Purpose (In General)

Purpose

Purpose refers to the reason(s) why an actor (person or group) does something.

The Purpose of CT

Here are the reasons why you or anyone else should apply CT.

1. Make the best decision for your context (surrounding circumstances). Best means that it follows your values and that is maximizes your payoff (rewards minus drawbacks in a holistic sense).

2. Discover what is most likely true. Something is true if it corresponds with the way things are; that is, truth aligns with an accurate view of reality.

The “CT Purpose” Skill

The skill (called CT Purpose) involve the following the following actions.

1. Arguer Role: Decide that you want to make the best decisions and find truth. Then avoid making decisions until you have the all the relevant information. Be open to changing your decision in the face of new information or better information.

2. Responder Role: Based on the context, gauge the likely purpose of the arguer and respond accordingly.

Tips

1. When you are in the arguer role, this skill makes you very open to new ideas and points of view. You commonly say things like “Help me understand” and “Tell me more.” You do a lot of listening.

2. When you are in the responder role, you rarely would battle or debate others or engage in conflict.

3. Making the best decision is the role of CT. However, if you want to persuade others ethically you’ll want to augment your approach with persuasion; see the associated BookCourse.

4. It is not common for others to have the CT purpose (best choices + truth). Expect others to want to persuade you and to convince you that they are right.

Rationale

This skill

There are two roles in CT:

1. Arguer: This is actor who is making a claim.

2. Audience: This is the target audience for the claim.

The CT Purpose: The term “The CT Purpose” refers to having a purpose of choosing the best course of action (find truth); that is, to make the best decision. In addition, this purpose involves backing up each claim with reasoning.

In the real world, actors have many purposes: to inform, to persuade, to sell, to influence, to entertain, to express identity, and so on.

Your job depends on your role.

Arguer: Your job is to make your purpose “the CT purpose.” That is, your job is make the best decision (find truth).

Audience: Your job is to assess the arguer’s purpose and to respond in the best way given your assessment.

Purpose: Arguer Role

When you are the decision maker, you get to choose your purpose. Thus, choose to make the best decision (find truth).

While this sounds easy, it is not because of the brain’s tendency to jump to conclusions.

Here are some skills that I recommend.

Open: Be open to the ideas of others, especially those who you violently disagree with. The reason for this is that you can learn from them.

Research: Get good information. Good information—aka, high quality information—is defined by seven criteria: super-useful, true, accurate, complete, easy-to-understand, organized, and justified. The reason for doing research is that the best decisions require good information.

Skepticism: Question everything, especially the beliefs that you strongly hold.

Humbleness: Recognize how often you have been wrong and behave with profound regard for your own flaws. Speak softly. Avoid certitude and dogmatism.

Validation: Bend over backwards to check your findings. Triangulate. Calibrate.

Reasoning: Explain why you have reached your conclusions. Lay this out so that others can help you spot errors. Cite sources. Use credible sources.

For me, reading Feynman’s Cargo Cult Science Speech was the point in my life where I got the idea of making it my purpose to find truth (select the best course of action). This was stress relieving because I could focus on find truth, not on trying to prove that I was right.

Identifying Purpose (Audience Role)

When you are in the audience role, your job is assess the purpose of the arguer and respond in the best way.

Identifying “The CT Purpose”: Look for most of the following items.

1. Clear evidence, reasoning, citations, and such.
2. Humbleness.
3. Absence of bias.
4. Absence of most emotive content.
5. Openness to others points of view; asking “what do you think?”
6. Respect for others.
7. Willingness to change conclusions if warranted.

Not having “The CT Purpose”: Here are items to look for to identify that the actor’s purpose is something else.

1. Emotions: Anger or passion at high levels.
2. Misinformation: anything that turns out to be untrue
3. Certitude: high confidence in being right
4. Dogmatism: asserting that something is undeniably true
5. Bias: Presenting only one side.
6. Defensiveness: strong defense, typically anger when challenged
7. Lack of evidence or reasoning.
8. Fake CT: saying “I’m just looking for truth” I’ve only heard manipulators say this.
9. Stating facts by using questions that are not really questions.
10. Interrupting, talking over the top of, battling, …

Of course, one should naturally be careful of actors who have a vested interest in persuasion: companies, salespeople, politicians, administrators, and so on.

Best Response (Audience Role)

The best response gives you the best results with the fewest drawbacks and the most rewards in holistic sense.

In most cases, I quick assess purpose and do not try to influence the other actor’s purpose.

If the arguer’s purpose impacts me and the arguer’s purpose is not desirable from my point of view, then I use socratic questioning because this is the best way to help others improve a decision that they have made.

Summary

The purpose of CT is to make the best decision (find truth).

When you are in the arguer role, you can choose to make this your purpose. However, this is hard to do. Some useful skills include being open to ideas that differ from yours, considering all viewpoints, doing skilled research, laying out your reasoning, validating, fact checking, having others look over your work and such.

When you are in the audience role, look for indicators of a truth focus and indicators of a non-truth focus. Then respond in the best way possible. Most of the time, this involves not addressing the arguer’s purpose. However, if the arguer is seeking things that may cause harm, then apply Socratic questioning.