A thread through the archive
Essays tagged “atheism vs religion”. Follow an idea across the archive.
Scott Alexander discusses how political groups can shift from outgroups to 'fargroups', leading to less hostility and more exoticization, and predicts this pattern may increase political in-fighting while reducing inter-party conflict.
Scott argues that to persuade people rather than just demolish them, you should leave them a social line of retreat by being genuinely nice and not treating the discussion as a status contest.
Scott uses a conversation with a Muslim woman who found evolution absurd to show that the absurdity heuristic, as used in Bill Maher's "talking snake" argument, is a bad way to dismiss beliefs.