How to discuss

Much discussion is simply attack masked as debate. Let's look at how this happens. The following is an informal, non-exhaustive list of what can go wrong in discussion, followed by a simple set of guidelines that can help to foster constructive discussion.

- Attacking the person (as opposed to addressing the argument)

- Construing another's challenge of your argument as a personal attack

- Construing another's challenge of your argument as an attack on free speech

- The use of emotive or inflammatory language

- The use of profanity or demeaning language

- Invoking light-and-darkness, good-and-evil, innocent-and-guilty oppositions

- Fostering fear or anger

- Exaggerating the threat posed by a view, an action, or a policy

- Exaggerating own suffering or privation to elicit sympathy and demonise others

- _Reductio ad absurdam_ (false extrapolation to undesirable extremes)

- False analogy with extreme historical scenarios

- Deploying straw-man arguments (caricature of the opponent's view, then attacking the caricature rather than the actual view)

- Discerning large-scale, systematic, unevidenced, covert conspiracy (actual conspiracies tend to be messy and clumsy and produce plenty of unambiguous direct evidence)

- Presupposing malicious or nefarious intent on the part of others

- Deflecting challenge by turning the tables

- Drawing false parallels between your own and others' views or conduct ('what-about-ism')

- Taking ideas, facts, or events out of context

- Attempting to silence others by threatening retaliation

- Attempting to shut down legitimate challenge or discussion on grounds of unity

- Inferring support for a particular position from widespread general backing (e.g. from voters)

- Viewing common sense as a joker card that defeats evidence plus reason

- Digression, diversion, and downright filibuster

Now we've got those out of the way, let's look at approaches to discussion that are helpful:

- Define your terms

- If you're going to talk about racism, equality, social justice, freedom, democracy, etc., establish a working definition of your term.

- For instance, if two people are talking about equality, yet they unwittingly disagree on what equality means (e.g. equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome), the discussion will fail

- Establish the framework. This could include:

- Facts and circumstances pertinent to the discussion (unless your opponent recognises the current core scientific consensus on climate change, it's a waste of time talking about solutions)

- Authoritative sources of information

- The timeline that brought us to here

- Define the purpose of the discussion

- Erect fences to stop the discussion veering off into the ditches on either side of the road

- Are we trying to establish:

- What happened

- Causality

- Culpability

- How to solve a particular problem

- What works or does not work

- What the strategy should be

- What the policy should be

- What to do next?

- Take turns. Listen. Pause. Remain respectful. Concede when wrong.

- Make the following distinctions:

- Detail vs big picture

- Something might seem a great idea in isolation but creates bigger problems

- Branch vs node

- Some branches of discussions are interesting but lead nowhere

- Nodes are junctures where the whole course of the remaining discussion depends on the determination made

- Principle vs rule

- Principles are adaptable to circumstances and must be juggled with each other

- Rules are applied bluntly and require no discretion

- Means vs ends

- The means might be laudable, but do they achieve the desired ends?

- Short-term effects vs long-term effects

- Sticking plasters vs surgery

- Kicking problems down the road

- Short-term pain vs long-term gain

- Surface reality vs deep reality

- Fixing the surface won't necessarily fix the underlying problem.

- An unresolved underlying problem will simply manifest elsewhere

- Individual virtues vs systems of virtue

- Focusing in on an individual right or wrong ...

- ... yet ignoring the bigger system of which the right or wrong is part

- If things get heated, bogged down, or circular, adjourn

- Pause

- Refine the scope (including the terms, framework, and purpose) and start again

- Be prepared to give up the discussion as lost ... for now

- A lot of constructive discussions can't be had until other blocks are removed