The reason this question comes up in the first place is because there’s multiple conversation and debate styles that have different properties, and you need some kind of name to distinguish them. Naming things is hard, and I’m not attached to any particular name.
The thing I currently call “Adversarial Collaboration” is where two people are actively working together, in a process that is adversarial, but where they have some kind of shared good faith that if each of them represents their respective viewpoint well, the truth will emerge.
A different thing, which I’d currently call “Adversarial Truthseeking”, is like the first one, but where there’s not as much of a shared framework of whether and how the process is supposed to produce net truth. Two people meet in the wild, think each other are wrong, and argue.
What I currently call “Collaborative Truthseeking” typically makes sense when two people are building a product together on a team. It’s not very useful to say “you’re wrong because X”, because the goal is not to prove ideas wrong, it’s to build a product. “You’re wrong because X, but Y might work instead” is more useful, because it actually moves you closer to a working model. It can also do a fairly complex thing of reaffirming trust, such that people remain truthseeking rather than trying to win.
And yes, each of these can be “collaborative” in some sense, but you need some kind of word for the difference.
(There are also things where you’re doing something that looks collaborative but isn’t truthseeking, and something that looks adversarial but isn’t truthseeking)
And each of those tend to involve fairly different mental states, which facilitate different mental motions. Adversarial truthseeking seems most likely (to me) to result in people treating arguments as soldiers and other political failure modes.
What I currently call “Collaborative Truthseeking” typically makes sense when two people are building a product together on a team. It’s not very useful to say “you’re wrong because X”, because the goal is not to prove ideas wrong, it’s to build a product. “You’re wrong because X, but Y might work instead” is more useful, because it actually moves you closer to a working model. It can also do a fairly complex thing of reaffirming trust, such that people remain truthseeking rather than trying to win.
What if we’re building a product together, and I think you’re wrong about something, but I don’t know what might work instead? What should I say to you?
(See, e.g., this exchange, and pretend that cousin_it and I were members of a project team, building some sort of web app or forum software together.)
There’s a couple significant aspects of that exchange that make it look more collaborative than adversarial to me.
Copying the text here for reference:
Isn’t allowing <object> an invitation for XSS?
Also, at least for me, click-to-enlarge images and slide galleries weren’t essential to enjoying your post.
The first sentence could have been worded “Allowing <object> is an invitation to XSS.” This would have (to me) come across as a bit harsher. The “Isn’t?” frame gives it more a sense of “hey, you know this, right?”. It signifies that the relationship is between two people who reasonably know what they’re doing, whereas the other phrasing would have communicated an undertone of “you’re wrong and should have known better and I know better than you.” (how strong the undertone is depends on the existing relationship. In this case I think it would have probably been relatively week)
Moreover, the second sentence actually just fits the collaborative frame as I specified it: cousin_it specifically says “the product didn’t need the features that required <object>”, therefore there’s no more work to be done. And meanwhile says “I enjoyed your post”, which indicates that they generally like what you did. All of this helps reinforce “hey, we’re on the same side, building a thing together.”
(I do suspect you could find an example that doesn’t meet these criteria but still is a reasonable workplace exchange. I don’t think you *never* need to say ‘hey, you’re wrong here’, just that if you’re saying it all the time without helping to solve the underlying problems, something is off about your team dynamics.
Probably not going to have time to delve much further into this for now though)
The reason this question comes up in the first place is because there’s multiple conversation and debate styles that have different properties, and you need some kind of name to distinguish them. Naming things is hard, and I’m not attached to any particular name.
The thing I currently call “Adversarial Collaboration” is where two people are actively working together, in a process that is adversarial, but where they have some kind of shared good faith that if each of them represents their respective viewpoint well, the truth will emerge.
A different thing, which I’d currently call “Adversarial Truthseeking”, is like the first one, but where there’s not as much of a shared framework of whether and how the process is supposed to produce net truth. Two people meet in the wild, think each other are wrong, and argue.
What I currently call “Collaborative Truthseeking” typically makes sense when two people are building a product together on a team. It’s not very useful to say “you’re wrong because X”, because the goal is not to prove ideas wrong, it’s to build a product. “You’re wrong because X, but Y might work instead” is more useful, because it actually moves you closer to a working model. It can also do a fairly complex thing of reaffirming trust, such that people remain truthseeking rather than trying to win.
And yes, each of these can be “collaborative” in some sense, but you need some kind of word for the difference.
(There are also things where you’re doing something that looks collaborative but isn’t truthseeking, and something that looks adversarial but isn’t truthseeking)
And each of those tend to involve fairly different mental states, which facilitate different mental motions. Adversarial truthseeking seems most likely (to me) to result in people treating arguments as soldiers and other political failure modes.
Abram’s hierarchy of conversational styles is a somewhat different lens on the whole thing that I also mostly endorse.
What if we’re building a product together, and I think you’re wrong about something, but I don’t know what might work instead? What should I say to you?
(See, e.g., this exchange, and pretend that cousin_it and I were members of a project team, building some sort of web app or forum software together.)
There’s a couple significant aspects of that exchange that make it look more collaborative than adversarial to me.
Copying the text here for reference:
The first sentence could have been worded “Allowing <object> is an invitation to XSS.” This would have (to me) come across as a bit harsher. The “Isn’t?” frame gives it more a sense of “hey, you know this, right?”. It signifies that the relationship is between two people who reasonably know what they’re doing, whereas the other phrasing would have communicated an undertone of “you’re wrong and should have known better and I know better than you.” (how strong the undertone is depends on the existing relationship. In this case I think it would have probably been relatively week)
Moreover, the second sentence actually just fits the collaborative frame as I specified it: cousin_it specifically says “the product didn’t need the features that required <object>”, therefore there’s no more work to be done. And meanwhile says “I enjoyed your post”, which indicates that they generally like what you did. All of this helps reinforce “hey, we’re on the same side, building a thing together.”
(I do suspect you could find an example that doesn’t meet these criteria but still is a reasonable workplace exchange. I don’t think you *never* need to say ‘hey, you’re wrong here’, just that if you’re saying it all the time without helping to solve the underlying problems, something is off about your team dynamics.
Probably not going to have time to delve much further into this for now though)