis of your list and given another chance to continue the process—most of the time, it turns out you realize your axiomatic beliefs weren't axiomatic for you after all, and that you can actually drill down even more.
Anyway, it goes on like this, the ultimate point being that you arrive at some network of beliefs which yo
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?