lessdazed comments on Rational Communication - Less Wrong

23 Post author: Swimmer963 10 September 2011 02:30AM

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Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 10 September 2011 11:00:44AM *  3 points [-]

These are perhaps good pointers for communicating with normal people, but go against a number of useful things that you should be able to do to communicate more efficiently, with someone you can cooperate with in that regard, or teach to get better at eventually:

  • Interrupting to fix (point out) a technical problem with reasoning, that would be forgotten and ignored as insignificant otherwise. Persisting at this leads to gradual improvement. (For example, fighting the many faces of rationalization the moment it's detected, or problems with misusing words.)
  • Interrupting an explanation that doesn't help you, that you don't accept and won't benefit from for one reason or another, getting the conversation back on track or reframing it.
  • Make sure you understand details of the described idea, and not just the outline. Summarizing at the end only checks the outline and ignores the texture.
  • I concur that approving/disapproving is not a good idea, but for a different reason, for you should point out considerations that you think relevant and expect the other didn't take into account, which can change the conclusion.
  • Confronting emotionally-driven reasoning helps with developing a measure of immunity to it, and ability to notice. People can be at their craziest when driven by emotion, so it's particularly important to notice when you are so influenced and take sufficient precautions to confound the craziness.
  • Above all these is, of course, educating people about the basic concepts that would allow communicating the nature of the problem when it manifests.
Comment author: lessdazed 10 September 2011 11:05:02AM 1 point [-]

Interrupting an explanation that doesn't help you, that you don't accept and won't benefit from for one reason or another, getting the conversation back on track or reframing it.

Going back to the fork in the argument, the point at which one first began to disagree, is helpful and the main way I would put that. For me, reframing usually comes after going back to the fork doesn't work.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 10 September 2011 11:10:24AM *  1 point [-]

I find that "misunderstanding" describes the difficulties in the process of actually trying to communicate better than "disagreement". "Disagreement" is not so much a failure mode, as a way in which to focus on the questions that you need to form better mutual understanding about. So you abort a line of conversation not because of disagreement, but because of misunderstanding, while disagreement refocuses the conversation.