That’s a kind of problem that I witness regularly when I argue with someone, and it is indeed very frustrating (and I’ve to admit that in the “heat” of debate, it happens to me to commit it too, not the Y->Z->Y but the Y->Z without conceding a local defeat, and I usually only realize I did it afterwards, and then I feel bad… but I’m working on it).
Like other very valid points you posted on other articles (taboo, semantic stopsigns, …) it’s very interesting to know them, they help a lot to understand “what went wrong” in a debate that didn’t reach an agreement (or at least, which didn’t manage to make any of the two change their minds the slightest). But it’s very hard to use them to improve the quality of the debate.
I tried playing the “taboo” but without the full explanation of the rationalist taboo, well, it’s very easy to inconsciously switch back to a synonym—to cheat instead of forcing to reduce. I fear the same with the other points… and saying to someone during a debate “well, go read the Sequences on LW and come back when you are done” is also a form of logical rudeness.
Anyone knows methods or ways to use the knowledge acquired on LW to actually improve the quality of a debate (and by that I don’t mean “to win the argument” but “to increase the chance that at least one of the two changes a bit his mind”) ? But I fear it’s a problem of inferential distances and there is no real solution to it...
It’s orthogonal to most of the Sequences, but I have found good results from “meta-teaming up” with my debate partner. That is, after a short debate long enough to expose both our views, I stop the other person and ask them to go meta and help me pick apart my argument. This usually earns enough goodwill to overcome “this guy’s my opponent” long enough for us to then team up and pick apart their argument. Where you focus this picking-apart is how the debate will succeed: if you focus on your areas of disagreements, you get mind-changing—if you focus on prior assumptions, you get a better picture of the person’s mental model—and so on.
I learned this from code duels: when two people disagree over the best way to write some function or program, they go off and both do it, then come back and compare notes. I was impressed by how they don’t simply run their code and point at faster response times, but actually work through the logic and see where their two solutions differ. This seemed obviously applicable to arguments, and it’s worked for me so far.
Caveat: I’ve only tried it a few times, there may be some “fails badly” moment I’m not aware of yet.
That’s a kind of problem that I witness regularly when I argue with someone, and it is indeed very frustrating (and I’ve to admit that in the “heat” of debate, it happens to me to commit it too, not the Y->Z->Y but the Y->Z without conceding a local defeat, and I usually only realize I did it afterwards, and then I feel bad… but I’m working on it).
Like other very valid points you posted on other articles (taboo, semantic stopsigns, …) it’s very interesting to know them, they help a lot to understand “what went wrong” in a debate that didn’t reach an agreement (or at least, which didn’t manage to make any of the two change their minds the slightest). But it’s very hard to use them to improve the quality of the debate.
I tried playing the “taboo” but without the full explanation of the rationalist taboo, well, it’s very easy to inconsciously switch back to a synonym—to cheat instead of forcing to reduce. I fear the same with the other points… and saying to someone during a debate “well, go read the Sequences on LW and come back when you are done” is also a form of logical rudeness.
Anyone knows methods or ways to use the knowledge acquired on LW to actually improve the quality of a debate (and by that I don’t mean “to win the argument” but “to increase the chance that at least one of the two changes a bit his mind”) ? But I fear it’s a problem of inferential distances and there is no real solution to it...
It’s orthogonal to most of the Sequences, but I have found good results from “meta-teaming up” with my debate partner. That is, after a short debate long enough to expose both our views, I stop the other person and ask them to go meta and help me pick apart my argument. This usually earns enough goodwill to overcome “this guy’s my opponent” long enough for us to then team up and pick apart their argument. Where you focus this picking-apart is how the debate will succeed: if you focus on your areas of disagreements, you get mind-changing—if you focus on prior assumptions, you get a better picture of the person’s mental model—and so on.
I learned this from code duels: when two people disagree over the best way to write some function or program, they go off and both do it, then come back and compare notes. I was impressed by how they don’t simply run their code and point at faster response times, but actually work through the logic and see where their two solutions differ. This seemed obviously applicable to arguments, and it’s worked for me so far.
Caveat: I’ve only tried it a few times, there may be some “fails badly” moment I’m not aware of yet.