Link: Why and how to debate charitably
Even though this was written by a current Less Wrong poster (hi, pdf23ds!), I don’t think it has been posted here: Why and how to debate charitably (pg. 2, comments). (Edit: The original pdf23ds.net site has sadly been lost to entropy – Less Wrong poster MichaelBishop found a repost on commonsenseatheism.com. He also provides this summary version.)
I was linked to this article from a webcomic forum which had a low-key flamewar smouldering in the “Serious Business” section. (I will not link to it here; if you can tell from the description which forum it is, I would thank you not to link it either.) Three things struck me about it:
I have been operating under similar rules for years, with great success.
The participants in the flamewar on the forum where it was posted were not operating under these rules.
Less Wrong posters generally do operate under these rules, at least here.
The list of rules is on pg. 2 - a good example is the rule titled “You cannot read minds”:
As soon as you find someone espousing seemingly contradictory positions, you should immediately suspect yourself of being mistaken as to their intent. Even if it seems obvious to you that the person has a certain intent in their message, if you want to engage them, you must respond being open to the possibility that where you see contradictions (or, for that matter, insults), none were intended. While you keep in mind what the person’s contradictory position seems to be, raise your standards some, and ask questions so that the person must state the position more explicitly—this way, you can make sure whether they actually hold it. If you still have problems, keep raising your standards, and asking more specific questions, until the person starts making sense to you.
If part of their position is unclear or ambiguous to you, say that explicitly. Being willing to show uncertainty is an excellent way to defuse the person’s, and your own, defensiveness. It also helps them to more easily understand which aspects of their position they are not making clear enough.
The less their position makes sense to you, the more you should rely on interrogative phrase and the less on declarative. Questions defuse defensiveness and are much more pointed and communicative than statements, because they force you to think more about the person’s arguments, and to really articulate what it about their position you most need clarification on. They help to keep the discussion moving, and help you to stop arguing past each other. Phrase the questions sincerely, and use as much of the person’s own reasoning (putting in the best light) as you can. This requires that you have a pretty good grasp on what the person is arguing—try to understand their position as well as you can. If it’s simply not coherent enough, the case may be hopeless.
- 's comment on Article idea: Good argumentation by (27 Nov 2011 20:12 UTC; 7 points)
- Relink: Why and how to debate charitably by (17 Jul 2011 0:53 UTC; 6 points)
- 's comment on 6 Tips for Productive Arguments by (28 Mar 2012 16:11 UTC; 5 points)
- 's comment on Self-Congratulatory Rationalism by (10 Jun 2014 15:27 UTC; 0 points)
Nice link, thanks for sharing.
Normal, non-argumentative conversation is a good place to practice noticing misunderstandings. (Just stuff like assumptions about who’s going where, when something is taking place, or where people are starting from) Since the participants aren’t trying to win an argument, its easier to take a step back and realize that you’re not on the same page. Doing this a few times makes it easier to do in “arguments”.
If you’re talking with someone with a similar inferential landscape as you and it seems like they’re talking about something completely different, there’s a pretty good chance that they’re talking about something completely different.
And if they’re not inferentially close, you’re really probably talking about different things. Mind the gap.
Like it, although it works under the assumption that your fellow debator is a truth seeker. While its nice to hope that this is the case, anecdotal personal evidence would suggest not- many people I have argued with are out to win, not to learn, and to be honest I myself have slipped into such habits. If you still want to argue with such people, because you believe that you might be able to change their minds, or they might have information which could change yours, its possible that the techniques espoused here will be less effective.
It works even when they’re out to win. For added points, it even works when they’re subtly trolling, if you construct your reply sufficiently robustly. The lurkers will even support you in email. Because it is, concisely, a way of truth-seeking and getting along well with your debate partner at the same time.
I speak from recent experience of stuff I learned on LessWrong obtaining the desired effects in an Internet argument recently. Basically, posting here teaches me to write more clearly and concisely and teaches me lots about how to think about thinking.
(LessWrong: the philosophy blog that teaches you how to win at arguing on the Internet!)
This raises a tiny worry in me. It is possible that we’ve just discovered a set of really effective dark arts, and the dark arts are just so effective that people who believe they aren’t dark arts can use them to convince other people that they are actually good things to do.
No, this is using entirely honest and informative methods that don’t get people’s backs up more than one already intended to. It is a way to achieve a win-win outcome. A good Internet discussion should leave everyone feeling better in some way—it’s not zero sum. Your concern is a reasonable thing to watch out for, however.
The dark arts, as I understand the phrase, are techniques which can be used to persuade people about a position even if the position is false. Therefore logic isn’t a dark art, because it’s pretty hard to persuade someone about a falsity using logic. Ad hominem is a dark art, because it signals that the opponent has low status and people are biased to align their opinions with high-status peers, irrespectively of truth or falsity of the said opinions. Charitable debating style alleviates the status motivations and I don’t see what other biases it can exploit to promote a falsity.
But since we should rely on empirical evidence, let’s test it. The idea of the test is to select a false proposition (not trivially false, as (“2+2=17”), but also not subtly false (“there are ontologically fundamental qualia”) or too technical (“there is an error in the Wiles’ proof of Fermat’s last theorem”) and try to convince people about it on two comparable forums. On the first, use the techniques suspected of darkness, on the second, refrain from using them. Compare the numbers of convinced opponents.
Well, no. In an argument, the truth is a strong strategy—it’s not a bad reflection on truth or winning that sneaky methods can also win. That is, winning doesn’t imply dark artsiness.
Yes, although I would mention that this is the case more commonly than you might suppose.
Edit: That the other party is a truth seeker, I intended to say.
Great post thank you for sharing. This attitude seems is very important online where the feedback loop between conversational parters is often an order of magnitude larger or more then when the conversation takes place in person.
Given person A perceives a insult from B in an online form. A’s negative reaction to a perceived insult can grow and take root in the amount of time it takes for B to clarify that no insult was intended. A can experience persisting negative emotions toward B even after it is clear to A on a conscience level that B intended no insult. In person it is often possible to clear these falsely perceived insults more quickly because of the quicker turn around time in the conversation and the high bandwidth communication allowed by the addition of body language and tone of voice.
The harder part in my opinion is communicating to peers the fact they are breaking these rules. In my observations even people who are good at updating on everyday topics have a difficult time updating how they update or changing/discussing their communication methods; many people attach these fundamentally to their definition of themselves and perceive any criticism as an attempt to harm them and react defensively.
Which one if either is do you perceive as more negative/harmful. B says to A.
I think you are wrong on topic T because of X and Y.
I think you are being irrational on topic T because of B and C.
Approach two is more likely to be received negatively, even though approach two helps to correct irrationalities that will often apply equal to many topics not just T, while approach one mainly helps with only topic T. Approach two directly tries to solve the root of the problem, while approach one tries to solve symptoms of the problem. Approach two is preferred in all cases where it is not urgent to come to a conclusion on topic T, when it is thought that person A’s reaction will not be to shut down conversation and approach two does not makes it considerably less likely for A to update.
There must be a good way to frame approach two. How about “I think B and C are causing you to come to wrong conclusions on topic T.”? Or some other way of trying to push the Bad bits to something A perceives as external. “I think B and C are causing you to communicate poorly on topic T.”
This could work if you know them well enough to know what the root causes of the irrationality are. Online however that is often not the case. It is more likely that B and C are just symptoms. In some cases B and C are not evidence of irrationality and B has misperceived them. It does not matter how open B is to correction on the issue though if A reacts negatively to to the statement however.
This is definitely less heavy. Though I have encountered many people who tie themselves too closely to their method of communication and have a hard time updating on it.
When a particular communication style, argument style seems to be the cause of many communication failures and unresolved arguments, two options come to my mind: go for breadth or dig deep. Going for breadth would be taking a new approach or several to get the point across such as the new approaches you offered. Digging deep would be B reducing and defining every part of A’s supposed failing argument style iteratively with A. This would continue until it is clear where the difference in perception lies and weather or not it possible to resolve the issue with the data at hand or if further data is need and perhaps even how to obtain it.
Going for breadth can resolve the argument in one step if you hit one of the right argument out of the near infinite number of incorrect arguments. Being overly optimistic about picking the right argument by going for breadth increases the time it takes to resolve the argument compared to the many step, often tedious dig deep.
Digging deep is surprisingly often shortens the time to resolution when compared to going for breadth. It only works if A and B are will to spend the effort to do so though.
I tend to shorten this to “what am I missing?” and it works fairly well.