Does anyone else, other than me, have a problem with noticing when the discussion they’re having is getting more abstract? I’m often reminded of this fact when debating some topic. This is relating to the point on “Narrowing the scope”, and how to notice the need to do this.
A general strategy of “can I completely reverse my current claim and have it still make sense?” is a good one for this. When you’re talking about big, vague concepts, you can usually just flip them over and they still sound like reasonable opinions/positions to take. When you flip it and it seems like nonsense, or seems provably, specifically wrong, that means you’re into concrete territory. Try just … adopting a strategy of doing this 3-5 times per long conversation?
This seems useful and simple enough to try. I’ll set up an implementation intention to do this next time I find myself in a long conversation. It also reminds me of the reversal test, a heuristic for eliminating status-quo bias.
Does anyone else, other than me, have a problem with noticing when the discussion they’re having is getting more abstract? I’m often reminded of this fact when debating some topic. This is relating to the point on “Narrowing the scope”, and how to notice the need to do this.
A general strategy of “can I completely reverse my current claim and have it still make sense?” is a good one for this. When you’re talking about big, vague concepts, you can usually just flip them over and they still sound like reasonable opinions/positions to take. When you flip it and it seems like nonsense, or seems provably, specifically wrong, that means you’re into concrete territory. Try just … adopting a strategy of doing this 3-5 times per long conversation?
This seems useful and simple enough to try. I’ll set up an implementation intention to do this next time I find myself in a long conversation. It also reminds me of the reversal test, a heuristic for eliminating status-quo bias.
Bostrom, Ord (2006)