John Dickerson

John Dickerson is co-anchor of "CBS Evening News" and anchor of "CBS Evening News Plus." He is also a Contributing Writer to The Atlantic and is co-host of the Slate Political Gabfest.

  • 07/13/2024: Asking ChatGPT for ways to engage in conversation.

    Is this the right way to write this query?
    Q: Someone is making a point to me with which I disagree, but I might be wrong and miss a chance to learn something. They are members of the human race, so I owe them grace and no motive-questioning at the start, but I don’t want to be snookered, and sometimes I might engage in conversations where people who participate in them act in bad faith for political, ego and attention-grabbing reasons. My patience, concentration and energy are not limitless. Time spent in an unproductive exchange has an opportunity cost. Please create a list of short instructions (please don’t go on) for how I should interpret their argument and maintain maximum humanity while at the same time exhibiting efficient critical thinking which would prompt me to duck out if the exchange has become stale or toxic. Please provide guidance for identifying such sour turns.
    ChatGPT
    1. Absolutely, John. Here’s a concise guide for interpreting arguments with both humanity and critical thinking:
      1. Listen Completely: Ensure you fully understand their argument before reacting.
      2. Clarify and Probe: Ask for details and examples to better grasp their points.
      3. Stay Open: Keep an open mind and avoid premature judgment.
      4. Maintain Respect: Engage politely and keep a calm tone.
      5. Assess Evidence: Critically evaluate the validity and sources of their claims.
      6. Focus on Arguments, Not People: Address the ideas, not the individual’s character.
      7. Spot Fallacies: Be alert for logical errors in their reasoning.
      8. Separate Emotion from Logic: Identify whether the argument relies on emotional appeals or facts.
      9. Delay Motive Analysis: Concentrate on the argument’s content before considering potential motives.
      10. Monitor Time: Be mindful of the conversation’s duration to avoid unproductive exchanges.
      11. Identify Sour Turns:
        • Repetition: The same points are being rehashed without new information.
        • Ad Hominem Attacks: The discussion shifts to personal attacks.
        • Straw Man Arguments: Misrepresenting your position to refute it easily.
        • Red Herrings: Introducing irrelevant topics to divert from the main issue.
        • Hostility: The tone becomes aggressive or disrespectful.
      12. Exit Gracefully: Politely end the conversation if it becomes repetitive, personal, or unproductive.

      This approach ensures a balanced, respectful, and efficient engagement while recognizing when to step away from a futile discussion.

    • More Notions

  • 03/25/2023: A satisfying GPT exchange

    A lot of the coverage of change GPT has been about the learning and development of artificial intelligence. What I wonder is how we, as humans, are going to slowly learn and acculturate to the kinds of exchanges with ChatGPT and its cousins. What I’m thinking about is the psychological closeness that will accrue in […]

  • 03/24/2023: Chat GPT on the difference between how to think about important issues.

    There is a gap in American public conversation between what gets covered and what is objectively important. Presidential campaigns exacerbate this gap. I asked Chat GPT to list the important stories and then I asked Chat GPT to list the stories about issues that impact the greatest number of Americans, which is a rough proxy […]

  • 03/24/2023: This is how we beat the robots

    I’m not kidding. When artificial intelligence becomes so good at copying human behavior, we will need to get really good at head fakes. Remember this simple rule: head fakes beat deep fakes. This is how we will beat Chat GPT. https://t.co/CZoZUpjYBk — John Dickerson (@jdickerson) March 24, 2023

  • 03/24/2023: We Have Three Questions on Prime Time

    https://johndickerson.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/CN-PT-JOHN-DICKERSON-_17_16x9_JD_SOCIAL-DELIVERABLE.mp4

  • 03/23/2023: Beethoven's Grit and Gut

    You’ve probably seen the stories about how scientists used strands of Beethoven’s hair to examine his DNA. They did so in the hopes of trying to learn more about the cluster of illnesses that troubled the composer throughout his life. He was a mess. I knew that he was afflicted–most notably by a loss of […]

  • 03/22/2023: Historical Shade and political anti-intellectualism

    Governor Ron DeSantis gave this response to Donald Trump’s nickname “Ron Sanctimonious” in a recent interview: “I don’t know how to spell the sanctimonious one. I don’t really know what it means, but I kinda like it, it’s long, it’s got a lot of vowels. We’ll go with that, that’s fine.” The nickname thing is […]

  • 03/22/2023: John McPhee on reading out loud.

    From The Paris Review. INTERVIEWER Is reading your work aloud still important? MCPHEE Certainly the aural part of writing is a big, big thing to me. I can’t stand a sentence until it sounds right, and I’ll go over it again and again. Once the sentence rolls along in a certain way, that’s sentence A. […]

  • 03/21/2023: How Imprint helps me beat the morning and makes the day richer

    For those of you who have read my Atlantic essay on recapturing my day, you know about my daily fight to beat the morning. I have found an extremely useful tool: The Imprint app. I have developped a pretty good routine for keeeping focus while at my desk (thank you Calk Neport, Marshall Goldsmith, David […]

  • 03/18/2023: Writing: The leaving out

    I’ve written a lot in this space about the space in which art takes place. In the writing I’m working on now I’m working on that puzzle. How to say what you need to say, and how to evoke and how to carry along a reader without giving them too much. I don’t want to […]

  • 03/15/2023: Faith and Hope

    At the end of 2020 I wrote about that pandemic year so I wouldn’t forget what it was like. I wrote about hope and Thomas Merton: “By hope…the abstract and impersonal become …intimate conviction,” wrote the Trappist monk Thomas Merton. “What I believe in faith, I possess and make my own by hope.” Hope in […]