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How to research

Some tools for navigating a complex world In a world where misinformation is rife, individuals need to be aware of conscious or sub-conscious false beliefs and ineffective methods of ascertaining 'what is going on'. Here is a non-exhaustive list of beliefs and approaches that probably do not help, following by a list of beliefs and approaches that probably do help. The 'don'ts' come before the 'dos', because a sound basis must be built on a *tabula rasa*. We need to deconstruct before we construct. This is essentially a personal memorandum I have shared because I have been asked to share it, and it will certainly evolve over time. You will probably disagree with some of these points. If you do, that's fine. I'm not here to argue. If you find this useful, great. If not, feel free to skip along. They are (largely) in the order in which they occurred to me. Feel free to share this with others. Feel free to copy the material. Beliefs and approaches that
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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 oppon
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