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...