[This is written as a moderator, and is a suggestion to Said Achmiz, jessicata, and others, posted here because this is currently the highest-placed comment on the page that follows a particular pattern.]
Not paying attention to the semantic content of this comment, but rather its structure, notice that it is a series of quotes, often of a single sentence, followed by similarly short replies. While this is a standard technique in forum arguments, I claim that is mostly for undesirable reasons (like it being optimized for “scoring points”), and have found that it’s not a particularly helpful method of discussion.
My suggestion (and it is only a suggestion) is that you try an approach where you share your understanding of your interlocutor’s whole point or position with a paraphrase, attempt to identify the most fruitful part of the disagreement to work on, and then devote the remainder of the comment to that point. This keeps discussions focused on moving forward, doesn’t give an edge to the party with more attention to spare to the discussion, makes it harder to talk past one another repeatedly, and makes it easier to notice when core points are simply dropped from the argument.
Sometimes detailed line-checking is actually the correct thing to do, and a tree of point and counterpoint is the right approach. (And I haven’t read this thread carefully enough to decisively say this is not one of those situations.) But oftentimes this is much more effective once more foundational issues have been converged upon, such that the leaves of the tree do actually propagate back upwards to change root positions.
I made a proposal for a moderator tool that seems like it might have been helpful to this thread, partly in response to your bracketed text, and I’d be curious to hear your thoughts. https://github.com/LessWrong2/Lesswrong2/issues/610
[This is written as a moderator, and is a suggestion to Said Achmiz, jessicata, and others, posted here because this is currently the highest-placed comment on the page that follows a particular pattern.]
Not paying attention to the semantic content of this comment, but rather its structure, notice that it is a series of quotes, often of a single sentence, followed by similarly short replies. While this is a standard technique in forum arguments, I claim that is mostly for undesirable reasons (like it being optimized for “scoring points”), and have found that it’s not a particularly helpful method of discussion.
My suggestion (and it is only a suggestion) is that you try an approach where you share your understanding of your interlocutor’s whole point or position with a paraphrase, attempt to identify the most fruitful part of the disagreement to work on, and then devote the remainder of the comment to that point. This keeps discussions focused on moving forward, doesn’t give an edge to the party with more attention to spare to the discussion, makes it harder to talk past one another repeatedly, and makes it easier to notice when core points are simply dropped from the argument.
Sometimes detailed line-checking is actually the correct thing to do, and a tree of point and counterpoint is the right approach. (And I haven’t read this thread carefully enough to decisively say this is not one of those situations.) But oftentimes this is much more effective once more foundational issues have been converged upon, such that the leaves of the tree do actually propagate back upwards to change root positions.
I made a proposal for a moderator tool that seems like it might have been helpful to this thread, partly in response to your bracketed text, and I’d be curious to hear your thoughts. https://github.com/LessWrong2/Lesswrong2/issues/610
Please write more proposals like this.