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Comment by windowshopping | Hacker News Reader

> I think we agree?

That is such a crazy way to start a response to someone trying to argue with you. I should try this. That's amazing. I know you didn't mean it as a trick, at least I'm pretty sure you meant it sincerely, but I'm just struck by the power of it to defuse and redirect the conversation. And this was a very low-grade example, but I could imagine this being useful in much more heated contexts.

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I think in general stripping away the parts you agree with from the argument works great, because it strips away a whole lot of potential for ending up indirectly arguing over things that aren't in contention, and it often also defuses the rest when it turns out the core of the argument perhaps is much smaller than people are willing to get invested in.

How do you do that without sounding negative? Because by doing that there's the risk of the general impression "we didn't agree", as you basically focused on the disagreements.

"You're totally right about X and Y. I think the only thing we disagree about is Z". People like being told they're right, and you then downplay the importance of the actual remaining disagreement. Often that lowers the stakes for people. They've already "won" since you agreed with most of what they said, so the rest becomes less important.

Repeating back what someone said (specifically: trying to mirror their exact words as best you can remember them) also has proven psychological effects: increased empathy and calming of your own emotional response and theirs.

It's a component of a few psych frameworks around improving interpersonal conflict. Ref: https://hartsteinpsychological.com/the-power-of-active-liste...

Short template form is "What I think I heard you say is (repeat their words as exactly as possible)? Did I get that right?"

Yeah, 100% agree with that.

OTOH I have often witnessed people agreeing without realizing it. I‘ve been able to defuse a bunch of arguments by pointing that out.

In fairness I completely agree with 99% of their comment.

I was nitpicking the use of the word “moat”. For it to be a moat, it’d need to be more expensive to traverse than to build.

Instead, the big AI firms are trying to create a monopoly on capital in an area where real costs are dropping 90% year over year.

Usually people are taught these techniques at the management courses. If you're at a BigCorp where they push managers through such courses - you can hear a lot of that stuff in your manager's speech if you pay attention to it.

Yeah, more valuable than the comments I came to read (even if those are interesting too!)

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