David

Jeni Cross who is a sociology professor at Colorado State University, talks about the three Myths of Behavior change. In these notes below I’ve ignored the SOM jargon and instead written about how the research applies to values. I could find five main takeaways from the 3 Myths.

MYTH 1. Information is enough to change behavior.

  1. If we speak to what folks value by making things tangible, personalized and interactive this is far more likely to change their mind than simply supplying them facts.

  2. Also, because folks are also loss averse, that is, they don’t want to lose value they already have, they are far more likely to change their behavior if it means they won’t lose value.

MYTH 2. Changing attitudes changes behavior.

  1. You can actually set qualitative behavioral expectations to change behavior and attitudes.

  2. You can also change behavior by speaking to what folks already value.

MYTH 3. Folks know their values.

  1. Social norms influence behavior far more than folks give credit for. If you speak to folks value of social norms, then you’re far more likely to change their behavior than they give credit for.
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David
Intellectual Discussion and Dialectic.

Finding Agreement, Quality and Beauty in the World.

When two people discuss a concept intellectually – naturally there will be disagreement.  What then?

In the two and a half thousand years since Socrates and the Ancient Greeks what two people aim for has been the truth. Disagreement has immediately implied that what one person thinks is false and therefore wrong, while what the other person thinks is true and therefore right.  The way to determine this right and wrong has been to logically argue about what is true and what is false.  Each participant in this dialectical discussion – using the rules of logic – determines the truth by watching for things like contradiction and consistency from their interlocutor.   If someone is inconsistent, or shows contradiction, then what they are saying is false and thus the person demonstrating the contradiction is right.  Quality, Values and Morals in these discussions are unimportant.  Truth and logical consistency is the focus, not Quality or Values or Morals.

But of course – this isn’t how things are.  Quality, Values and Morals do exist and *are *very important.  Values actually create our ideas and opinions. And so if we are to ever reach agreement, we will not find it simply with the aid of logical consistency (although it helps).  If we only keep our eyes on logical consistency we will be forever stuck in muddy water at the bottom of a waterfall – not in the clean water at the top.   Unless we explain, beautifully, the values, the morals which form the quality of our opinions we won’t get anywhere but be stuck with a bunch of meaningless, valueless, truths.

This is true not just of one or two discussion – but of all discussions  – everywhere.  Why do people value the things that they do? Why do some people call one thing moral, while another group call something else moral?  Of course, in these discussions there will be disagreement.  But unless there is an openness to this disagreement, an openness to see something better, an openness to even try the values of another, an openness to be honest with yourself about your own values – then things will stay the same and not get any better.

cultural-values intellectual-morality
David

“Lying just beneath the surface of (political) arguments with passions raging on all sides are big questions of Moral Philosophy.. But we too rarely articulate and defend and argue about those big moral questions in our Politics”
Michael Sandel

Michael Sandel has a great series on Justice which explains the currently competing philosophical theories of social justice that exist in the world today. Unlike anyone else I’ve seen he’s bringing the problems of Moral Philosophy to the public at large in an easily accessible way.

In the TED Talk above, Sandel gives a passionate plea to bring some of this intelligent philosophical discourse to our political dialogue. I share his frustration and it is heartwarming to see someone make such an argument in a public setting. Of course, the Metaphysics of Quality provides us with a vastly improved language with which we can discuss morality and it brings with it coherence and evolutionary context to these discussions where there previously was none.

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