[saalweachter]

I'm sorry, I'm not trying to call you out personally, but this is itching my brain something fierce so I have to blurt it out, and hey, it's the internet. A little derailing never hurt anyone.

It's amazing to me how universal the "I used to be a non-believer" line is in evangelism. From the classic "I used to be an atheist but I've been born again" to all the members of political party A claiming to have been a member of party B before seeing the light to technological evangelism.

It just jumps out at you after awhile.

[mw888]

That’s a nice little Kafka trap you’ve constructed to disregard the people who change their minds away from what you think. So every time someone changes their mind and uses their previous opinion as informative you are going to non-committally imply it’s “evangelism?”

[saalweachter]

It's not really a trap -- it's more a rhetorical tactic.

The trick is that when you say "I used to believe X, but now I've realized I was wrong and believe Y", you can get away without giving evidence for why X was wrong and Y is right. You appeal to a commonality between you and your audience (your audience believes X, you used to believe X) and by presenting your change you imply that they are being left behind, that they have missed something you have seen.

It's such an effective rhetorical tactic that speakers will sometimes make up a conversion experience to use in their evangelism, even if they have always been a member of the faith.

There's nothing wrong with changing your mind, with adapting to new evidence. But you shouldn't confuse someone's declaration that they have changed their mind with evidence for the position they have adopted; that's where logic and rhetoric diverge.

(And again, I'm not trying to start something with the GP; I am fascinated by the universal utility of the rhetorical device more than this specific case.)

[samhw]

Thank you for writing this: it crystallises something that’s always annoyed me about the trope-ridden evangelist shtick. You’re absolutely right.

[crdrost]

Late to the party but FWIW I used to be an atheist and then a Buddhist and am now a Christian...

My attitude is very different from the evangelist’s, it says “look that was an important part of my journey and if that’s the direction you’re going, don’t let me dissuade you. I can tell you why those didn’t work for me but I can’t hold up my present consciousness as “the only correct thing, believe as I do or else you are irrational or anything like that. Heck I am sure that we are both irrational in innumerable ways and why would I pretend I’m more sane than you?”

This fatalism also infects a lot of how I teach things like physics, I tell people a lot that “learning is pain—or more precisely, learning abstractions relieves a pain and chaos and difficulty such that you can only truly absorb the abstraction when you have felt the confusion it addresses. So I can no longer pretend that ‘now that I have suffered through all of that, here is the Right Perspective so that you don't have to!!’... I’d have to take you through the suffering to get to the teaching on the other side.”

[Valakas_]

I'm sorry, but I will do this: I used to think like you're thinking. Pointing other people's logic fallacies, understanding sophism and the logical soundness of arguments.

Logic, for human debates, is very nice in theory. But there is a reason humans adopted shortcut thinking and don't use logic all the time. We are not robots. We don't have infinite processing capacity, and statistics and probability save A LOT of time. For example, doing strawmen fallacies is useful. It allows you to filter through a lot of crap before investing time in digesting whether what that person said makes sense or not. If you would go into any conversation with a blank state of "Let's analyse the logic here" Good luck with that.

So we adopt shortcuts. What shortcut is he doing? "I'm like you" is indeed establishing commonality. The person is saying "I get where you're coming from, i've been there, so I understand at least some reasons why you currently think that way." This is useful if the person is being honest because it let's you know that this person might be saying something more valid than if they had no idea where you're coming from. It means they were once in your position, and something made them switch. It's different than if they never had been in your position. They never had to think anything through. So knowing this is useful. This saves time. Is it fool-proof? Not really. People can lie, or might have not thought that much about it anyway, but like I said people are not robots, and we can't analyse each argument like if we were one.

So rather, let me also help make a shortcut and your argument more clear: Don't call out this behavior, which from an honest person is good, call out what you're actually thinking that he's doing - that he's trying to manipulate readers. Why you would think that, I don't know.

[Sholmesy]

S/he's not disregarding the people who change their mind, he's pointing out the emptiness the trope of "I use to be X, so I know what it's like".

Changing one's mind should be encouraged.

[hooande]

stating that you used to be a non believer isn't necessary. he could have made all those points about blockchain without that piece of information. the GP's point is that the decision to add it is worthy of suspicion

[z3c0]

Seems like a reworking of the "everybody has an agenda" retort you see so often these days. It's a slippery slope that only leads to dying a curmudgeon, as all chances for new perspectives were rebuked as agendas/evangelism/propagandist/etc.

[antifa]

Or, it's a slippery slope that only leads to keeping all your BTC/ETH and missing out on what getting scammed 20 times a year feels like.

[z3c0]

Strange, I've managed to do all of that without being needlessly cynical.

[CRConrad]

Me too: I'm only cynical because it is needed.

[antifa]

99% of random new cryptos have been scams or useless, so if anything the user was too generous with their politeness.

[TomSwirly]

If the comment gave any actual reasoning, it wouldn't be open to that criticism, but as it is, it's empty hype which deserves all the criticism it gets.

[throwaway98700k]

It’s a dangerous attitude because it has a paternal edge to it. Any “enlightenment” naturally leads to seeing others as unenlightened.

[nyolfen]

it is dangerous to say that you have changed your mind about something?

[CRConrad]

Yes, to say that you have changed your mind about something as if that carries any particular weight in favour of that something is "dangerous" to the recipients of your message, as it's an underhanded debating tactic designed to persuade them of something that has no actual persuasive arguments in its favour.

[nyolfen]

can you point to where in the comment OP indicates that his opinion carries 'danger' for the audience? the comment is literally "i used to think this was irredeemable as well, however my personal opinion has shifted, caveated by the fact that i still agree that there are tons of scams and a crash coming"

[CRConrad]

Sorry, I'm not quite sure what you're talking about. For one thing, nobody else has "literally" said that; your comment is the only one Algolia can find with those exact words.

For another, I can't quite see what's not to get; what is it you're not understanding? saalweachter pointed out that "[i]t's amazing to [them] how universal the 'I used to be a non-believer' line is in evangelism" (Further expounded upon in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29948754 ); throwaway98700k simplified to "[i]t’s a dangerous attitude because it has a paternal edge to it"; you asked whether it is dangerous to say that you have changed your mind about something; and I tried to explain that yes, it is, and why. (You might notice that my reply, like your question, was couched in quite general terms: The danger of "conversion" claims in general, without reference to any particular "OP" in this thread.)

But, to explain it again: No, of course OP doesn't indicate that their own opinion carries danger for the audience. (Would you?) That is precisely the danger, that "OP" (assuming you mean poof131) didn't acknowledge that their "conversion" isn't an argument in favour of "conversion", while still mentioning it as if it had something to do with anything (which, as saalweachter explained, tends to carry convincing weight in people's minds even though it logically shouldn't). Sorry, I don't know how to explain it better. Except, perhaps -- did you think this discussion is about whether the "conversion" claim would be "dangerous" to OP himself? That's not it. The danger is that conversion claims tend to persuade people more than they should; the danger of people getting duped into believing things that aren't true just because someone successfully (maybe even unconsciously) uses a rhetorical tactic.

AFAIK, I never claimed OP themselves indicates that their opinion carries danger. That's precisley why I agreed with the posters who did it for them, and spelled it out to you in my GP. Is there anything else in that, that you still don't understand? Besides your misapprehension that I claimed "OP" had said that, I mean (or possibly that the danger mentioned would be to not to "OP" but to the audience)? Which I sincerely hope is (are) thoroughly dispelled by now.

[mahogany]

Alternatively, what if they simply learned something new which caused them to change their belief in something? It's better to focus on what caused their mind to be changed (it may or may not be bunk) versus focusing on the fact that their mind changed at all (which can certainly be a good thing).

[antifa]

> what if they simply learned something new which caused them to change their belief in something?

Then they would have shared that, instead what we got was indistinguishable from "some charismatic people dupped me and/or I'm in on the scamming now."

[mattdesl]

it goes both ways – "I used to be religious, now I am an atheist"

(I was also against crypto/blockchains when I first learned about them last year)

[antifa]

It really doesn't go both ways.

It's "I didn't find any evidence for God, so I stopped believing." vs "I believe God is real but I can't prove it".

When somebody is telling me they think God is real, they're trying to sell me something, or they think it's important to tell me.

When I tell people I'm an atheist, I probably didn't want to have to tell anyone, and I genuinely don't care what you believe unless you're using it to hurt others.

[mattdesl]

it’s all relative, depends on your vantage point.

just look at the OP thread that led to these discussions: the author is vocally decrying blockchains. if you view anti-crypto as the atheists in this analogy then they sure do make a lot of noise on HN (these kinds of posts routinely make the front page).

[antifa]

> they sure do make a lot of noise

What, you mean like randomly, unprompted? For no reason? What are they trying to sell you?

[mattdesl]

basically: adherence to centralized systems of value transfer, rejection of decentralized alternatives.

[CRConrad]

> rejection of decentralized alternatives.

Assumes facts not in evidence. Show me a "decentralized alternative" that doesn't a) reek to high heaven of Ponzi scheme evangelism or b) burns resources like there's no tomorrow, and I'll be all ears.

But that's not what's being touted here. The current Crypto-"currency" fandango has quite enough downsides as is; notice that it's usually its proponents who claim that any arguments against it are about its "decentralized alternative"-ness.

[mrelectric]

As usual, truth is somewhere in the middle.

[CRConrad]

Quite often, it isn't.

[tomxor]

The parent's perspective does not come across as an evangelist's though. Quite the opposite. It's balanced, seeing the hype for hype, seeing the flaws, and yet seeing that there is still some truth and potential buried in there. The world is grey.

[TomSwirly]

> seeing the flaws,

The article names none.

> yet seeing that there is still some truth and potential buried in there.

The article details none.

> The world is grey.

"Everything is true, even false things!"

[tomxor]

I'm commenting on the parent comment, not the article...

[floodyberry-]

There was no substantial justification given for changing their opinion. IF it was an honest post, it was entirely unconvincing

[tomxor]

> But more recently after learning from and interacting with people building in the space my assessment changed.

[CRConrad]

Yeah, exactly: That's not a reasoned or reasonable justification.