Some pointers about discussions

General Discussion
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Hope everyone had a fun time today! I noticed there’s some lack of discussion ability around. Since that is one of my favourite things to do, I decided to share some ideas that I keep on the back of my mind when discussing.

The objective
Contrary to popular belief the objective of a discussion is not to win it. The objective is to increase our shared knowledge, to move forward. This can happen in different ways:

  • Adding new information
  • Changing one’s mind from something false to something true
  • Finding common ground on apparently opposed views

With this in mind, we can start making some progress, for instance…

Always assume good intentions
This is often quite a failure in discussion groups, not to mention business meetings. Assuming good intentions prevents us from making other assumptions. More than that it allows us to keep the discussion focused on the objective.

Always show your agreement whenever you agree
Since most people think that the objective of a discussion is to win it, they’ll take counter-arguments personally. One way to defuse that is to tell them that you agree with them. Read my posts and check how often I write “I see your point” or “I agree with you on X”. People will trust you and not think you are attacking them but rather that you are open to engage in a fair exchange of ideas.

Steelman arguments
Better use an example here. If someone says “Pirate Warrior is overpowered” and you reply “Pirate Warrior isn’t even in Standard now, who cares” you are making a strawman argument. You are not addressing the actual the argument, but rather addressing tangent to it. The way to avoid strawman arguments is to steelman them, meaning: interpret arguments in their strongest possible form. If you need clarification, rewrite your interpretation of the argument in the strongest possible form and ask your “opponent” if that is correct. If you aren’t able to do that: shut up and move on.

Don’t use fallacious arguments
Here’s a list of common ones:

  • Ad Hominem: attacking the person instead of the argument. This can be subtle or not, but every time you talk about who the person is or thinks instead of the argument you are incurring in this fallacy.
  • Strawman: read previous point.
  • Arguments from authority. Any argument that uses some form of supposed authority are irrelevant. Things like “most players agree” is an argument from popularity or “even Kripp said” is a pure argument from authority. They are irrelevant. However there are arguments that are not from authority but look like it, for instances saying “It is possible to be an F2P pro player, a good example is Amnesiac” may be a bad argument, but it is not an argument from authority and it’s true.

There are dozens of fallacies. Knowing and identifying them is key for some that discusses a lot, but these 3 are by far the most common. What to do with them: easy, ad hominem deserves to be burnt with fire. The other two are either slips (we all fall into fallacies) or ignorance. Kindly correct them, if possible without pointing the actual fallacies but the logic behind it.

What if all fails
What if whoever is discussing with you is incapable of following the same logic? Well, if they are polite, disengage politely. There are better times and places to discuss. If they are not, then you are not discussing, you are debating. Now your objective is to pass on information into others that are observing, not the person you are interacting with. Feel free to openly point fallacies and to be witty. Ask for clarification and counter-arguments because it’s on them to actually return to civil discussion. Whoever does this doesn’t know any better, but that doesn’t mean they are bad or stupid. They simply lack the necessary skills. Whoever agrees with them doesn’t either, but you shouldn’t care. Your objective moving forward is to inform others that are able to participate in the shared knowledge.

This are just some pointers, hope it’s useful for you all. There’s tons to discuss on this subject but this should be good to go for forums sake. Good luck, grasshopper. :wink:

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…let me change your mind :wink:

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This assumes that there is a discussion willingness though.

I think there are 2 model groups of people: the ones that want to discuss as you outlined it and the ones that want to say things to make themselves feel good.

The latter group isn’t willing to engage in what we call a discussion because any counter argument is viewed as an attack on a thing that makes them feel good, so as a personal attack. This results in equally personal counterstrikes (the fallacious arguments).

This post is intended as a help for people who struggle with dealing with this 2nd group. I’ve had great troubles with that for years and I pissed people off left and right and suffered pretty badly myself because I was trying to work through discussions that the other side had no intentions of having.

but once I realised that there are those 2 categories, life became much easier for me.

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This is where I fall down. I love to have good, in-depth discussions on here as a lot of you know and I like to think I can be insightful and contribute as well as most to a good discussion, but when I see other people making wild claims about their perception of the game, insulting others or just acting like a complete idiot in general it pushes my buttons and I feel the need to step in and try to show them their errors. Obviously this hasn’t worked as well as I would have liked on occasion and I often find myself getting dragged into arguments.

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That’s why I mentioned to always assume good intentions. At least you are giving the other person a chance. To be honest I feel you do this most of the times.

Not all fallacious arguments are personal attacks. That’s why I agree with them in whatever I can, it disengages the defensive thing. However if presented with personal attacks, well… discussion is over, debate begins. However, all your points are completely valid.

And we’re making progress. :wink: Keep in mind that wild claims, people upset and so on may just be a reflection of their state of mind at the time. Maybe they need to get some steam go. If there are no personal attacks, you can easily engage assuming good intentions and agreeing with them wherever you can.

If you don’t mind the feedback, when you engage with what you perceive to be “stupid people”, you are factually falling on ad-hominem fallacies yourself because you are objectively addressing the person rather than the argument. You know better than that, mate. :slight_smile:

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Yea. I meant it as a classification in my own mind. If I know someone belongs to the 2nd group, I won’t try to explain my arguments over and over if he misunderstands/misuses them. Also I won’t chase them with my arguments if they cherry-picked through my post only to answer the stuff that they have answers for. And so on.

Yes, I know. I tried to make it short because I’ve written so much today already. It was another trademark khisana oversimplification :smiley:

I used to do that. Once I even succeeded. The other 348 times I was berated or ignored.

Anyway, my point isn’t to stop talking to people that show a lack of discussion skills, but to help others find an exit out of those conversations if they suffer from them. I’m sure you two understand me, but I wanted to summarize that anyway for my own peace of mind :slight_smile:

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This depends on the subject imo. In the case of subjective discussion, you are correct in assuming that everyone should be considered as an equal. If we’re having a discussion about something that only has one correct answer, the arguments of certain people should carry more weight. For clarity: only your own professionalism/authority counts in those cases. “X or Y said” is a fallacy in all cases (unless you say “Phillybear said”)

Edit: disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing can also be a fun way to pass time.

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Indeed it does. Arguments from authority are very tricky, some of them are not even arguments from authority. :slight_smile:

My daughter often asks complicated questions. To give her the full spectrum, especially on complex questions, I debate with my wife while my daughter moderates. If we agree on the subject, I play the contradictory, just to have a full in-depth discussion. In a way I’m disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing. We’ve had great fun with this, sometimes my daughter even wants to play the contradictory herself, which is awesome. I’m hoping, as a minimum, that she doesn’t say dumb things in forums when she’s old enough.

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This topic should need to be a sticky one , ´´read this before you create a topic´´

Keep in mind that in general most posters just vent their emotions and dont expect any debate or discussion, but that reveals itself most times with the sentences used by the OP with his opening post.

Though hearthstone is a game played by a lot of teenagers to and sometimes it can be difficult to determine if the person in question that you are arguing with is ´´stupid in that moment of time´´ or just a teenager because i do encounter sometimes some idiotic events/conversation between two grown ups in my social enviremont.

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