Interesting. Some time ago I was planning on writing some things on how to have an argument well, but I found a lot of it was already covered by Eliezer in “37 ways words can be wrong”. I think this covers a lot of the rest of it! Things like “Spot your interlocutor points so you can get to the heart of the matter; you can always unspot them later if they turn out to be more crucial than you realized.”
One thing I’ve tried sometimes is actively proposing reasons for my interlocutor’s beliefs when they don’t volunteer any, and seeing if they agree with any; unfortunately this doesn’t seem to have gone well when I’ve done it. (Maybe because the tone of “and I have a counterargument prepared for each one!” was apparent and came off as a bit too hostile. :P ) Not sure that any real conclusions can be drawn from my failures there though.
actively proposing reasons for my interlocutor’s beliefs when they don’t volunteer any, and seeing if they agree with any; unfortunately this doesn’t seem to have gone well when I’ve done it.
Yeah, when you ask leading questions (“You are saying X is true, do you think so because you believe that Y happens?”), people tend to get unreasonably suspicious :-/
Interesting. Some time ago I was planning on writing some things on how to have an argument well, but I found a lot of it was already covered by Eliezer in “37 ways words can be wrong”. I think this covers a lot of the rest of it! Things like “Spot your interlocutor points so you can get to the heart of the matter; you can always unspot them later if they turn out to be more crucial than you realized.”
One thing I’ve tried sometimes is actively proposing reasons for my interlocutor’s beliefs when they don’t volunteer any, and seeing if they agree with any; unfortunately this doesn’t seem to have gone well when I’ve done it. (Maybe because the tone of “and I have a counterargument prepared for each one!” was apparent and came off as a bit too hostile. :P ) Not sure that any real conclusions can be drawn from my failures there though.
Yeah, when you ask leading questions (“You are saying X is true, do you think so because you believe that Y happens?”), people tend to get unreasonably suspicious :-/