I want to lose every debate | Hacker News Reader

I want to lose every debate

sive.rs

478 pointsTomte368 comments

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

While high school debate did teach me many positive lessons and I am thankful that I spent four years of my life doing it, many years later I have come to understand that it also taught me something truly negative: that the point of a conversation is to win.

I have put a lot of time in my adult life unlearning that trait, and reflecting on the harm it did to my relationships with other people.

If you want to grow like OP here suggests—which I think is a valuable, worthwhile goal—you will do yourself a great service in learning to listen. I know we all think that we do this, but I don’t think many of us actually do.

When you talk to others, take note of how much of the time you spend formulating a response. I know that for me, I find that frequently I’m already generating my rebuttal before they finish speaking. I am effectively listening to respond, not to hear what they have to say. I’m much much better at listening to hear today than I was a decade ago, but I still have to correct myself on this routinely.

It’s important to note that you can listen to hear and still be free to respond; if you want to have an interesting conversation you will definitely need to put in some effort too. Just make sure that you’re internalizing what they’ve said before you form a response to it. It will almost certainly slow down the pace of a conversation but stands a decent chance of making each exchange a lot more interesting for both of you.

I really believe that the most profound realizations of my life have come when I shut up and put in the effort to internalize what other people around me were doing and saying.

I recently read a similar point phrased in a way that really resonated: “if you’re right, you’ll still be right in five minutes” (so you might as well listen carefully in case you’re wrong).

While this is good advice, it is still in a debate-mindset where, ultimately, it is about "winning" a conversation. But if you argue with someone who holds factually wrong opinions is it truly winning "if you showed them" and they think "what an asshole" and move on? That type of person is practised at brushing off a debate loss. That means if you enjoy winning such a debate it tells more about you than about the person opposite.

The best conversations I had with the worst people stemmed from me not even telling them my opinion at all. I just asked them to explain theirs to me and asked the questions that occured to me in a respectful manner. Leaving them in healthy confusion and doubt afterwards (and learning a thing or two about them on the way) is more rewarding than winning a debate with them. Sometimes those people really surprise you as well, because they hold a combination of opinions that seem incompatible to you.

"Winning" a debate can have value if there's an audience and where there's something important at stake, but people need to consider that if you get into "debate mode", there's virtually zero chance the other side will consider your viewpoint for a second, so it's a tradeoff with respect to whether convincing an audience matters or having a good conversation where both sides are open to learning something.

I absolutely agree with you that the best conversations tends to come from the latter approach you describe. Unfortunately, it can often be difficult and take some skill to avoid pushing the other person into "debate mode" by making them feel like they're losing. Especially if there's an audience, however small.

Has anyone ever provided any evidence, that debate content ever influenced audience's opinions?

Debate can be fun (for some) as a game, and force you to articulate your position well, and you can learn from it. But there are different modes of engagement which are often much more helpful.

What people often don't realize is that winning a debate doesn't necessarily mean you side with the truth. A debate is aimed at winning on your existing opinions and the other losing. It is not aimed at discovery, validation or learning. Victory is more important than truth, and a lot of 'good moves' in a debate actually bring you further away from the truth.

If you engage in a conversation where you are both curious and submit to what's true (whatever that means), this conversation will rarely be a debate.

If a debate is in public between skilled debaters who show sportsmanship, then I think the public can gain a lot because a debate forces you to be very on point.

> A debate is aimed at winning on your existing opinions and the other losing.

That's true of the sort of debate that's practiced competitively by "debating teams", but I don't think it's always true of debate as the word is used in an everyday context. A debate can also be more like a dialectic.

> force you to articulate your position well

That's the problem with how we see a debate. It's just about that. There's no need to present your position in a compelling way or find common grounds with whoever you're debating.

If you read any books by professional negotiators - you'll notice that they conduct themselves very differently than you would in a debate.

Getting to Yes and Getting Past No have been eye opening to me. I no longer feel like I even need to "win an argument".

> the public can gain a lot because a debate forces you to be very on point

I recall reading some articles stating, that debates fail to convince anyone of anything. Public debates only encourage tribalism, IMO. If you watch a presidential debate - no amount of "winning" changed people's opinions.

I can even argue, that just hearing "X won the debate" will cause more impact; compared to listening to them.

Sounds like Socratic method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method

Very good advice. A classic debate tactic is to coerce the opponent to hastily misspeak and then force them to defend their poorly worded statements. Cooler heads usually prevail. The classic defense is to slow it down by asking them to clarify their position. You can take it from there if you want to debate or not.

Most people aren't debating you on purpose so there's no point as they continue to rubber duck (and maybe even thank you later). In case they really are in it for a debate, then by all means proceed.

These sorts of mindsets are predicated on the assumption that two people "talking it out" or possibly appealing to google will arrive on "the right answer".

While in reality for many things there are judgement calls, trade-offs, unknowns and basically "it depends". In software, POCs, trial&error, R&D, etc help you test out the options.

Many would do better to frame a discussion as surfacing the risks, trade-offs, potential pitfalls, and benefits of different answers such that the "bad answer" is avoided, more than "the one right answer" is somehow discovered.

Yes, this is the real purpose of debate. It's an adversarial method of ensuring all important factors in a decision are brought up and heard by all involved, so they can go on to make the tradeoffs they think are right on their own. Nobody has to win or convince anyone of anything.

I think you need to be mindful if your "adversary" enjoys the "adversarial" method or, like many introverted software devs, is simply expediting the conversation to get away from you.

That's what a moderator/chairperson is for. They give the word to alternating perspectives and then after a few exchanges call for a decision.

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.

> the point of a conversation is to win

I have a feeling that a lot of people think this. Coming to an 'agree to disagree' is really had for some people. Sometimes there's no other option though, because both people seem to know the same facts, they just have differing opinions on how to deal with those facts.

> take note of how much of the time you spend formulating a response

I've been paying attention to this for years now after hearing or reading something similar. I haven't been able to change this, but sometimes it's helped me move back to listening and not missing important details because of it.

The point is you don't even have to agree to disagree — it is not mandatory to tell the other person your opinion. You can also just listen to theirs and ask questions etc.

A conversation can be much, much more than a clash of opinions. Going into a conversation with the idea of "the other guy is wrong" is a sure way of never understanding how they arrived at that wrong opinion to begin with. Yet sometimes precisely this is the most valuable thing you could learn from them.

> A conversation can be much, much more than a clash of opinions.

It can be, but sometimes it isn't. Those are the cases I was talking about where agreeing to disagree can be a good outcome.

> it is not mandatory to tell the other person your opinion.

Even more -- it is not mandatory to have an opinion on everything.

> Coming to an 'agree to disagree' is really hard for some people

In many cases the person you talk to don't really disagree, but pretends to due to ideologic or some BS reason. Maybe they don't want to say the real reason they think X.

The "agree to disagree" is often used as an escape hatch for hypocrisy.

> The "agree to disagree" is often used as an escape hatch for hypocrisy.

Sometimes. Other times it's a great way to point out that hypocrisy by pointing out you all have the same information, yet you come to different conclusions/opinions.

Sometimes it's a conscious decision to have all the facts and ignore them. It's not hypocritical in that case.

Yeah, even though "agree to disagree" is the admission of a stalemate anyway rather than anyone "winning" or "losing"...

When someone tries explaining something to me, I try to summarize what this person said when they are finished. E.g., "So you're saying that <summary here>" or "It seems like <summary here>". This forces me to actively listen and remember what the other person has said. Afterwards, I'm looking for a response in the lines of "That's correct!" or "That's right!", or a correction and explanation that I haven't heard it correctly. Even if I don't agree with the other persons believes, this seems to build good relationships.

That is what is called active listening, and is a good way to do it.

Reminds me of the interview with Jordan Peterson, where the interviewer said "so you're saying that <some invented bullshit that J.P. never actually said>".

So I agree with you as long as you don't fall into that trap of putting false words in the other mouth.

It is also useful if the other person won't accept any other phrasing that word-by-word quoting, even if in good faith, and accurate. It shows they are not willing to compromise.

In situations where someasks "so you're saying that..." followed by something they didn't say it might very well be on purpose, but in other cases being explicit about how you understood someone can allow them to elaborate and correct your understanding.

It's much better than just continuing the conversation under a false assumption.

I agree - especially in an interview situation where many of us still have a vestigial instinct that an interviewer is not biased and is informed, we can assume that what they say is an objective interpretation.

In that instance, doing that actually exposed it quite well. Jordan Peterson is able to respond off the cuff, so a reasonable percentage of the audience didn't walk away having assimilated the interviewer's version of his position.

The subsequent Joe Rogan interview of Jordan Peterson was illuminating. Joe Rogan is, against the odds, a good interviewer, because he listens and engages, and only occasionally challenges.

Always found it funny how admitting that Joe is a good interviewer is some type of a concession.

He’s probably the highest paid interviewer on the planet, of course he’s good at what he does! If he hadn’t found the ire of the online progressive crowd by letting on some unsavories, he’d probably be regarded super positively across the board. It’s crazy how many times I’ve seen web-activists go for blood with this guy and come up empty handed. Why is it hard for people to admit he’s just a really good podcaster?

I don't know. I didn't "admit" it; I just said it.

Yes my apologies - that wasn't aimed at you specifically, just a poorly phrased observation.

No worries!

He is a good podcaster, but he has a habit of publishing misinformation also, which his audience seem not to scrutinise.

Interviews, especially televised ones, are a performance. You're explicitly not trying to convince the interviewer of anything, you're trying to give a good interview, ostensibly for the benefit of whoever is watching. Politicians, for example, are famous for doing whatever they can, in more and less elegant ways, to talk about the things that they are interested in conveying (the "talking points") and not about whatever it is the interviewer is asking.

This is not the point of this technique. This technique is about actually talking to a person, one-on-one, and trying to understand what they mean. No one else is watching, or at least the interview isn't being recorded.

Verbal Aikido with Fred Kofman is right up that alley.

https://youtu.be/O6N9nvk8bvE

That sounds like the public debates which seem to be more of a thing in the US in general, but go back to e.g. the Greek and Roman traditions; two people debating with an audience taking in both sides.

The problem I have with modern-day debates (I mainly catch the political ones) is that they're not at all good or in good faith, there's a lot of "but YOU did this", a lot of dismissals, and no good structure; the moderator does not do their job very well in a lot of cases.

Mind you, that depends on the politician as well. Populists (e.g. Trump) are not good at all in debates.

Populists (e.g. Trump) are not good at all in debates.

Depends what you think the point of the TV debate actually is. Trump, for all his flaws, instinctively understood the actual point of the televised debate, and crushed all his primary opponents. He knew that his target audience didn't care if he was right or wrong on any of the facts or detail, they want someone who looked strong and confident and commanding, so that's what he focused on.

There is nothing more tedious in adult life than some debate club weenie trying to turn every random fucking conversation into a debate.

I strongly suspect debate club has a net negative impact on peoples social skills. It teaches a bunch of anti patterns to successful social interactions.

Like, you will be shooting the shit with the lads down pub the once or twice you see them per year when this dickhead (and every group has one) picks up on something and decides it's time to flex his master debater skills yet again.

Related absolutely cringe inducing behaviour includes the following:

- the "I am very smart" contrarian (so half of this website) - the "gonna then everything into politics" (liberal) one - the "gonna turn everything into politics" (conservative) one - that guy who says "let's not get political" (proceeds to get extremely political) - "uhm ackshually" overcorrecting guy - guy who doesn't know dick about a topic but will pontificate on it

Its entirely possible to unlearn these behaviours. The first thing is to realize you don't always have to respond.

Someone says something wrong in passing? Ignore it, move on.

Someone says something you disagree with? Evaluate if the inevitable unresolved and probably heated argument that will happen when you make it an issue is worth the time, effort, and awkwardness for everyone else present.

Someone says something exceptionally disagreeable? Just fucking leave it be and disengage as soon as possible. The fight isn't worth the time.

- the one that compulsively comments on formatting without discussing the actual topic ;)

- agreed, though, that these are all flavours of trying to ‘win’ rather than actually contributing meaningfully

Debate clubs have you argue points that you don't necessarily agree with, they compete in rhetorics, not proving they are right.

A wise man argues not to prove he's right, he's arguing to become right.

Assuming (or at least allowing) your "opponent" knows something you don't is about all it takes to take a casual debate from a nuisance to learning experience.

And another favorite sign of the debating idiocy: the "this-is-a-fallacy" corrector, using fallacy lists to point "logical errors" in discussions...

What do you talk about if not these issues? What is a conversation to you? It feels like you've successfully eliminated any disagreement from your conversations. Or is that just relevant to "shooting the shit with the lads down the pub once or twice a year"? When can we have discussions that might show disagreement?

It's entirely possible to have a conversation about all those topics but gets increasingly difficult when your friends fall in the cliche 80/20 category. 80% great people 20% not so much. I think parent poster has more of a problem with those types. You can chill and have fun but certain taboos open a can of worms that nobody wants to deal with especially when you just wanna decompress and have a few beers.

There's a time and place for everything and friendship dynamics get...complicated.

It feels to me that's the crux of it. Friendship dynamics are not universal even within a friendship group. It might be the desire not to "debate" makes the GP author the 20% outlier. It feels a bit like "well that's just like your opinion man".

There is still usually some disagreement, but in many social settings (eg, having a few pints at the pub with people you rarely see), topics of discussion usually are what people have been up to, and other "light topics".

In most social situations "heavy" discussion or "debating" is entirely unwarranted and brings the overall mood down.

There are plenty of discussion groups and meetups if you want to hotly debate politics or suchlike!

There are also "third ways", so to speak, ways to have people feel comfortable without resorting only to least-common-denominator "harmless" topics.

I have been a regular at several places (sometimes coffee shops) across the country where I can sense very real substantive conversations. Sometimes people just need a little nudge to get out of their comfort zone.

Such interactions can help bring people even closer. It takes intention and some experimentation.

one can disagree in open mode (socrates) and disagree in closed mode (Ben Shapiro). If both people are looking forward to learning from the disagreement I find that a lot more fun than if both people are looking forward to appearing smarter than the other person.

There's disagreement and there's verbal battle. Those are not the same.

I don't hate debaters, but there is a particular dismissive type that doesn't want to give you an inch or agree to disagree and theirs has to be the last word.

I have an aunt who seems to have a need to disagree at all times. The most amusing example was while she was talking politics with my father and he said “I completely agree with everything you just said.” Her response - “Well you must not have understood me.”

I have your aunt's problem. Speculations like oppositional-defiance disorder and Narcissism have been thrown at me as possible explanations.

I'd argue (heh) that what this behavior boils down to is: I'm restating what you're saying, only in terms I can understand, which makes me come across as argumentative. You're "wrong" only in that what you're saying doesn't compute with me-- I'm really shouting down my own lack of comprehension, which presents as me arguing with you (if that makes any sense). Her response "Well you must not have understood me" is classic Me, but in reality that's textbook projection, which backs me into into a corner I try to get out of...with more arguing!

Even knowing I do this, I can't ever catch myself doing it early enough to stop it; dopamine rush from outrage trumps my ability to dial it back. So I just avoid in-person debates altogether. I'm not aiming to offend anybody and can express my position more clearly in written form.

I have the same issue with understanding code other people write. I don't "get" larger architectures unless I wrote the entire stack myself (again, understanding someone else's concept by reinventing it myself). If I didn't write every goddamn class in the framework, I don't remember they exist or how they work together. Once I realized this I pivoted away from software development; nobody has time or need for another TempleOS.

Unfortunately this behavior is commonly found on the #mentalhealthawareness Narcissistic personality disorder checklists so everyone calls it out as malicious. I suspect autism though, since (for me) this always stems from information-processing difficulties. Make of it what you will.

It might originate from brain physiology. Daniel Amen had done 5000 brain scans 20 years ago, no idea how many until now. From one of his books i learned that contrarian behaviour can come from a disfunction in the Cingulate cortex.

Whatever i say, the first thing my mother says 95% of the time is "No" or another dismissal. It was astounding to see my son acting the same way, answering "No, thats wrong" to things he doesn't even know!

I have been really contrarian for most part of my life. But i realized how annoying that behaviour is and made an active effort to change it. Through repetition it became a habit to respond positively or neutral.

there's a talk on persuasion - I believe Chris Voss is the presenter - where one of the techniques is to phrase your question so that the answer you want is 'no'. E.g. rather than say 'would you like to go to the movies' you'd say 'is there anything you'd rather do than go to the movies'. It's interesting that this works - he said that saying 'no' is a defensive mechanism that enforces boundaries, maybe more so with some people than others. Then again, his background was hostage negotiation so he probably trained on a skewed sample.

Voss' stuff would usually be pretty shitty to use on people you're friendly with (and I found a lot of the anecdotes in his book... strained credulity, let's say, to be polite) but in this case might actually be great for breaking those "nobody can decide what to do" sorts of situations. Make people actively choose what they'd rather do than what you suggested. Could work.

I enjoy watching the occasional political twitch/youtube streamer or speaker. I couldn't tell you why; I don't feel that most of them leave me feeling any wiser after the conversations end. But the times I come across positions that I haven't traditionally considered or agreed with being well-stated and expounded upon is really enjoyable and usually makes it worth the minutes or hours burned having it playing lightly in the background. Very much in the spirit of this post, like the author I too enjoy being "wrong" or losing debates. The rush of new insight is thrilling. Vaush and Douglas Murray come to mind as some of the recent ones that have said things I find very compelling.

Not long ago as I was exploring those circles I kept hearing this name repeated. A streamer named Destiny. So I started consuming some of his material. And it was absolutely insufferable. This person treated every single statement as a drawn battle line that is to be defended by every last ounce of mustered anger and blood. No matter how infinitesmal or semantical the focal point of discussion was it was torn apart to shreds. There was no intent to learn, no hoping for new perspectives. It was solely a sport about feeling correct. It was awful to listen to.

I was shocked to see how popular this person is (given their streams and subscribers). Not only because I felt that overall they were a garbage person to have a parasocial relationship with but because if I found him as awful to listen to as I did, surely a large amount of others would feel the same. And while no doubt others feel like me about him, on the other hand I must be neglecting something. There must be a cadre of people that find (arguably) well defended positions thrilling and almost narcotic. I do not associate with many of those types of people in meatspace and I suppose I had slowly forgotten that there's a significant number of them out there.

But yeah, I'm right there with you. I'm here to learn, and there's others that aren't and will knowingly or otherwise prey upon that willingness by digging their heels in on the most miniscule of points. Makes no sense to me. If the only purpose served by me opening my mouth was to convince the world of my correctness, I would just assume everyone else was as obsinate as myself and wouldn't bother to open my mouth in the first place. Save the calories.

Totally agree re. Destiny. Between him, Vaush, Hasan (ugh), and the rest of them, I feel like we’re intellectually stunting an entire generation of teenagers.

I had a friend in NYC who used to read a tonne load of books but now just watches the 3h Hasan stream every day and then parrots every take the video game streamer says as if it’s gospel. I ended up cutting him out of my life because he just grew so tiring to be around; any conversation had to be directed to how idiotic the other side (code for republicans) is. As a non-American, it grew really old hearing rant about how stupid 40% of their fellow countrymen are.

Listening to someone pretend to get angry and punching down on people less educated isn’t intellectually nourishing, it’s reddit prison slop.

What's interesting to me is how I've started to really dislike people in that mindset/space even when they offer points that I agree with. Take Hasan for example. He says a number of things I agree with when I hear them. But the delivery of them is awful, to the point that it corrodes the foundation on which he stands. It's hard for me to accept that you promote a position of shared empowerment and broad equality when you reject a large contingency of people (based solely on their beliefs no less) as borderline sub-human. Those two things don't mesh. I, like him, am often left bewildered by the positions his opponents sometimes take. But that bewilderment is a sign that I'm lacking information and context, not a sign that I'm dealing with a person who isn't to be treated with at least a modicum of respect.

It reminds me of an exchange between Neil Degrasee Tyson and Richard Dawkins in which Neil tells Dawkins that, while he makes good points, perhaps he should soften his delivery? Because it's hard for the realm of science to pull in new defenders when their staunchest proponents are telling its detractors they are imbeciles. And dawkins fires back with [...]"Science is interesting, and if you don't like it, you can fuck off". EDIT: This exchange must have been in the mid 00's? The birth of the Four-Horsemen-of-Atheism era. The absolutist cultural debate position has a rich history.

There's a time and place to cut ties and not waste time interacting with people that disagree with you. Sometimes the right move is to reject an ideology or group outright. But it seems like the modern concept of that time and place is very skewed.

Reads like these streamers are the left-wing equivalent of conservative AM radio and about half of Fox News' air time. Interesting. I didn't know we had those sorts on "our" side (Maddow and such are a bit similar, but the tone's still not quite like a Shapiro or a Levin or even a Limbaugh). But then, I've spent a grand total of maybe 15 minutes on Twitch, ever. I didn't even know there was political commentary on there.

Since those folks (the AM radio / unhinged Fox News guys) have been wildly successful at getting people to vote a certain way and swing rhetoric hard in the direction they promote, I'm torn on whether or not to be upset about this. If it eventually gets us a developed-world healthcare system and typical-in-most-of-the-rest-of-the-OECD worker protections and benefits, I guess I don't care if shitty psychological manipulation is what does it, if the alternative is that we continue not to manage to achieve those for several more decades. It'd be cool if my elementary-aged kids could have some nice things before they're middle-aged—I've only got 30-40 years left, probably, so have given up hope on any of this happening before I'm ancient, but maybe my kids' kids will fully reap the benefits, on the back half of this century.

> This person treated every single statement as a drawn battle line that is to be defended by every last ounce of mustered anger and blood.

I left a FOSS project that I liked a lot hacking on, because of a person like that. It was painful, but better for my mental health overall.

This is quite interesting, because I find Vaush to be a perfect match for your description: absolutely insufferable debate bro and a hypocrite (the whole "living your values" discussion was very showing).

And Destiny to be a fairly reasonable mostly good-faith debater.

> Its entirely possible to unlearn these behaviours. The first thing is to realize you don't always have to respond.

> Someone says something wrong in passing? Ignore it, move on.

This is a skill I've worked on for years. Not every conversation needs to be a teaching moment or life or death. Most are just people bullshitting around with each other. Constantly correcting or arguing doesn't help anyone.

This is a whole chapter in "How to win friends and influence people."

Someone says something wrong in passing? Ignore it, move on.

Someone says something exceptionally disagreeable? Just fucking leave it be and disengage as soon as possible. The fight isn't worth the time.

This is life advice - print it and hang it.

As someone who did high school debate competitively for four years and still judges competitions nearly every weekend... I really don't think this tracks in reality. It really sounds like you're describing a caricature, and maybe it's based on someone you know, but I don't think it's really the normal outcome for people who debate.

There are surely former debaters who still feel the need to prove themselves to their friends and colleagues and will go out of their way to seek an argument. It is a competitive activity and so it attracts competitive types. But part of the process of becoming a well-adjusted adult, and yes, debaters all go through that process too in time, is recognizing where and when their skills are welcome.

Most people love to win, that includes arguments.

What a lot of people failed to learn from debates club, is that a formal "win" is a net loss of a relationship.

> What a lot of people failed to learn from debates club, is that a formal "win" is a net loss of a relationship.

In US competitive debate, debaters learn very quickly that whether you "win" or "lose" is not decided by themselves or their opponent but by the judge. You don't measure your success by whether being argumentative made you feel good or whether you felt like you won but by whether the judge evaluated what you said and what the other person said and signed a ballot in your favor. That actually involves a lot of "reading the room" and self-awareness about how other people will hear you when you talk. Good debaters solicit feedback from their judges and coaches to ask them how they can do better. And good judges look past the bluster, penalize debaters who use bad faith tactics, and reward debaters who succeed on substance. Judges are accountable for their decisions too - they have to explain to the debaters why they voted the way they did, which encourages judges to evaluate debaters carefully and give good feedback.

Again I think it is a caricature to say that a person who does debate structures their personality around it and tries to turn everything into an argument. I concede as a high schooler I went through a phase like this; then I went through college, matured a bit, got other hobbies and priorities and came to understand how to use the skills I learned as a debater in a positive-sum way.

That whole wall of text completely ignoring my point. Not only that, I now have a very negative opinion of you... simply because you completely ignored what I wrote.

What I learned from your response, is that debates in US teach you - ignore the principles of the argument, fail to follow up and say(or write) a lot of words. (to "win")

Funny, that to me you've become the caricature that you're complaining about.

The irony of someone arguing about high school debate being bad and then making piss poor arguments of zero substance is not at all lost upon me although it looks like it whizzed past you. I think someone like you would've benefited more debate than anyone else.

And yet here you come. Replying to my comment, using the same exact techniques created specifically "to win".

Literally evoking the feeling of being attack, by introducing thinly veiled insults into your comment.

What do you think would result from such a retort? (specifically after you called my perspective "piss poor")

PS: I have debated many times at school and afterwards. Your condescension is poorly hidden

I wrote what I wrote because I thought you had some sense of curiosity about the people you complained about and I thought this was an appropriate space to talk about each other's beliefs and experiences. I did not expect your hostility!

Awful lot of projection goin on here, mate.

You're not wrong but I think you're overstating things. Honestly if you're that miffed about these conversations maybe it's you.

This describes passivity not social skills. I can't really say that doing nothing or walking away in the face of an unpleasant situation while privately declaring the other people involved "cringe" and "dickheads" and "weenies" really demonstrates great social skills honestly.

I think the important thing is to be aware that there are several different types of debates or discussions with different purpose. School debate teams focus on combative debates - debates where the goal is to convince an audience, not the other side. The type politicians tends to engage in during campaigns.

But it'd be good if people got better training in "cooperative" debates, where the purpose is to learn and listen. I can't recall many instances where that was encouraged in school, but there were a few. All of them were focused on a subject, though, rather than actually teaching the skill of listening and debating constructively.

There's a space for both - sometimes you need to be combative -, but people switch to combative mode way too readily.

To your point on the time formulating a response: Online I find a good measure of whether I'm "listening" or gearing up to being combative is whether I end up significantly re-writing my reply while writing it as I process the comment I'm replying to, or if have it "ready and loaded" to fire back at someone by the time I hit the reply button.

All the team projects have that as an implicit element, don't they? In order to arrive at a solution, the team has to talk, divide labor, etc.

Or one person takes charge and steamrollers everyone else, or one person ends up doing the work because the rest can't be bothered, etc. You're right there's often some implicit element of it, but how to do it well seems to be rarely taught. At least it wasn't made explicit at my schools, and I've heard little to indicate it's been made explicit at my sons schools either. It seems pretty arbitrary how well people pick up those skills.

What we understand as debate today, is exactly the school adversarial debates that you're referring to.

The "cooperative" debate is what we call a conversation.

Throwing the word constructive in front of debate, does not change the adversarial nature of it.

There is a gradient of Advanced Conversational Techniques that nobody seems to ever discuss. If someone hasn't got a real grasp on the basics then just listening is certainly a great start and gets people about half way there. Life gets easier. Most people are so desperately instinctual at social tactics that anything which involves thinking about what other people think will yield great dividends.

But if the goal is self improvement, it can't be done with just listening. Like learning can't be done by just reading. It is far to slow finding the gaps in your own understanding; arguing is orders of magnitude quicker. People will explain an argument's flaws right quick, and often helpfully repeat themselves a few times.

Although what you're leading towards here might be persuasion, because it is a great tool for learning and people often don't realise the subtle way a persuasive argument pushes back. Those aren't as much fun as the hot flush of a robust debate but they are a lot more powerful (especially since many people may not realise that there is an argument going on).

Where can I learn about _Advanced Conversational Techniques_?

Sorry, in hindsight I shouldn't have capitalised that. It isn't a recognised name for something that I'm aware of.

That said I found Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication quite eye opening because it articulated the idea that it is possible and sensible to approach conversation strategically. Then after getting a feel for a do-no-harm approach it is relatively easy to start categorising what people say into tactics and there are some things that work and others that really don't. It seems pretty obvious that effective people are very good at listening, asking questions and what sort of evidence they treat as persuasive or unpersuasive.

> don’t debate at all, just listen

This is what the OP says; while the title of the post is "I want to lose every debate" that's what he says in the end:

> I never want to debate, but if I had to, I would hope to lose.

And I get it, I think; but there is something to be said in favor of debating, not as a competition, but as a method of refining each other's ideas.

Someone exposing a theory of theirs that's apparently well polished is less interesting than people discussing, exchanging ideas and poking and exposing possible holes.

That's what debating should be: not a sport with "winners" and "losers" (what does that even mean in the realm of ideas??) but as a joint effort and journey in search of the truth.

Discussion:

an act or instance of discussing; consideration or examination by argument, comment, etc., especially to explore solutions; informal debate.

Discuss is first recorded in 1300–50; Middle English, either from Anglo-French discusser or directly from Latin discussus “struck asunder, shaken, scattered,” past participle of discutere, equivalent to dis- dis-1 + -cutere (combining form of quatere “to shake, strike”).

I think this is what I dislike most about Jordan Peterson. He appears to behave as if it's your fault if when you paraphrase what you think he's said back to him is not something he wants to agree with. IMHO, you haven't understood someone if you can't repeat it back to them in your own language, and there's a good probability that this is the fault of the explainer not the explainee.

> He appears to behave as if it's your fault if when you paraphrase what you think he's said back to him is not something he wants to agree with.

I don't think that's unique to JP. Most people are very bad at paraphrasing without veering into misrepresentation. I'm still working on getting better.

That's not what I said. ROFL

> That's not what I said.

Yes, it is. I quoted you and the source post is unmodified.

Ironically, my interpretation may not be what you meant, despite it's simplicity.

>> IMHO, you haven't understood someone if you can't repeat it back to them in your own language, and there's a good probability that this is the fault of the explainer not the explainee.

So I guess we just talk past each other. Sounds good.

The internet is not the best medium for satire I suppose. Hence the ROFL for emphasis.

If you remain silent you potentially deny your parties the opportunity to have a profound realization.

If it's a lecture and not a conversation, I will usually end up thinking of counterpoints to what they said. And I believe that they have a good response to any counterpoint I have, and I want to hear it.

Otherwise I'm left with my counterpoints and I'm less engaged and less convinced.

That makes me think of The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't https://g.co/kgs/2eXND7

Derek Sivers never listened to anything, he's a narcissistic maniac who floods the email boxes of everyone on every list he's ever had with self-help advice that's never more than the most thinly disguised self-promotion.

Please stop talking as if his writing is profound.

What do you think about losing every debate?

aw man, you're gonna force me to read this? fuck. ok. give me a minute.

...

Okay, I think that as expected the word salad doesn't do anything to expand on the subject; it's another grossly compact attempt at telling everyone what a crazy and interesting life he's had without going into detail beyond the barest mention that he was somewhere and talked to someone; serves yet again as a form of name-dropping; proves absolutely nothing about debate but somehow oddly inspires people here to go way out of their way debating what the author meant.

In general? I think debate is just a byword for civil discussion, and the concept of winning or losing one is stupid. Discussions are meant to elucidate and digress and open both people to one another's point of view, but that's no reason they shouldn't be contentious. To describe a contentious conversation as a debate in which someone has to win and someone has to lose is reductive and misses the point of conversation. To cast oneself as the ultimate martyr in such conversations by way of [losing one's ego on the road from Patpong to Nepal and] creating ranking click bait topics is pure Derek Sivers. There ya go.

Thank you for that. I appreciate your conversation about the content of his article rather than the content of his character.

Like others, I have no idea who Sivers is.

Even a broken clock is right once in a while. I can understand your reaction if that is your experience with him (first time I hear of the guy), but it at least seems to have created some constructive discussion here.

fair. The discussion is good. Mostly projection on a shell through which some think they can hear the sea, but maybe better than a dead silent room.

Thanks for your comment. I thought I was going crazy with all the responses to what reads essentially like a self-help quality article.

Also, some of the examples are infuriating. So someone thinks poverty is not upsetting? Well, screw them. And the rest of those examples are so bland, how about "losing" every debate with these:

- Nazism is right.

- Rich people should become richer and poor people should become poorer.

- Women should not have equal rights or vote.

Go on, "listen and lose the debate", I'm sure it will be illuminating and productive.

Losing doesn't have to mean you 100% agree with another party at the end. Learning something new and changing your original position is good enough.

> someone thinks poverty is not upsetting

Someone was able to find happiness in non-material things. Good for them.

> Nazism is right

Ok, but was it absolutely wrong? Should we dismiss anything that even remotely resembles Nazism? Were there any good parts that Nazism had? E.g. patriotism or anti-communism? Short-term dictatorship can be better than alternatives (especially during wars). Eugenics on it's own is also not bad (e.g. most people are pro-abortion when fetus has a deadly disease, which is a form of eugenics).

> Rich people should become richer and poor people should become poorer

Poor in US are among most wealthy people in the world. Instead of fighting laws of nature (a battle you cannot win), maybe it's better to focus on improving well-being of "poor"? I.e. you should be able to live a good life even if you are poor.

> Women should not have equal rights or vote

Unequal rights doesn't necessarily mean someone is being taken advantage of. In theory, an optimal distribution of rights could very well be unequal. You can also do a thought experiment on how society would look like if only families are allowed to vote (with highest earner in the family voting, which essentially means "women cannot vote").

> Someone was able to find happiness in non-material things. Good for them.

Poverty is not having to eat. Poverty is a self-compounding problem: you cannot eat, you cannot work (or not enough), you get sick, so you cannot work, etc. Every accident impacts someone living in poverty way more than someone who is not. "Find happiness in non-material things" is something only those who have their basic necessities covered have the possibility to contemplate.

> Ok, but was it absolutely wrong? Should we dismiss anything that even remotely resembles Nazism? Were there any good parts that Nazism had? E.g. patriotism or anti-communism?

"Yes", "yes", "no", and "no".

> Poor in US are among most wealthy people in the world

That doesn't address the worldview I mentioned, it's complete misdirection. The view is that the rich should get richer and the poor should get poorer. Engage with that.

(Also, poverty is not "a law of nature" and it's not true that every poor person in the US is among the most wealthy people in the world).

> Unequal rights doesn't necessarily mean someone is being taken advantage of.

Yes it is. Your proposed experiment is bullshit.

PS: you also misunderstood my prompt, which was to debate with people who believe what I listed, not debate with me. I don't care to debate with you about those awful, made-up and purposefully stupid statements. I don't want you to "teach me" anything, either.

> Poverty is not having to eat

No, that's famine.

Poverty has many definitions, but generally it's not being able to meet a certain standard of living. It may include nutrition standards, but again, malnutrition in US is very different from malnutrition in Africa. Again, if someone is "poor" by US standards, but lives a happy life - good for them. I could learn a thing or two from them. You could too.

> "Yes", "yes", "no", and "no".

Absolutist views are rather boring and a clear indication of a closed mindset. The exact opposite of what the post is about.

> That doesn't address the worldview I mentioned, it's complete misdirection. The view is that the rich should get richer and the poor should get poorer.

But it does. Rich are getting richer is the natural effect of positive feedback loops. You are rewarded for the value you produce, which allows you to produce more value. Streamlining those loops allowed us to create enormous amount of wealth in the last century.

The only way to fight it is to create an artificial compensating negative feedback loop, i.e. punish people for creating value. Evidently, not a good idea if you look at famine in USSR (google for "Dekulakization").

People like you seem to focus on a few outliers without recognizing that "rich getting richer" has benefitted billions. If having a few billionaires is the cost of moving billions out of poverty, I'll gladly take it. So yeah, rich should be getting richer, because the only alternative is everybody being poor.

> Yes it is. Your proposed experiment is bullshit.

Is this really your best argument?

> No, that's famine.

No, that's poverty. Poverty is a self-reinforcing loop, this is well studied. Malnutrition is malnutrition, you die from it in North America, Africa or whatever. I don't care for your new age "find happiness where you can" mumbo jumbo.

I don't live in the US nor anywhere close to the US, so stick your assumptions where the sun don't shine!

> Absolutist views are rather boring and a clear indication of a closed mindset

I'm sorry you find denouncing and rejecting Nazism is boring.

> "rich getting richer"

You conveniently forgot "the poor must get poorer".

> (google for "Dekulakization")

I'm puzzled, is "assuming people don't know a term I'm using and need googling it" part of your "just listen, do not try to win debates" strategy of TFA? Thanks for teaching me though, I didn't know anything about the history of the USSR!

It must be that I am not "producing value", haw haw haw!

I wrote a longer post to your bullshit reply, but I won't bother, since you decided to ignore this: "you also misunderstood my prompt, which was to debate with people who believe what I listed, not debate with me". Since you failed to engage with pretty simple instructions, and instead you chose to go your own way -- funnily enough, breaking the premise of TFA, which was "to listen"; instead of doing so you launched into an attempt to refute what you guessed were my objections -- I'll bid you adieu.

Good luck with your debate tactics!

> I'm sorry you find denouncing and rejecting Nazism is boring.

Evidently, simply denouncing and rejecting does nothing to prevent it from emerging again. All the raping and murdering in Ukraine is currently done in the name of denouncing Nazism, yet it looks very much like Nazism.

> you also misunderstood my prompt, which was to debate with people who believe what I listed, not debate with me

Turns out debates don't always happen on your terms. Despite your best effort, you still learned something today.

> All the raping and murdering in Ukraine is currently done in the name of denouncing Nazism.

Ah, yes, I guess if we had debated the "good parts" of Nazism then the invasion of Ukraine wouldn't have happened.

> Despite your best effort, you still learned something today.

Do you really think that's an honest debate tactic? Do you think that, when reading your last line, I will think "gee, this guy truly taught me something!" or rather dismiss your remark entirely? And do you feel your way of debating is in line with what TFA proposes, or is it possible that you are trying to "win" here, therefore rejecting the whole article?

I guess I learned this conversation is futile?

> Ah, yes, I guess if we had debated the "good parts" of Nazism then the invasion of Ukraine wouldn't have happened.

Kind of. If more time was spent deconstructing Nazism/Fascism, instead of simply repeating "Nazism bad" it would be much easier to notice it right under our (their) nose.

> I guess I learned this conversation is futile?

I'd suggest you to re-read your messages in this thread. Analyze their tone. You never attempted to have a conversation.

So, do you really think that's an honest debate tactic? I noticed you like dodging.

I'm not using debate tactics and not accusing others of doing it. I'm just debating.

If you do want to switch topic to debate tactics, you should first re-read your own comments: they are full of strawman arguments, deflections, condescension and are quite demeaning in general. Hopefully acting like a butthurt teenager is a debate tactic too, not your personality.

"Butthurt teenager". Ah, resorting to insults now?

"Despite your best effort, you still learned something today."

How would you say the above line ranks in the goal of "I hope to lose every debate" and "just listen" mindset?

> "Butthurt teenager". Ah, resorting to insults now?

Again, re-read your own comments. I've matched a fraction of your insults and you're already getting upset.

> How would you say the above line ranks in the goal of "I hope to lose every debate" and "just listen" mindset?

It doesn't rank well at all. Good thing I never claimed to have a "just listen" mindset. In fact, I said I disagree with it.

> you're already getting upset

Am I upset? You sound upset yourself.

> Good thing I never claimed to have a "just listen" mindset. In fact, I said I disagree with it.

It raises the question of what you were trying to debate with me then.

Could you summarize what you think my initial comment was arguing?

> Could you summarize what you think my initial comment was arguing?

In a lame "gotcha" attempt you took author's words extremely literally: "Let's see how you lose a debate against 2 x 2 = 5 believer. Haha, I'm so smart."

Now, which one do you think is more likely:

- Author meant to say that literally every debate is worth losing

- You (likely on purpose) misunderstood the point author is trying to make

What do you really think is the point author was trying to make? Can you explain in your own words?

> In a lame "gotcha" attempt you took author's words extremely literally: "Let's see how you lose a debate against 2 x 2 = 5 believer. Haha, I'm so smart."

Have you read the HN guidelines?

> You (likely on purpose) misunderstood

Ah, we have a mind reader!

> Can you explain in your own words?

I can, but I won't for you, because it would be fruitless.

No need to reply: you won. You won big time. Have a cookie.

"I never allow myself to hold an opinion on anything that I don't know the other side's argument better than they do" ― Charlie Munger

> While high school debate did teach me many positive lessons and I am thankful that I spent four years of my life doing it, many years later I have come to understand that it also taught me something truly negative: that the point of a conversation is to win.

I've always enjoyed arguing (in the sense of a polite dialogue between two who disagree). But for me, even though I enjoy arguing, being right is more important -- which includes trying to cultivate the discipline to recognise and acknowledge when my interlocutor makes a good point, and trying to understand why they think what they do.

At university, I checked out the debating club, thinking it might be a good fit for me, but I was wrong. There, the goal seemed to be purely to win, correctness be damned. I found the arguments they marshaled towards their goal to be dishonest and contrary to the goals of increasing understanding and getting to the heart of a matter.

I can see how that could be seen as a sport or competition of sorts, but I worried about the kind of habits it might form. It is too similar to the kind of arguing I enjoy that it would be easy to slip from one mode to the other if those debate club type skills were developed and honed.

Yeah, it can work great one on one, sadly it's much harder to do as the number of interlocutors increases, as the time spent thinking things out instead of immediately answering is time that someone else can "hijack" the conversation (for bad or good reasons, nobody owes you a lot of time to formulate an answer), at which point it could be hard or sometimes even rude to come back to that point.

thank you. If I'm ever in a position of choosing a co-founder again, I'll probably ask potential candidates their opinions on debate and treat any positive sentiment towards debate as a negative signal. Few things are more tiring in an already difficult slog than needing to go to war every time you'd like to introduce a change.

I know some people are energized by debate, but I'd rather work with someone who builds my confidence rather than constantly attacks my ideas and, if those don't have any weak corners, my character and judgement. Nothing wrong with either preference, but the two shouldn't work together in my experience.

Your position/preference seems to arise from your identification with your own ideas, which is one of the most fundamental differences in the realm of people's response to "debate". There's absolutely nothing wrong with identifying with your own ideas, and indeed, it will naturally lead to a negative experience if you have to interact with someone who attacks those ideas.

However, there are people who don't experience as much, if any, attachment or identification with "their own ideas", and instead view "debate" (or indeed, any sort of exploration of ideas, truth, and so forth) as a chance to be, to use an over-used phrase, "less wrong". It doesn't bother me if someone demonstrates to me that what I thought is wrong (as long as they do it in a way that respects me as a person), and in fact I welcome the correction (though sometimes it may be difficult to process if it is a long-held idea with wide consequences).

As usual, there's a spectrum (or two) here: a spectrum of identifying with your own ideas, and a spectrum of levels of personal respect when "debating". Certainly a very bad combination is one person with a high level of self-identification with their own ideas being debated/attack by someone who (a) has no concept that this self-identification experience is real (b) cannot engage with the ideas without criticizing the other person.

There's a big difference between these two:

1. Co-founder who clearly signals respect and self-reflection, and who much later reveals they have a penchant for the occasional debate and dis-attachment from their own ideas.

2. A co-founder who signals they like debates in a candidate meeting.

I rankly speculate here on HN that if OP always avoids #2, not only will nothing bad happen as a result, but they will also decrease the chance of choosing a bad candidate.

I further rankly speculate this for any founder.

HN debates are fun, but they hide the fact that debate is a low-effort tool. Like drinking alcohol, it can be useful. But if it moves from being a mere implementation detail to becoming part of the API in a candidate meeting: run!

There's a bit more to it than that. Identifying with my ideas makes challenging them stressful, yes, but debate changes a potential eustress into distress. A dialectic where we're trying to leverage different initial perspectives to both arrive at a better understanding of the truth feel like I'm risking something valuable to win something more valuable. It's stressful but exhilarating. A debate just feels like I'm protecting something of value from someone who brings nothing of value to the interaction. Because I assign value to ideas, debate feels inherently destructive and negative-sum.

> don’t debate at all, just listen.

debates, even though I prefer the term discussions, are held between at least two parties.

I might sometime be the part who listens, but we can't both be listening, there will be no discussion.

So if you have something to say, say it and don't let anyone interrupt you.

Listening to what other people are saying means donating your time and attention, not everybody deserve it, there's a reason why "professional listeners" such as psychologists charge a lot of money to do it.

Most of the time people don't want to discuss, they simply want to talk about themselves.

Like the author of this piece.

Same experience with high school debate, there must be dozens of us.

The linked article did say: "I never want to debate"

> don’t debate at all, just listen

I think that depends on how familiar they are with your perspective. You don't want to think of the interaction as unequal, with you taking the higher perspective of observing both their ideas and yours, appreciating and integrating them, while they only exist in their own point of view, the observed to your observer.

If they understand your perspective but you don't know theirs, it makes sense for them to do most of the talking. But if they don't understand where you're coming from, then a one-sided conversation is one-sided in a bad way. It's like looking at them through a telescope. You'll have your reactions to their ideas, but you won't have their reactions to yours, their reactions to your reactions.

I was told, by someone I was dating, many years ago, that they thought that when they were speaking, I was thinking about what I was going to say next. I didn't fully understand that comment for more than a decade.

This is a highly insightful take. Thanks. You nailed it.

Learning to listen may not come naturally for some of us. It's a skill that requires practice and reinforcement.

I had the same experience with two exes and just now in my late 20s, after reading the comments, I feel Im understanding what they meant.

>high school debate [...] taught me something truly negative: that the point of a conversation is to win.

The etymology of "debate" is "de-beat", i.e what you do to avoid beating each other, so in principle it's closer to negotiation than to mutual battering.

Huizinga argues that debating is essentially a human expression of our animal play instinct. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Ludens

This would also be the reason in settings where debate is formalized, e.g. a courtroom, there are elements of pageantry and pantomime. All playful exaggerations, nonetheless serious (because play can be serious business, look at any child absorbed in a game).

Debating as a means to avoid combat then follows quite naturally. It's sublimation of a primal instinct, channeling dangerous antagonistic behaviors into the realm of harmless play.

Charitably, I get what you and the author of the article are describing, but I would make at least this comment.

The point of listening is ultimately to know the truth. The fact that listening to others is ipso facto social means that we learn a great deal in community. But it's one thing to learn about what someone else believes. It's another to accept those beliefs as true. The person you are listening to could be in error. Listening is, therefore, a kind of data collection, and data need to be interpreted, after which some kind of verification generally ought to take place (of course, we cannot verify everything, hence for practical reasons, we often trust, e.g., the authority of tradition and its authoritative "keepers", at least until we have reason to doubt).

W.r.t. debating, there's a time and place for it. Classically, it is a formal and public affair reserved for certain circumstances. You don't debate during data collection.

I think Socratic dialogue is a better fit for exploration and discussion, though that, too, and trivially so, has a time and a place.

We listen to a great many things that we objectively know aren't true. Or which have no specific bearing on truth.

Listening is critical to all communication (there's at least one speaker and one listener to any conversation involving one or more sentiences). I'd suggest that the goal of listening is to understand the other party, at least within the universe of their story or experience. You don't have to believe, agree, sympathise, or even empathise. You may have entirely selfish reasons for doing so (is this person a threat / kook / messiah / ...?). If we choose to listen, though, the principle goal is only occasionally seeking truth.

> don’t debate at all, just listen

but if all people with this mindset, improvement never comes

> It will almost certainly slow down the pace of a conversation but stands a decent chance of making each exchange a lot more interesting for both of you.

Deliberately slowing conversations down to one 100th of their normal pace might produce some interesting results. In a sense, this is one of the techniques that science uses, and it seems to reliably produce excellent outcomes in fairly complicated problem spaces.

That's not an alternative, that's just "the final message in the post"?

> I never want to debate, but if I had to, I would hope to lose.

Another thing is realizing you really don't need to have an opinion on everything. Enormously freeing to realize this.

> don’t debate at all, just listen

I disagree (pun intended).

Debating allows you to understand your own position better, e.g. is it based on information, intuition, values, preference, experience, or bias?

And it forces another party to do the same, which allows you to better decide how to handle disagreements.

E.g. if their position is based on preference, we can agree to disagree and move on.

If it's based on a bias, I will value their opinion less.

If someone has a different knowledge, that's something we can (and should) resolve asap.

If our values are different we will never be able to resolve it and it's better to avoid conflict.

If you perceive there is sufficient trust and interest in engaging in some kind of debate, sure, consider it. Debate, in its many forms, can have many advantages, but it is not categorically preferable.

Also consider all your other options: pure listening, mutual bonding, offering emotional support, even walking away (from a no-win situation).

If / when debate falls apart, there are many options to reconnect.

That's really not how debate typically works.

Someone states their position, while you're expected to undermine their position with a retort. It is one of the least productive ways of resolving differences.

You're supposed to both attack your opponent's position and defend yours.

What you're describing is a lack of debate culture. A good example of that was already referred here (the infamous "so you're saying" interview).

That's literally worse.

Very much this, I was going to comment similarly.

Every discussion is not a debate. Perhaps this is what Sivers was trying to communicate, in which case, he did so rather poorly.

The examples offered all revolve around lived experiences, lifestyle preference (taste), and articles of faith, for which there really isn't much of an objective truth, let alone one which can be demonstrated through evidence and reason.

There's something to be said for simply choosing to absorb a story, to bear witness, even to validate a person's view or choices (though that last isn't necessarily always appropriate).

From my experience, some years back I encountered a ... local character ... who was known for accosting strangers on the street and ranting about various topics, generally rather fantastical. I'd seen this happen several times over the years, and one day it was my turn. After the tirade slowed, and unsure how to respond, I simply said "thank you". The transformation was immediate and profound: they were immensely grateful and their entire demeanor changed.

I don't pretend that this is universally applicable. I do know that there was no point in rational argument with the person. The circumstances were such that there was no obvious danger to myself or those around me. But I've thought more than once over the years of how a simple acknowledgement might often be an excellent choice of response.

How peculiar that every "debate" this person has lost is in the same ideological direction. How would this person respond to:

- the Christian explaining that the resurrection of Jesus is a historical fact?

- the prosecutor describing the heinous crimes of the people she's put behind bars?

- the sibling of an addict denouncing opiates & opioids, meth, crack and the drug trade?

Where's the limit for this person when encountering:

- the pederast who describes his perversion as "love?"

- the practitioner of FGM who praises it as a "tradition?"

- the religious fanatic who believes God has told him to kill?

I hope the person would be at least open to the first set of people, and would be willing to "win" against the second set.

Overall, I think the framing is a bit wrong. Having an open mind doesn't mean you have to stick your finger in the wind, and having firmly held beliefs without experience, knowledge or wisdom doesn't mean you need to preach them vociferously. Certain things are true, and certain perspectives are not so valuable.

Agree, in the same ideological direction and all of them inconsequential. It's very easy to have an "open mind" when no stakes are involved.

I believe I feel this way. I think many, if not the vast majority of us do. Now for a little test. When was the last time you lost a debate on a topic you felt strongly about? And not a debate that further reaffirmed your own biases (I used to believe X was bad, but wow I was wrong - it's WAY worse than bad) but actually a meaningful swap from (X is bad) to (X is not bad).

In my case, the answer is never. Now I'd like to imagine this is obviously because I'm the most intelligent, objective, and insightful individual to have ever lived. Of course I suspect the actual reason is because anything worth debating will always have reasonable arguments for both sides. And so long as your arguments are reasonably factually based, it's never really possible to lose a debate, unless you choose to. You can learn new things, expand your worldview, but losing will only happen if you want it to. Hence the reason I added that qualifier about swapping worldviews as opposed to enhancing a prior held one.

Of course this doesn't preclude major worldview shifting change from happening, but it happens over long periods of times for reasons that I don't think any of us can really pin down. It's going to be a butterfly effect of a million little factors.

> but actually a meaningful swap from (X is bad) to (X is not bad). In my case, the answer is never.

I think you did, otherwise you would never change your opinions, which I doubt.

But I think it works more subtly. I've noticed that when I lose a debate, my immediate emotional response is rejection - the person is wrong, my opinion is right, even though I couldn't effectively justify it.

But once the emotional hurt of loss wears off, it will sometimes (not always) move my position, sometimes a little bit, sometimes completely. It can take days, months, sometimes years.

> But once the emotional hurt of loss wears off, it will sometimes (not always) move my position, sometimes a little bit, sometimes completely. It can take days, months, sometimes years.

That's exactly it; I'm convinced people's opinions can and will change over time, but they take time.

This is used in subtle ways too with modern-day internet and social media (and before that, newspaper headlines); people will scan the internet's headlines and depending on what they see, form an opinion. If all you see is headlines about police brutality, you will be convinced that the police is corrupt and violent and shit. If all you see is headlines about a demographic being involved in crime, you'll form prejudices about them.

I tend to see this as down to how heated the debates are. For combative debates, I tend to be far more likely to move my position if I'm audience than participating. For less heated discussions, I may well move my position during the discussion itself. Keeping the temperature down matters if you want to convince the other person(s); letting the temperature rise sometimes works if your goal is to convince an audience.

I've definitely had debates where I became a lot less sure of things I was reasonably informed on. A discussion that ends with "I'll have to go away and think about that" is a good one.

At a younger and more formative age, I’d engage in online discussions with people who had completely opposite views from mine. And I’ve had my mind changed plenty of times.

It’s happening less in the past decade or so, because I’ve already had many of the same discussions, and I’m sure partly because I’m becoming more rigid as I age.

But many online forums also reduce visibility of unpopular comments, and it’s harder to engage in some of those discussions. This is the reason I never downvote, even the most awful takes.

I've probably never changed a deeply held belief after a single conversation, but my beliefs have changed over time and those changes have been aided by discussions I've had along the way. I think it takes me a long time to form a strong view on something and, once formed, it also takes a long time to change or abandon that view. Even if I participate in a conversation where relevant new information is imparted to me or my reasoning is shown to be flawed, I'm likely to take that away and chew it over (and do my own research) before changing my position.

Comments from strangers on the internet have changed my opinions.

> but it happens over long periods of times for reasons that I don't think any of us can really pin down

Well having kids can change how you view things quite abruptly.

> And so long as your arguments are reasonably factually based, it's never really possible to lose a debate, unless you choose to

That's the trouble with the expression "losing a debate". There is the notion that you've been defeated. So what actually happened is not a debate, but a fight. A debate is something you can learn from, a gain.

> When was the last time you lost a debate on a topic you felt strongly about?

Why would you talk about something you feel strongly about in the first place? If you are sure you have got it all figured out, there is nothing left to talk about. Discussion is only useful when you recognize gaps in your understanding and are able to learn more about it.

> it's never really possible to lose a debate

It is. If you cannot compel the other party to offer you information that you can successfully learn from, you've lost. A debate is only won if you've learned something from it. Which, again, is why it would be rather illogical to debate something you feel strongly about. What can you learn if you already have it figured out? If you truly know it all you are guaranteed to lose every time, and at that point why waste your time?

Debates are for the audience, not for you.

No one changes their mind in real time. Even if they know they are wrong their ego digs in in the moment.

Truly consequential shifts in your thinking happen gradually over time.

I find this article amusing. I think it puts forward something interesting but frame it completely incorrectly.

The author doesn't actually want to lose debates even if it doesn't seem to realise it. He doesn't want to have debates at all. He just wants to have conversations with people and less preconceptions. That's something I'm completely in line with. I believe we suffer as a society from a collective excess of opinions.

The funny thing is that even when he tries to describe is prejudice in an unprejudiced way, he horribly fails at it.

Astral Codex he ain't

I agree he frames it incorrectly, but he has not failed in terms of results. If he framed it as "I want to talk to people", it would not be posted on HN, and no one would be visiting his site or discussing his shower thought.

It's not really healthy to view such a thing as success, unless your goal is to become good at bullshitting people (as opposed to creating lasting things of value that you can be proud of). Lots of great projects show up in HN and receive no views. On the other hand lots of self promoters who say nothing imortant get tons of views. Ideally you'd want to be in the middle, where you made something awesome and were good at promoting it.

I don't get it.

There are many sex workers which are forced to do this job, some even under threat.

I also don't see an issue using analogies to explain things.

Was the Hindu person poor itself? If so, how has this person dealt with sickness in the family?

Any religion is a perfect recipe for peace, it just depends on the fairness and good will of those practicing it.

Why should partying not be a good thing as long as it is done in a good balance, and why would an ugly tattoo require an explanation, unless a good story can be told about it?

What does any of the above have to do with stupidity? I certainly wouldn't want to lose a debate about why murdering someone can be considered a good thing.

I just don't understand the spirit in which that article has been written. But then again, "TED speaker" kind of explains it a bit.

This does have enormous TED energy.

I think the idea is to quickly touch on profiles of people whose world views (apparently?) contradict the authors and then to promote the idea of listening, with an open heart, to people who you believe at the outset are misguided. I think this is because it's common for us to find powerful new insights into how people see the world or feel about things when temporarily we set aside our judgements and understand the internal logic of people we disagree with? That people make more sense once you see things with their eyes, and then also the world makes more sense because those people want things in the world too?

I dunno, it's pretty fluffy.

> I certainly wouldn't want to lose a debate about why murdering someone can be considered a good thing.

Serious question: What is the benefit of winning this debate?

I sure wouldn’t be upset if someone murdered Putin, ideally 11 months ago.

It would be someone presenting me this argument, like one can assume other people were presenting the author their arguments "pro sex work" which the author apparently never considered.

Someone presenting me an argument that "murdering someone can be considered a good thing" and them wanting me to lose this argument is something which I would not want to happen.

I think the issue in that sentence was the double negative in addition to the lack of definition of who is proposing that argument.

But assuming you did not get confused: I would prefer to live in a society where it's considered a good thing to not murder others and if this were up for debate, I sure hope I would not get convinced of the opposite, which would mean "losing the debate" in the way the author means it.

> I would prefer to live in a society where it's considered a good thing to not murder others and if this were up for debate, I sure hope I would not get convinced of the opposite, which would mean "losing the debate" in the way the author means it.

I'm going to be downvoted like crazy for saying this, but it seems you are making these statements with a feeling of safety because you are assuming the vast majority of people reading this comment (i.e. on HN) share your views. Other than that, there is nothing different in your attitude than the folks in countries I have lived in where they would say:

> I would prefer to live in a society where it's considered a good thing to not let women get a college degree and marry them off in their teens and if this were up for debate, I sure hope I would not get convinced of the opposite.

They too make these statements because they are in a community where the majority share their views.

A better way of knowing you are right is to allow the possibility of being wrong. If you are going to go in with the mindset of "Of course I'm right and I need to win", chances are you will process the other party's arguments very differently compared to "I think I am right but I'd like to see why other people think differently."

Feels like the Republican vs. Libertarians issue. Like the author accidentally noticed that there are other valid point of views. "Maybe those LGBT groups do make a point and should be accepted and integrated just the way they are."

But honestly, there are just facts which are settled in the larger community and trying to negate them just doesn't lead anywhere, when the fruitful discussion is in "the smaller issues".

We (as in "we from the West") don't have anything to gain from entertaining thoughts like reconsidering the banning of women from any type of education. That's a settled topic. And luckily in my country the murdering issue is also a settled topic, specially if put in contrast to what is currently happening in Iran.

Maybe what triggered me was his title and his cheering about his enlightenment. "The benefits of listening to other people's opinions" vs. "I want to lose every debate".

Your comment confuses me.

It sounds like you actually do not want to discuss these issues (which is fine), and that is different from debating to win on these issues. What I don't get is that while you do not want to explore these issues, why do you take issue with someone who does? When Derek sees that a large collection of people believe in something that he doesn't, he wants to know what they see/believe that he doesn't. If you don't want to, that's OK. But if he does, that should also be OK.

> like reconsidering the banning of women from any type of education

Your phrasing is telling. I didn't say anything about banning women from education, nor do the people I refer to in those countries advocate for it.

> to not let women get a college degree

There's no reason for me to stick to your exact argument since yours is a subset of a problem which is occurring in several places. For us this issue is settled and there is no reason to undo the progress which has been made.

This implies that you are assuming the perspective of a person which is in favor of a patriarchal society, let's take Afghanistan for example. The people you are referring to there do certainly not want to get convinced of the opposite of their beliefs, they would be giving up (unfair) privileges. There is no value for us assume their point of view, there's nothing to gain but an understanding of which methods could exist in order to try to educate these men to make them understand that those are no human rights. The author implies that he accepts the point of view of those people which he talks to, which is perfectly fine, but in this case, it is unacceptable. There is nothing left to debate. In that case the only thing that can happen is that some courageous women fight for their rights, but we also have to admit that it gets harder and harder the more modern a population becomes. Take Iran for example, not that they have the education issue, but there it's about some freedoms which some citizens want to obtain, but it get's harder because there's the new technology which the oppressors can make use of.

Where is the point in debating that murder should be an accepted and not punishable fact of life? You simply can't put a person with me in a room which is pro-murder and have it debate with me that it is ok. There is nothing, absolutely nothing for me to gain from his point of view, with the exception of me maybe getting to understand how a murderer thinks which could be a benefit if I would be a detective, which I am not. There's also nothing for me to gain by having some Taliban with me in a room and he trying to make me understand that women have essentially no rights. There's zero reason for me to even listen to a single word which this person has to say to me in this regard.

That is what I'm trying to explain, that some things are not even worthy of debate and if those were assumed that they would be worthy of it, then I certainly would not want to lose those debates when engaging in them. The other person should be the one learning something. There are hills I'm willing to die on. Sometimes the other person is, simply put, a stupid person.

> For us this issue is settled and there is no reason to undo the progress which has been made.

This is just an "I've made up my mind and don't want to think about it" mentality.

Overall you're missing the point: You say "For us this issue is settled" and they say the same - it just settled differently. If you're not open to explore it, do you see that it is weird to expect them to be open to changing?

> This implies that you are assuming the perspective of a person which is in favor of a patriarchal society, let's take Afghanistan for example. The people you are referring to there do certainly not want to get convinced of the opposite of their beliefs, they would be giving up (unfair) privileges.

While this may be true of Afghanistan, it is not true of the people I am talking about. But how would you know that without engaging?

> There is no value for us assume their point of view, there's nothing to gain but an understanding of which methods could exist in order to try to educate these men to make them understand that those are no human rights.

Saying "there's nothing to gain" is simply saying "I know better" without knowing perhaps half of what there is to know. Of course you do! So do they!

> You simply can't put a person with me in a room which is pro-murder and have it debate with me that it is ok.

That much is clear from your comments. But if the pro-murder person is willing to listen to you, he is already ahead of you in understanding.

> There is nothing, absolutely nothing for me to gain from his point of view, with the exception of me maybe getting to understand how a murderer thinks which could be a benefit if I would be a detective, which I am not. There's also nothing for me to gain by having some Taliban with me in a room and he trying to make me understand that women have essentially no rights. There's zero reason for me to even listen to a single word which this person has to say to me in this regard.

Going back to my original comment, your mentality is the same as those who argue the opposite. And while opaque to you, it is crystal clear to people who have lived in both societies. They have the stances you find repugnant for precisely the same reasons you have your stances - you get validation from the society you live in and are unwilling to comprehend that there can be (reasonable) other points of view.

What I think is happening is that you simply don't want to explore these issues. As I said - that is totally fine. Life is limited and we can't explore everything. But instead of stating it as your preference, you are trying to make absolutist statements about it ("not worthy of debate" "other person is ... a stupid person", etc.)

https://twitter.com/mayahiga/status/1620586546083803136

This is all fun until you talk to someone who is absolutely brainwashed or alien to a peaceful behavior.

Do you really want to lose the debate to flat earth advocate? Do you want to lose a debate to a war aggressor supporter? Do you want to lose a debate to a serial killer?

I bet you don't.

PS. Maybe I didn't get something right, but I suffered a lot in conversations with close relatives who are denying that killing other people is bad in the light of ongoing war in Ukraine :(

Of course the will be outliers and edge cases for most of the advice you receive. This observation from Derek is more or less a guideline, not an iron rule. He's not advocating to forgo common sense when dealing with people.

I think that the fact that Derek found this interesting enough to write about and people find it controversial to discuss about here kinda proves that his wish is the outlier and the norm is arguing with bad faith actors or people who have made up their mind and want to convince you, not really learn anything.

Maybe this is an internet thing but genuine enlightening discussion is kinda hard to be found on internet.

>close relatives who are denying that killing other people is bad

Nobody, except people with legitimate mental health issues, thinks killing is a "good" thing.

Your close relatives believe Russia is on defense. Kind of like how the US was on defense in Iraq. So, from their perspective, the way to save lives is to negotiate an end to the war where Russia takes that tiny bit of land, and Ukraine stops being considered for the UN.

Come to the discussion using human life as the topic. Figure out where solutions exist that save the most lives. Talk about how many die and what is gained or lost as a result.

Moving the conversation from nations to humans will not only help the argument make more sense, it will have you coming away with far superior respect for your incredibly important family unit.

What's interesting in this is how many people still think that in politics there's a ,,good side'' and a ,,bad side''.

Europe would stay much stronger together with Russia, so it was worth for US to increase the conflicts between the two powers (destroying Nordstream wasn't the nicest move).

Putin was used to high gas prices making his power the highest, but he wasn't used to the power of LNG that US has, as it's the first time that LNG comes into geopolitics in Europe so strongly.

But as you wrote, nobody wants to kill people, it's a terrible consequence of geopolitics.

So why did Putin attack Ukraine if it was so obvious that it would benefit the US?

He probably expected an easier win and smaller help from US, but again that's geopolitics, it's still not about ,,people liking killing people''

That's a great question worth a full deep dive. A debate where losing is beneficial and where being a spectator is worthwhile.

Russia has been developing its own LNG with the French know-how and with Chinese money, and while the volumes that EUrope imports are still relatively small, they are now only an order of magnitude smaller than pipeline methane at its peak... and growing.

It's also questionable just how long the US will be able to afford to export that methane (phase change isn't free), since the related tight oil seems to already have peaked ? (Maybe a few decades still ?)

That bit of land isn’t tiny, and the russians aren’t going to stop at 20% of Ukraine.

The aim of fascist russia is the total erasure of Ukraine. That means genocide. Trying to make a “peace deal” means more dead civilians, not fewer.

Anyone who does not understand this is clueless, and it is quite frustrating how many Chomskys love to indulge themselves pontificating on such a serious issue with sweet fuck all real insight.

I don't hold an opinion on this worth sharing, I was merely stating what I have heard from people beforehand as reasoning.

I look at maps showing between 10-15% of Ukraine being of the Donbas region from 5+ random Google-provided sources. What source do you get the 20% from?

As to the total erasure of Ukraine I am also unaware of any evidence that this is true. I always appreciate being informed and would love an authoritative source on this if you(or anyone) can provide it.

Based on the personal attacks at the end, I'm not expecting a reply. My comment is for others mostly with a small hope that you can help further my understanding.

> What source do you get the 20% from?

The 20% figure might be outdated now after the Ukrainians liberated Khersonks'ka Oblast north of the Dnipro. The NYT most recently put the figure at 18%[0].

> As to the total erasure of Ukraine I am also unaware of any evidence that this is true. I always appreciate being informed and would love an authoritative source on this if you(or anyone) can provide it.

The russians are only rarely going to state their aims so blatantly. It is only recently that kremlin officials admitted that the soldiers who invaded Ukraine in 2014 were indeed kremlin-backed. Until recently, they denied it.

You can see fact #2 here[1] for a more detailed explanation, but to really understand the kremlin's perspective, there's quite a lot of material you need to follow and digest.

More explanation from Carnegie[2]:

> The Kremlin’s logic appears to stem from its thesis about the “artificial” nature of Ukrainian statehood. If Ukraine was “constructed” by Lenin in 1918, as Moscow now insists, then it can be just as easily and legitimately “deconstructed”: its neighbors have the right to claim Ukrainian territory, which Russia will not oppose. Indeed, it has already made a head start by declaring the annexation of four Ukrainian regions in September.

I have Ukrainian residence and I was living in Ukraine for most of last year. I also have many personal and professional relationships in the country, so this imperialist war and the innumerable war crimes committed are of special importance to me. I have literally watched missiles fly and explode in the sky from my kitchen window.

> Based on the personal attacks at the end,

Sorry, my outrage isn't directed at you specifically. It is directed towards anyone who parrots kremlin propaganda. For some reason, this is all too common among intellectuals like Chomsky and his ilk who struggle with the painfully basic principle that the enemy of your enemy is not your friend.

---

[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/world/europe/ukrain....

[1]: https://mfa.gov.ua/en/10-facts-you-should-know-about-russian...

[2]: https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/88585

- https://kafkadesk.org/2022/05/08/russian-invasion-to-continu...

Thank you for the very thoughtful reply. I am reading it now but wanted to respond in a timely manner. I do try to keep my opinion on important events informed, but have been finding it increasingly difficult since Jan 2020.

I lean towards promoting a solution that doesn't turn this invasion into WW3. Preferably a solution that results in fewer deaths. That does also include worldwide deaths that for example may stem from the financial fallout of the war itself. As well as a comparison of lives saved/saveable using the money being spent.

I'm very aware this is a privileged position that I can justify while living in Canada. Knowing I would find it incredibly difficult if not impossible to maintain my position if the conflict was localized. I like to believe I would still lean to societal benefit, but for that I have zero confidence.

I primarily ponder on the options allowing for an eventual de-escalation being limited or even non-existent. Is there a route to an end of the invasion that you see as viable? What is needed to get there and who do you think could make it happen?

Thank you again for the informative response. I've come out with better information than I had this morning.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to respond, especially given I hadn’t made it clear as toward whom my ire was directed.

Unfortunately, because Putin has gone all-in with this war, he has backed himself into a corner. There is no off-ramp that he can now take to save face. I think the hesitance of the western powers in arming Ukraine has been an attempt to provide Putin with off-ramps and minimise both civilian and military casualties on both sides. They have slowly begun to realise that Putin has no interest in diplomacy, which is why they have stepped up arms shipments.

The way this ends is in russian military defeat. That might not happen before they lose about half a million soldiers though, and we’re about 20% of the way there. It might also end sooner if the Ukrainians are able to expel all russian forces from all of Ukrainian territory, and then build sufficient defences so that further border skirmishes are futile. The Ukrainians need a whole load of equipment for that though.

> Nobody, except people with legitimate mental health issues, thinks killing is a "good" thing.

But what if a woman wants to kill her unborn child?

They don't see it as a person.

Canada as a country doesn't see an unborn baby as a person for example.

That is not a statement I am making or denying. Though I have noted that this definition could be used as a justification in someone's view.

>Nobody, except people with legitimate mental health issues, thinks killing is a "good" thing.

I know a lot of people that believe killing can be justified and in that sense a "good."

...who are denying that killing other people is bad in the light of ongoing war in Ukraine

I wonder what your point of view would be if your family was killed by people who have no intention of listening to another person's point of view.

Understanding perspectives is a useful skill. But it's not where having an educated opinion ends.

I understand the desire of US fossil fuel companies to do fracking. They're not stupid or comically evil. But they can be greedy, misguided, selfish and too focused on short term gains (if you want to be extra accustory, "within their lifetime"). If you then move over to how much astroturfing is involved in pushing through a viewpoint you may even call it evil. Though not comically, because everything here is still just following the forces and inventives of our economic system - profit at every non-monetary expense. If you want change, your solution needs to address systemic issues (not neccessarily abolishing capitalism, but focusing on different inventives and making other alternatives viable/profitable though taxes)

(I hope the point I picked is uncontroversial enough, but you can probably apply it to your least favorite policies of your least favorite flavor of political party, organization, movement or institution)

In Manufacturing Consent, Herman and Chomsky write that (I’m paraphrasing) “nobody wakes up and thinks, ‘how will I ruin the world today?’”.

Our world is full of perverse incentives which are embedded into society itself. It’s been one of the most important lessons I’ve ever learned.

Truly evil people are rare. Selfish people not so much. But selfish people nevertheless will generally follow the law and social convention.

Unfortunately it’s hard to change either of these things.

Fracking is textbook comic evil.

Say there's a comic book where fossil fuel co's worked to permanently ruin the groundwater and increase earthquakes in a region - bribing lawmakers and fucking over the people who lived there, gagging scientists, etc - all just for a resource that is literally burning the planet... So they can upgrade their megayacht/private jet... I'd find it hard to believe that others could allow it to happen.

"Following the incentives of our economic system", so your actions are indistinguishable or worse than those of a comic book villain, *is* comically evil. Literally. The fact that so much of our economic system defends this behavior says a lot.

"Comically evil" usually refers to a character that is evil for the sake of being evil, without external motivation. Like the stereotypical first D&D character some people make.

Such people are somewhere between rare and nonexitent. You could say the fossil fuel company executives are pretty high on the evil scale, but they are not evil for the sake of being evil. And I was careful calling them evil because HN is a politically diverse bunch and sometimes saying things diplomatically is the right choice over being technically or morally correct but getting downvoted into oblivion for invoking a certain kind of language.

If you need an example: I basically never say I'm trans or an anarchist in any top level comment to explain the origin of my perspective or my claim to knowing more context than others because these two words got me outright dismissed too much in the past.

Fracking happens, because we need energy not because fossil fuel CEOs are moustache twirling comic book villains.

That would be only true if fracking would be the only source of energy.

Not-fracking gives an enormous leverage to the Saudis, who are textbook comic evil as well. A medieval theocracy slowly transforming itself into a modern authoritarian country, dissolving dissidents in acid on the way.

Or to another major producer, Putin's Russia stuck in the Stalinist imperial mindset.

Pick your poison.

There's a method for deconstructing an opinion to eliminate bias and examine it through as objective of a lens as possible. This generally helps ground a lot of irrationality. Their conclusion might not necessarily be correct, but as you said, if you understand the perspective you can structurally address it.

Clickbaity way to say it, but yes, I like to "lose debates" in the way Sivers describes here. For the same reason, I'm very tolerant of rudeness and disrespect if and when it comes with an insight that makes my understanding of something click.

Also for the same reason I like to say, "Don't tell me I'm wrong; instead, improve my worldmodel to the point that you no longer have to, because the wrongness will be obvious."

But I'm not sure that what Sivers describes here is coterminous with "losing a debate". Rather, it's just one way you might "lose a debate". In practice, losing a debate more often looks something more like:

1) The other side stubbornly refuses to engage with your point while effectively signaling you're a bad person despite endorsing the same tradeoffs you do. [B]

2) The other side points being so muddled that you can't untangle what they're disagreeing with or what makes your point wrong, but they speak with that confidence that everyone wants to agree with them. [A]

I don't like losing a debate those ways.

[A] Example of this kind of misdirection from Thank You For Smoking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuaHRN7UhRo

[B] Recent example from HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33900804

The first time I saw US-style collegiate debate, it seemed like a great mind-game. Over time I've come to consider it though as the sign of a bullshitting culture, where the truth is irrelevant, and winning the argument is all that matters.

Professional debating and the article both feel wrong since they're missing the key element to me: synthesis of opposing ideas into something more than each individual side. It might happen that at times this synthesis means that one side is completely discarded, but the goal of any debate to me should be to achieve the sum of all truths that are held by all parties.

Most places from from schools to success stories seem to fail in describing the purpose of debating to me because of that.

It's the difference between being right and winning. Not the same thing. The best way to be right is to change your mind, since the odds that your model of reality matching with reality are stacked against you.

If you don't plan for failure, you plan to fail.

If you don't plan for being wrong, you plan to be wrong.

What do you mean US-style? As far as I'm aware, such debate clubs exist all throughout the world. The most famous of which are probably the Cambridge Union and the Oxford Union both in the UK.

It might be anglo-saxon style. I've never seen them in mainland Europe in this format.

I don't know about the Oxford Union, but the people arguing in the Cambridge Union generally believe the arguments they are making. This makes it quite different from debate clubs in school.

I agree. The fun thing for me in “debate” is understanding the arguments for and against something. Most often, arguments differ through either (1) the axioms used, or (2) there is a subjective preference at play. In these cases, there is no right side.

Of course, there are cases with an answer, often scientific type questions.

Years later, still puzzling over Thomas Jefferson's passivity at Philadelphia, John Adams would claim that "during the whole time I sat with him in Congress, I never heard him utter three sentence together"

Jefferson, himself would one day advise a grandson, "when I hear another express an opinion which is not mine, I say to myself, he has a right to his opinion, as I to mine." And "Why should I question it. His error does me no injury, and shall I become a Don Quixote, to bring all men by force of argument to one opinion?... Be a listener only, keep within yourself, and endeavor to establish with yourself the habit of silence, especially in politics."

> Why should I question it. His error does me no injury

Isn't that an incredibly dangerous behavior especially in political debates ? I mean, wrong political opinions do injure people. Maybe not the other people in the room but the people who elected them.

Do I miss something ?

As Adams agreed, it was quite the perplexing philosophy. However, who won in the end? The firebrand Adams or stoic Jefferson???

Thomas Jefferson was as privileged as they come. Of course he'd have that opinion. He was at the top of the pyramid. Opinions held by his fellow man would have no impact on him personally.

> Do I miss something ?

Yes, the part of governmental politics that involves creating and enforcing policy. Jefferson would listen to people's arguments in legislature but infrequently debated them because his strength (in his own estimation, at least) was in writing responses, especially as policy proposals.

Someone speaking a disagreement does him no harm, even if what's being described would be harmful. But someone implementing something he viewed harmful in enforced policy is different, and he treated it very differently.

Governmental politics tends to emphasize, even glamorize, the former, but the latter is what actually affects people and Jefferson often focused his attention on it.

One could strongly suggest that Jefferson's preference for written arguments and policy over political debate and lobbying is why Hamilton had more effective Federalist influence over early policies of the United States, and manifests even more strongly in Jefferson's prescriptions for the republic — the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights, wanting to rewrite the Constitution every 20 years, his opposition to slavery and promotion of universal free education, freedom both of and from religion in government, strongly held national liberties and local self-government — many of which were at the time, or have always been, ignored in practice.

I don't like the position of "losing is good".

I want to win every debate, because I define winning a debate as coming out of it knowing more that I did going in. Debating isn't a zero-sum game, me winning doesn't make you the loser.

Yeah but what if you're wrong and you "won" by attrition? This is the problem with a lot of debates; they don't end with one party being convinced of the other party's point of view, they often end because one party just gives up.

I mean your point does apply if you actually acknowledge your lack of knowledge on a subject and do your research before bringing in an argument, but a lot of people don't, they have a standpoint and will stick to it.

Losing isn't good, but neither is winning if that was your goal going into a debate; the goal should be to learn and come to a consensus.

I think you misunderstood me.

The point I'm making is that you should redefine "winning a debate". Learning (and hopefully coming to a consensus) is exactly what winning should mean in your head. Just altogether abandon the notion that you win by convincing the other party you're right.

There's a sort of hidden weakness to "losing": it's extremely difficult for people to correctly filter out BS at scale.

I'm not talking about on an individual encounter level - BS almost always loses to truth. But the percentage isn't so high that smart and/or successful people never fall for BS in their lifetime.

Especially since BS is under evolutionary pressure to be extremely believable.

That's a big part of the benefit of being part of the mainstream of knowledge. It's almost certain that large swaths of the mainstream are BS. But the mainstream is also exposed to the most criticism (at least the parts where criticism is acceptable), which means that BS tends to get filtered out more quickly as well.

In contrast, looking at "alternative" knowledge communities, they all generally have that whiff of being scammy. There's probably some truth in there, at least in some of those communities, but there's also a lot more BS.

So, I'm not saying to never lose. Losing is generally good. Just take care to make sure that you're actually losing.

> But the mainstream is also exposed to the most criticism (at least the parts where criticism is acceptable), which means that BS tends to get filtered out more quickly as well.

This is what I worry in relation to ChatGPT. Producing quality, believable BS is currently expensive, and the price of exposing it is relatively manageable. But with ChatGPT, it will be possible to produce huge amounts of BS which will be extremely believable and simply uneconomical to critique and expose.

BS can be tailored to the audience, imagine a Wikipedia written by ChatGPT specifically for your which takes into account your own biases. It doesn't even have to be factually wrong, it can just modify the writing style, a word here and there to evoke a different sentiment, play on your personal preconceptions to move slightly your political position in a certain direction. People will claim they are immune to such subtle manipulations, but I don't believe that.

It's also worth noting that ChatGPT is a BS generator that's only allowed to generate BS for one side of a number of modern arguments.

> at least the parts where criticism is acceptable

This is an important effect to note. If criticism of an idea is not socially allowed then you cannot rely on mainstreamness as a proxy for truth.

There's also another effect worth noting: if an idea is relies on building blocks outside daily experience (e.g. anything about the large scale) and requires quantification as part of the argument then its going to struggle to propagate (both the guys with the megaphones and your average Joe are bad at thinking quantatively). Incorrect ideas about the dangers of nuclear power being the classic example.

Ah, the good old cognitive dissonance between striving to be right and the higher goal of learning and progressing as humanity. For those interested, I recommend this article from Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/maybe-its-just-me/...

Great perspective.

This is why I love browsing HN. Despite its relatively homogeneous userbase, people manage to stay civil when they disagree

Elsewhere it's harder, but it still happens.

To a point; I have seen some greyed-out comments that just devolved into trolling. Thankfully, HN is self-regulating and has good moderators that help filter out these things.

The quality of the moderation can't be overstated. Dang holds this place together.

Derek's right here. Being willing to be wrong is one of the best ways to grow. I have a lot of strong opinions and a lot of knowledge, and I used to think that meant I had to be an absolute warrior defending my side of an argument. Turns out you're stronger if you're willing to consider that you don't know everything.

Yet another Derek Sivers post that makes me think he's a freaking genius.

Even better yet: don't presume (virtually) any of your beliefs are 100% right in the first place.

I would say that more importantly than winning or losing a debate is to know which debate you should participate.

About 99% of the time IRL, debating is pointless and just annoying to everyone present.

Yeah, couldn't agree more. They also can be annoying online, so people just ignore. On Reddit you often see very long, deep, threads with 1-karma posts that nobody even bothers to vote for. On HN those long debates not only take a lot of space, and you often see moderators telling people to stop.

Sometimes you gotta preemptively "lose" a debate, by not answering at all. At most a "Alright, I get your point but I disagree" which also doesn't really add much to the discussion.

Great point. A lot of people debate for debate's sake, because their opinion is out there. That's probably what I do on HN, I post and never look back or respond to any replies. Not a good trait, but anyway.

Best thing to do, if you detect you're about to enter a debate, is to ask "What would it take for you to change your opinion?". If they reply with "nothing" or a vague answer or whatever, exit the debate. Likewise though, ask yourself the same question.

I feel like there are two different things that are often talked about as the same thing:

1. Wanting to understand and learn. Here you use the help of another person to figure out what the best solution or the right answer to something is, or just to understand how something works or in other ways improve your knowledge. There is no winner or loser; the only outcome is whether the discussion was successful or not.

2. Wanting to prove how much you already know or that your idea is the correct one. This is just about showing everyone that you (or your idea and therefore you) are better than the other person, not about what you learn from it. Here there is a winner and loser; you win if you appear to know the right answer from the start.

These are two very different things; you could even say that they are opposites. In number 1, the goal is to learn. In number 2, the goal is not to learn but to stay with your current idea. Why don't we have different words for these two things?

It seems like in this article, what he is talking about is doing number 1 but talking about it as if it were number 2.

Could the reason that we talk about these two things as the same thing be that people often do both at the same time? In that case maybe they want to appear as already knowing but secretly still trying to learn something. Or maybe they only try to learn but others are judging them as if they should already know everything from the start, and that way misunderstanding what they are doing.

Consider this: You have an idea about how things are and this other person has another idea in direct contradiction with yours, such that at most one of the two can be right. If you want to treat their idea as if it has merit then you have to argue with them to understand why they think what they think and how well their idea fits in with other facts you already know. If you care about the truth then you will need to subject their idea to the same harsh trials your own idea (presumably) passed, and if there's any possible flaws or inconsistencies you'll want to dig in to thoroughly understand everything. You might that in fact you were wrong all along and this idea is actually better than yours.

Do you see how and why one might want to learn something new while outwardly appearing to want to prove themselves right (or, more accurately, to prove the other person wrong)? An idea that one can't prove wrong is certainly worth considering seriously.

> Do you see how and why one might want to learn something new while outwardly appearing to want to prove themselves right (or, more accurately, to prove the other person wrong)? An idea that one can't prove wrong is certainly worth considering seriously.

Yes, this is exactly what I meant by my last sentence. Two people may want to learn something and in order to do that they have to "attack" each other's ideas so it may look to other people like the goal is just to prove how correct they are, and that the one who does that is the winner, when the real goal is to learn the truth, and proving that you are correct is just a way to get closer to that goal.

So it seems like the difference is that in number 2, proving that you are correct is the goal, while in number 1 it is a tool you use to reach the other goal.

"Always wanting to be right" is something I've been accused of since I was little, when all I've always wanted was to know as few false things as possible, even before I could articulate that thought like that. In my experience, people who don't like or want to argue, which is most people, will always assume that someone who is arguing is doing #2 no matter what. I don't think someone can correctly tell which of the two the other person is doing.

To each their own, but I prefer argumentative and opinionated people and have nothing against discussions even when they become heated. In my experience, there is much more to learn from others by discussing a topic than by "listening" to them. Good discussions take a certain emotional detachment from the topic, though, and when that is lost it can become unpleasant. But in my opinion "pleasant" isn't a major criterion for good conversations.

Listening and taking someone's point of view has nothing to do with debating. When you're actually listening, you're not debating anymore. It's a life skill.

That might be your preferred way of learning. As for myself, I can't take someone's POV without understanding. And I can't understand without exposing my current model to be shaped by someone's counterarguments. For me there's no better way to learn (apart from explaining and being met with unexpected questions, which I enjoy even more).

Why post this comment? Asking out of curiosity, trying to listen to view your point.

Some comments higher up conveyed it better than I did myself.

I feel like losing a debate and understanding someone else's point of view/learning from them are separate things. In my own experience a debate is not the ideal means of communication if I want to empathize or understand someone better. But as groestl points out, this is a personal matter.

Vigorous debate is a good thing.

It's about learning to turn it off afterwards.

Debate at its best is where the issues are at stake -- not the relationship. Getting clear on that is an important communicative and emotional skill.

The problem with "wanting to lose" in this post is how fake and sentimental that attitude can become, against our best intentions.

If both sides can put their cards on the table, that's a more productive conversation, rather than one side shutting up and keeping theirs close to the vest.

Confrontation is not an evil to be avoided. Hurting others is the harm to be avoided. Those are two very different things. Sometimes avoiding confrontation hurts oneself and others the very most.

Furthermore, there is no logical reason why one should default to thinking that only others will bring value to the conversation, and that one's own experience and judgment are not as important to share. By sharing one's thoughts, the other side may hear, learn, or rethink something that could change their lives. To the extent that "wanting to lose" consciously or unconsciously results in one bringing less of a certain energy to a debate, that's an opportunity lost for everyone.

Discernment and diplomacy are the valuable skills here. Again, rather than check out (whether smugly or earnestly), instead, let's make efforts to figure out when, where, why, and with whom to turn on the heat, -- and then turn it off.

Sportsmanship among athletes and collegiality among lawyers are good examples of this in practice.

"And do as adversaries do in law,

Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends."

--Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew, Act I, sc. 2.

> The problem with "wanting to lose" in this post is how fake and sentimental that attitude can become, against our best intentions.

Yes. Plus it can seem condescending. I wouldn't want to debate anything with someone adopting some sort of "philosophical master" stance that "through losing" will achieve enlightening. I prefer the other person gets angry if need be, which at least is honest, rather than trying to play some Socratic bullshit on me.

It comes across as "I'm better than you, let me show you that to lose is actually to win".

Good point. People smell condescension, and then check out.

The whole thing cools. They'll say just enough to get to the next topic gracefully. The dispute is patched up with something like "we'll agree to disagree" or something like that, in the interest of polite conversation, rather than square-on debate.

In that scenario one does not receive the full force of an opponent's argument. It never got ventilated. An opponent only brings that energy to a debate between earnest people who see themselves -- not their arguments -- as equals.

> The problem with "wanting to lose" in this post is how fake and sentimental that attitude can become, against our best intentions.

A better way might be to say, "losing can be good" If you put your best forward, and still lose, then you learned something, and hopefully became stronger. In the same way tennis players always want to play people better than them, because they will get better playing a superior player even when they lose.

A good analogy. And that stance is so different from "wanting to lose" -- it is "wanting a challenge." To get bested by a worthy opponent. That feeling can only be had after bringing one's best and strongest game to the court.

Every debate you lose is one where someone else won (and by the author’s logic, was deprived of the chance to lose).

Some debates I want to win, for the simple joy of teaching someone something new.

While it would be an optimal use of my time (from an information-theory point of view) for me to lose every debate I participate in, some debates are worth taking up for the chance to share.

I am wrong constantly. yet somehow I and others, who are also wrong, function and get by in life. It's kinda amazing how society works when so many people are wrong. If I had to guess it's the correcting mechanism from the exchange and discussion of ideas. Bad ideas tend to be weeded out or turn into better ones.

I chime well with the gist of this post. However, I think there is no win or lose in a debate. There is the sharing of perspective. The terminology of win/lose is a symptom of Side-ism which I believe humanity suffers from. People feel like they need to be on a side of something, which leads to people who feel like they belong to the "other side" feel left out and ignored, and then the wheel turns and then the other side feels the same. Each side tells themselves the other side is stupid/evil/ignorant/etc.

Instead they could have listened, compromised, come out of the assumption that neither side is wrong, and there should be a middle ground that works for all.

But instead we're stuck with side-ism and an everlasting shift from one extreme to the other, while the majority in the middle get car sick from all that violent movements.

Dialectic is where things happens, it's where people meet. Dialectic is the dancing space between two perspectives.

We all know the saying "It's not about the nails", where one person try to solve an appearing problem for another one who secretly just need an ear to be listen to. Yes, listening is important as a human skill to relate & connect, but ultimately living together is dancing between perspective. We hardly all be passive or let others strongly shape our shared narratives.

We know we're not right, how can we be ? we share a narrative about the world and try to make sense of it. Like the Tao symbol Yin & Yang interlacing, everything we do, we tell contains a part of truth and a part of wrong. The issue is when one identifies too strongly to one's perspective. We're always at least partly wrong but living is deciding which path to take at any moment, and accepting it's not right.

Politic is how we organize ourselves & Democracy aims to listen to everyone, the only way to do that is to share our perspective and enable true dialectic. Sure, sometimes positions are strongly held, but there is no true freedom without a bit of a fight isn't it ? how can we all relate all the time ? share the same taste, share the same vision ? it's boring and borderline dangerous. That what anarchism tell us, not as a dogma to political utopia but as a way to relate politically : we differ so we need to talk, we need to dance everytime to build a better shared perspective, with as many vision there is.

Anarchism is a dialectic of every moment, inhaling and exhaling, sharing and dancing, but we cannot dance alone, and we cannot just all listen (and say nothing), and we cannot all talk (and be deaf to others perspectives).

And this is what we are all doing just now, what the authors of the post did too. He speaks his truth and wait for people to dance with it.

(But as anything goes, what I just typed is neither completely true or false, and that's ok)

How self congratulatory. So many people, most people hope and assume they are this way. We all think we are super progressive and smart and just want “growth”. It’s a bit redundant to spell it out. So what? Big clap. You have a growth mindset. You want to embrace “regret”. How intellectual of you.

It requires energy to pay attention to others and walk in their shoes. Attaching a stereotypical label and switching off / ending the debate is the low cost option

Ergo, we must reclaim quality time for engaging with others if we want to live in quality societies

I wish debating skills were taught better in schools. A lot of people see debates as a personal attack on themselves and are set to win, no matter the cost. Then comes every dirty manipulation, trick and foul play. This is infuriating.

I feel the same way. I'm going to try to defend my position as well as I can (sans dishonesty and rhetorical tricks), but actually winning an argument means it was probably a waste of my time. My goal is to be right about everything, so I wish that in every argument I have I'm on the wrong side because when somebody who is right convinces me that I am wrong, I become smarter than I was before the argument.

I think it's pretty common to feel indebted to people who convinced you that you were wrong. Really what happened is that they put in the work before you got into it with them, and aggressively shared the benefits with you. Losing an argument is like someone beating the crap out of you, strolling into your home and ransacking it until they find your debts, then paying them off against your will.

I walk into every argument hoping to lose, and hoping I don't embarrass myself too badly on the way to that loss. The worst is when you figure out that you were confidently, smugly wrong. But if you laugh with your opponent about how cocky you were, it makes it all better.

edit: it's only worth my time to win in an argument if I'm trying to help someone I care about, or if I'm trying to argue against behavior that affects me or someone I care about negatively. Not an abstract effect, like when you pretend your tweets are social work, but concretely, like with a coworker that you depend on, or a neighbor.

It bothers me that people argue so poorly.

That's why debate exists. And why some people excel at podcasts Joe Rogan being an examplar.

His best debates have very similar formats.

"Tell me about"/"why do you think"

"What about X"

"So you're saying Y?"

"Wouldn't that mean Z"

People are bothered because he rarely ever seems to shoot others down just gets them to lay out their points and fleshout reasoning.

The only time he shoots you down is if he thinks you don't have an explanation around some aspects of your point. But his job is done the audience can make up its own mind.

That's the mark of a good host (or debater), instead of arguing directly (confrontational), they encourage the other party to think.

You don't win a debate with arguments and counter-arguments, you win it by letting the other person come to and change their own conclusions.

You seem to be stating that Joe Rogan's 'best debates' aren't debates so much as interviews.

I'm bothered that you describe that as a debate.

You're nicely applying the JRE method here.

The problem is that the other definition of 'debate' is competitive and people have interests to appear correct more than to be correct.

To follow the spirit of the original linked article I will choose to accept that a debate can be defined as a conversation where one person presents their ideas and another person listens and asks clarifying questions in a generally non-argumentative manner.

With the JRE you seem to be saying that the guest is arguing that their ideas are correct and JR is arguing the negative but only through the use of questions and occasional direct counters to the guests argument.

Seems like a debate to me although also fits the definition of an interview.

It's not dissimilar from the socratic method.

But he leaves the direct criticism to the audience.

He will almost never use the phrases "I don't think that's correct" or similar.

Louis Theroux?

I always thought the socratic method was where somebody (Socrates) was teaching something to a student. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that doesn't seem right for describing the JRE

But I think Louis Theroux has a not dissimilar style.

(Unless you're asking me if I'm Louis... I'm not)

There are debates which are illuminating (esp. when you first time hear some ideas), you get new POVs and see excitement in the speaker's eyes, and even numbers/data might add up to a point, but the overall ideas might be harmful/dangerous/impractical/too-nuanced/in-theory-sure-but

Examples:

  - People should believe in god(s) b/c people believing in god(s) are more stress-resistant and are overall happier -> improvement of life quality
  - Everyone should pay the same amount of taxes - since they get from the state on avg the same amount of services -> fairness
  - Everyone should be paid the same for any kind of job if they put the same amount of effort/time -> fairness
  - Geopolitics can be described in a few catchy phrases (esp. in hindsight) - zero-sum games, rimland/heartland etc.
  - Richer and more achieved should have more kids (by law or consensus) than poorer ones -> it'll improve human gene-pool wrt cognitive capabilities

People formulating and believing (and sometimes acting on) such and similar ideas are not rare. Having them as family, friends, colleagues, random interlocutors at a party and entertaining their train of thought, sure. But considering them as a partner in a company, advisor, someone you elect for public office... not so much.

> ... I don’t want to convince anyone of my existing perspective. I would rather be convinced of theirs. It’s more interesting to assume that they are right.

There's no need to assume anything. Ask good questions instead.

It might not seem like it, but asking questions is one of the most important skills there is. This skill is not taught in K-12. If anything, you're taught to assume that what you read/see is right. In many degree programs, you also won't be taught how to ask questions but rather repeat what you've read or heard, with some level of analysis.

The difference between good questions and bad questions often comes down to leading. The subtext of a leading question is that the asker is trying to push the askee in a particular direction. Those question tend to yield bad answers of the kind that won't convince you of much.

Better questions are interrogative-led. They start with words like "who", "where", "what" and "why", not words like "do" or "are". It takes practice to ask these kinds of questions and the follow-ups that are needed to actually be convinced by someone else's argument.

OP assumes everyone debating him is doing so in good faith.

These "learnings" he is taking to heart could very well be built on lies and ill intentions of those he is debating.

Sure, it is good to be open to new information, but it's not wrong to develop a worldview based on your own objective observations, experience, and research, that is firm and not open to sway by agenda-holding groups and individuals who seek to "enlighten you".

This TED talk “on being wrong” has stuck with me over the years.

https://www.ted.com/talks/kathryn_schulz_on_being_wrong

Especially the part about the coyote in loony tunes running off the edge and not falling until they realize they are wrong. That’s what feeling right feels like… until you realize you’re wrong.

I remember an interview with a smart man at some medical device company. His most memorable thing started with the pretty boring, "what do you like least about work?" So, I replied, "arguing about plans for projects. Many co-workers get emotional there and resist bringing in facts." And his reply to that is what made me think he's pretty smart.

Arguing and debating about what to do is one of the biggest ways that managerial types can add value to a workplace. And it's even right to get a bit emotional, because the things decided in the meeting is probably going to decide stress, money, and life quality for everyone there. It's hard to change plans after deciding what to do in a big meeting. Bad managers will use debate tricks, but so will good ones. Everyone must be aware of these things, otherwise it's out of control. The expectation for senior employees is to be responsible and contribute important arguments in debate.

IMO the author underestimates the positive effects of non combative debates between adults. For a long time before we could just google, debating was one of the main ways we used to check our ideas. Do you believe the sky is red? Try to debate someone and see if you can convince them. And while we now can just google most of the simpler things, that's not the case for complex ideas.

As the author notes by simply listening you will have a better view of the other persons arguments. But at the same time you deprive them from the opportunity of validating their ideas. Which is not a simple tradeoff.

Even worse most people will take silence as a form of agreement, which for a debate about C++ vs Rust is no big loss but is not true for a lot of other issues. And strangely enough the examples provided by the author are complex non trivial ideas no one should take for face value or agree by silence.

I used to think this too, but found it was mostly a manifestation of my intellectual cowardice, not a coherent position itself.

An open-minded willingness to change one’s mind is admirable. But if you change your mind too often, you end up thinking less yourself - you’re outsourcing learning. It should get incrementally more difficult to change your mind the more you learn. Otherwise, you’re just collecting facts, not actually understanding anything.

Besides, you don’t really hope you’re wrong, and it’s a bit arrogant to say so. Have you ascended above these petty emotions of the flesh? Being wrong is A Bad Thing, and “I believe I’m wrong” is an oxymoron.

I think a better approach is “I’m always willing to change my mind, and hope I never have to.” I’m often wrong, about things of which I’m unaware, and I always pursue the opportunity to be less wrong.

But it’s a worse title.

But discovering that you're wrong is a great thing. It means you've become just a little bit less ignorant -- and we're all ignorant of more things than not.

This reminds of "Argue well by losing" [1]. The purpose of debate shouldn't be to win or lose, but to reach consensus.

In addition, the ancients of the classical world regarded "Rhetoric" (ie the ability to debate) as being the highest form of intelligence. It required not only a deep understanding of the reasoning behind your own opinion but also an equally deep understanding of that of your collocutors. Ie, you should be able to argue in favour of his/her point as well as your own, and as well as he/she can. That takes wisdom and humility that most today seem to lack.

[1] - https://haacked.com/archive/2013/10/21/argue-well-by-losing....

I actually want to win every debate. Winning is hitting delta less than something small. The whole point is for each utterance to increase information gain. Aumann's Agreement Theorem always applies so if you get IG = 0 at any stage it is worth considering if the discussion is worth it.

Additionally, verbal and textual conversations lack the depth to transmit the full state of the probabilities in your model.

Consequently, it is often useful, as a participant, to break off a miniclone of oneself to perform the information interchange and then integrate it into the rest afterwards. You can't tabula rasa the miniclone easily because of the bootstrap time but you can't retain elasticity of your true mind. A more plastic form of yourself can work well.

The problem is that this approach is susceptible to information contagion.

In my family we like arguing about things. Our way of doing so is quite animated and enthusiastic. We're trying to get our point heard of course but the real pleasure is perhaps that it is a fight in the sense of a water pistol fight or a game of rugby or something like that. It's mental exercise with excitement and humor.

It doesn't suit everyone and might seem alarming. Also we sort of play the game with the underlying attitude that it is all unimportant and that we admire and like each other.

The mind changing never happens then but sometimes it happens a few days later.

I HATE changing my mind but usually after I have I'm glad I did it. It's very uncomfortable but to say that nothing can change what I think would be to admit that I wasn't thinking anymore. It would be awful to be like that.

A corollary that helped me take criticism less personally: a friend once said “I ONLY like negative feedback”.

They went on to explain that positive feedback/compliments weren’t helpful to them because they couldn’t grow from it. The starkness of the statement was what I needed to recognize it.

Interesting perspective. This requires a level of inner strength that many of us do not always have. Increasingly though I realize that I don't need a lot of verbal feedback. You can tell a lot just by people's physical reactions to you. And the corollary is that I notice that there are some people that I try and shut down with body language to get them to leave me alone.

This is some Seth Godin, LinkedIn level stuff right here.

The article's title is about debates, but all he gives are examples of conversations (except maybe one). I don't think you can really compare debates with discussions, thus drawing this conclusion from unrelated lived experiences does not make much sense to me

> The Muslim explains why Islamic law is a perfect recipe for peace.

And I'm done with this article.

s/peace/oppression/

When "debating" I often was presenting a point of view I disagree with as if it was mine and trying to defend it as best as I could based on the information I have to see what other people have against it, whether it makes sense and if it is similar to what I actually think about it. It was helpful to me, as often the point I disagreed with, was actually "the right way" and I was able to keep being out of my bubble. That being said, people often believed that what I say is what I actually believe in and so many won't even speak to me because they think I am a twt. I guess I was good at this.

Great analysis. I'd extend it to "interview." I had a chance to do some interviews on a podcast (for a change, I'll dispense with the shameless self-promotion and not link to it), and I had a chance to practice this. I tried to remember, "the listener is not here to listen to ME; they're here to listen to the interviewee."

Also sometimes watching the old Dick Cavett show on OTA. It's a miracle that they ever let a guy like him on television. He actually talked to his guests, rather than reading off some cue cards his producers gave him.

I’be learned to keep an open mind. Whenever I see something which I don’t understand, or something that screams “that’s just stupid” I try to wait with being the judge - because by experience, there’s usually some rationality behind that.

It might not make sense to me, but could make sense - even be very important to others.

Probably the people I enjoy the least to interact with, are the highly opinionated and cocksure people that simply refuse to expand their minds. Listen more, would be my best advice. Wait until you see a bigger picture, and don’t try to infer everything from the go.

This reminds me Bertrand Russells's "The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt".

Though in my experience a lot of very intelligent people are pretty cocksure [0] and could do with a dose of humility.

[0] Ref. the word 'cocksure', not that HN will ban me, but twitter might - cf. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-64451977

Im reminded of the book “Getting to yes” by Roger Fisher.

“ In any negotiation, he wrote—even with terrorists—it was vital to separate the people from the problem; to focus on the underlying interests of both sides, rather than stake out unwavering positions; and to explore all possible options before making a decision.”

https://www.economist.com/obituary/2012/09/15/roger-fisher

> They lend me their shoes and glasses, so I can walk a mile with their viewpoint and experience it for myself.

I love this qoute and completely agree with it, it's always enlightening to "really" try to understand other people, without evaluating whether they're right or wrong. But the problem arises when you both start acting and your ideas clash. And you need to decide which is the "best" way.

As a matter of fact, this logic is expedient for those who want to brainwash someone. Sure, you may have to listen to the weak people you think are "stupid," and that gives you a new perspective. But not in the case of some huge media. They just want to sensitize people with convenient political and commercial propaganda. Punch the strong and sympathize with the weak.

"The Singaporean in the three-piece-suit explains why clothing is like the SMTP protocol.", that must be Meng Wong of RFC4408

I come to ask this. Why is it like SMTP?

There's a time and a place for vigorous debate in support of your position, and a time and a place for listening non-judgmentally with an open mind. Most things don't matter all that much and aren't worth fighting about. Some things are.

Some people just like to fight at every opportunity, and others are too cowardly to fight when they should.

In english this seems to be called "debate bro culture"? In my language it's called like "debate horny". The gist of this thing is oppose to loseless context, so there's always part of context that is lost. Debate is close to talking in analogy. It will leads you to something but not the thing as a whole.

Remember, if you're winning, if you're correct, if you're talking, then you're not learning. Only when you're wrong and you recognize you don't have the full picture can you grow. I think our education systems and parents often frame being wrong as bad, but it's precisely the opposite.

> Now I want to hear everything about how clothing is like the SMTP protocol

If email is from the wrong "brand" (i.e. server); it is instantly seen as garbage and discarded by most mail hosts. If clothes are from the wrong "brand" (i.e. manufacturer); they are instantly seen as garbage and discarded by most people.

Agree if no consequence. But imagine, what if there is. And the debate's winner gets to implement his BS.

Loose every debate. When you are on your deathbed you won't be reviewing these debates. You'll be either reliving those great experiences you had, or regretting the experiences you didn't have. Key word:

"Experiences"

Words don't count for anything. They're just sounds we make....

This is very self-congratulatory and fails to account for the many times where winning a debate can have greater implications than navel gazing. If the author has never encountered these, he's either very lucky or has no meaningful views against the mainstream anyway.

All of these "debates" are about how someone else's way of life makes sense for them. The world would be a better place if we assumed this is the case most of the time instead of having to be convinced of it.

You can't understand people with empty arguments. on the contrary, you get prejudices or wrong impressions about them. I think it makes more sense to listen to people to understand. If you want to understand.

There are three kinds of debate:

- Debate where the goal is to learn.

- Debate where the goal is to persuade your opponent.

- Debate where the goal is to persuade the audience.

The first is good for your soul, the second for you ego and the third for your political career.

The way I always lose debates on social media is when a pedophile (or pedophile defender) argues with me. They have an answer for everything. I don't have that much time to be on screen to argue with them.

I have read multiple times, that debates cannot be won or lost.

People don't change their minds as a result of debates, thus it's impossible to win or lose a debate.

What the author talks about isn't a debate, but rather learning.

The stoics would say two ears, one mouth and the Buddhists would say the ears have no lids but all else do. Everyone is right in their own perspective. That’s why it is called a point of view.

> The Hindu explains why poverty doesn’t upset her.

So according to the author me and my community are not upset by poverty and hence are not doing anything to fix it.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/india/india-lifted...

https://gdc.unicef.org/resource/report-india-lifted-271-mill...

Who is this author again and why are people listening to a charlatan like him?

It seems to me that the author spoke about one particular Hindu they met who was not upset by their state of poverty. It’s not clear to me that they claimed that your community is not upset by it, and is not doing anything to fix it. Help me with clarity.

If it has nothing do with her being hindu or beliefs generated from religion then why is that fact she is hindu relevant ?.

It is like saying a short or bald person came to me and said poverty doesn't bother them.

If I was short or bald then I am going to be offended by that.

> her

I think you're extrapolating. Author is very clearly just talking about an individual, not a group. No need to get outraged.

But he is, he characterized that person as a Hindu,he didn't say a friend or a neighbour or whatever else he could have described her by.

The implication in labelling her hindu is that this a common or known position amongst Hindus?.

I have no idea why he chose that signifier to refer to the individual he was talking about, that was also confusing to me, but it doesn't follow that he means "literally everyone who is also Hindu", and I didn't jump to that conclusion.

I understood it as a common or at least well known view amongst hindus, which seems a reasonable interpretation of the statement made.

"So according to the author me and my community..."

No, not you and your community. He said no such thing. Don't put words into other people's mouth.

A book on this topic: Think Again [1]

[1] https://adamgrant.net/book/think-again/

When your goal is simply to learn, then you can listen instead of debating.

Sometimes the outcome matters, though. Sometimes there is justice, well-being, or kindness at stake.

Obviously not every convo needs to be a duh-bate. but "works for me/them" is a pretty low bar for veracity or moral permissibility.

Usually losing the debate means losing to the pig who has better experience. I prefer to just avoid debates. they tend to never be productive except maybe in academia. A common criticism you see online is people avoiding debate and blocking, but consider that usually this is from being tired of bad faith, obtuseness, etc. At some point, patience runs thin. You don't have time for the one or two good, productive debate out of dozens bad, pointless ones, so blocking or ignoring is easier. And no one changes their mind anyway.

It's not a debate but a conversation. Treat it like an exchange of information, not something you can win or lose. If the other person doesn't follow, then you can stop replying.

So the articles title is misleading

I didn't write the article, I'm just joining the discussion.

I'm just stating the obvious, wasn't targeted at you

"Debate" doesn't have to mean just an organized discussion between two people in front of an audience. If two people are having an argument where they're trying to convince each other of their own position, that's also a debate.

But that's not what he describes in the article.

"I don’t want to convince anyone of my existing perspective."

That's not a debate

That's missing the point. The author is not taking about a heated exchange, but mostly just listening so closely to the point you actually get convinced you agree with someone else, at least from their perspective.

hmm...but just listening is not a debate though. it's part of a debate, but the debate is the back and forth process. I have found the 1-10 ratio to hold up and this is as being as polite as possible.

> The sex worker explains why she loves her job.

I'm not going to comment on the other stuff, but we should stop with the sociopathic neo-liberal glorification of "sex work", which in the majority of cases is just human trafficking.

I come from a town in Eastern Europe where one of the local mob guys has been caught with trafficking hundreds of (I guess mostly local) girls in Spain. I'm pretty sure many of those girls, if asked, would have told a nice story of "I earn good money out of this! It's liberating!" to any Westerner techie client who would have bothered to ask, what else could have they said? They were still the victims of human trafficking.

The fact that some prodtitutes are victims of human trafficking doesn't mean that all are. In fact, there are countries where sex work is legal but not human trafficking. So it's possible to even have a legal distinction there.

I don't know how things are in Spain, but in the US there's a huge stigma associated with being a sex worker besides it being illegal and actively enforced. In these conditions it would be very difficult to have sex workers who are not somehow a product of sex trafficking. However, in societies where it's not really a taboo, some people will pick that profession, at least for a while.

I'd like to believe that the people who are against sex work are actually thinking of the good of the sex workers and because of human trafficking.

Yet there is a lot of human trafficking in other areas, like farmwork or maids in the Western world, and the non-Western world is filled with sweatshops and literal slaves. And you never hear them mention it.

Which makes me convinced these people are just anti-sex work for religious or moral reasons (because they have internalized that sex is sinful or bad), reasons they then lie about.

Good test of the OP’s point, hope you both lost this one :-)

> Yet there is a lot of human trafficking in other areas, like farmwork or maids in the Western world, and the non-Western world is filled with sweatshops and literal slaves. And you never hear them mention it.

> Which makes me convinced these people are just anti-sex work for religious or moral reasons (because they have internalized that sex is sinful or bad), reasons they then lie about.

> thinking of the good of the sex workers

Good for whom? for the johns and a handful of high profile female "socialites"? It certainly brings nothing good for females as a class.

You blame "religious" morals for opposition to prostitution, but even Marx was opposed to prostitution, nobody can't accuse him of being very religious...

> Which makes me convinced these people are just anti-sex work for religious or moral reasons

If it matters I'm an atheist. I'm against "sex work" because women (it's women in the majority of cases) are trafficked and taken advantage of, in both a material and a direct physical way.

I see this "sex work" non-sense mostly coming from people who have had no direct contact with the reality/materiality of it all, i.e. mostly from the Western middle-classes.

Later edit: Because this has touched a close nerve with me, copy-pasting some stuff related to that reality/materiality I had mentioned from a news article about Romanian prostitution rings in Spain [1]:

> The women were freed from brothels in Malaga and Girona where they had been sexual exploited by their compatriots and made to work for up to ten hours a day under the threat of violence.

> Some had come to Spain after being falsely promised better lives by the Romanian sex traffickers while others had fallen victim to the so-called 'lover boy' scam, according to a police statement.

> This method involves one of the sex traffickers forming an intimate relationship with the woman to earn her trust before later forcing her into prostitution.

> One of the women freed, who was only 18 years old, had been reported as missing by her family in Romania.

> Police described the 'iron control' exerted by the 'well-organized' sex-trafficking ring and said that the women had been kept completely isolated from the outside world.

I don't know of any sane person who would call that legit "work" and "liberating".

[1] https://www.thelocal.es/20140812/spanish-police-smash-romani...

It's just when I pragmatically think about solutions to the very real problem of human trafficking, banning sex-work seems like the least effective thing to do. And what constitutes sex-work? Any sex where payment is involved? Any sex act outside of marriage?

Human trafficking is already illegal. Fund investigators and get rid of traffickers.

Empower sex-workers instead of banning the practice, because it will still happen but just more in the shadows. Bring it to the front and truly regulate it.

Why would sex outside of marriage be considered sex work? For something to be work you need to receive some sort of material compensation. Usually it's just money. But I guess if someone gives you a car or some jewelry in exchange of sex it could classify too. I don't see how having sex with someone in a party where both people wanted it could conceivably be considered sex work

> I'm against "sex work" because women (it's women in the majority of cases) are trafficked and taken advantage of, in both a material and a direct physical way.

That's a very naive and harmful take.

Criminalizing sex work means that only criminals would be involved in it, hence the trafficking.

Given that you can't do anything about supply and demand, the only sane solution to trafficking is decriminalizing sex work. Not being "against it".

This 'lover boy' scam is a big industry in Japan, it's called host clubs.

Perhaps we should credit OP with enough intelligence to assume that their debate with the sex worker didn't happen in a context where OP was their client.

Also the fact that sex work can be linked with human trafficking doesn't necessarily mean that sex work is bad. Working on a construction site can be a meaningful and rewarding career, but could also be utterly miserable if you've been trafficked there and are working in conditions of modern slavery. But that means human trafficking is bad, not that construction work is bad.

If anything, I think the human trafficking thing is an argument for NOT demonizing / criminalizing sex work, so that it becomes part of the visible, regulated economy, which would it turn make it harder for traffickers to exploit and control people.

I totally assumed it was a friend of his, for some reason. Having read his stuff I get the impression he spent a portion of his life being highly social and trying to meet a lot of people. In an intentional way. His life is a bit like a lab!

Sex work is a very good example of a topic where you can change your mind completely from one debate/conversation to another depending on examples and framing and the ulterior motive of the conversation partner.

I think it has to do with morality of course and the problem of defining "sex work" but mostly I think it's the fact that we humans are sexual beings and that our sexuality often is a "dark" place. In the sense that we don't shine a light there ourselves out of fear what we could discover (eg. why did I get a tingly sensation when two people of the same sex kissed in the latest mega hyped tv show everyone is talking about).

Edit: and due to this our reasoning abilities are kinda off and we are more subject of swaying to different sides based on subconsious feelings. Eg. "so you are saying prostitution should be legal and protected by laws and unions, YES, that seem like better for the sex workers (then I could hire a male sex escort and finally find out...)"

You're opening a can of worms, but that's basically what every debate does. The idea of "sex work" has other, larger implications. For example, in my country, if you are unemployed, the government gives you some money, but less money if you don't try to find work. If "sex work" is a legitimate form of work, can the government suggest you seek such a job, if you can't find work otherwise? Will your friends and your family pressure you? It may seem far-fetched at first, but if I think back to all the other things that were liberating alternatives and now have become mandatory. Cars gave us the freedom to quickly get from A to B, but now a commute of 1 hour is acceptable. Phones gave us the freedom to reach everyone almost instantly, but now you have to be available 24/7 for everyone else. You can get the latest news at any time, but you also have to stay up-to-date. It is no coincidence that most women put on make-up every single day.

What I'm trying to say is that everything that is "liberating" only shackles you to a new framework eventually.

Do you oppose agriculture as an industry? Do you oppose factory work? Globally a lot of forced labor ends up being used to cut costs for international companies.

What about just young women making stupid life choices? Like putting off meaningful relationships or long-term careers for easy short-term cash to fund their vices. Would they count as liberated individuals that middle aged men should feel no qualms about availing themselves of?

Even if it's normalized, women will just be tossed aside when they get old (pass 30) in such environments...

If you value freedom and equality you cannot be against sex-work. Being against sex-work means that police someone elses bodily autonomy. Human trafficking is a framework issue, not specific to sex-work.

I agree with this, and I hate when people say "debating is pointless because no one ever change their mind".

One great advice I've heard is that, before even going into a debate, you ask someone "What would it take for you to change your mind on this subject?"

People won't change their mind if they don't have an open mind to begin with, or if they're not open to debate on a subject matter in the first place.

A lot of people - online and off - will engage in debate for debate's sake, even though all parties involved are not willing to change their opinion. They just want to be heard.

I mean who here would have an open mind about e.g. flat earth or whether the Holocaust actually happened (to invoke Poe's law)? I sure don't, and I don't feel guilty about it either; I don't need to consider anyone's point of view if I find their opinion morally reprehensible, and if they strongly hold those beliefs and are unwilling to accept alternatives, they're not worth the effort or time. They can go back to their echo chambers.

Given the current level of political polarization in the US, we can conclude that Americans are very bad at this.

This is a special case of one of my life mottos: I've never learned anything by being right.

But what about the person who argues that you should want to win every debate!?!?

I think the completely radical idea being rediscovered here is called humility.

Now here is a new problem: The other side wins. The examples are that there are no consequences of the debate, which is great. But in reality, there are consequences (some of them are negative) if you lose the debate, e.g., job interview.

You can understand people and where they come from, information about why they believe what they believe. But it's naive to think this can always foster common ground - some beliefs are entirely incompatible with the existence of the listener.

I've heard a good one about that; there's opinions and there's morals. You can debate about whether, idk, donuts are good or not; that's a personal opinion, the stakes are pretty low with that.

But other disagreements are on a moral level; things like racism, some people are morally bankrupt and have Strong Beliefs about what should happen with people not like them. I don't believe you can (or should) debate with people like that.

And I think that the anti-science 'debates' can also hit people on a moral level; how DARE you hold these strong beliefs that do hold up to scientific scruteny? (think flat earthers etc).

I completely disagree. Silence is implicit agreement in some (and I would argue most, at one time or another) people's minds. A fringe mentality that doesn't encounter any push-back will tend to exacerbate itself further and further. If an idea is not factually wrong anyone can be convinced of it. Anyone can be made racist or tolerant given the right argument.

Sadly sometimes our desires aren't met

Let's not forget the Prime Directive.

I try to aim for education with empathy.

> don’t debate at all, just listen.

Just loved this.

Not every opinion is worth your time.

Get yourself over to reddit, the best debaters ion the world. Appeal to authority almost every time.

Be curious, not judgemental.

you only loose if you refuse to debate

OP got it wrong

I'm sorry, but I just can't read this.

Ever since I put out an album on CDBaby in like 2004, which was Mr Sivers project at the time, I have been subjected to an endless stream of daily self promotion from this man. Somehow he evades all spam blocks and all attempts to remove myself from his lists. I have never seen another human being so self absorbed who consistently just had to have their meandering thoughts manually junked from my inbox for so many years. Not even my father who forwards shit from fox news every morning. My pure level of irritation at seeing Sivers name must be a great credit to his ability to evade every spam block on earth; it's almost like every attempt to block him just makes him stronger.

You don't have to read anything. One does not have to be a genius to guess EXACTLY what the blog post is about.

Can't you just block his emails?

I've tried. I've even contacted him personally. I run my own mail server so you think it should be trivial. A year or two later, he's gotten past my filters again. We're talking about 20 years here. I don't understand it but he's got some form of email jujitsu.

Insu

These days I try to actively confuse myself as to what positions I hold in the aim to be more objective with my reasoning. As best I can I try to block out thinking in terms of labels completely.

When I was younger I cared a lot about having very clear, well defined opinions. I adopted labels to describe my positions and would wear these labels with pride as I believed them to be correct and well-reasoned. Eg, I am a liberal. I am pro-choice. I am anti-war.

But truth was I wasn't 100% liberal, pro-choice, or anti-war. There were circumstances where I could hold more nuanced opinions depending on the context. But because I adopted these labels I was always really reluctant to acknowledge when nuances existed. This was especially true the more gray the right answer was. For example, a lot of people who are anti-war believe the US was right to join the fight against the Nazis. But what about the American civil war? What about supporting Ukraine against Russia. Are these justified positions too?

Suddenly it's difficult to claim to be anti-war while also be a supporter of many major conflicts. How can someone who claims to be anti-war be in favour of so many wars? You know rationally you can't be anti-war and also pro-war when it suites you so you might be tempted to try to rationalise why actually the American civil war shouldn't have been fought or why Ukraine should just let Russia win to preserve peace.

Equally assigning labels to others is also bad. What if you were arguing with someone you consider a racist and they make a good point? No matter how correct they are to acknowledge that point is difficult because suddenly that risks agreeing with a racist. I'm from the UK and I've seen this with the EDL here. While a lot of their opinions are awful, they also occasionally can make good points about issues like grooming gangs and Islamic extremism here in the UK. The problem as no one wanted to agree with them about anything so Islamic extremism and grooming gangs got labelled a far-right conspiracy. I suppose a more recent example of this was with Covid. In 2021 agree with any argument against mass government mandated vaccination programs was often considered being anti-vax.

My head is far more muddled these days. I believe I'm more objective and flexible in my thinking though. I'm saying this because while being happy to lose a debate and change your mind is great, no one goes into a debate to lose - especially not to someone you view as an ideological enemy in some form. As soon as you assign labels to yourself and think in terms of "winning" and "losing" it's very difficult to think rationally about anything.

> The Muslim explains why Islamic law is a perfect recipe for peace.

Let me rephrase it for a second.

> The Communist explains why global USSR is a perfect recipe for peace.

> The Nazi explains why Reich is a perfect recipe for peace.

Sometimes you have to wish for an idea to die, too bad if some of its carriers have to go with it.

>The Muslim explains why Islamic law is a perfect recipe for peace.

That would be so funny to listen to. Mental gymnastics would be trough roof.

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