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I’d like to offer an alternative framing: don’t debate at all, just listen.

There are two wanys of looking at this. Doing nothing means you lose the opportunity to possibly correct an innocent mistake or to set the record. But it's also possible you may have no clue what you are talking about.



Listening doesn't mean you say nothing, otherwise the other side will (eventually) just stop. Listening means asking the right questions.

Imagine someone has an out-there idea. Listening means you go along with them and have them explain it to you. And you play the nice, slightly curious, but not too curious person that has an open mind and ask the doubting questions. You know more Judo, less boxing, instead of punching and dodging you just make sure when they come at you, their own energy carries them into positions they have to deal with.

I tell you, a big fraction of the people's strongly held opinions completely fall apart when you just make them explain it in detail. And if they realized it is bullshit themselves that is a much more valuable thing than any fact you could ever provide.

Especially naive people with wrong opinions have a strong reactance. That means if you tell them they are wrong (something they are used to being told), they will now treat this as a fight and you as the enemy and they will proudly lie to themselves (1+1=3) just to one-up you.

That means the best way to get into productive territory with those people is to not swallow the bait and slowly go from where they are into a direction that is completely new to them.

That also means leaving arguments like "I studied $X" or "scientific journal $Y says $Z" at the door. Those basically trigger them back into learned talking points


It reads like you're saying people should fake being open to arguments while actually already having made up their mind from the start.

>Imagine someone has an out-there idea

How would one know the idea is out-there until one has listened and understood what someone else is saying?

>And you play the nice, slightly curious, but not too curious person that has an open mind...

I don't have to "play" this part, unless I were someone who isn't naturally nice and curious.


One won't know, of course. I thought the whole point of saying "Imagine" is given such a situation, how to deal with it. Of course, while listening if it isn't an out-there idea, listen, converse and follow up.


It's a hypothetical, sure. Imagine a debater who feigns being open to your viewpoint, with the actual purpose of steering the conversation into territory you may be less familiar with so they can in their view "beat" you there. I'd refer to this as a debating tactic, not listening. Or maybe listening à la Ben Shapiro.


ObXkcd: 386

"Debate" and "listen" are not the only two options.

Debate, specifically, comes from a mode of communication called rhetoric, or persuasive argument.

There are other forms of communicating, including simply narrating or relating an event or position, entertainment, and others, one of which is dialectic.

As I've commented a few times over the years here, confusing dilectic and rhetorical conversation is one of the oldest confounding points of conversations in the book --- it's what Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle wrote on at length (particularly Plato railing against the Sophists, that is, rhetoriticians, and Aristotle's Sophistical Refutations, a/k/a "bullshit arguments that must die" to put a contemporary spin on it.

Derek's entire premise strikes me as ... extraordinarily blinkered here. If you find you want to impart your own wisdom, it's possible to do so other than through raw debate. In particular, the mode of simple discussion or Socratic Method, in which you ask questions which (might) lead your interlocutor to reach the conclusion you're suggesting on their own seems especially valid.

"Had you considered X" or "How would you address Y" being possible entry points for that.




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